Today, we have a really cool video for you guys. It'll be a collection of four stories that are all fan favorites, and they all share a theme, Camping Horror Stories.

These stories have all been totally reedited, so even if you've seen them before, it's going to feel new and improved. That was the whole point of doing this. We wanted this to feel like a brand new viewing experience. But before we get into those stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week.

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Okay, let's get into today's stories. In April of 2020, a 17-year-old named Sam, who was an avid outdoorsman, decided to go on a one-night hike in the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. The mountain's name has a bunch of supposed origins, but the one that's generally accepted is people are afraid of the Superstition Mountains because of all the mysterious deaths that have occurred there. And so because people would avoid these mountains in fear of mysterious death, it became these superstitious mountains. But Sam was not superstitious and regularly came out here to go hiking, in particular on this eight-mile loop that went through a canyon. And so this one night overnight he planned on doing was going to be on that eight-mile loop where he'd do four miles in, camp out, and then four miles back. And he planned to do it with a friend, but his friend at the last minute canceled. And so Sam teetered on not even doing it, but ultimately decided, Okay, I'll just do it by myself because I'm very familiar with this area. On the day he was supposed to go do this hike, he had planned on getting there early in the day to have maximum lighting.

But due to some unforeseen circumstances and traffic and bad road conditions, he didn't get to the trailhead until 5:45 PM that night. Sam knew it was a bad idea to start this hike so late because he was going to run out of daylight. He probably was not going to make it four miles to the point where he planned on camping out. But he figured with his good health and fitness, he could probably quickly make his way to the two or even three mile mark, and there were some suitable camp campsite's there. And so he decided he would risk it and just try to go as fast as he could and use the daylight he had to reach a suitable campsite. But he wasn't able to move as fast as he thought he could, and soon the sun was down and it's totally dark and he's got his flashlight, but that only is able to shine 10 feet in front of him. And then at one point, he nearly falls off of this rock, and he knows had he fallen, he would have gotten really badly hurt. And he's 15 miles away from the nearest help, and he's in a bad cell phone service area, and the roads getting out here are treacherous.

No one knows exactly where he is. And it dawns on him that you've made a pretty bad choice, and you should stop right now and make camp here and not try to risk it any further. And so as it happened, where he was, there was this forest right nearby, and he could see there was a clearing about 30 feet off the path when he shined his light. And so he walked into that clearing, and he found it was a great spot to make camp. And in fact, on the edge of this clearing was the remnants of a fire pit. It was very old, but it at least showed someone had camped out right here and and they seemed to have made it just fine. So suddenly he was feeling pretty smart, and he felt pretty good about where he was staying for the night. Now, Sam intentionally did not bring a tent. He liked to sleep on a sleeping pad with a sleeping bag over that, and then he would string up a tarp over the top of him in case it rained. And since this clearing was surrounded by a bunch of pine trees, he was able to string up his tarp over the top, and it was perfect.

And pretty soon, he had a fire going, and then he cracked open a can of beans, and he began eating his dinner. And as he was eating, he started to get a sense that something was off, something was not right. He began scanning the tree line as if he was going to find something out of the ordinary, but his visibility was incredibly limited because he was sitting right up against a fire. And if you've ever sat next to a fire in a dark forest, your visibility is like five feet in a circle around the fire. You really cannot see beyond that. And his vision was also limited by all the pine trees that encircled his clearing. So he really could only see what was immediately around him, nothing else. And he starts thinking, That's got to be it. Maybe I'm just nervous because I have no visibility. But as he's rationalizing this bad gut feeling, a rock the size of a marble comes soaring into the campsite and lands at his feet. And he looks down at the rock, and immediately he connects that to that sense of dread he had. And he's looking around a little more aggressively now, but again, his vision is very, very limited.

And so for the next 15 minutes, Sam is really aggressively scanning the tree line and listening really intently, and he doesn't hear anything. He doesn't see any more rocks get thrown. And so he begins to rationalize and convince himself that there's nothing wrong here. That feeling I have, oh, don't worry about that. He starts telling himself, I must have kicked a rock. That's what it is. Or maybe a rock fell off a tree. But either way, it's something totally explainable and you got nothing to worry about. And after a little while, he convinced himself, and he got into a sleeping bag under his tarp, and he went to sleep. A couple of hours later, Sam wakes up, and he has that same sense of dread, and now it's back with a vengeance. And he can't hear anything, he can't see anything, but he's definitely feeling like something is wrong. And at that moment, as he's listening really intently and looking really carefully, he hears the sound of rustling leaves. It sounds like someone walking through leaves about 30 or 40 meters away from his campsite. And initially, he can't tell if this person or animal is walking towards his campsite or away.

But over the next 30 seconds or so, the sounds start to fade, and he convinces himself that, okay, they've left and everything's fine. But just in case, he wanted to grab his flashlight and shine it in that direction. And so he reaches next to him where he had left it when he had gone to bed a couple hours earlier, and he can't find his flashlight. He's looking around for it and he can't find it. And he's like, man, that's weird. I had it right here, right next to my body, and it's not here anymore. And that's when the alarm bells start going off in his head because the only way this flashlight moves is if he moved it. If it's not here, how did it move? He jumps out of his sleeping bag, he ducks out from under the tarp, and he's looking around on the ground in the immediate vicinity of where he was sleeping to find this flashlight. As he's looking out of the corner of his eye, he sees some light. He turns his head and in the same direction that he had heard those footsteps, those rustling leaves, when he was still laying down, he sees his flashlight laying on the ground about 10 meters away, which means someone or something had been less than a foot away from him to get this flash light that was right next to him while he was fast asleep and totally helpless and had moved it all the way over there.

And immediately, Sam thinks to himself, That's a trap. They are trying to lure me away from my campsite. Suddenly, he felt so scared he wanted to vomit, but he knew in order to survive this situation, he needed to keep his wits about him. So he puts his boots on and he grabs his knife, and he knows he's not leaving this campsite. In fact, he's going to build the biggest fire he can. He's going to stoke that fire as big as he can get it, and he's not going to go anywhere near that flashlight. For the next several hours, Sam just stood in the middle of his campsite, holding his knife, preparing to confront whatever the heck is out in the woods. And over those several hours, he would hear footsteps approach his campsite, turn around, and leave. Every time the fire got lower, he noticed they would come closer and closer and closer, and when he would stoke the fire, they wouldn't come as close. But at about 3:00 AM, he ran out of firewood. So unless he went into the woods to get more, he'd be out. And he's certainly not going into the woods.

That's the whole point, is to avoid the woods where this thing is. And so as the fire died down, Sam prepared himself mentally for whatever happened next because he knew that with that fire gone, this thing was comfortable coming all the way in, coming all the way up right next to him to get the flashlight. And so finally, he hears the footsteps approaching. And before this, the closest they had come was maybe about 15 meters away. They were far enough away, it didn't feel intimate. It was terrifying, but he had some distance. This time, they walk right up to about three meters away, but they intentionally come behind the thickest group of trees, so he can't see them. And it's still dark outside, and he's in that bubble of light near the fire, so he's blind to whatever's on the other side of those trees. But he knows they're there, and they've stopped. And for 2 hours, this poor kid is standing in the middle of this campsite, facing in the direction of whatever is behind the trees, Probably his imagination is going crazy at this point with what could be behind those trees, just waiting for whatever happened next.

But ultimately, the only thing that would happen is the sun would eventually come up, and right before it actually popped over the horizon, this the other side finally moved. It turned around and ran away, and it did not come back. And so when the sun finally did come up, Sam didn't just charge out of there because he's still thinking there could be a trap. He waited until it was totally full sunlight, and then he packed up everything he had, and he practically sprinted back to the parking lot, back into his car, and he drove nonstop for 20 miles until he got to a gas station where he could park and collect himself. When he got there, he got out of his car, and he went in, and he got a drink, and when he came out, he noticed someone had written something on the dust on the back window of his car. And he walks over and it just says, Sleep well? Sam is confident whoever was stalking him at his campsite is the same person or group of people that wrote this message on his car. And now Sam just wonders, What would have happened if I retrieved that flashlight?

In 1982, a very outdoorsy teenage girl and boy who had recently started dating, decided to go camping in Maine. Around 1:00 AM on the first night they were there, the girl wakes up because she has to go to the bathroom, and she's about to unzip her tent when she stops because she hears some strange noises coming from outside their tent. It wasn't that loud, but it sounded distinctly like something was digging in the ground, but she really had to go, and she figured, You know what? It's probably just some small animal or something. And so she begins to unzip the tent, and there's a little bit of sunlight that night, and there was a clearing outside of their tent. So the moon light's pouring through. So she has plenty of illumination. And so she looks through this tiny hole, and she can't believe what she sees. It is a grown woman squatting down about two or three feet away from their tent. Her back is to them, so she can't see that she's looking through the tent, and she's feverishly digging into the ground in front of her. The girl literally falls backwards into her tent.

She's so startled by what she sees, and she lands on her boyfriend who immediately gets up, and What's going on? And she goes, Shh. And she points at the little hole where she had unzipped the tent, and she goes, Look. The boy is confused, but he can tell his girlfriend is very serious. So he sits up quietly and he looks through the little opening in the door, and he sees the digging woman. The boy recoils and looks at his girlfriend and he's like, What is going on out there? He takes a flashlight and she's telling him, Don't do it. And he opens up the tent a little bit more, and he aims his flashlight directly on this woman. And this gets her attention. And she stops digging, and she stands up slowly, and she turns around and faces them, and she's got no expression. She's not giving them any indication why she's there. She's not acting aggressive. She's not acting scared. She's just completely neutral. And she stands there staring at them for quite a while before turning around and just walking away from their campsite. And after a little while, when they were pretty certain she was gone, they open their tent all the way.

They go outside, they scan around with their flashlights, and she's nowhere to be found, and they go to where she was digging. And it's just this weird four-inch deep hole in the ground. There's no rhyme or reason to why she was doing that. And so after sitting there wondering what they should do, they settled on, Well, tomorrow we'll tell the Park rangers that she was here, and maybe they'll do something about it. And so feeling pretty confident that this woman's not going to come back, they both go back into the tent, they zip it shut, they get in their sleeping bags, and they're about to go to sleep when they hear someone running towards their campsite, and they know it's this woman. They immediately unzip the tent and they look out, and now the woman's not digging anymore. She's rummaging through some of their stuff that's outside of their tent. And the way she's doing it, they described as monkey-like. She'd pick something up, look at it, and throw it over her head. She'd pick the next thing up, throw it over her head, back and forth, just throwing things behind her. And so the boy gets out and he shines a light on her and goes, You need to leave.

And she doesn't react. She just keeps flipping through all their stuff until he gets pretty forceful and says, You need to leave right now. And at that point, she stops and looks at him like, What are you doing here? And then she gets up, turns and walks away. Now the couple really doesn't know what to do because she's clearly willing to come back after being confronted. But they stayed outside their tent for about 15 more minutes, shining their light and making lots of noise and treating her like she's an animal. And they're just trying to scare her away from the campsite. And after a little bit of time, they thought, Okay, there's no way she comes back now because we were pretty aggressive with her this time, and she seemed to really get it. They both do go back in the tent, and as soon as they zip it shut, they hear her come running straight to the site like she was literally waiting in the wings for when they went back in the tent. And this time, she runs back to the hole in the ground, and she's just feverishly digging into the ground as fast as she can.

And this time, they come out of their tent, and they're mad, and they are screaming at this woman to, Get the F out of here. What are you doing? And this seems to frighten the woman who gets up, and she looks at them like, Why are you yelling at me? And she runs away, and it looked almost animalistic the way she was running away, like she was feral. The boy and the girl are totally shaken up at this point. It's about 1:30 in the morning, and this woman just keeps coming back to their site, and they don't know what to do about it. So they turn on some lanterns and they turn on their flashlights, and they decide we're just going to stay outside until the morning. That way, we know she doesn't come back and doesn't steal anything from us. But by about 3:30 in the morning, they've been outside for 2 hours. They're getting cold. They're super tired. The woman's nowhere to be found. And so they finally say, You want to go back in and get some sleep? I think this time she's really gone. They get back in their sleeping bags, and they to sleep.

They don't hear her again. The next morning when they get up and they unzip their tent, they look outside and all of their stuff has been thrown all over the campsite. And the hole in the ground that the woman had dug that was previously about four or six inches deep is now well over a foot deep. They realized this woman must have been lurking in the shadows in the woods, watching them from 1:30 to 3:30 in the morning. That whole time they were out there warding her off. She was just waiting, just watching them the whole time in the shadows. And as soon as they went into their tent, she must have given it a little bit of time, but then she ran right back over and she ransacked their sight. But the strangest thing was, after they looked through all of the stuff she had chucked around, nothing was missing. And there was some pretty expensive stuff that was laying out that she could have taken but didn't. After they picked up their site, they went to the Park Ranger and they told them about what had happened, but the stranger has no idea what to make of it.

He's never heard of such a thing. And so the couple just leaves that day because they're not about to spend another night here. And to this day, they have no idea why this woman was running onto their site and digging into the ground and rumaging through their stuff. It was like she was just a wild animal. In the early 2000s, a teenager named Evan and his father would regularly go hunting in the Georgia backcountry. When Evan turned 14, his father befriended a very wealthy landowner in Georgia who offered them access to one of his best private hunting areas. Just a couple of days later, on October fifth, Evan and his father would take him up on the offer. They woke up super early and they drove out to the edge of this property that was actually fenced in. They went to a main gate where they had the combo that this guy had given them. They punched in the combo, opened up the gate, drove in, shut the gate, locked it, and then continued down the access road. They followed this road for about two miles where it came to a stop right outside of this huge forest.

They parked their truck, they got out, they put on their gear, and in the pre-morning darkness, began hiking into the woods. Even though they were there primarily to hunt, Evan and his father secretly enjoyed just hiking around the woods and camping out. And any chance they got to extend their hunting trips, they would, even if the hunting wasn't good. And so since they spent a ton of time in the woods together, they noticed almost immediately when they walked into this particular forest that something was off. There's no birds, there's no animals. Silence. It's just totally silent. The only sounds they heard that were not them was a single plane that passed overhead. Although they found this very odd, they figured, You know what? This is a private property. Not a lot of people are out here. I'm sure as soon as we showed up, the animals were aware of us and they scattered. They finally make it out to the hunting stand that the owner had told them about. They get all settled in. They're getting ready to see some animals. And all day long, they don't see a single animal. They don't hear a single animal.

In fact, again, it is just completely silent. Frustrated, they began packing up their stuff, making their way down off the stand, and they started looking for a place to make camp for the night. And Evan's father suggested, Well, hey, there's obviously nothing over here. It's been quiet all day. Why don't we walk deeper into the woods a little ways, set up camp there, so tomorrow we have a better chance of seeing some animals? So they hiked for about an hour farther away from where they parked their truck, and they reach this clearing, which is perfect for setting up their camp. And so they set up their tent, and Evan's father says, Hey, we still got some daylight. Do you want to go try our luck and see if we can see some animals out here now? Evan's like, Yeah, why not? So they hike a little away from their campsite, and they set up their blind, and once again, they don't see any animals. It's totally quiet. And so they turn around and they start heading back. As soon as they could see their campsite, which really was just their tent, they noticed that their tent was now collapsed.

And Evan's father turns to him and says, Oh, it must have been the wind. And Evan says, No, it couldn't have been the wind, because all day today, we have been commenting on how quiet it is and how the fact that there's no weather, no wind, no anything is heightening the fact that it's completely silent. So it could not have been wind. So Evan's father is like, Well, when you set the tent up, did you not put the posts into the eyelids? Did you not build it correctly? And Evan's like, No, I've made that tent like a thousand times. I know it was set up correctly. They walk into their campsite and they look down at their tent and they're really confused at what they see. The two rods that go in an X over the top of the tent that thread through nylon loops and then anchor at four different points on the base of the tent, well, they had been removed from the four corners. If you know how a tent works, it works on tension. Once you have a rod anchored in two points, it doesn't just pop out. It's anchored at two sides.

It's actually difficult to remove each anchor. Once one is out, the other comes out easily. But basically, the rod would need to break in order for it to come out of those anchor points, or someone would have to come over and remove it. They didn't remove them, and none of the rods were broken, which leaves them with either they failed to set up their tent, even though they distinct and clear memories of setting it up and double-checking it was set up because they put gear inside of it, or someone came over to their campsite while they were gone and undid the four corners. They decide, You know what? It can't be some stranger coming over here because we're the only ones with the gate combo. This is private property, and no one could have been here. And why would they do that if they came to our campsite? Why would they randomly collapse our tent and then vanish? So it had to be us. We must have not made the tent. And while they didn't really believe that they had not made their tent. They convinced themselves that that's what happened because the alternative was just too bizarre and frankly terrifying to consider.

So they build their tent and they make a little fire and they stay up for a little while chatting before being tired and saying, Okay, let's just go to bed. They extinguish the fire, they get in the tent, and they both fall asleep. A couple hours later, Evan wakes up suddenly, and he's not sure if he's dreaming or not, but he thinks he hears someone laughing a couple of hundred meters behind their tent off in the woods. Evan instinctively turns to make sure his dad is still in the tent with him, and he is. Then Evan starts listening really intently to what's happening outside. All he can hear is silence like it's been since they got in the woods. He doesn't hear any more laughter. He says, Okay, I must have just been dreaming, and there wasn't any laughter out there. And eventually, Evan goes back to sleep. A little while later, Evan wakes up suddenly again, except this time, his dad is already awake and looking around anxiously. Evan sits up and goes, What's going on? And his dad goes, Shh, and he goes, Can you hear that? And Eben listens, and to his horror, he hears laughing.

He wasn't dreaming before. Eben also realizes the laughter is not coming from the same area. He heard it. It's now coming from the opposite direction, and it's a lot closer to them. Eben very quietly and carefully explains to his dad that he actually heard this laughter a couple of hours earlier. And Eben's father turns to Eben and says, Before we came out here, I asked the owner, should we expect any other hunters or campers or anybody nearby? And The owner said, This is private property, and it's fenced in. There is no one there but you guys. After this revelation, they both turn their attention back to just listening because they're hoping this is just going to stop, and whatever this is, is just going to leave. But it doesn't leave. They hear footsteps running towards them from way off in the forest, and it's so quiet.

It's really easy to hear these footsteps.

And whatever this is is charging towards them. And then it comes to a complete stop right at the edge of their clearing. At this point, Evan is now grabbing onto his father. Evan's father is holding onto his rifle, and he's getting ready to open the tent to confront whatever is out there. Right before he grabs the zipper, this thing, this person, whatever it is, starts laughing again, and it's practically right on top of them. It's so loud. They can hear it clear as day right there, right outside their tent. And Evan's father takes a deep breath. He grabs the zipper, and as soon as he begins moving in, the sound the zipper made causes the laughter to stop. They don't hear footsteps, so they know probably something's still out there. But the laughter stops like it's recognized that they're making noise. They're right there. There they are. They're in the tent. Evan's father freezes with his hand on this zipper, and he's debating whether he should go outside or not. And before he can even make that decision, whatever this thing is, turns around and runs back into the woods, and it's just gone. For several minutes, they just sit like that in total silence, praying that whatever this is is gone for good.

After several minutes, when they don't hear anything, there's no more laughing, there's no more running, Evan's father rezips up the tent, puts his back down, and they're both left just sitting there thinking, What the heck just happened? Evan and his father would stay up all night, and they would barely speak because whatever this thing was had heard them when they moved the zipper. They were really afraid of making any sound, even little sounds, because it's so quiet, sound travels really far, and they don't know who or what is out there. And so in silence, holding their guns, they're just waiting for the sun to come up. And as soon as it did, they were up and out of there, literally running out of the forest, checking over their shoulder the whole time all the way back to their truck. And so to this day, they have no idea who or what the heck was running around out there. And they told the owner of the property about it, and the owner just said, It's not possible. We have a totally gated in private piece of property, and there are cameras watching the only entrance, and you are the only ones that went in or out over that time period.

And prior to that, we monitor this property. Nobody else was in there.

In 2016, a 25-year-old Wall Street banker named Matt was camping near Mount Rainier in Washington State. His job was so hectic that in the rare times he got a chance to, he would disappear into the wilderness for a few days to clear his head. Despite living in one of the biggest cities in the world, Matt was actually a very competent outdoorsman. For this trip, he decided he would stay way off any trail deep in the backcountry in random locations. On the first night, he found a nice clearing in the trees, and so he set up his campsite there.

He ate some food over his fire. He pitched his tent, climbed inside, and within a few minutes, he was fast asleep.

Several hours later, Matt woke up to some strange sounds coming from outside of his tent. It sounded like a couple of animals or maybe one animal moving around right outside. And so after a while of just hearing this constant sound, he rolled over and he barely unzipped his tent flap just to look out and see if he could see whatever animal it was. And what he saw shocked him. There was a man sitting in front of his firepit. There was no fire in his firepit. The guy was just sitting there with his hands on his knees, looking straight down. Periodically, he would just kick his feet in the ashes of the firepit. Matt didn't even know what to do, so he's just looking at him through this little tiny gap in his tent. This man, all of a sudden, looks up directly at Matt and makes eye contact with him. The guy's eyes go wide, and he stands up, turns around, and runs away from Matt's campsite. Matt has no idea how to react to this. And so he just quickly unzips his tent, jumps outside, and shines his light into the forest, looking for this guy.

He's thinking to himself, Who is this guy? I am in the middle of nowhere in the backcountry of Washington State. How long was he sitting outside there for? What does he want? And so as Matt is trying to make sense of this totally weird thing, he's thinking, okay, I'm going to look out and I'm going to see his flashlight somewhere, or I'm going to see his campsite. Maybe he's set up nearby and he's looking around into the total darkness. He's through all the trees, any light source, anywhere out there, he would see. And there's not one. There's no fire, there's no flashlight, there is nothing. And so eventually Matt goes back inside of his tent, he zips it up, and he's just left dumbfounded. He can't understand how some person was just sitting outside of his tent for no apparent reason and then vanished into the forest without even turning on a flashlight. And so after a very restless night, finally the sun came up again and Matt was very relieved. He stepped outside. After a little bit of time now from this strange incident, Matt started to tell himself that all that was is some guy happened to set up his campsite nearby.

It is possible, albeit rare because we're in the backcountry, and maybe he was just intoxicated and he wandered over here, and stranger things have happened, so that's probably all it was. Matt felt like there was nothing to worry about. He packed up his campsite, and he began hiking into the forest. Matt didn't have a planned route.

Instead, he had a map and a compass, and he began just wandering in the forest, exploring wherever he wanted to go.

Over the next two days, he covered at least 10, maybe 15 miles in random zigzag directions. He found a nice clearing, and he set up another campsite. That night, he set up a fire, and he was eating some food near his fire. Then as he's sitting there, he hears rustling coming from behind him. He's pretty sure it's an animal, so he turns around and he doesn't see anything, and he goes back to eat his food. Then a little while later, he hears some more rustling behind him. This time, he can't really just write it off. Clearly, Clearly, there is something behind him that's moving around. He stood up, turned around, and remained motionless and just listened, expecting to see maybe a deer come out of the woods. But instead, he hears a man's voice come out of the darkness that says, Do you know how to get to Bell's Canyon? Matt's heart starts racing. He knows that even though he can't see him, it has to be the same guy he saw two days ago because they are in the middle of nowhere. He hasn't seen any other hikers or campers or anyone. Clearly, this guy has the ability to sneak up on him.

And so he's thinking, What does this guy want? I just spent the past two days hiking in random directions for 15 miles, and he must have followed me. And so Matt, not knowing what else to do, just says, I don't know where Bells Canyon is. And then there's silence. And Matt, one part of him is thinking, I hope this guy does not come into the light. I hope he just goes away. The other part of him is thinking, Well, maybe this is a different person that is lost, and they're looking for this place called Bells Canyon, and they'll into the light. It'll be a big relief. I'll send them on their merry way, and everything will be fine. But as Matt is having this wishful thinking, the voice from the shadows does not come any closer, but instead asks the same question a bit more forcefully this time. Do you know how to get to Bell's Canyon? This time Matt did not respond. Now he was scared. This is not some friendly hiker looking for directions. There's something wrong. Matt, knowing he's all alone out here, he knew he had to do something to try to take control of this situation.

He took a deep breath, he reached down and grabbed his flashlight, and in one swift motion, he lifted his light up and shined it in the direction of this guy's voice. What he saw was this guy from two days ago looking out from behind a tree right in Matt's direction. He was hiding from him. When the light hit him, the man barked at Matt to aim it away. Matt instinctively lowered his light, but now he was too scared to raise it again, and now he knows it's the same guy. This guy has been following me for two days. For several minutes, Matt just stood there absolutely terrified, and this guy, he just stayed out there. Matt didn't hear a move. It was just a complete standstill. Then the silence was broken yet again by this voice, except somehow he had moved even closer to Matt. When he came through asking the same question, Do you know how to get to Bells Canyon? His voice was so close to Matt that Matt got scared and raised his light up, and the man was standing just a few feet away from him. This time, the man's eyes got wide like they did the first time they saw Matt, and he turned around, and he ran into the forest again.

Matt, not knowing any better, just began running after him, but he only ran for about 30 seconds before he realized the terrain out here is so rough. He's going to fall, get hurt, he's going to get lost, and this guy's already long gone. He somehow managed to run immediately so far away. Matt just goes back to his campsite, and he's thinking to himself, What do I do? I have no cell phone service. I'm at least three days away from my car, and I'm in the middle of nowhere. No one even knows where I am because I didn't chart a course. I didn't tell anyone where I was going to be. Matt just grabbed his knife and stood in the middle of the campsite. And for hours and hours, he just kept looking around, expecting this guy to just show up again or start speaking to him from somewhere out in the darkness. It was absolutely horrifying. Finally, by about 3:00 in the morning, Matt was so tired that he had to go to sleep. He hadn't heard this guy again, he didn't see him again, and he figured, I need a little bit of sleep because tomorrow, he's going to pack up his campsite and begin this epic journey back to his car.

He climbed in his tent and he had a very restless next couple of hours. Then the sun came up, Matt jumped out of his tent, packed up his stuff, and began practically running in the direction of his car. All day as he was hiking, Matt kept looking over his shoulder, expecting to see this guy because clearly, he had followed him for multiple days over 15 miles, and so the likelihood that he's still following him was really high. All day, Matt just felt like he was being watched. He was totally terrified. Then the sun started to go down, and Matt knew he would have to camp out again. He found a clearing in the trees. He set up his campsite, and he was so tired from running basically all day and being so mentally exhausted from this experience that he just got in his tent and fell asleep very quickly. But several hours later, he woke up to the sound of somebody walking around his tent, and he knew it had to be this guy. He's still in the middle of nowhere. He's not even close to the parking lot yet. This guy is still following him.

Matt sat up in his tent, he clutched his knife, and for hours and hours and hours all night, this guy just walked around his campsite. Then around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, he scampered off. When the sun finally came When he woke up, Matt leapt out of his tent, packed up his stuff, and literally just began running in the direction of his car, hoping that maybe he could get there before needing to camp out one more night. All day as he moved, he's looking over his shoulder, knowing this guy is following him. At At this point, it's not even a question. He's somewhere in the forest, but he could never see him. Unfortunately, as the sun was setting, he knew he was not going to be able to make it to his car. He was just too far away. At some point, when it got too dark to keep moving, he had to find a clearing and set up his tent again. Matt climbed inside of his tent. He zipped it up behind him, he grabbed his knife, and he sat there expecting to hear this guy come walking around. But after several hours, he didn't hear him.

Matt started to wonder, Maybe this guy has left me alone, finally. Maybe he's not following me anymore. And so Matt, who was totally exhausted, laid down to go to sleep. And then as he's laying there from somewhere out in the woods, Do you know how to get to Bells Canyon? Matt immediately sat up. His heart began racing so fast that he actually was concerned he might have a heart attack. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say. So he just sat there holding his knife. And then this guy began running past his campsite making animal sounds. He would stop periodically and moan and grunt, and he'd kick up leaves, and then he'd run past his campsite again, over and over and over again until his son finally came up and this guy scampered off back into the woods. Matt didn't waste any time. He left out of his tent, packed his stuff up, and ran all the way back to his car. When he finally got inside of his car, shut the door and locked it. He cried tears of joy. He was so unbelievably relieved. He pealed out of the parking lot.

He got to a nearby hotel. He finally got cell phone reception, and he considered calling the police about this guy, but he thought, What am I going to tell them? He didn't a crime. He was just terrifying. He decided not to call the police. He finally flew back to New York, and he just had to accept that there was some strange guy out in the wilderness of Washington State who was able to hunt him over three days and 30 miles in rugged terrain without the use of a flashlight, without any gear. All he ever said to Matt was, Do you know how to get to Bells Canyon?

Wait, don't go anywhere.

We actually have a bonus story for you.

This final story has quickly become one of the classics on this channel. It's a story about a forest in Connecticut that is actually illegal to enter, basically because of maybe paranormal activity out there. We don't know, but it is actually illegal to go into this forest.

There's a whole crazy story around it.

I actually told the story on a live stream recently about Dudleytown, and so we went ahead and took that footage, we edited it, made it really pretty, and now you get to watch it in case you didn't see it live.

Enjoy.

In the summer of 1906, there was this couple, Dr. William Clark and his wife, Harriet, and they were up in Northwestern Connecticut, and they're driving along this winding country road in a place called Litchfield County. And as they're driving along, it's so scenic and beautiful with rolling hills and green everywhere. And what they were doing is they were looking for a location in this area that could serve as a location for their second home. So Dr. Clark was an oncologist, and they lived back in New York City, where he and his wife lived a fabulous life. He was super successful. He was not only an oncologist, he was a big-time professor as well. And so they lived this amazing life in New York, but their lives were really hectic. New York City is a hectic place. Add in the fact that they were very social people, always going out and going to functions and this and that. And so they had some extra money, and they wanted to buy or build a second home that would serve as their retreat away from the city. And after, I guess, looking all around the country, they found Litchfield County was the opposite of New York City.

I mean, very few people were living there at the time. And again, it's this beautiful scenic place. And so it just seemed like the perfect spot. So again, Dr. Clark and Harriet, they're just driving along. Beautiful day. And in Litchfield County, they eventually reach this beautiful red wood-covered bridge, and they go over it. And when they get to the other side, their field of view opened up because there weren't as many trees right on the other side of this bridge. And they suddenly had this view up into the right, maybe half a mile away or something, of this weirdly Shaded forest. Now, you got to remember that basically everywhere they're looking, there's trees everywhere. I mean, it's very densely forested everywhere. But there was just this one rise of a pretty big hill, a prominent hill that was really dark, totally It was because there's two mountains or two hills on either side of it, almost creating a valley. And so it just looked like, wow, that's a very shaded forest. And as you'll see, it's actually called the Dark Entry Forest, in part because of how shaded it is. And so they've just come out of this bridge, and they're seeing this area up on this hill.

There's no buildings, nothing. It's just trees. And there was just something immediately about it that really stood out to Dr. Clark and his wife. And they noticed that the road they were on, there appeared to be a An access road that splintered off the road they were on that appeared to go up into that forest, the dark Henry forest. And so they look at each other and they're like, Hey, let's go up there. Maybe that's the place where we can find our spot for our second home. And so Dr. Clark pulls off the main road, goes on the access road, and he begins making his way up towards this darkened forest area. And really quickly, the road itself was very overgrown. At first, it seemed like it was relatively well maintained. But the farther up they went towards this dark forest, the rougher it got to the point where Dr. Clark couldn't even drive on it. There was too many potholes and everything. So they end up pulling the car over in parking. And at this point, they're actually in a bit of a clearing, and they can actually see up ahead of them where they parked, it looks almost like an entry point to the forest.

The tree line is right in front of them, and there's a gap in the trees where this rugged road continues into the forest, and they continue walking on foot towards the entry of this forest. Again, it's beautiful scenic, very sunny, beautiful day. They're super excited, and they walk into the shade of the forest. Right away, it's like all the sunlight basically vanishes, but not in a spooky way. They lowered the brightness slightly, and It's very quiet. And the canopy in dark entry forest is known for being really, really thick. And so not much light was pushing through, but it created almost like... It was like they were walking into a bubble. It's just pure unadulterated silence and peace. And as they're walking on this road, which quickly becomes mostly like a little path. It doesn't even look like a road at some point. It's just grass that's been pushed down. Clearly, not many people or anything is coming into this forest, at least not from this direction. And as they're walking along, they're looking around and they're like, This place is so beautiful. I mean, it was already beautiful, but this is especially beautiful. They walked maybe a couple of hundred feet into the forest, and off to their right is this apple orchard untouched, No one's taking these apples.

It's just like a wild apple orchard. And there's deer that are just eating the apples off the tree. And they're looking over at Dr. Clark and his wife, and they're completely unafraid. They don't see people. So this is not terrifying for them. Deer just eating their apples. And then on the other side of the road, there's these huge fields full of flowers that are... Again, trees are everywhere, but there's all these flowers at the bases of the trees, lilies and roses and yellow bitter tansies, or I think that's what they're called. So all these beautiful flowers. And then at some point, as they walked a little bit farther into this dark entry forest, the sunlight that was poking through, it was hitting the ground in such a way that it was actually sparkling because this forest was actually on a hillside, and there was this mineral called mica. If you're familiar, it's this little translucent. It almost looks like clouded glass. That's actually a mineral that comes from the ground. And when the sunlight hits it, it looks like it sparkles. And so they're looking around at these wild animals that are unafraid of them and flowers and there's babbling brooks and streams.

I mean, it's like out of a Disney movie. This is a perfect place. And so by the time the couple came out of Dark Entry Forest, this is only like they walked around for maybe an hour or so. By the time they were coming out, they were completely sold that that was going to be where they went ahead and bought their land to build a second home. And so they go back to New York City, and they put in the paperwork to buy the land, and they buy a 1,000 acres in this forest, which it's ridiculous to imagine just casually buying 1,000 acres anywhere. But they did. They bought their 1,000 acres. And as soon as they had it, as soon as it was finalized, Dr. Clark began calling around to all these builders, local builders in Connecticut that could help him build his home. And he had no intention of building some humongous home. They bought a huge amount of land, but they only wanted to build a small cabin. But despite the job being relatively simple and despite Dr. Clark offering quite a bit of money to anybody who was willing to go out there and build this for him, none of the builders would do it.

They never really gave a straight answer to Dr. Clark about why they would not go into Dark Entry Forest, but universally, no one would do it. And so Dr. Clarke, he definitely was discouraged by that, but he just chalked it up to, okay, so obviously it's an isolated place. It's relatively hard to get into Dark Entry Forest, and where they had bought this land. It was pretty far into the forest. And so he just decided, okay, it just might not be worth it for them. It's logistically a nightmare. They don't want to do it. And so Dr. Clarke is undeterred, and he decides he will just build the house himself. Dr. Clark, he grew up on a farm in New Jersey. He was a very handy guy. He had built buildings before, so this was something he could do. And so over the next several months, every weekend, Dr. Clark would make his way on his own to Darkendry Forest. And it also was full of owls that were hooting all the time. So there's this audio side of being in this forest, which is really intense. There's owls hooting constantly. And actually Dr. Clark and Harriet thought it was really cute that these owls, it seemed like they were almost personally greeting them as they came into the forest.

And so Dr. Clark, every weekend for several months, he would go into dark entry forest and be greeted by the owls, and he would go to the land where the thousand acre land. Actually, he had identified this one flat spot in the thousand acres that was good for building a home. And so the first thing he did over these several weekends he was out there is he just cut down this massive swath of hemlock trees, just clearing out that flat area. And then he chopped up the trees he cut down into lumber, and he used that to build a rustic, simple two-story cabin. And then after this cabin was built up on this hill, there happened to be another hill not too far away from the cabin where there was a freshwater spring right at the top. And so Dr. Clarke, he went up laid piping from the freshwater spring down to his cabin. So they had fresh water in the cabin. And then down the hill from where the cabin was constructed was a small brook. And Dr. Clarke, he found himself always going down and just staring into this beautiful brook because there were all these drought, because nobody fished out here.

This is like an abandoned place, basically. There's all these drought just swimming around unencumbered, just leaping out of the water. If they even do that, I don't know if drought do that. I think they do. And so he ended up actually building a swimming pool right next to the brook, specifically so he could sit in the swimming pool and watch the drought. And so by Thanksgiving of that year, so 1906, by Thanksgiving, the property was done. The cabin had been built, everything was done. And so that holiday season, Dr. Clark and Harriet and their whole family would come out, and they would spend the holidays sitting in their pool, watching the crowd, and just having a wonderful time. And really, for many years, every summer and every major holiday, the Clark family would come out to their beautiful dark entry cabin, and they would stay there. And it was really perfect. It is until 1918. In 1918, in the summer, Dr. Clark and Harriet were at their cabin, And they were having a nice time when Dr. Clark got word that he was actually being called back to New York City for an emergency. Remember, he's an oncologist, so these things happen, and he was called back.

And for whatever reason, Harriet, who normally likely would have joined him and just gone back to New York with him, she decided to stay. I mean, they've been coming here for years by this point, so she probably felt somewhat comfortable, although admittedly, she was very unhappy about this. She didn't want to be there alone. But again, she decides to stay. But she tells Dr. Clarke Because she didn't know how long he would actually be in New York, and he didn't really know either. But she said, You got to promise me you'll be back here as soon as you possibly can. And Dr. Clarke would tell her that, I'll do my best. I should be back here in maybe a couple of days from now. And I promise you I will come home as soon as I possibly can. And so Dr. Clarke packs up his things, and he and his wife, they leave their cabin. They walk their way down the trail listening to the Owls and looking at the Micah sparkling on the ground. And they leave the forest, and they make their way to a nearby train station, which actually was not that far away from the entry to the forest.

Harriet dropped off her husband, and she watched as he boarded, and it began taking off, and he disappeared to go to New York. Dr. Clarke, As he's vanishing, traveling on this train, he's thinking to himself that, Okay, I'll be in New York just for a couple of days. I'll be home. I'll be back in no time. Little did he know, over the course of time he was going to be in New York, his wife would endure something that is just truly horrifying. Before I explain to you what happened after Dr. Clark left, you need to understand some history about this forest, history that Dr. Clarke and Harriet did not look into before deciding to purchase these 1,000 acres. Because had they done the research into this area, they likely would not have bought the land. So there actually used to be a town that was settled in the dark entry forest. It was called Dudleytown, and it was settled in the 1740s. And at first, it was just a couple of families just getting by. But pretty quickly, it grew to about 30 families and several structures and houses and the whole nine yards. It's a small community inside of this It was a beautiful forest, and things were great.

For a small town in the 1700s. Things were stable. But starting at the end of the 1700s, in the 1790s, up till about the 1800s, things started to go really, really badly in Dudleytown. And in fact, because of how badly it went, it earned this... The conclusion was that Dudleytown had to be cursed, and that lure had stuck around, which is actually why those builders refused to do the work for Dr. Clark, because they believed it was a cursed place. So this is what led to it being believed to be cursed. And I'll tell you, it's pretty creepy. So it started with the Carter family. So the Carter family was a big family inside of Dudley town. And it was in 1790, 1792, there was this cholera epidemic that broke out in this small town, and six members of the Carter family died really suddenly from cholera. And the remaining members of the Carter family, which was significant, I think there was a dozen people still left. Might have been a few less than that, but a pretty good chunk of people, they were so grief-stricken from the loss that they decided to just abandon, literally abandon their houses in Dudley and go back to New York City, where they happened to be from as well, same as Dr.

Clark. But as soon as they got to New York, they were massacred by natives that lived in the area. And the only people that survived this massacre were three children, and the three children were kidnapped and never seen again. And so that was the start of bad things happening to people in Dudleytown. The next thing that happened is there was a guy named Hollister. We don't know his last name, but he either fell off a roof or he was pushed. We don't really know, but either way, he died. But he died on or near another person's home whose name was Tanner. Okay, so Hollister dies, and he dies on or near Tanner's home. And after Hollister died, which again, it was shrouded in mystery, Tanner, the owner of the home where this guy died, he began talking obsessively, and it's documented, obsessively, about strange creatures lurking around the tree line inside of dark entry forest right around Dudley town, every night. That's all he saw. So guy dies, and all of a sudden, Taylor is noticing all these strange creatures, and he's telling everybody in town that there's something going on here. Nobody believed him.

And so slowly, Totally, Tanner, every night, he would see whatever he was seeing, and it drove him insane, completely insane, to the point where he couldn't even function, and his daughter had to take care of him until he passed away. And as Tanner was losing his mind, his next door neighbor, whose name was Abel, began to talk as well about these creatures that were coming to the edge of the tree line surrounding Dudleytown most nights. And just like Tanner, Abel as well slowly lost his mind over these creatures because nobody him. And then all the way up until just past the 1800s, so many people just randomly died in Dudleytown, some from disease for sure, but others, they'd just be found dead. And then many people as well began sighting these strange creatures that were lurking all around. By 1900, the only family that was still alive in Dudleytown was this family called the Brofies. And it was a fairly big family. And the mother, she suddenly died of cholera. The two sons, they were accused of theft in another town and then fled and vanished. And so literally, it's down to John Brophy, the actual last person who's living in Dudleytown.

And one night, he didn't know... Apparently, he didn't know why, but his cabin burned to the ground. And after his cabin, or while his cabin was burning, people were called out. They saw the smoke. They came out to put out this fire. And the last anyone saw of John, who's lost his whole family, he's lost everything, is he just turned and walked deeper into the forest and was never seen again. And no one could find him. That was it. And that was the last person who lived in Dudleytown. And that marked the moment that Dudleytown went from still being occupied to being a literal ghost town. And you can actually look up the newspaper article that documented the moment when Dudleytown became a ghost town. No one lives there. A few years later is when Dr. Clark and Harriet were taking their stroll through Litchfield County and up into Darkentry Forest and saying, Wow, this is the place for us. And they saw the ruins of Dudleytown. They walked past the crumbling foundations of these old homes, and there was all these remnants of this town that was still there, but much the way they viewed the Owls as being charming, they also viewed this run-down old town that was gone as cute, and it made them want to stay there more.

So they were aware of the town but didn't do the research. Apparently, Dudleytown was cursed, and that is where they bought their land. So fast forward to 1918. So Dr. Clarke, he's left for this emergency trip to New York, and it would turn out he was only needed in New York for 36 2 hours. It was as short as he could have expected it to be. So less than two days later, keeping his word to his wife, he's back on a train, and he's heading back to that stop where Harriet had dropped him off, near the dark entry forest. And although this was rare that Dr. Clarke would leave his wife in the cabin. He expected her to be waiting for him at the train station. They didn't have an exact time that he was going to be there because it wasn't entirely planned. But he had said, I'll be here in one or two days And so he just expected his wife to check the schedule and be at the train platform. But as he's pulling into the station, he sees his wife is not there. Now, this was not some huge cause for concern, but it was enough of a red flag that as he's pulling into the station, Dr.

Clark is thinking something feels off. And so he ends up going from the train station, and he actually walked the rest of the way. He didn't take a car or anything. He walked to that access road and made his way up to the entry of Dark Entry Forest. And as soon as he walked into the forest. So daylight out here, he steps into the canopy and it's dark again. And remember, it used to feel so welcoming and wonderful going into that forest. It was so peaceful. But now it has a different feel. He steps into the forest and suddenly it feels threatening. It feels ominous. And the owls that are hooting the whole time he steps in. It didn't feel like they were greeting him. It felt like they were telling him to leave. But he had to find his wife, and he's thinking she's up at the cabin. That's where we need to go. And so he begins jogging, fast walking. He's getting a little nervous through the forest. And as he's moving through, the sounds of these owls are getting louder and louder and louder and more threatening until finally, when he gets to the clearing, when he can actually look up and see where he built his cabin up on this hill, it's like a cacophony of noise.

It's just constant hooting, almost like it doesn't even sound like hooting. It's just a loud sound that's constant. And so Dr. Clarke is starting to panic, but he gets even more panicked when he looks up at the cabin. He doesn't see his wife, but he sees the front door to this cabin is slightly ajar. And so Dr. Clark, he runs the rest of the way up the hill, owl's hooting the whole time. He gets to the door, and he's terrified. He knows there's something wrong here. But still, he gets the courage. He opens up the front door, and the second he steps into this home, which he has loved and spent years and years in with his family, he steps in and everything is different. Instead of it being peaceful, he now feels this almost high pitch sound inside of his head for a second, and he's confused. And then he hears what It sounds like maniacal laughter coming from the second floor. He doesn't see anybody on the first floor. He thinks it's his wife, and so he charges upstairs. He gets to the landing, and he sees the door to his bedroom where he would expect his wife to be, is slightly open.

And he can hear this laughter coming from inside of this room, this maniacal, crazy, loud, high pitch laughter. And he's totally panicked. He goes to the door, and he opens it up. And there in the back corner of the bedroom is his wife, and she's in the fetal position, and her mouth has been opened as wide as it can go. And the laughter that he's hearing is coming out of her body, but her jaw isn't moving. Her chest is heaving, and this maniacal laughter is just coming out of her as she stares him dead in the eyes. And so Dr. Clarke, he was so terrified of what he was seeing and all the hooting and all this craziness going on that he just turned and ran away. We don't know what happened to Harriet Clarke over those 36 hours that her husband was gone, but something happened to her. And when she was taken away from this cabin, the only thing she would say is the strange creatures kept coming back. I kept seeing strange creatures. Same thing that all the people in Dudleytown had said that caused them to flee the town. And so we don't know exactly what became of Harriet.

There is one account that says she was Forever. She went to a mental hospital and stayed there until she passed. Another account says she went back to New York with Dr. Clarke, where she took her life. But either way, the final thing was she claimed to have seen the strange creatures and lost her mind as well. Following this, so following the story, Dark Country Forest really took on this unbelievable legend. People knew about this story. They knew about the legend of the 1700s and 1800s, but this felt recent. I mean, this was a documented case of this doctor's wife. And so it spawned a lot of people going into Dark Country Forest to see what's out there. And lots of people who go into that forest before it became illegal reported feeling phantom hands, slapping them on the back and feeling really intense pockets of cold air. Actually, the very famous Paranormal couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren, in the 1970s, they went out and ran this special series about what happened in the Darkentry Forest. And they came out and said, Absolutely, that forest is demonically possessed. So that's going to do it. If you enjoyed today's collection of Strange, dark, and mysterious stories, and you're looking for more content like that, remember, we have a whole slew of podcasts under the Balin Studios umbrella.

All these podcasts are amazing. It's all bingeable content, and it's available right now for free. All you have to do is go to any podcast platform, look up Balin Studios, and boom, there's all our podcasts to choose from.

Okay, that's going to do it. Thank you so much for your support.

Until next time. See you.