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Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you'd like to hear more stories like these with a different background sound, please check the description to check out my other two podcasts and if you want to get rid of all of the ads, you can subscribe for just $2.99 a month. Last thing I really appreciate you being here and I'd really love if you would follow the podcast and come back again soon. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy. Before I start this story off, this was about a year ago and though I do have some thoughts that this was sleep paralysis, I am leaning more towards the idea of it just being a nightmare. What makes me think that it could have been sleep paralysis was the fact that I heard my brother go to the bathroom and when I woke up he was coming out of the bathroom. But I could have just heard the bathroom door close in my sleep and my mind included it in my nightmare since it is a common occurrence during the time of which this occurred. I was asleep in my room and my door a little less than halfway open. I felt awake and I was asleep on my left side. To give you a quick layout of my room as it is relevant to the story, my bed was centered against the wall while my door is in front of my bed all the way to the right of the front wall. To the left of my bed, I have a mirror which allows me to see my door even if I am facing away from it. As I had my eyes closed, I heard my brother walk into the bathroom and shut the door, making the area outside of my room dark since the only source of light that was illuminating the hallway was closed off. Suddenly, from my mirror, I saw a tall, lengthy woman walk up to my doorway. She looked drenched and her skin was a grayish color since it was dark. I couldn't make out too many details, but all I know is that I was terrified out of my mind. I tried moving, but of course I couldn't. I couldn't even make out the smallest noise. All I could do was hope that my brother would walk out of the bathroom and this dream or sleep paralysis episode would end. I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see the thing for much longer. This was when I didn't have carpet in my room, so the sound of her dropping to the ground was even more audible than it normally would have been. It almost sounded like someone dropped a huge piece of meat on a hard floor. With the exception of the sound of her bones cracking when she did so. My breathing became rapid as I heard her crawl on all fours toward my side of the bed almost inhumanly fast. I kept my eyes shut, fearing that if I opened them it would take long to get over the horrifying face that I would see. All I heard for those few seconds was breathing and my heart beating in my ears. This was in a whisper tone. Open your eyes. Out of nowhere I was snapped awake and let out a small scream as I thought the woman was still in the room. But she wasn't. There was no one by my bed. The bathroom door opened and my brother peeked into my room, confused. I didn't have to say a word and he just switched on the light for me and went back to his room. But I stayed up for a few hours after that, being too scared to go back to sleep, terrified I would see that same woman and hear that same voice. Open your eyes. Randall Smith was raised an only child in the small town of Pearisburg, Virginia. The townsfolk remembered his mother as a nice lady who kept to herself, earning a living in a laundry room at the Giles Memoria Hospital. But for some reason, for the first few years of his life, Randall's mother chose to dress him in girl's clothing. We can only speculate as to the effect this had on the young man, but what we do know is that his school classmates would later describe him as something of a loner as well as a habitual liar. He often told tall tales of money he didn't have or of spurious sounding adventures he had been on. This led to his peers calling him lr, an acronym standing for Lying Randall. During his youth, Randall would often go walking the Appalachian Trail alone, finding solace in the rolling hills and deep primordial forests. After high school, Randall earned a living doing odd jobs around Virginia. Some might have fretted at the instability, but Randall relished it as it gave him the freedom to ramble where he liked. And just like in his youth, he would spend the majority of his spare time wandering the Appalachian Trail, sometimes disappearing for days at a time. The trail stretches for just over 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine and attracts thousands of hikers every single year, most of which see the trail as a kind of rite of passage for serious hill walkers. Most use the trail as a means of escaping their busy work a day lives, taking comfort in the peace and serenity of nature. But at times the trails are anything but serene, and there have been a number of hideously violent crimes committed in the area, perhaps the most infamous being the 2008. Abduction and murder of Meredith Emerson by a psychopathic drifter named Michael Hilton, which took place in a region known as Blood Mountain. During the spring of 1981, two 27 year old social workers from Maine by the names of Susan Ramsey and Robert Mountford decided to hike through Appalachia to raise money for a mental illness charity. On their travels, they had made friends with another hiker on the trail, but had to part ways. Shortly afterward. However, they had agreed to meet up near Pearisburg, Randall Smith's hometown, to catch up and grab a bite to eat together. But when Susan and Robert failed to show up to the meeting, their hiker friend became concerned and contacted the police to report them missing. Deputy Sheriff Tom Lawson gathered up a handful of other deputies and then went up onto the trail to begin the search. On the way, they spoke to a number of other hikers, asking each if they had seen anyone fitting the missing couple's descriptions. Most said no, but one group said yes, reporting that they had seen a man and a woman talking with a rather strange looking individual who seemed to be acting in a bizarre manner near the Wapiti shelter, a small log structure that had been constructed so that weary hikers could rest a while before continuing down the trail. The deputies headed straight for the shelter, finally reaching it on May 30, 1981. By that time, it had been 11 days since the last sightings of the missing hikers, and unless they were experienced in bushcraft, the chance of them reappearing unharmed were rapidly dwindling. While searching the small wooden structure, one of the deputies noticed what appeared to be a blood stain on one of the floorboards. The men then fanned out, searching the area intensively until they came across a small clearing that contained a pile of leaves, one that looked like an attempt to cover something up. They kicked away the leaves, revealing a cloth sleeping bag that had a large heavy mass inside of it. When they cut it open, they discovered it was the corpse of Susan Ramsay, the female half of the charity hiking couple. A day later, with the help of a sniffer dog, the body of Robert Mountford was found buried near a tree stump. Also wrapped in his sleeping bag, Robert had a single bullet wound to his head fired from a.22 caliber weapon, while Susan had been stabbed several times before being bludgeoned to death. Their bodies then dragged from the Wapiti shelter to the spots they were buried. Nearby, deputies found Susan's canvas camera. They had hoped that the film might contain clues to who had murdered them, but found it had Been pulled out and stolen. However, Susan's backpack was also found. A backpack which contained a paperback book that was taken for fingerprint analysis. Most of the prints obviously belonged to Susan, but one set belonged to someone else entirely. Investigators initially believed they belonged to Robert Mountford, but were shocked to find that they did in fact belong to none other than lying Randall Smith. The sheriff's deputies immediately traveled to Randall's home. He was not around, but the deputies had a search warrant and smashed their way into his place to make some seriously disturbing discoveries. Not only did they find bloody clothes and some items which evidently belonged to the murdered hikers, they also found a great deal of X rated materials and most disturbingly, some hospital instruments that had been apparently been fashioned into makeshift X rated toys. Deputies also found a handwritten note stating that he had been kidnapped and was going to be executed. But analysis showed this had been written in Randall's own handwriting and was no doubt merely an attempt to throw the police off his scent. The race was on to find him before he could hurt anyone else. Days passed. The police had no luck in locating Randall Smith. All of his usual haunts reported that he had not been seen in days. With rangers and police scouring the Virginia section of the Appalachian trail with absolutely nothing to show for it, the effort was exhausting. And deputy sheriff Tom Lawson found himself needing a break. So he took his family on a brief vacation down to Myrtle beach in South Carolina. But in some bizarre twist of fate, Deputy Lawson ended up getting a call from the department back home saying there had been an arrest in South Carolina of a man that was strongly suspected to be involved in the hikers murders. An arrest in Myrtle beach of all places. Deputy Lawson hurried to check the suspect out. When he arrived, he was told that the arrested man claimed to have amnesia and could not remember his name or how he had ended up in Myrtle beach, but that he was covered in insect bites in a way that was consistent with someone having hiked the Appalachian trails for days on end. Insect bites that had been scratched so much that they were in danger of becoming infected. In order to get the man to reveal his identity, the deputies hatched a cunning scheme. They told the man that they could not get him the medical assistance he required without a medical consent form that he was required to sign. When given the form, the man scratched out a name onto the paper. Randall Lee Smith, he wrote. The police had found their man. Randall smith was just 27 years old when he was extradited back to Virginia on charges of first degree murder at first it seemed as if Randall would get the death penalty if convicted, but in a strange turn of events, he accepted a plea bargain that resulted in him getting a 30 year sentence instead of being executed. One of the victim's fathers was an Episcopalian minister who accepted the use of the plea bargain and was generally against the idea of Randall being executed. It was also thought that the plea bargain was the better option, seeing as there was a complete lack of motive in the killing, with prosecutors believing this would weaken their argument in the event of a trial. The resulting reduced sentence caused outrage among the local community and fury among hikers nationwide. Out of a 30 year sentence, Randall Smith only ended up serving 15 and was released in 1996 after reportedly being a model inmate who never caused any problems in prison. He walked out of prison a self confessed murderer, but a free man and returned to Pearisburg as a pariah. Randall lived with his mother until her death in the year 2000. After she passed, he became more and more of a recluse, although just like in days gone by, he spent much of his free time up in the Appalachian trails and on more than one occasion was spotted chatting with hikers who were no doubt completely unaware of who they were talking to. But even if they did know Randall Smith, the murderer by his image, they may not have recognized him by now. By that time, he was 54, no longer the portly young man who had been convicted of killing Susan Ramsay and Robert Mountford. He was skinny, pale and walked with a slight limp, and his time in prison had hardened what had once been boyish, smirking features. Then, In March of 2008, Randall seemed to give up on life entirely. He took all the pictures down from the walls of his mother's home, packed a few belongings, then walked off into the woods. He took only a few changes of clothes, some camping and fishing gear, and Bo, his dog. For all intents and purposes, to the people of Perrisburg, Randall Smith had dropped off the face of the earth there one day, totally vanishing the next. But to them, it was simply one less thing they had to worry about. So barely a peep was raised. A few months later, on May 6, two fishermen named Scott Johnston and Sean Farmer were catching trout up near their favorite spot on a place called Brushy Mountain. It was a beautiful summer's day, perfect for outdoor activities and feeling a little closer to nature. All was peaceful and serene, when suddenly they spotted something coming through the trees toward them. It was a middle aged man with a slight stoop, one who warmly waved before approaching their Campsite. The man introduced himself as Ricky Williams. Scott and Sean followed the unwritten code of Appalachia by inviting Ricky to sit and share a dinner of freshly caught fish. Ricky happily obliged, explaining that he was starving, that he had been in the woods for weeks by that point and hadn't eaten substantially in days. Scott and Sean could see this was no lie. Ricky was pale and skinny, and the dog that accompanied him was evidently equally hungry with its ribs protruding from its fur. The campsite the three men had dinner at was only a mile and a half from the Wapiti shelter, the site of the hiker murders way back in 1981. As they ate, Scott and Sean asked Ricky about his life. Ricky replied that he was graduated top of his class from Virginia Tech University and had gone on to write highly advanced scientific papers for NASA pertaining to complex new methods of spaceflight. He also claimed to be extremely wealthy, owning multiple homes in Florida and South Carolina, where he would spend his time with his wife, who was a runner up in several Miss USA pageants. Scott and Sean listened skeptically, recognizing that the man's appearance and his tall tales about a high flying career were most likely a complete fabrication to them. It was almost as if the man who sat before them was in a habit of lying. It came easy to him like it was second nature. As the hours passed, the sun began to dip below the horizon. Scott and Sean began to wonder why their guest hadn't started to make a move back to his own campsite, which was apparently a few miles further upriver. One of them made a comment that he had better head back before the inky black of night had truly descended. Falling and injuring yourself on such a secluded stretch of the trail could mean real trouble for even the fittest young man. But death for an old timer. Ricky stayed for about a half an hour longer before finding his feet, thanking Scott and Sean and beckoning his dog to follow. Come on, Bo. For the man's name was not, in fact, Ricky Williams. The man's name was Randall Lee Smith. And just as he began to walk away from the campsite of his generous fishermen hosts, he pulled a.22 weapon from his pocket and pulled the trigger four times. The first bullet struck Sean in the temple. The second shot slammed into Scott's neck. The men tried to run, but still the shots came. The third tore into Shawn's chest cavity, while the fourth hit Scott in the rear of his neck. Blood poured from wounds caused by red hot lead having ripped through their bodies. But still the fishermen heard hurtled into the woods for safety. Scott had managed to find cover behind a tree as Sean reached his truck parked in the grass just a few yards away. But as he climbed into the cab of the vehicle and slammed the door behind, he saw the face of Randall Smith through the window to his left. Randall raised his.22 weapon, pointed it at Sean's head, and once again pulled the trigger. But no shot rang out. The weapon hadn't fired. Randall Smith had run out of bullets. As their potential murderer began to reload the.22, Sean gunned the truck's engine and put the pedal to the metal, screeching towards a nearby road with a bullet wound to his head. When he found the road, his headlights illuminated a figure standing in the middle of it. But it wasn't Randall Smith. It was his fishing buddy, Scott. He had survived his wounds and had cut Sean off at the road in order to escape. Sean threw open the passenger door and Scott dived in, still holding onto the open wound to his neck that leaked fresh blood onto the upholstery. But although they were in the process of escaping certain death, their chances of survival were horrifyingly slim. Scott was bleeding to death from a wound to to the throat. Shawn had been shot in the head. The nearest hospital was over 30 miles away, and they were driving on an uneven dirt road in the middle of near total darkness. Their headlights the only thing to guide them in woods so deep they had no cell phone reception whatsoever. And to top it all off, Scott had left his truck behind with the keys in the ignition. There was every chance that Randall Smith was following them, having tasted blood, looking to finish them off. It took just five minutes for Scott and Sean to find a house with lights on inside. But to them, those five minutes felt like an eternity. As they pulled up outside it, Scott leapt from the cab of the truck and began to hammer on the front door, screaming for whoever was Inside to call 911. The homeowner, a woman named Melissa Miller, initially thought it might have been some kind of home invasion and was reluctant to actually answer the door. But when she did, she screamed for her 21 year old son Randy to fetch some towels before calling 911. 20 minutes passed after the first 911 call and still no ambulance had arrived. There was a pile of blood soaked towels sitting in front of each each wounded man. When Scott asked to use the Miller's family phone to call his mother and father, he believed with all his heart that he would never see them again. But shortly afterward, an ambulance did arrive and with it came A police officer. The EMTs tried to stabilize both men and ensure that neither would bleed to death in the Miller family home. But it was impossible, and they soon called called for helicopter support to airlift both men to a hospital for emergency surgery. Scott, still bleeding from his neck wound, was loaded onto one of the medevac choppers. By that point, convinced that he was going to die, he could think of no other reason for such drastic measures. His fishing buddy Sean had been shot in the head and chest, but it was he that was being airlifted. If his wounds were more serious than a straight up head shot, he knew his chances of survival were bleak. As the helicopter took off, he felt his mouth filling with blood and heard one of the EMTs talking over the radio, saying she didn't think he was going to make it. He felt himself slipping away and said that at one point he thought he was already dead. But as the helicopter landed in nearby Roanoke and a blast of downdraft from the rotor blades hit him as the as he was unloaded, he knew he was still alive, thanks to the swift actions of young Randy Miller, who had not only helped with fetching towels, but had also managed to get a hold of one of Randall Smith's missing posters. The police knew who the shooter was. Later that night, a Virginia state trooper was driving along the road about eight miles away from Harrisburg when he spotted Scott's stolen gray truck going in the opposite direction. The trooper turned in the road, turning on his lights, and the truck picked up speed dramatically in an attempt to evade him. But in the frenzied effort to escape justice, Randall Smith ran the truck off the road and flipped it upside down. The trooper pulled up alongside the overturned truck with his weapon drawn while Smith was still strapped inside of it. The same.22 he tried to kill Scott and Sean with lying on the ceiling of the truck cab, just out of reach. The trooper caught a glimpse of Randall's eyes with his flashlight and later described them as the coldest he had ever seen. In a chilling twist of fate, the unconscious murderer was then taken to the very same hospital that Scott and Sean had been airlifted to, and when he awoke, tried to claim the shootings were insistent self defense. When Randall was well enough to be transported, he was taken to the medical wing of the New River Valley Regional Jail in Dublin on May 9, 2008. Then, a few days later, a jail officer went to give Randall his dinner. But when the crazed killer didn't retrieve his meal, the officer called his name once, then twice, but there was no answer. The officer rushed to unlock the cell door, finding Randall lying unconscious on the floor in front of him. Medical staff hurried to revive him, but their attempts were in vain. And shortly afterward, Randall Lee Smith was pronounced dead at the age of 54 years old. Forensic analysis showed there were no obvious signs of foul play, no marks on his body whatsoever. And in all likelihood, Randall had simply died of natural causes. So distraught at the prospect of spending more time in prison, so disappointed that his victims had survived the attack and deprived him of the thrill of killing, that he had simply given up on living. His funeral service lasted just 30 minutes, and to avoid any angry displays by the local townsfolk, the service was only announced after he was buried. Randall was buried next to his mother while his dog, Bar Bo, scratched in the dirt during the graveside ceremony. You may be pleased to hear that Bo has since been adopted and given a home with a loving, caring family who feed and walk him regularly. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Randall Lee Smith is that it seems there were absolutely no motives to his murders. Scott and Sean could well have been the kindest people Randall had met in his entire life. Two people who shared food and warmth with a total stranger, owing him nothing but giving nonetheless. In return, Randall tried to take everything from them in a sneak attack that changed both men's lives forever. It seems that Randall killed simply for the sake of killing, because it made him feel powerful. There was no rhyme or reason to his bloodlust, and not even those who were kind and generous did him were safe. Mankind has long fabricated beasts, demons and malevolent spirits that have only ever been confined to the page or screen. An attempt at creating a kind of controllable fear. A simulation. One intended to distract us and comfort us. Because the reality is much more terrifying. Real monsters walk among us, looking and sounding just like our friends, neighbors and family. But they are not driven by love. And they are hungry. 20 year old Kelly Berg Dove lived with her 4 year old daughter in Bridgewater, Virginia. She was a popular young woman. Not a single soul in all of Bridgewater seemed to have a bad word to say about her. Least of all her loving husband, who she'd been romantically involved with since they were both high school sophomores. She also made a point of keeping in touch with her mother and sisters almost every single day. All in all, Kelly was about as wholesome a person as you're ever likely to find. And even found the time to work night shifts at a local gas station to help support her family. They weren't exactly strapped for cash But Kelly valued the idea of making a contribution that would allow them a taste of the finer things in life, as well as squirreling a little of her paycheck away each month for her daughter's college fund. But sometimes terrible things happened to the most wonderful of people. And on the night of June 18, 1982, something was about to happen in the sleepy town of Bridgewater that would send shockwaves through the close knit community. On the night in question, Kelly was working her usual night shift at Harrison Berg's Imperial gas station on South Main Street, Route 11. Kelly had gotten the job because her three sisters had either worked there in the past or were still currently employed by Imperial. The employer thought it would make the girls more accountable for their work, and he was right. Whenever one was sick or couldn't come into work, another would always take her place. And on this night in particular, Kelly was covering for one of her sisters for a little extra college money for her young daughter. Kelly's mom, Rachel, was also a very loving and attentive person and would often call the gas station whenever one of her daughters was working to check if they needed any food, food or hot coffee brought over to help them through their shift. When Rachel spoke to Kelly that night, nothing seemed to be amiss to her. It was just another average night at a mostly quiet gas station in rural Virginia. But little did she know this would be the last time she would ever talk to her daughter. As the evening's events were about to take a rather dark and terrifying turn at around 2:30 in the morning, long after Kelly's mom had retired to bed, Kelly apparently called the Harrisonburg police. The call was to inform them that she had been aggressively harassed by a guy she had described as improperly dressed. It seems Kelly was far too polite to describe what this male customer actually did in any kind of detail. But it's safe to assume that the implied meaning was that he had exposed himself to her. Just a few minutes after this first call, Kelly called again, this time pleading with the dispatcher for a patrol unit to be sent to the gas station. The same man that had apparently exposed himself was calling the station to make obscene threats. And it seems that Kelly was growing anxious as she believed he was willing to follow through with them. The dispatcher promised to get a unit out to her as soon as possible and that she should hang tight. However, just moments after the second call ended, Kelly called 911 yet again. Only this time she was in a complete panic. With a voice that was dripping with fear, she demanded to know how far away the responding police officers were, as the same deranged customer had apparently returned and was sitting in a silver or gray Ford that was parked in the gas station's forecourt. The last thing the 911 dispatcher heard was Kelly screaming that the man had just gotten out of the vehicle and was heading towards the gas station's main building. She then slammed the phone down, apparently preparing to defend herself. The cops rushed over to the Imperial gas station, expecting to arrive to a violent assault in progress. But to their bemusement, when they arrived at the gas station, the place was as quiet as the grave. They searched the entire site, but Kelly was nowhere to be found. All that remained was her purse. There were no signs of any kind of violent struggle, no indications the store had been robbed, but there were also no clues as to where Kelly was. It was as if she simply vanished into thin air. What's clear is that if the suspect was armed, he could have forced Kelly into his vehicle in just a matter of seconds. Kelly's family believed this to be the case as they insist that any attempt by an unarmed man to grab her and shove her into their vehicle would have resulted in Kelly fighting back vigorously. The police investigation that followed led officers to a nearby convenience store where a clerk informed them that he had been visited by a man driving a gray vehicle about a half an hour before Kelly's disappearance. The clerk told them that the man was aged between 20 to 25 years old and had blonde shoulder length hair. This might seem like an obvious lead, but the cops were unable to track down this man, so no connection between him and Kelly's apparent abduction could ever be made. The police then interviewed Kelly's three sisters who were also employed by the gas station. They were shocked to hear that the obscene kind of phone call calls that Kelly had received that night were commonplace, but that no one had ever acted on them, believing them to be from some harmless old pervert whose bark was louder than his bite. They also didn't entirely believe that the man that had harassed Kelly that night was the same person making the phone calls as. There didn't seem to be anything overly threatening about the lewd calls. While the driver of the silver or gray Ford was obviously aggressive enough to show up to the gas station in person. Yet after news hit that one of the gas station girls had apparently been abducted, the phone call seemed to stop entirely for a while, only resuming around six weeks later when this apparently harmless old perv called and made lewd comments to one of the gas station's new hires. This could well be because whoever was making the calls simply wasn't involved in the abduction and didn't want to implicate themselves as a suspect in such a violent and disturbing crime. But it could also be because the same person who made the calls was satisfied with abducting Kelly and didn't feel the need to make another call. Not until the same hunger resurfaced in them around a month and a half after the first fact. When local media outlets contacted Kelly's parents regarding their daughter's disappearance, they gave a rather shocking answer to some very probing questions. When asked if they had any idea who might have kidnapped or harmed their daughter and if this person might be a member of the local community, Kelly's parents unequivocally answered in the affirmative. Although the police had asked them not to publicly speak the man's name name, they believed her abductor had been someone Kelly had gone to high school with. Someone who had a long history of indecent exposure and making obscene telephone calls. And, according to Kelly's sister, also drove a silvery gray Ford. But surely, if Kelly had known the man personally, even just by association, she would have named him in one of the 3911, calls she made leading up to her abduction. But it's also very possible that this person had either obscured their face somehow, or Kelly had simply not recognized him. Given that they had both graduated some time ago, there's also the possibility that Kelly was so terrified that she just failed to mention the man by name during one of those calls. Either way, the police obviously found the possibility of this man being the culprit so plausible that they asked Kelly's parents not to use his name publicly. Yet despite this, he was never charged with any crime, as there was simply not enough evidence to attempt any kind of conviction. There were several other suspects in the case, and authorities were sure to question all of them. But at a time when CCTV cameras and DNA evidence were still just technological pipe dreams, actually placing a suspect at the scene that night was all but impossible. For all intents and purposes, the person who showed up at the Imperial gas station that night is a ghost. Someone who showed up, bundled Kelly Berg, dove into a vehicle, and then seemingly vanished themselves. Barely a trace of either of them was left behind. Merely a purse and a vehicle description. Far too little for the cops to go on to secure a suspect, Kelly or her body. Almost 40 years later, what happened that night remains almost a total mystery, with Kelly being declared legally deceased by local authorities. Despite her family pouring money into private investigators to try and find out exactly what happened. They are no closer to getting any solid answers as they were almost four decades ago. The only truth we have of that night is the terrifying reality that Kelly went to work that night, not suspecting a thing, and ended up encountering someone that caused her to vanish from the fate face of the earth. And that, horrifyingly enough, is something that could happen to each and every one of us. I grew up in an extremely small rural town in Florida on a farm. The population of our town was less than 1,000 people. The closest city, Gainesville, Florida, was about an hour away. The nights were pitch black dark because there were no streetlights or light pollution like in the city, except for the light of a million stars. My great grandfather passed away when I was about eight years old, leaving my granny heartbroken. We lived a field away from my great grandmother, who was about 75 at the time. Unfortunately, Granny had already started getting early Alzheimer's and sometimes didn't act like herself. The family besides me decided that it would be best if I moved in with her so that she didn't have to be alone in the evenings and at night. Granny lived in an old farmhouse that she had helped build by hand with my granddaddy in the 1930s. The house was constructed of wood, wood with a tin roof. We did have electricity at this time, but no air conditioner or telephone. The front door was wood, and the top half of the door was a glass window pane with a small decorative curtain across the very top, the kind you might see on a kitchen window. Needless to say, anyone could see inside the house as clearly as we could see them. The door lock was the original one made by my granddaddy. It wasn't really a lock at all. It was a piece of wood nailed to the frame that you turned horizontally when you closed the door, meant to keep someone from pushing the door open. I slept in the room with my granny. Our bedroom was at the very front of the house, right next to the front door, and my bed was pushed directly up to the window that looked out over the front porch, porch and yard. I always felt safe because my family and aunts and uncles lived in the adjacent farms all around us. In 1990, that all changed. I was 10 years old by now. Granny was getting more forgetful, sometimes wandering around the house at night. In the nearby city, something awful had occurred. A man had broken into apartments of several college students in Gainesville, murdered them and done horrible things to their bodies. There were no suspects. The police called him the Gainesville Ripper. Rumors spread through the community like wildfire. Some said the killer was dressing up like a cableman or electric man to get people to let him in their door. Fear and anxiety. Anxiety grew daily as the police had no leads. My dad decided it was time to teach me how to use our family weapon. Just in case. Dad took me out in the woods and I practiced. That night I fell asleep with the weapon beside the head of my bed with clear instructions to not open the door for anyone we didn't know. As a 10 year old, I felt like this was a pretty big responsibility and my anxiety kept me from sleeping much those next few nights. They reassured me that I would never have to use the weapon, but better to be safe than sorry. Until the next night, which was the most terrifying night of my life. Up until this point, I was laying in bed looking at the digital clock on granny's dresser. 3:05am in bright red digits. Granny had gotten up to wander around the kitchen. She did this often and I just let her do what she thought she needed to do. I heard a tap on the front door window pane. I listened intently and then silence. Suddenly the porch light flipped on, illuminating through my little window. What was Granny doing? I scurried out of bed to the front door just in time to reach for Granny's hand as she was trying to turn the piece of wood, keeping the door locked at the same time. I looked out the window, my eyes meeting the eyes of a strange man standing there. The porch light was behind him and I couldn't see his face very well, but his hair was long and unkempt. I did not know him. He jiggled the handle and pushed hard on the door with all his weight. I was terrified and I excitedly screamed at Granny, asking what she was doing. She told me Granddaddy was at the door. She sometimes thought Granddaddy was still alive. There was no convincing her it wasn't him. With the man pushing furiously against the door, I had to drag Granny with both hands and Granny into the bedroom so I could reach the weapon without giving her a chance to open the door. I grabbed the weapon and ran into the living room, aiming directly at the front door, my finger on the trigger. The stranger was gone. I had no telephone to call for help. We were trapped. I sat in the recliner by the front door, staring out into the darkness beyond the porch light with weapon in hand for the the rest of the night, unable to swallow, shaking so hard I could barely aim the weapon. I waited for the man to return to try one of the flimsy windows or the back door. Every moving shadow, distant dog bark, bump in the night or snap of a twig had my heart racing and blood rushing through my ears. The wind would blow and make the screen door creak open and fall shut with a bang. It was torture. My arms ached from holding the weapon, my nightgown was soaked with sweat and I was on the verge of bursting into soul wrenching sobs. But I had a job to do. Guarding us from the Ripper. Oblivious Granny tottered around the kitchen getting ready to make breakfast because granddaddy would be wanting his coffee soon. I didn't argue or care what she did as long as she stayed away from that front door. I never saw another glimpse of the stranger, but I felt like he was out there watching us. After staying wide awake all night, terrified, holding vigil, I made sure Granny was back to sleep, slipped out the back door and ran straight across the hayfields home to mom and dad for help once the sun came up in the morning. The police eventually caught the Gainesville Ripper and it was not the same man I saw at our front door that night. My family hired an elderly lady to stay with Granny and I moved home permanently. To this day I don't know who was at the door on that pitch black night, but I still panic looking out of windows at that night into the darkness. So this story takes place in the winter last year. I work as a chef in a hotel based in the UK and as the hotel is in the middle of nowhere they are able to provide staff accommodation. We also get a lot of people from abroad coming come and work here for work experience as most of the staff are quite young who live in accommodation. This of course means quite a lot of partying. One night me and my friend AJ are finishing a long shift and decide to have a few quiet beers and not attend any of the parties. We go to my room and start chatting about the day's events and the conversation after a few beers moves onto the paranormal and what we both have experienced. AJ is from Mexico and he starts telling me about stories from his hometown. I find out that he used to be quite the urban explorer, visiting abandoned locations and documenting them. That's when he tells me about Randonautica. For those of you that don't know, randonautica is basically an app that asks for your GPS data and send sends you a location using randomly generated nearby coordinates. Little did I know at this point that there had been some true horror stories by people who have used this app. I really wouldn't advise it, especially at night. As we were a few beers down at this point and AJ already had the app downloaded, we decided it would be fun to go for a walk and see what was at the location selected by Randonautica. It asked us to think about what our purpose was. For example, find something scary or something unexpected. As it was nearing 2am, of course we went with something scary. It popped up with three nearby locations. As neither of us had a car, we decided to take the one that was closest. As I said before, we live in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by woodland and fields. So this meant that we would be walking along back roads in the pitch black with only our phone torches as light. As we started walking, everything seemed to be amplified. The wind whistling through the trees, the animals rustling in the hedgerows. We walked down a hill near the hotel and towards the bottom we could see traffic light lights illuminating the path ahead. We were talking and feeling positive, maybe a bit merry from the beers we had before. Nevertheless, we were getting closer to the location and I started to feel a bit on edge. We crossed into some fields and this is where things started to get weird. Our path was blocked off by some gates. The gates were padlocked shut, but they were small enough to climb over. The location was past the gates, through the field and off to the left hand side. I looked at AJ and suggested we head back, but we both came to the mutual agreement that we had come too far to just turn and walk away. We both jumped over the gate and started walking through the muddy field. Now it was really dark. The moon had gone behind some clouds and it seemed to get colder. It was nearing 3am we both pointed our torches in the way the app was telling us to go and suddenly we could see what looked like an old storage container just sat there in the middle of the field. Is that it? I asked. No, said aj, it's over in that direction and pointed to his left. We both continued to walk towards the storage container, though don't ask me why, I think it was just out of curiosity. We both stopped at exactly the same time. Our torch lights lit up the front of the container There. Someone had spray painted a clown. A sinister looking clown. I was frozen. If we had stumbled across this drain during the day, it would have been scary enough, let alone at 3 o' clock in the morning when we were walking towards the unknown, AJ broke the silence by letting out a nervous Laugh. It's just a clown, bro. I just looked at him. Yeah mate, it's just a clown. Spray painted on a random storage container in a random field with no one around for miles. After a few seconds he said, let's keep walking. At this point, the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end. Something really didn't feel right. I am not actually scared of clowns. It's just I really didn't expect to see that. And something was off. It's just over there, bro, he said, pointing at a tree line. Absolutely not, I thought to myself. Not a chance am I walking up to those trees. It was the start of a vast forest that ended at the hotel nearly two miles away. I am not running through the forest and getting lost if there's something out there waiting for us, I said in a shaky voice. Again, we both came to an agreement not to turn back. We edged closer towards the forest until we could see a little opening. It's in there, he said. I looked and started walking faster towards it. I didn't want this to be drawn out any more than it had to be. Something stopped me in my tracks. My blood ran cold. We were on the tree line at this point, and through the trees I saw a little light. Someone or something else was there. I knew where that light was. It was in the pinpointed location. I turned for what only could have been a split second to tell AJ we were in danger when we heard it. Twigs and branches breaking. Whatever it was, it was moving closer. I looked back even though I knew I shouldn't have have. And a tall black figure was standing in between two large oaks. I didn't get a better look. I couldn't. My legs just geared up and I ran. I ran without looking back. Me and AJ were sprinting now, faster than we ever had before. We didn't even know what direction we were heading in. We didn't know how far we ran until we saw that illuminating glow of the traffic lights. We both slowed down, panting and spluttering. It felt like my throat was bleeding as the cold night air hit my face while running and through gasping breaths had cut my windpipes like glass. We looked around and couldn't see anything. I think we're in the clear, AJ said through staggering breaths. We walked quickly up the hill towards the hotel. I have never been so happy to see the lights in my entire life. This is a warning. Never download Randonautica and if you ever do, only use it in the day. Later it came to my attention that people have gone to locations only to find dead bodies. And some people say it's associated with the Dark Web. I don't know what that thing was or who they were. I guess I never will. What makes this story more scary? I don't think it was paranormal. I think it was a human lurking in the trees, waiting for us.