Dead Silence in the Woods: A Terrifying Encounter

He had camped in those West Virginia mountains for years under the stars, completely at peace, until one August night when the forest went silent. My name is Edmon, and here is Nick's true scary story. The paranormal, the supernatural has always seemed to find me in one way or another. This story specifically takes place out in West Virginia in the Allegheny Mountains, roughly twelve thirteen or so years ago. My mom was married to. My stepdad at a very early age in my life, and I had a big brother as well. My stepdad had a best friend named Barry. His family had owned several acres of land way out in the mountains, forty to fifty plus miles from any town, any street lights or anything. I grew up in and around the woods, being around six to maybe ten years old. In the summertime, we would go out there for a week or two weeks at a time, hiking the trails, playing by the river, skipping rocks. We would drive into town occasionally for my mom and stepdad to go shopping for us to grab food and supplies. Because when we were in the cabin it was pretty isolated, we would never see anybody around, except for maybe Barry once in a great. While he would stop in. Other than that, it was just the four of us, just isolated in the middle of the woods. At night, you would see all the stars, no street lights, no like pollute and nothing. It was quite magical and I always really enjoyed being out there. Never ever had any weirdness, feeling any kind of weirdness, never felt scared, never felt anything other than just pure joy. Fighteen years my mom and dad had gotten divorced due to many reasons. We were cleaning out his house on my stuff, my brother's things, my mom's things. I had taken a couple of boxes from my bedroom and the attic to my dad's house, where I would primarily stay until I moved out as a twenty year old. A couple of years after that. I was probably about sixteen at this point. I was at my dad's house one day in the basement. My high school was having some kind of child fundraiser something where we were donating kids clothes, kids toys, food, money, and stuff like that, and I had a pretty extensive collection of stuffed animals from when I was a child. I was in my basement that day looking for a bunch of that, and I come across two boxes that I didn't I first recognize until I opened them, and I realized that one box was full of just a couple of camping things like an It was a machetti, a hunting knife. There was an old ripped up tent, one of those big nineties thick, twenty pound flash lights. And then there was a crumpled up piece of paper that I unraveled and it was constructions on how to get to the cabins. Unfounched to me at that point. I had always thought that, you know, when we got there and drove there as a kid, it would take many, many hours to get there. But I was always in the back seat in the back of my stepdad's vand playing on my game Boy Color or playing you know, my Pokemon cards with my brother, so I never really had a symplance of where we were and how far it was actually looking at these instructions, and they were very. Detailed and precise. You would leave the nearest town to some dirt roads, and then ten miles down this dirt road you'll see a huge tree with a couple of notches in it with an ar row. Go right on that turn, and then there will come up. A three prong fork in the road in the woods. Take the middle prong and then turn left, and then you'll see a huge bolder thirteen more miles down. Make that left and then turn right. So they were very specific instructions on how to get to this area that very and his family had owned, and I thought, I definitely got to make my way out there at some point. I was seventeen when I went out there the first time. Thanks to my deadbee dad, he had helped me get a car, and the luxury of my dad not being the best father, I was able to sneak out a lot and leave for a few days at a time. So I thought, perfect, I can now take a weekend or three and just go out there alone. I can take this stilapidy to tent and try to patch it up and make my own little camping adventure. So I did. Took me roughly seven maybe seven. And a half hours to get out there, and luckily I did it in the daylight, because trying to find this location from that first town, which I can't for the life of me remember the name, it took a good probably two hours just to get to that location, and I never even made it to the actual cat I had just picked a cool spot. I thought it was a nice open clearing, and I just kind of set my base up there. It was a little super cool, like the woods were loud and alive with cicadas and crickets and frogs. It was the dead of summer at that point, and I was super stoked to be out there. And I had found a cool clearing where a trail that I remembered as a kid, my stepdad had found. It would basically take you up about thirty minutes hike up and then thirty minutes down up to a cool ledge and one that leads is basically a beautiful view of the Alleghany Mountains, the forest, and at night especially you'll see the moon and all the stars and shooting stars. It's just such a beautiful sight. And that would be the place I would go to several times. Over the course of those two years. Two years later, nineteen years old, I had been out to this location probably a good twelve thirteen. Maybe fifteen times. Each time. I've never ever had any trouble. The most dangerous thing or craziest thing I would see out there. It would be like one time I saw a bear with two barry cups way down the mountain, way in the distance, a lot farther from me, you know, than any danger would know persist. Luckily, a couple of times I would hear a mountain lion. And if you've ever heard a mountain lion in the wild and not realize what you're hearing, it sounds like a woman screaming for bloody murder, and it's quite scary if you don't know what you're listening to. And at first I didn't, and I panicked, and I thought, oh my god, I'm not out here alone, and there's a killer with the next somewhere killing somebody. But I had learned later that it was most likely a mountain I am doing some research, and I look heard a couple of more times. Luckily, never had bothered. Me or came near my tent as far as I knew, while I was out there. But then when I was nineteen, it. Was the beginning or middle of August, and I decided to go out there for two nights just alone. I had always gone out there alone. I'll try to get a few friends a few times. To come out with me. But back then I didn't have friends that liked to go out and camping in the middle of the woods and night alone, isolated so far from anything. I love being in the nature, I love being surrounded by the woods, and you know, I just felt so free. So I thought, it doesn't matter. I'll just go off for my usual trip, you know, and maybe I'll come back and again in a month before somewhere early ends and have one last hurrah. So I make my way out there. I believe it was a Friday afternoon. I had gotten a last start. It was about maybe one o'clock to o'clock or so. I remember getting to the dirt trails around nine o'clock or so, so it was getting pretty dark out. That was kind of my first mistake because I had never gone to this location out there in the dark, because I'd always needed some light to be able to see that tree with the naxies in it. Or the big boulder with. The arrow, or the three pronged way, and to know exactly how to get there and not get lost. So I was definitely a little turned off at first, but I thought, you know what, I made the truck out here, just just keep going. Just push forward, you'll make it to UH clearing and you can just figure it out tomorrow. Eventually I make it to a clearing, and I believe it was stick clearing I usually always go to. There was may be four or five that I would usually stick to. They all would lead to the trail that I like to go up to the ledge. On the mountain to see the view. I got there and I parked and I kind of sat there in my car for a little bit, maybe like an hour, messed around on my little flip phone at the time with no internet service, no phone service, just playing a couple of games I had, beating the granola bar or two. And then eventually, around maybe ten ten thirty, I decided to get. Out of the car pack a little bag. I had stolen two beers from my dad at a joint I brought with me just to relax and chill in the woods. I was making my way up to the trail, so I grabb my stepdad's machete I had brought, and the class light and I also had a headlamp that I was wearing too. I closed the car door, I lock it up, make sure I have my keys, my bag, everything in me on me, and I start to look for a good path to get to the trail, because this specific clearing was maybe not too terribly far from the trail, maybe like a five minute walk to the actual full trail, so I'm used to going up. I hadn't been to this spot maybe in like a month and a half at that time. So a couple of branches have fallen. I think there was one small tree that had fallen over. Luckily, the machete helped me a lot with that, hiking down some branches kind of getting out of my way. The woods were just so loud, so alive, with just a million cicadas. I had probably heard a couple of coyotes way in the distance, progs and just everything. You know. I could barely hear myself think at points, and I just one of the reasons why I love the woods at night, just because it's so alive. So I'm making my way up the trail and it's a pretty decent hike. There's not too many rocks in the trail, not too many like weird steps. It's a pretty smooth hike up about it, maybe like thirty five to forty degree angle. I make my way up and the end of the trail basically stops and you walk up out of the woods, and it's so kind of like an open clearing. There's a somewhat tall wall of just huge, imongous boulders. To get to the ledge where I'll usually get up to and chill, you have to kind of scramble up them a little bit. So I'm just climbing up. I put them a seady in my bag, kind of like slice it on the side a little bit, just to keep it held up the way it doesn't fall out. My phone to my pocket, had lamp, it's full brightness, flash lights in my pocket as well. I'm making my way up the boulders and I get to the ledge, lay out and hang out. I'm just looking at the vast darkness. And luckily that night it was a clearer night, so I had a beautiful view of a full moon and the stars were just everywhere, and it was just a magical night. Hung out there for honestly, probably an hour. It felt like, just gazing the stars, just hanging out. I had drank my beers, I had spoke my joint. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling happy that I'm out there and just thinking, ah, I just I'm so lucky to be able to experience this. Even though I'm alone, it's still a great experience to be. Out here and just should be an awe of nature. At one point, I decide, okay, well, I think it's getting a little late. I checked my phone and it was roughly I want to. Say, eleven thirty, maybe almost twelve o'clock I think, And I decided, okay, I'm gonna head back to the car. I'm going to get some sleep. And I realized, oh damn, I didn't set my tent up, so I guess I'll be just sleeping in my car for the night, and I can always just set that up in the morning and take care of that. Then before I go hiking for the day, I'm making my way. Down the border wall, and I start to walk down the clearing a little bit, which is just like a maybe twenty yard clearing, like not that big at all, and then you enter the woods to the path that takes you down. And as I'm walking, there's two things that I immediately noticed. That kind of sent a shiver down my spine. The first thing I noticed was there was this horrible, putrid, putrid smell. If you had ever smelled like old rotten meat or something that's decaying out in the wood, which I have smelled a plenty of times, that's basically what. I felt like. It smelt like death. And I'm thinking, like, oh God, maybe there's a dead fox, maybe a dead coyote, maybe a bear had. His meal earlier somewhere around here. You know, you're used to this, you know it. You know you know how to spot these things, So just don't don't panic. And initially I didn't, But then the next thing I noticed which made me panic was the lack of sound. The woods had completely fallen silent. If anyone has ever been in the woods at night when all noise just disappears, it's definitely a feeling of just complete fright and isolation, like you feel like you're just completely alone out there. My first thought after that was, oh god, okay, there must be a bear. There must be a mountain line. There must be some kind of predator walking wandering around right now. That's probably why there was no noise. And I'm thinking, okay, just keep calm, just keep my head fishing forward, look for any eyes, and just walking on this trail and just don't panic, just keep walking. So I'm taking a couple of steps, and that's. When I hear footsteps. I can hear footsteps very loudly and very clearly, because again the woods are just dead silent, and I can hear my own footsteps crunching on a couple of. Like sticks and stuff and a couple of. Stones going down this trail pitch black, by the way. Just this flashlight and headlamp I have. When I started to really panic, and what made me start to run was noticing that the footsteps were a bipedal, so they were on two feet. It didn't sound like a dog or a bear or anything on four feet just walking down. It sounded like a person walking. And the push stuffs sounded extremely heavy. I could quite literally feel the vibrations just running through my body with each step. At that point inside something snapped and I just darted down. I'm running down, and it. All felt like it just lasted like five seconds, this run, because it was so quick and so panicky. And I'm running and I'm going down this mountain trail that takes thirty minutes to hike up and down to I'm slamming into trees and falling over in bushes, and I'm hitting hitting my head. On different like tree branches sticking. Out, and because it's hard to kind of jump and dodge and look behind you, look to the side of you to make sure that whatever this thing is is still behind me and chasing me. And the entire time I'm running, I can hear this thing just right behind me. There's no way I was. Going to stop and turn to look, because I just, you know, fear of flight. I just I couldn't do that. So I just I just kept forward. I just kept going, telling myself, you've got to get to the car. You've got to get to the car. You're going to get to the car, and once you get there, you can drive out of here, go be home free. In my mind too, I do remember vividly thinking, like. My god, what is this thing? My God? Is this a person? Is this a mountain man? A homeless person. Like this can't possibly be a big pay It can't possibly be a yetty like. I don't believe in those things, you know, I haven't seen them with my eyes. I can't possibly be something that's out of a realm possibilities that you know, humanity isn't keen to that. We haven't discovered quote discovered yet. All these thoughts are just racing, racing at the same time, thinking just don't get killed, just keep going, don't die. Miraculously, I see the shimmer in the distance of my hear's headlight. At this point, I had completely dropped my bag. My bag was gone, my flask light was It flew out of my hand at one point, tumbling down. My knees were all straped up. I had probably torn my shirt, and debrio was all over me. I had rolled a couple of times. I knew that I had smacked my head a lot, and I just could feel the sweat and blood just coming down my face. Luckily, I had my headlamp still, so I still had a source of light. Once I got down and saw my car, I just kept going. I just didn't look back, and I just had my eyes set just on that flicker of light on my head light and my head beam up on the headlight of my car. And luckily, my keys were still lost in my pocket, so I grabbed them out. I flew and basically bodies slammed into my door of my car and then I turned the key into the car and then opened it, closed it behind me, and just threw myself in on the passenger side. Threw myself in like long ways, like horizontally, and I flicked on. The manual lights on my car. My car was facing forward to the woods, and the path that I had gone up and came down. From was to the right side of the car, so the right side of the had like kind of flashed a little bit onto the path, like maybe like three fourths of the path. Was kind of eliminated. Sitting there in the car as I flicked on the light and I turned to look at the path to see if I could see whatever this person or thing was. What I only could make out was something that was extremely tall. It had to be at least eight maybe nine feet tall, because the trees next to this path were extremely extremely large and old. This thing basically it towered over the top of my car's roof. Like in the windshield. I couldn't even see the top of this thing. It had some kind of a gray personally kind of gray hair. It seemed like within a moment it just ran up the trail at like lightning speed, because I could see the outline of this thing next to the tree, and then within a blink of an eye, it just went darting up this trail. And I remember sitting in my car, still laying like across both seats, just like frozen in horror. And I remember looking at my desk and seeing the time. It was at one oh six am, and one oh six point five radio was on and it was green. That picture will always be in my head that that precise moment, and I sat there, crawled into my driver's seat, and without like a half an hour just sitting there, it was like maybe twenty seconds. I started the car and then I just start to try to figure out how to get the hell out of there again. My bag was gone, my phone was gone, everything except for my headlamp and my car keys I had still and everything was just lost. The instructions on how to get there were gone everything. And luckily, for God's sakes, luckily my wallet was in my car that night, so I did have my wallet and my license with me, so I'm fortunate for that. I had to start to make my way out of the woods, and it took me probably a good two and a half hours to figure out how to get to the main dirt road that takes you to the first town. Those few hours driving in the pitch black was probably one of the scariest parts that night, because I kept sensing that whatever this thing was, I felt like iyes were just on me. These roads were very bumpy, very rocky. You know, it was very hard, and the car's shaking, and I'm shaking. My heart's beating a mile a minute, and I'm drenched in sweat, and it's it's still pitch black, so I can't even see the damage that my body had just endured, like the rips of my shirt, my pants were torn. I knew I had blood gushing from a couple of cuts on my face and my. Arms, my knees and all all of it. Somehow I make it to this main dirt road because I had recognized one of the large trees that you turn when you first get into like these back dirt roads to get to that location. And then I just kept driving straight until I hit an actual paved road, and then from there I drive about six and a half seven hours home. It was probably around four thirty five thirty am or so. I had stopped at a gas station one of the first gas stations I saw, just to fill up on gas and just to take a breather from driving like ninety miles per hour. Surprised that no cops had spot in me because I was driving like a bot out. Of hell. Into this gas station and I got out of my car to pump some gas. That was the first time I had noticed in the window of my car like what I looked like, because I hadn't looked at the verview mirror. I had looked at myself at all. I was just in too much of a panic. And I remember looking over my shoulder at the. One gas attendant inside the convenience store attached to the gas station, and the guy he was looking like maybe a teenager, was working I guess the night shift. And I remember looking over at him and seeing him through the window. He was looking down with his head in his palm, I guess, maybe looking on his phone or reading a book or something. And I remember seeing him look up and then he like kind of did a double take and looked at me and had this big bug eyes and was like looked like he was almost like surprised and like shocked to see me. And I was thinking like, well, what's his problem? And now that's why. I looked into the window and I saw my reflection and like the cuts and stuff, and my face was a smeared red, sweat, blood, and I looked a mess. I looked a complete mess. And fast forward, I eventually do get home. At that moment, I was living at my mom's apartment with her, and I got in there. It must have been maybe eight thirty nine and thirty in the morning, and she was just about to leave from work. Of course, she right away starts panicking, like, what the what the hell happened to you? You look like you just fell down a mountain? What happened? Oh my god? Like I thought you were camping. Did something happen? Did you get into our car accident? And just all the questions and panicking, and I basically said, yeah. I fell down the mountain. You know, I hit a rock and I was late at night and I rolled down, I hit a tree, and you know, I just got well banged up. I didn't want to tell. Her that story right away because I was still too in too much of a panic. I still hadn't realized what it is. I saw what I had just experienced because I didn't really have an explanation. Even though my whole life I have been followed by the paranormal or the supernatural in many instances, I had dozens of stories. I still am a very big skeptic until I can actually see it with my eyes and have actual definitive proof that, like, yes, that is right there in front of me right now. I'm not one acid, I'm not dreaming, I'm not asleep. I can see this. It's right here, and that's what usually can confirm, you know, the truth. For me, to this day, I still don't know what it was that night that chased me down that mountain. Could I say that. It was a bigfoot like creature, something that maybe resonates in those woods and ancient something maybe you know, I know that there are cave systems out. In those woods. Could just be some ancient animal species that you know, we just haven't seen or discovered yet, or maybe we have and there's just no undying proof of it, no photographic evidence of it or recorded evidence. I'll never pre get the vibrations of those footsteps and just how heavy they felt, and a smell, just that future smell will. Reside in my memory forever. I haven't been out there alone, since I've been out there at all since. Actually, I well like to go back though. One day, just to reminisce and just to see the site, and maybe I'll find my bag. Who knows. I'm definitely a thrill seeker, like I love the thrills. I love the climb mountains and hike up really cool volcanoes. I've been to a bunch of different really cool places where you can do those kind of things like trekking and mountain climbing and stuff. And I never would have thought that somewhere in the West Virginia Mountains, hours from my home with harbor or such a frightening event. Nick, Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. Now I understand this was a very you know, this is an event that happened, is a thing that happened to me kind of experience, and we're obviously going to have a bunch of questions about it, right. It's a good thing that you were very detailed in how you told the story during our call as well. But there were a couple of points that you made that I ended up researching on a little bit. Actually, I really want people's input on this, because there was something that you mentioned about the silence actually how we title this story, right, and that silence like dead what we call like that when the woods go dead basically is when a predator is around and animals know this. Bugs know this, like birds understand this, right, they go away, they like stay quiet because there's an animal trying to hunt them, right, So they do that. And it's the same kind of thing that people say they experience when there's a big Foot sighting. Just you know, in all these paranormal accounts that we get to hear very interesting right there. I mean, I'm just gonna leave it at that with that point specifically, because that meant that there was something else around, right, It kind of gives you that hint, like watch out, everybody stays quiet, right. Another thing the rotten smell. Obviously we've heard about this one where there's reports of strong sulphuric or decaying smells in also in Bigfoot lore. Another thing happens with the skin walker or the crawler encounters. Same smell also happened. Surprisingly, I'm not saying that this is connected with the same thing, but like with demonic encounters, same thing, or soul fur smell or a weird rotten egg kind of smell, so all these things. I mean, it could be like biologically, I read somewhere that it says that the explanation is that there's territorial scenting or stress phareronohs that are released during these these times. Are those true? I'm just very curious to know what if anybody out there listening has an idea of like what this could have been, right, because obviously it could have been stressed, it could have been something. It could have been like our minds making things up in the dark, which I mean it can happen. But if that can happen, the other thing can also happen. Maybe there was something there, right, So this is what I mean by like, By the way, once I get into some of the comments that we received for the previous story in this podcast, you'll see what I mean how this connects with the same thing. The other thing is a psychological thing. Right now, this is what a skeptical person might say during the dark, you're scared, you're seeing things, you're hearing things, your mind's connecting things to kind of support the idea that you're making up. In your head. I mean that's I mean, it's a valid thing. But when you we have all these things like when there's an event then you mentioned one oh six am, right, the times when there's an event so impactful, we remember these very tiny details that we would otherwise not even consider. For example, right back when I was I was maybe eleven or twelve something like that, when nine to eleven happened and they made us write down what we felt at the moment at the time, I was like, I mean, I don't know, I just it was scary to see planes crashing into a building. Right. But looking back when when they asked me, hey, where were you or do you remember that day? I remember the exact journals that we used, like the style of them, the pencil, I remember the TV that we watched this on. And I like, there was no way I can forget that. And there's tiny little details that I can't remember for any other event, you know, Like it's strange. I remember the day, like what the weather was like, It's very very strange to think about so all these things, us remembering very specific details like the time, things like that, Like I know it seems very obvious, but like it just stamped in our minds. Along with this, it's a sign that maybe you know, this was definitely an event that creeped us out, and we're remembering a bunch of details. So if we can remember those details, why do we start to doubt them? And why do we start considering that we make things up? Right? I don't know. Those two things kind of contradict each other, as in, we will probably remember all these things and vivid detail. That's what I'm trying to say here. So I believe these kind of encounters that had something like that, I remember very specific details that there's no way I would have remembered in any other situation. So telling me that, no, you're probably not remembering it right, I'm like, I don't know. But then again, everything is possible. Right now, we have the whole area factor, Appalachian Mountains, the area, the zone. Now you're out there by yourself. I don't know how you do this. I don't know how any of you guys do this. But being in areas where there's generational land ownership, families that have owned lands for like hundreds of years, and they're just passed down family to family, like generation to generation, some of them untouched, like all these acres of land completely untouched. It's beyond me how you guys can do this and go out there. But why are there so many encounters out there? Like why are there so many of these things, these events, these creatures in the woods out there? I don't know. It just gets me thinking about what if these are actual entities, like what if these are remnants of the past, or what if these are creatures living in there because they're completely empty, like you're you can be in an area where you're miles and miles aways from from like any human beings. It's bizarre to me that people can feel so confident, So I guess not scared going in areas like that. Still very brave, very brave. Another thing here is that there were things that that Nick mentioned here in the story about childhood exposure to isolation, those mountains, Right, you grow up with it, then you do all these solo trips. You're comfortable, right, you have other paranormal experiences, which I'm very curious, by the way, uh to hear what those those experiences are about. So Nick, if you listening, please, like, if you want to share all these stories, I think we might have talked about it, like, if you want to share the stories, please just send me an email. We can schedule another call or record it. You can also record it and set it over. I'm sure people are very curious to know what these these other experiences were, because things like premonitions, dreams like that. Like, maybe it brings the fact that some people can attract the strange, you know, all these things that some of us wish we could experience, that we could tell a story on here, and we just don't write, and some of us just are a magnet for these kind of stories, which kind of tells me that maybe we have a different kind of sense for this, or we have other receptors that can catch these things. It's a very interesting theory, at least to me to think that, because here's my thoughts on the paranormal, is that these things are happening right. There's situations, there's entities, There's things that are roaming around that we don't understand. There might be energies, waves of some shape or form, and only some of us can detect them or at least pay attention to them. The ones who can't see them, the ones who can't quote unquote detect them are the ones that experience them and completely ignore the because her mind just kind of says that's impossible, it can't happen, and we just keep on living our own lives. That's what I think. And there's some of us that are experiencing something and we question it and we wonder what could this be? So that's what makes it, you know, that's what makes the difference. A person that doesn't believe in the paranormal, that isn't open to it, will never be able to understand this. Right, So what sucks is that we have the burden of proof here. We have to prove that it exists, and you know, like it doesn't make any sense. Why is it on us? I don't know. Just interesting little thought there that I wanted to add. And then also the other here's the thing that I often wonder, right, when you hear about bigfoot encounters, you have supposedly these it might have been a skinwalker, might have been some other thing, right, but you have these creatures that can run really fast, that can detect you, that know that you're there, and yet they don't harm you. Obviously you've heard the stories of people that obviously they're t the story. That means they survived it, right, they live through it, so they survived it, So we might have that bias there. But like, if they have the ability to catch up to you, why don't they? Right it? Just are they just trying to scare you away? Why chase you? Like? And why like how do they keep up with you in like pitch black darkness? Like there's some type of different vision that they have. What are their intentions? Those things really creep me out, you know, when I think about or when I listen to a paranormal experience like this where you made it, you survived, and it could have killed you, it could have done something and it didn't. Does that make them like good entity? I don't know. I feel like a bear would have just gone after you and if it was hungry, it would just go after you. And that's it so pretty bizarre. But that scene, that idea, Yeah, that experience of running away making it to the car geez, Like that's intense. Like if that doesn't get your adrenaline like pumping even as you're listening, I don't know what will because that was like this is intense. Anyway, There's a lot of things here that you know, go on in certain areas of the United States and in the world in general, where you have places that they say that they have a reputation that locals can't really or don't really talk about. They know something exists, but they don't really talk about it. And I'm very interested to know if anybody else out there from the Appalachian Mountains, from those areas of the United States, forests in the dark woods, if there's any experience that they want to share, because we have one. It was called The Smiling Man from the Woods. Now that story I mention it often. It's one of my favorite, Like you know, long form, I guess stories that we have here on the show and then mention something from the woods like that, And it gets me to think that families keep things from themselves, and I wonder, why wouldn't it be better to just say it? Or are you so afraid of this thing that you choose not to say anything at all. So this is why I appreciate this podcast, in every single storyteller that comes on here to share their experiences, because yeah, we get a lot of scrutiny too, Like we get a lot of questions, we get a lot of comments like oh I don't believe this. Oh it must have been this, It must have been a gas leak, it must have been whatever, like all these things, and I'm like, hey, just let the person share their experience, man Like, come on, like what do we hear? Like are you that guy you know in the like if somebody's sharing a story around a campfire, You're like, that's not real, Like come on, let's not do that. And you know, part of the whole community here at true Scary Story is all the people that you know that listen and that share a story. They say that they feel like people can relate to them, and it's like, hey, we can share this story. Other people might have experienced this, and I'm in a safe place where people don't won't think that I'm crazy. Basically, that's what I'm trying to build here. So when I get comments of like I don't believe this, Oh this has never happened. Oh that's so fake, I'm like come on, Like I don't know if I should just like stop, like delete those comments or something, because I'm like, come on, like do you do that? Like are you like the people go to magic show and you're like, I know, how you did that trick or something like that. Even I'm not saying that these stories are fake, but like, you know, somebody sharing their experience, like they're letting us into part of their lives, sharing something about them that is very different to each and every one of us. So I just wanted to bring that up there because I don't know, I see these comments and I'm like, come on, and I believe you guys. Anyway, this is I mean one of these things where a familiar play something he had done for years, go out into the woods by himself and do all that and experiences and it changes, you know, what he was able to do. It tells you, and it tells you a lot about just how intense, how traumatic this actually was, so very important story. I'm super glad that you got to share it with us, Nick, So thank you again. We have a lot more stories about the woods and everything in this very podcast, and I also have a few on the other show, Horror Story. That one's more of a documentary style. We have a bunch of podcasts, by the way, in case you didn't know, a fictional show like campfire style stories, documentary style True Stories. There's also a video podcast paranormal Clout where you can see me talking talking about all these cases and talking about other things on camera. And also if you just want to listen, you can also listen. It's like a podcast too, So if you find it, you find those shows also, please forget to follow on them and leave a review. This episode of True Scary Story. This one by Nick. This. This episode was edited in sound designed by Sarah Vorheest Wendel a VW sound, with additional production by the rest of the Scary FM team. That's me Bianco with the scheduling. We have Sophia with some of the other you know, logistical kind of things. They also help with a lot of the other shows to so make sure to check them out and check check out all of our work. You can find them on this very platform. Just search for those those those shows. You'll find a lot of this info on just scaryfm dot com. You can see the list of all of our shows. If you want to get in touch or share your story right here, go to true scarystory dot com. Fill out the form there, we'll get back to you and then I'll show you the openings for the calls in case it fits the show. If it's something completely like you know, I fit another one of our shows, I'll let you know, and then also a new story. Sorry I forgot to tell you about this, but new stories should be popping up soon on this same feed that you can get it early on Scary Plus. That's the our membership, our subscription thing that really helps us out with keeping everything balanced because the ad revenue really bobs up and down, but the subscription is always the same, right, so it's it's like keeps that kind of standard for us, and you get in exchange, you get the stories a week early. You also get the stories completely add free, and you also get a couple bonus episodes every once in a while when we have like extended kind of material. There's also a little updates there that that pop up every once in a while as soon as they're available. Just want to remind you that we're also doing for Paranormal Club, the other podcast. We have live streams, so there's like actual interaction there. I talk about these shows a bunch of other shows too, and random things people ask me in the chat. That's YouTube on YouTube Live. You find Paranormal Club pod on YouTube. You can click on the live tab and that's where you can find the next live stream that I'm going to do, which is if you're listening to this on Wednesday, it's usually on Thursday nights, so should be popping up there. If you miss this one, you're probably gonna see the next one already schedule there. Also, be sure to tap follow on this podcast so you get next week's story and drop five stars in the reviews. Please please, we need we need a bunch of stars. Spotify already told us, like, hey, tell people to follow because we don't see a lot of movement. And I'm like, because I understand sometimes people listen to but they don't tap follow, which I get it. I do the same thing, but I started doing that now to actually follow the shows that I that I enjoy listening to. Anyway, thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, see as soon