[music] This happened to me in the fall of 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic when everything still felt surreal. My friend Jay and I were on our way from NYC to Michigan to knock out a couple of vinyl flooring jobs and also scout some potential properties to renovate and flip. We were using his work truck, a white Ford F-150 that had seen better days but ran like a beast.
We decided to leave in the evening around 7:00 p. m. and make the drive straight through the night to get to our destination.
Jay had this theory that driving overnight meant less traffic and we could just power through on energy drinks and gas station coffee. Plus, we'd save money on a hotel. I wasn't thrilled about it, but I figured I'd sleep in the passenger seat for part of the way, and we'd trade off driving duties somewhere [music] around Pennsylvania or Ohio, which is a two-lane highway that cuts right through the mountains of Pennsylvania.
This highway is far from safe. It's elevated in mountainous terrain. There are constant turns [music] and it snakes around so much you can barely see what's coming.
The curves just keep coming one after another. So if you go through the guardrail, you're not just going off the road. You're flying down into the darkness of a ditch or ravine, probably a couple hundred ft down.
Not a pleasant thought, especially at night when you can't see anything beyond your headlights. Anyway, I'm driving while Jay is trying to [music] get some sleep in the passenger seat, reclined back with his jacket balled up as a pillow. I stop at a service plaza around 1:00 a.
m. to refuel and run into the shop real quick to grab some drinks and snacks for the road. The place was nearly empty, just a tired looking cashier and one truck driver getting coffee.
It's a little past midnight and I noticed one other car refueling a few pumps away from us. It was a red or burgundy SUV. I think a Mazda CX-5 or maybe a Suzuki, something boxy like that.
There's a guy sitting in the driver's seat just staring ahead. But I pay it and him no mind as I joged back to the truck with my plastic bag of snacks. Fast forward maybe 30 minutes later and I'm cruising in the left lane doing about 90 trying to make good time.
Then I noticed these headlights behind us in my rear view mirror. It was the same red SUV from the service plaza. At first I don't think anything of it, just another night driver heading the same direction.
But then it dawned on me. This guy has been behind us matching my speed [music] since we left the service plaza. I decide to do a quick test to see if I'm being tailed or not.
Since I was doing 90 consistently, I slowed down to 70 and moved over to the right lane, waiting to see if he passes me. The guy also slowed down with me, staying about three or four car lengths back. Now I'm on full alert, heart starting to pound a little.
I reach over and shake Jay awake. Bro, I think this guy is following us. I tell him about the service plaza and how he's been matching my speed for the last half hour.
My friend Jay is an ex-armmy Ranger who served two tours in Afghanistan. He's a lot more vigilant than me and also way crazier. He immediately sits up, wipes his eyes, and turns around to look at the headlights behind us without saying a word.
Immediately, he says, "Yeah, that's definitely the car from the gas station. I noticed the guy was looking at you extra hard when you walked past him going into the store. Thought it was weird, but didn't say anything.
" >> That made my stomach drop a little. >> Okay, switch lanes and see what he does. So, I flip on my signal and switch from the right lane back to the left.
The SUV does the exact same thing, mirroring me like clockwork. All right, slow down to a stop and pull over on the shoulder. Let's see what this guy does.
I listen to him and gradually slow down to a complete stop on the shoulder of the highway. Hazards blinking. And this psycho slows down and parks right behind us on the shoulder, maybe 20 [music] ft back.
My heart was absolutely racing now. Wow, this guy has a lot of nerve. Something's definitely not right here.
His tone dead serious now as he kept his eyes locked on the rear view mirror. >> Okay, now pull out and gun it to 90. I have an idea.
I pull off the shoulder and stay in the right lane. As I press down hard on the gas pedal, the truck lurches forward and starts picking up speed. 60 70 80.
Jay leans over and says, "All right, listen. Break check this guy hard so he crashes into the back of us. Then we jump out with the tools, catch him off guard before he knows what's happening.
" I look at Jay like he's lost his mind. That's the Army Ranger and him talking. Always ready to go on the offensive.
Dude, at this point he isn't an active threat yet. If he tries to ram the truck or does something aggressive, then it's a different story and we do what we got to do. But right now, I'm not doing that, man.
Jay shrugged, still keeping his eyes on the mirror. All right, your call, but keep that speed up and don't let him get close. >> Jay looks around the inside of the truck and grabs a high-powered handheld spotlight from under his seat.
One of those heavyduty ones we use for job sites. He slides open the back window of the truck cab, letting in a rush of cold night air. Okay, I'm going to light his ass up and see if we can get a good look at him.
So, he flicks on the spotlight and aims it directly at the SUV behind us. Guess what? The guy's front windows are heavily tinted, like limo dark tinted.
We can't get a look at his face at all. Just a dark silhouette. I'm going to switch lanes.
See if you can aim at the side. Maybe his side windows aren't tinted. So, I quickly swerve onto the left lane.
And as I do that, Jay swings the spotlight over and clicks it on again. I make sure to turn my head toward the SUV at the same exact time Jay hits him with the light. For those 3 seconds we had him illuminated, I will never forget the look of this guy.
It's burned into my memory. He was tall, at least over 6' 3. Because he was hunched way over the steering wheel like he could barely fit in the car.
He had this completely bald, pale, round face like Uncle Fester from the Adams family. Super unsettling. But then he had this wild, frizzy hair on the sides and back like Kramer from Seinfeld, just sticking out everywhere.
And he had a rough 5:00 shadow covering his jaw. But the worst part, when that light hit him, he didn't flinch or look away. He just stared straight ahead with this blank, emotionless expression.
And that's what really creeped me out. Once he saw that I wasn't alone and that we now knew exactly what he looked like, he suddenly slowed down and turned off at the next truck rest stop area. Just like that, he was gone.
We didn't see him again for the rest of the drive. To this day, me and Jay get into heated debates about whether I should have break checked the guy or not. I've analyzed this situation over and over in my head, and I've concluded that this guy's intentions were definitely evil.
But thank God, I was never able to find out. What do you all think? Did I make the right call?
Now, before I end the story, I want to add a few more details that I found out later. That stretch of I80 through Pennsylvania has had multiple unsolved disappearances of solo travelers over the years, especially truckers at rest stops. When Jay shined the spotlight on him, we noticed his SUV had no front license plate.
And we also later found out that there were reports of a similar red SUV following lone drivers on that same highway around that same time period, but nobody ever got a good look at the driver. >> [music] >> So, me and my best friend have this thing where we go camping once a year, and we've been doing it since we were like 13. And nothing scary or weird has ever really happened on these trips.
But last year in the Blue Ridge Mountains was a bit different. Anyway, so we got there during peak season on the first night and the place was packed. We were running out of daylight, so we had to set up camp on this sketchy spot on the side of the mountain.
And it was a total wind tunnel. Now, when morning rolled around, we said screw it and headed into town and spent the day drinking beers and screwing around until late afternoon. And by the time we made it back up to the mountains to find a better spot, we were losing light again.
So, we managed to find this more remote area and got everything set up. Now, it's probably around 1:00 a. m.
when we notice this flashlight pointed right at us. Then, whoever it is starts walking toward us. We don't really think much of it.
Figured it was probably a park ranger coming to tell us off about something. I mean, who else walks up on you in the middle of nowhere at 1:00 in the morning, right? I don't know about you, but I've always thought there's like an unspoken rule when camping.
You don't just walk up on people's campsite that late unless it's an emergency or something. Anyway, the person gets close enough and we realize it's just some dude, probably early 50s, wearing a t-shirt and basketball shorts. His girlfriend or wife, maybe 40s, is with him, but she won't even look at us.
The guy immediately starts forcing this conversation about absolutely nothing. Doesn't say anything about the time. Doesn't even acknowledge his girlfriend is there.
His eyes are darting everywhere while he's talking to us about random like what kind of lantern we [music] have and how cool it is. Then he starts saying weird stuff like how he used to be in law enforcement completely out of nowhere. Had nothing to do with what we were even talking about.
And then all of a sudden he accidentally shines his flashlight on our tents and goes, "Oh, that's where you guys are sleeping, huh? Cool setup. " >> The way his eyes and flashlight kept moving around, it felt like he was trying to figure out how many of us there were and what we had with us.
He kept scanning the ground around our campsite. We were definitely getting sized up. Once he's seen everything around [music] us, he just kind of pauses for a second, then ends the conversation and walks off back into the woods.
Once his flashlight disappears, me and my friend just look at each other without me even saying [music] a word. He goes, "We're packing our and getting out of here. " So, we did.
This was hands down the most unsettling thing that's ever happened to me while camping. I really think this guy was planning to wait until we fell asleep and come back. I don't know what for, but I know for a fact we [music] were getting sized up that night.
[music] A few villages over from where I live, there's a country park that has a pretty fascinating history. During World War II, the area was actually home to an extensive network of ammunition factories and railways. They deliberately put them here because the woodland provided natural concealment from German bombers flying overhead.
Now these days, most of the old buildings are just scattered bricks and foundations buried under thick brambles and overgrowth. It's quite eerie walking through there knowing what used to be on the site. I've spent a fair bit of time exploring the area, and all I've really found remaining are the odd section of railway track poking through the leaf litter, a handful of air raid bunkers, some you can still get into, and one old railway station building that's still partially standing.
Just to preface this, in my country, the wildlife is basically harmless. The largest animal you'd find is a horse, so we weren't worried about that side of things. Now, this event occurred in mid June last year.
A couple of friends and myself decided to sneak into the park at night and camp there as a celebration for a private event. One of our mates had just finished his exams. We arrived around 1000 p.
m. and snuck into the small gravel car park at the side of the park. There were no cars left and the park rangers had clearly locked up and gone home for the night.
The gate was chained shut, but there's a gap in the fence we knew about from previous visits. It was still quite light out being summer, which made sneaking in feel a bit less dodgy. And eventually going out this night turned out to be a bad decision because the weather took a turn for the worse.
What started as light drizzle quickly became a proper downpour. We started hastily packing our soaking wet belongings back into our bags, deciding to find an abandoned building to take shelter in rather than stick it out in our flimsy tents. At this point, it was around midnight and it was pitch black.
Those thick summer clouds had blocked out any moonlight. The heavy rain was absolutely hammering down, and we were already drenched through. Using our phone torches to light the way, we stumbled along the overgrown paths, trying to find the nearest building in the forest.
The obvious choice was the old train station we'd explored before. It was only about 10 minutes away if we cut through the woods rather than sticking to the main trail. The station had big interlocking metal fencing put up around it because the council considered it derelictked and structurally dangerous.
Obviously, we went in anyway. We were absolutely soaked and desperate for shelter. We squeezed past a gap in the fence where someone had bent it back and it released a loud screech from the rubbing metal that made us all freeze for a second.
Probably woke up half the wildlife in the area. We quickly headed further inside the small structure. Our torches picking out graffiti and old beer cans on the cracked concrete floor.
Then we found the secret shaft we discovered on a previous visit. A narrow opening that led down into the old air raid bunker beneath the station. It was drier down there, if musty and cold.
We laid out our sleeping bags on the concrete and eventually managed to get to sleep around 1 to 2:00 a. m. listening to the muffled sound of rain above.
About an hour later, we all jolted awake to the sound of that same metal screech from earlier, the fence being pushed aside. My heart immediately started racing. We looked around at each other in the darkness and did a quick headcount.
All six of us were present and accounted for. So, we quickly shut all our phone lights off and sat there in complete silence. For about 3 minutes, we didn't hear anything except our own breathing and the rain outside.
Then, whoever or whatever was up there got closer to the shaft entrance. The sound of wet footsteps above us on the station floor became louder, though still relatively faint, but it didn't sound like normal shoe footsteps. It was more of a soft, irregular padding sound, almost like something dragging slightly.
The rhythm was off, too, not the steady clip of boots or trainers you'd expect from a park ranger doing rounds. We all sat there frozen, barely breathing, as the footsteps stopped right near the entrance shaft to the bunker. I slowly turned my head to look towards the opening.
There was no light coming from above at all. Then we looked at each other in the pitch darkness, eyes adjusting just enough to make out silhouettes as we all realized the same unsettling thing. Whoever had come up there had no torch with them.
How were they navigating through that derelict building in complete darkness? The footsteps didn't continue, and they'd just stopped. We sat there in absolute silence, straining our ears.
assuming whoever was up there was still standing right above us. After what felt like an eternity, probably only 5 minutes, but it felt like an hour, the footsteps finally picked back up again, that same odd shuffling sound, heading slowly away from our direction towards the far end of the station. We eventually heard the sweet sound of the metal fence screeching as they left.
We had a whispered discussion and decided to stay put rather than risk running into them outside. We figured it might have been a park ranger trying to sneak up on us with his lights off on purpose, and we definitely didn't want to get caught trespassing and find. We managed to get some uneasy sleep until our alarms went off at 6:00 a.
m. We'd set them to leave before the rangers arrived for their 8:00 a. m.
shift. Crawling out of the hole and into the gray summer morning light, we came across our muddy footprints from the night before near the entrance. However, there was an extra set of footprints belonging to whoever had followed us in during the night, much larger than any of ours.
We just stared at them for a moment before quickly packing up our stuff and legging it out of there. Probably just childish paranoia, but none of us wanted to hang around. We never did figure out who or what was wandering around that station in the dark.
Part of me wants to believe it was just some homeless person seeking shelter from the rain, but the bare feet and the way they moved so confidently without any light still gives me chills. We haven't been back to that park at night since, and I don't think any of us have any plans to either.
