Before I start retelling this particular experience, I want to
preface it with my reason for posting.
This happened some years back and I've always been quick to
push it aside and try to forget about it, but a conversation I
had recently inspired me to write my story out so that
people with more experience in paranormal or supernatural
phenomena my tell me what I witnessed, if anything.
This all takes place in northwestern Montana during late
autumn of 2009. Apologies for any spelling and
grammatical errors, I wrote it all down in one sitting.
When I was 17 I moved out of my parents house and in with a Co
worker who I'll call John in his trailer.
We got along well at work. It was actually one of the
better roommate situations I've ever had in terms of
compatibility, and we became close friends during that time.
We were roommates until shortly after I turned 18 and some
personal stuff happened with my family.
I ended up moving back in with my parents for a while to help
them cover some bills. It took about 3 months for that
situation to stabilize, and I called this friend up about
moving back out there. This was the first time I
remember feeling something was off, though it's been so long
that I can't recall the details of the conversation.
There was just a sense of wrongness that lingered for a
while after I'd hung up the phone.
The end result was that I was welcome to move back in, which I
expected. I waited for a day off, and
another friend, who I'll call Dave, came to help me move.
Dave was another Dungeons and Dragons pal from a different
group, and we were figuring we'd show up and talk John into a one
shot session or something. So we loaded up all my stuff and
drove out there and it was a nightmare.
From the moment John opened the door everything was wrong.
I won't say John was a clean freak, but he tried to maintain
his space and he'd always insisted we clean up for company
when I was living with him. I stood there open mouthed at
the thick layer of dust coating nearly everything.
The longer I looked around, the worse it got.
There was a half eaten plate of food turned to mold sitting on
the table. Both sinks in the kitchen were
similarly moldy, and the air in the trailer stank even beyond
what I'd expect from moldy dishes.
I was extremely taken aback by the state of the trailer, but
the state of my friend was even more shocking.
He worked at a bank and had always kept himself clean, but
now he looked like a wreck. He'd lost weight, his skin had
an unhealthy waxy look to it, his hair was overgrown and
greasy, and his body odor was terrible.
His smell was the first thing that made me think something was
really off about the situation. I've been playing Dungeons and
Dragons and doing other nerd stuff for a long time, and I'm
sorry to say a lot of nerds don't have the best hygiene
practices. So I've encountered plenty of
pungent body odor, but this was not the same.
It was almost the sickly sweet smell of something dead, but not
quite. I've never smelled anything
exactly like it before or since. At this point in the encounter,
I was at a general level of unease and I didn't want to go
into the trailer. But John invited us in and not
wanting to be rude, I went. I figured something crazy had
happened while I was away. John wasn't dating anyone, so I
didn't think heartbreak was the cause, and we'd stayed in touch
after I first moved out. Even when that fell off a bit, I
still heard from mutual friends about the Dungeons and Dragons
sessions he was attending. Regardless, something had
obviously happened, So standing there in his dusty living room
with Dave, who kept shooting me sideways looks, I asked John if
everything was all right. After a full 3 seconds of
silence, he assured me everything was fine.
That was it. He didn't explain the state of
his house or anything else, and what was even weirder was when
he said you guys can crash out here and then just headed off to
the back of the house. I'd always known him to be a
diligent host, so this was odd to say the least.
Though basically nothing was going as I expected or
remembered, so him ditching us in the living room of his nasty
house was maybe the least weird thing so far.
This is the part where I'm pretty glad Dave was there.
To me, this nasty trailer was still my home.
I'd lived there for over a year before my three month return to
my parents, and I had a sense of belonging that I think made me
oblivious to things obvious to Dave.
Despite the condition of the place and being left alone by
John, I still hadn't changed my plan of living there.
I set my stuff down and started preparing to clean, but Dave
stopped me and began pointing out things I hadn't noticed.
The layer of dust was completely undisturbed across the entire
living room and kitchen area, except for a thin track from the
front door to the hallway leading to the back of the
trailer. Whispering to me.
Dave said Nothing in here has been used for a long time, and
once I really looked around, I realized he was right.
The TV, the computer, the couch, the chairs, the dining table
with its rotten food. He hadn't laid a hand on any of
it for at least a month, maybe longer.
Dave, moving almost as if he were sneaking, walked quietly
into the kitchen to inspect the fridge.
He pointed out a few thick patches of dust on the flatter
surfaces of the fridge, but it was harder to tell on the
handle. The metal handle had some dust,
but not as much collected. Stepping past Dave, I reached
out with one finger and popped the fridge open.
I was gagging before I'd even opened the door enough for the
interior light to come on. Throwing my arm across my face
and burying my nose in the crook of my elbow, I opened the fridge
about halfway. It was top to bottom, rotten
food. After a second I stepped back,
turning away, trying not to vomit.
Once I'd collected myself, Dave showed me 1/2 gallon of milk
he'd pulled out of the fridge, indicating that it had expired
three weeks prior. Personally, I just wanted him to
put everything back and close the door.
I was more or less done playing Dust Detective.
I basically shrugged off everything up to that point,
cleared some dust from the couch, got my laptop out, and
connected to the Wi-Fi we'd always paid for.
After a while, Dave joined me and we played World of Warcraft
for a bit. Eventually he told me he'd hang
out for the night because he was my ride and taking him back to
his place and then driving back again was a 90 minute round
trip. To be clear, I would have taken
him home anyway. I wouldn't blame anyone for not
wanting to stay in a room with a giant stack of moldy dishes in
the sink and a fridge full of rotten food.
We played games for the next few hours and John never made a
sound. At one point, Dave asked me
where the bathroom was, and I told him it was at the far end
of the hallway next to John's bedroom.
A low level of unease had been building since John first
answered the door and was getting worse the longer we
stayed. Normally I wouldn't walk with a
friend to the bathroom, but it felt like the right.
Thing to do this time? So I LED Dave down the hallway,
flipping on the hallway light as we went, and ended up with dust
on my fingers from the switch. By this point I was actually
getting annoyed. I don't normally have bad
seasonal allergies, but all the dust we'd been stirring up had
my nose itchy and half plugged. So on the way down I figured I'd
point Dave to the bathroom and then knock on John's bedroom
door to confront him about the condition of the house.
But halfway down the hallway, I noticed a hole in the floor
outside the bathroom door, a jagged edged hole through which
I could see the dirt, cobwebs, and shredded black plastic that
had once covered the insulation. I sighed, exasperated by the
weirdness. I directed Dave into the
bathroom and walked to the end of the hallway where John's room
was. I briefly wondered if he was
asleep as no light was coming from under his door.
The sun was setting, but it gets dark pretty early that time of
year. Annoyed, I knocked loudly and
after a few seconds I heard a grunt from inside.
I popped the door open and flipped on the light.
This was when it really started to sink in how wrong this whole
experience felt. I glanced around the room and it
was in much the same condition as the rest of the house, dust
everywhere except for a small track from the door to the
nearest side of the bed. The bed itself was terrible,
blankets and pillows stained a deep yellow, almost black in
places, and John just lay there with 1000 yard stare fixed on
the ceiling. I completely forgot why I had
come to talk to him, because looking directly at him filled
me with a profound fear. It seemed odd to feel so afraid
in that situation, my sickly looking, clearly depressed
friend lying on a disgusting bed paying no attention to me at
all. John was not an intimidating
guy, he was short, a bit chubby and baby faced, yet in my gut I
was afraid of him. I mumbled something about coming
to say good night turned off the light.
And shut the door. I turned around to see Dave
kneeling by the hole in the floor, which as I write this,
makes me wonder how long I stood there in the doorway.
If I had to estimate, maybe only 15 seconds passed from when I
left Dave to when I said good night to John, yet he was
already out of the bathroom. As I approached, Dave pointed at
the edge of the hole and told me the wood along the edge was
twisted upward, as if the hole had been made from below.
I wish I could confirm that I'm including it here because Dave
did say it, but I didn't take the time to inspect it myself.
Right then. I was at war with my own sense
of fear sparked by being around John.
I just nodded to Dave and said we should get back to the living
room. Fast forward a bit, I kind of
came to my senses once we were back in the living room and I
had reopened my laptop. My sudden intense fear of John
eased off and we played games for a few more hours before Dave
said he wanted to rest his eyes. We shut everything down.
I settled into a recliner and Dave lay on the couch,
positioned so he could keep an eye on the hallway.
I was too uneasy to sleep after seeing John's room.
I knew I wouldn't be living there.
After all, as much as I disliked living with my parents, it was
preferable to whatever was going on with John.
Quietly, I told Dave that everything was all wrong and
explained how, from what I knew of John, he would never have let
things reach this point. We weighed the possibilities.
A psychotic break may be drugs, or, as I later thought, he might
have been seriously ill. All of those remain possible
explanations for his strange behavior, but my gut still tells
me none of them fully explain it.
After a while, we lapsed into silence.
I was just waiting for the sun to come up, starting to wonder
why we hadn't already left, when Dave motioned with his hand to
get my attention. He pointed toward the hallway
and I turned my head slowly in the recliner.
After maybe 15 seconds of staring into the dark hallway, I
heard a slight creak. A little while and a few more.
Creaks later, I saw John's darkened silhouette standing
just inside the hallway at the edge of the kitchen.
That deep sense of fear started building in me again.
The only thing I can compare it to is the time I went hiking
alone and ran head on into a bear going the opposite way on
the trail. I had bear spray which I didn't
end up using, but it was terrifying and honestly I've
never really enjoyed hiking since.
Standing across from that massive bear with nothing but a
can of spray was a terror so deep it still gives me
goosebumps. By contrast, I've been face to
face with plenty of threatening or crazy people without.
Feeling that same dread, It's a human threat, if that makes
sense. Seeing John lurking in that
hallway inspired a level of fear so intense that I have no choice
but to consider unconventional answers for what happened to
him. Because the only comparable gut
feeling of dread I've ever experienced came from facing one
of the largest terrestrial predators on the planet by
myself on its home turf, armed with basically nothing.
There was something deeply wrong and dangerous going on that I
can't explain analytically, but my instincts told me I was in
danger in a way I'd never prepared.
For to Fast forward to the end, we lay there in silence while he
lurked in the hallway for hours. When I asked Dave about it
recently, he said it was at least two hours that John stood
there. Eventually, he crept back down
the hallway to his bedroom. Then, quietly and quickly, we
gathered our things, snuck out to my car and left.
I followed up a bit with our mutual friends afterward, but
got the same story from all of them.
One day he just stopped coming around.
Later I heard from someone who spoke to his parents that he had
called them and said he was leaving town.
As far as I know, no one has seen or heard from him since.
I've mostly tried to forget the whole thing ever happened,
although for a while I had panic attacks whenever I thought
about. It I realized nothing overtly
paranormal took place, so I'm sorry if this is posted in the
wrong place, but my gut tells me that something well out of the
ordinary was going on. If anyone has any insight, I'd
be happy to hear it. If you need more details, I'll
answer questions as best I can. And if you don't believe me, I
don't blame you. These events took place in a
rural part of North Dakota in the summer of 2012.
Anyone who's spent time in the Midwest of the US won't take
long to tell you there's not a lot to do in your free time.
In places like North Dakota, this is doubly true.
It's either hot or frozen, it can be ugly, dusty, and it's as
if someone left the wind on. For the last 30,000 years,
almost no one wants to live there and even the bushes
evolved into tumbleweeds to try to escape.
That said, in 2012 North Dakota had some of the best wages in
the world due to its oil boom and I, like so many other
people, just sort of ended up there.
Now when I say there wasn't much to do, it's not hyperbole.
You've got restaurants, bars and strip clubs.
None of which were built for the influx of people flooding in
from other states, many of whom you wouldn't want to be around
even when they were sober. Still, you find ways to pass the
time between shifts, and one of our favourites for a while was
driving the back roads at night, listening to music and smoking
weed. I didn't personally smoke, but
everyone else did. So there it is.
It was a time and place where a lot of people were constantly on
edge. Everyone was a stranger.
We worked all the time and we slept in whatever houses our
jobs could find. For us.
Every week brought another story about someone being killed or a
business being robbed at gunpoint.
The local police were overwhelmed by the skyrocketing
crime rates. I like to think of it as a brief
resurgence of the West's more lawless era.
So at night, we'd cruise down endless dirt roads in the dark,
blasting whatever music we had on hand and trying to laugh off
the stress of being there. Sometimes we'd stop in the
darkness, kill the lights and listen to the wind howl around
the vehicle. The sound could even be kind of
soothing sometimes. But not that night, and it was
the last time I ever took a recreational night drive through
the countryside. I think we all felt the
difference right away. We pulled off to the side of the
road, killed the lights, and turned the radio down.
When clouds cover the moon in stars and you're many miles from
the nearest St. lamp, it's hard to describe how complete the
darkness can be. You turn off the lights and
suddenly it's not just an. Intangible absence of light.
The dark becomes more solid, like it has a certain weight you
can feel against your skin. This part of the experience can
actually be fun in a scary way. But we'd done it many times and
I was fairly used to it. The wind howled differently
around us this time. If you live there long enough,
you'll experience all kinds of winds at various volumes and
pitches. By that point, I had lived there
for quite a while, and I'd never heard this particular shriek
before or since. It was menacing, and I felt my
hair rise at the sound. A girl who rode with us was the
first to speak up after maybe only a few seconds of being
pulled off the road. I remember hearing her voice in
the dark. Damn, that's creepy.
I nodded silently, my head turned as if to look out the
window on my side, though I couldn't see beyond it in the
darkness, With every passing moment it seemed like the
unnatural shriek on the wind rose higher.
It was an entirely inhuman sound that, as it climbed, gave the
impression of something approaching.
I was convinced as I sat there in the dark that something was
descending on us while we were parked off that road.
While my fight or flight response was still catching up,
my friend next to me in the back seat beat me to the punch go.
He snapped from the darkness and instantly the car lights clicked
back on. The engine started and I felt it
more as a vibration through my seat than a sound.
I remember vividly being unable to hear anything over the
shriek. I felt the tires spin for a
second in the dirt and grass before catching.
We lurched forward and shot off down the dirt Rd.
From the moment we stopped to the moment we floored it out of
there, I'd estimate no more than 10 seconds elapsed.
I think if it had ended here, we might have kept driving around
at night laughing it off as jumping at our own shadows.
If that had been all, I wouldn't even bother to write it down.
But it wasn't, so here we are. As we shot off, I experienced a
revelation that chills my blood to this day.
While we were parked in the darkness, the wind blew
consistently across the car from right to left, and the shrieking
sound also moved in that direction.
As we tore down the road, I was acutely aware of the.
Sound and the direction it emanated from shifted from my
right to behind me even as we speed away.
I knew instinctively that this was wrong.
The road was more or less a straight run for a few miles,
and every sense told me that shriek was not the wind, as I
had first believed. My hearing told me it was
something else, and as we fled that something gave chase,
though it seemed unable to keep up, because after a few miles
the shrieking faded away entirely.
We drove on in silence, except for the car rattling down the
uneven road and jostling. Me in my seat.
My muscles were tense and my heart pounded like mad.
I remember vividly leaning toward the middle of the back
seat so I could look out the front windshield, trying to calm
down and confirm we were in the clear.
From my angle, I saw movement in the headlights and a pair of
eyes reflecting back at us, far too near to miss hitting
whatever it was, but the driver slammed on the brakes anyway and
we skidded along the dirt Rd. I watched as we slid straight
into the eyes shining in the headlights, bracing for an
impact that never came. We slid right past them and came
to a stop somewhere near the middle of an intersection of
dirt roads after a moment of stunned silence.
And a round of Is everyone all right?
We opened the car doors and got out, looking around for signs of
whatever we'd hit, Though I never felt any impact, there was
nothing, no damage to the car and no noise in the immediate
area. A cold chill crept along my skin
as I turned in place, taking in the narrow crossroads poorly
illuminated by the headlights. I repressed the urge to shiver
and gave up the search, calling out that I'd found nothing and
heading back to my open car door.
I'd taken only a few steps before I found myself rooted to
the spot and icy fear rippling across my skin and seizing my
chest. Even as the wind gusted over us,
I heard the edges of that awful shrieking begin to creep in.
We all stood there for a moment, equal parts terrified and
fascinated, and just like before, the volume steadily
climbed as if to signal an approach.
Almost as one, we scrambled back into the car, slamming the doors
and getting ready to take off. I still remember a certain mad
curiosity lingering in the back of my mind.
A part of me even then wanted to know what the source was,
because I'm fully certain it wasn't the wind.
As before, the sound quickly faded behind us as we speed down
the dirt Rd. No more shining eyes appeared to
impede our escape. After perhaps 40 minutes of
driving, we turned onto a paved highway and headed back into
town. After that, night driving became
a much less popular pastime. We rarely discussed what
happened that night, and though I've moved far away from that
windblown Dust Bowl, I can't deny that I still stop and
listen whenever the wind picks up, hoping against hope I never
hear that cold shriek again. As I was writing out this
encounter with the unknown, I did some follow up research on
paranormal phenomena or mythological accounts that might
be consistent with what happened.
I'm sorry to say I didn't find much to corroborate my
experience. There's some lore about
Crossroads at midnight, which isn't super helpful since it was
considerably later than midnight.
I'd appreciate any information or insight if there is any to be
had. And of course, if you don't
believe me, I don't blame you. I've been searching for some
semblance of similarity to someone else's encounter for
three years now, hoping another's experience might align
even a bit with my own to validate it.
Until last night, I'd found details that kind of aligned
with my encounter, but nothing I felt was concrete enough to keep
my story from sounding absolutely insane.
It still does sound insane, I know, and I have no way to
further explain any of it. All I have is what I witnessed.
I found a post on here from 18 days ago that sounds eerily
similar to my own. The key difference is the
familiarity of the voices it mimicked.
Which leads me to wonder if this thing had been watching us for a
while to get both of our voices down, it would have had to have
hurt us at the most recent ten hours earlier before we left for
work. All right, to preface this, I
typed all of this up as Adm to send to someone else after
reading the other guy's story, so the syntax might be awful.
Sorry if this reads like a trashy DM, but I honestly get
terrified of this thing whenever I spend too much time talking
about it, so I'd rather not type it all out again.
I've been wanting to write this since it happened in 2018 and
2019, but I legit get really uncomfortable the moment I
start. I'm sure the thing isn't
actually watching or whatever, but I don't know.
I just hate retelling it. I do think it's important to
share though, because finding someone else's story led me to
several others that seemed to align with whatever I saw and it
was honestly so cathartic I figured maybe somebody else
might be in the same boat and need some sort of validation
that they aren't insane. So I was living down in West TX
in this National Park where the restaurant I was working at
rests. At the top of a 15 minute hike
up a mountain trail from the housing they provided us.
I closed up the restaurant after everyone left each night, so I
was always an hour or two later coming down the hill than
everyone else. It was usually pretty empty,
really quiet and uncommon to encounter anyone else as the
only thing at the top of the mountain is the closed
restaurant, gift shop, store, and some trail heads.
There isn't much reason for anyone else to be on the trail
at that hour. One night I'm coming down, no
moon. So it was pitch black, the trail
was empty, and it was characteristically quiet.
I round the last bend to get to my house and right before I get
off the trail to take a shortcut through the thicket of cactus
and brush, there were maybe 1520 trees.
Even though it's a desert, the top of the mountain has a high
Sierra microclimate. I hear my best friend roommate
Call My Name clear as day in the other direction.
He said my name and when I turned he said it again.
In retrospect, it sounded funny. It was close, maybe 15 yards
away, but also sounded far off at the same time.
Like if someone recorded his voice from far away but played
it very nearby. It just sounded off, but not
enough to flip a switch immediately.
Maybe I'm remembering it differently than it actually
sounded. I'm facing my house maybe 50
yards away, and the voice comes from directly to my left, on
this Foothill of the mountain we'd hike around sometimes.
It has much more tree coverage than the trail I was on, and
considerably more than the thickets separating me from the
clearing around my house. If you walked five feet in the
direction the voice came from, you'd completely disappear from
the view of anyone on the trail or on the back porch of the
house immediately. So hearing my friend's voice
calling me over I thought oh cool we're night hiking and I
turned to follow it. But right before I take my first
step into the tree line I hear his actual voice down on our
porch saying hey who are you talking to?
That stops me. I turn back to face my house,
confused as hell, just in time to see this thing burst out of
the thicket I was about to shortcut through in the. 1st
place before I got distracted by the voice from the exact spot I
would have walked through this thing bolts.
It was humanoid, technically, but The thing is tall as hell
and way too skinny for a human. At least 8 feet tall, but slim.
Inhumanly slender. It was hunched over and running
like it had just taken off from a track mark, you know?
But it kept that same hunched form the whole time and never
stood fully upright. OK.
So about the color, that part has always messed with me
because for one, I'm color blind and it was a greenish yellow.
I get greens and yellows mixed up a lot, especially that
particular hue. And two, it looked like it was
giving off its own glow, which has always sounded so absolutely
ludicrous that I never tell anyone unless I trust them not
to think I'm completely joking, because if I heard this story I
might think someone was at least a little bit joking.
Our back porch light was on though, and the thing lined up
with where it would have been shining, so if this thing was
translucent, it could have taken on that Sheen by reflecting the
porch light. The colors do kind of line up.
I guess if it reflected the light it may have looked like
that color, but it certainly wasn't identical.
Honestly, I swear it had its own shine.
Like looking at a dying glow stick.
More than enough to see, but kind of faint.
Regardless, it was a light that definitely wasn't there a second
before when I'd gotten to the shortcut.
It would have stood out for the last 50 yards of the walk, at
least. It should be noted that had I
followed that thing's voice, two things would have happened.
One, I would have completely disappeared from anyone's view,
and two, I would have turned my back on whatever that thing was
and entered a thicket of trees, weeds and cactus far too dense
to turn around, run, or fight back in.
And that trail it led me toward goes directly to the edge of a
Cliff that drops into a massive break in the mountain.
The window in Big Bend National Park that cleanly drops all 6000
feet to the wide open desert below.
That could have been its purpose leading me in that direction.
If I were going to do something nefarious, that would be the
perfect place to catch someone alone and lead them somewhere no
one else would come across them. Legit in the middle of the day,
you could probably make someone disappear there if you wanted.
Anyway, how this thing was running, it immediately felt
like I'd spooked it, like how a deer runs off at a noise.
But this was different in that it seemed a lot more determined.
It seemed intelligent, aware of its own movement, not just
acting on instinct. It was like spooking a person if
they'd been watching you from the bushes.
Spooked but sentient and definitely acting like I'd just
foiled some nefarious plan. So naturally I also bolt,
exposing my back to this thing but taking the opposite slightly
longer way to my back porch. My buddy, God bless his soul, is
still there when I make it and he asks again, who are you with?
His face is just confused as hell and he keeps looking past
me. I'm like, you heard it too,
right? And he says, yeah, where are
they? I was like, what?
What? There was multiple.
Apparently from his perspective, he had heard multiple voices
alongside my own, all carrying on and joking around, talking
back and forth pretty loudly. He said there were at least
three other voices talking with mine, but it sounded like a
whole crowd coming down the trail.
He heard us getting closer and closer for the past few minutes
and just assumed I'd run into a hiking group and was talking
with them as we headed down. That's not unheard of in the
daytime, but very uncommon for the hour of night.
It took me a minute to show him I wasn't messing with him, that
I was completely alone and hadn't vocalized a single word
until he called up to ask. Who are you with?
It took a second to even express my side of what was going on.
I was so out of whack I couldn't find the words to explain so I
just kept shouting something like, I swear to God I just
heard your voice and then this thing, dude, this thing.
Eventually it registered with him that there had been no other
lights on the trail. I wasn't using a flashlight that
night, so maybe there was actually a moon out and that I
had just heard his voice calling me off trail and into the.
Dark. We both started trying to figure
out what the hell we just witnessed.
OK this part might be a little crazy but I'm not implying
anything. I'm just saying this is what I
had been doing on the walk down before this happened.
Obviously walking home solo, I hadn't actually said a word.
Whoever he heard was certainly not me and I certainly didn't
come with a crowd. But I had been praying like
crazy on the hike down. There had just been this super
dark negative energy in the house lately, and I was trying
to surround myself with light and positivity, asking God to
give me strength before I walked back in.
Out of nowhere, midway through the trail, I got this absolutely
overwhelming joy. Like an absolute ecstasy.
I was screaming inside, feeling happier than I could describe,
like I could take on the whole damn world.
Maybe I am implying something because call me crazy, I've
always felt that had something to do with how the night turned
out as opposed to how it might have.
I know that part makes me sound insane, but so does the rest of
it, so whatever. I certainly don't think it was a
coincidence. I'm just not sure what to make
of it. Every detail means every detail.
That's just what was going on with me as the walk was
happening. It would have been a noteworthy,
memorable night even if the thing hadn't shown up.
It was that powerful of an energy.
Anyway, that's pretty much it. The only other thing is our
memories of it. Out of nowhere.
I just sort of stopped thinking about it.
Not like I forgot but it was hidden behind some thick fog in
my head. The next morning I told the
story to a friend and she uncharacteristically shut me
down saying something like y'all are just crazy and getting
scared of these mountains and then walked away.
It really wasn't like her to dismiss someone, especially a
friend, without hearing them out.
She was a very empathetic person.
It was like she'd heard something that triggered a
memory she refused to touch and shut it down before it got too
close. I don't know, maybe I'm reading
into it, but that's happened a couple of times with this story.
Anyway, we'd been living on that mountain off and on for a few
years at that point, and had never once heard or seen
anything remotely similar to that thing.
Until that night. We'd never even heard a story
vaguely resembling it. We weren't just randomly spooked
by our own house or the trail we took twice a day every day, and
we weren't seeing or hearing things based on stories we'd
projected into the darkness. But the weirdest thing happened
the moment she walked away. It was like a fog just slowly
poured over the memory. And the last time I remember
thinking about it was that moment.
Then it just disappeared for months.
How in the world does something that massive, that frightening,
happen in your life and then you just stop thinking about it?
Then one day it just popped back up.
I was honestly so surprised and unsure of how I hadn't thought
of it in so long. That was almost more baffling
than what we actually witnessed. I asked my friend, the one who
was there just before I sent this, if he'd felt the same fog
thing, and he said absolutely. He doesn't really like talking
about that night, and he's told me so, but I can't help bringing
it up whenever possible, hoping that by talking it through we'd
find some sort of explanation for what happened.
Even as I typed the message, I felt like I'd asked him about
this a million times and just kept forgetting his answer.
Maybe I have. That's not super uncommon, I
guess. Anyway, that's pretty much
everything. I'm really sorry if you read all
this and found it underwhelming, but I really felt like I needed
to convey as many details as I could possibly remember, just in
case someone reading this has had any sort of experience with
any part of it. A mimic?
A humanoid. The memory loss, anything.
I don't know. I really don't know what to make
of all this. All I have are the details of
that night and my memory doing something bizarre afterward.
I have never known what to make of it, but the other guy's post
from a few weeks back honestly helped me.
After three years of grappling with the experience, just seeing
something that might be similar makes me feel like I've learned
as much about it as I honestly feel comfortable knowing.
I figured maybe somebody else might be in the same boat and
need some sort of validation. Just validation I guess.
Anyway, thanks for reading. I'm a 28 year old male living
right outside Chicago over the border in Northwest Indiana.
I'm currently pursuing of a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences at
Purdue. I'm not exactly what you would
call scientifically illiterate, and I consider myself fairly
mentally sound. I've never had any problems on
that front. I have only ever openly
discussed this once before in a random Quora question I answered
anonymously. So I'm still not very good at
discussing it openly, and only two people who know me
personally are aware of what happened.
I avoided talking about it for a long time because I feared the
stigma associated with the topic, especially in
professional and scientific communities.
I was immensely relieved when the people I did open up to
believed me without question, which is why I'm typing this
here today. Please go easy on me.
All that being said, I've been trying for a few years to come
to terms with something that happened to me.
It was almost five years ago, shortly after my 23rd birthday.
My father is very sick so I was staying with my parents at the
time to help take care of him and the house.
I woke up in the middle of the night.
It was warm, but I could hear and feel the breeze from the
fans. I need to sleep.
I reached over, grabbed my phone and checked the time 331.
I put the phone back down and tried to settle back into a
comfortable position. After a moment I realized I
could hear and feel a humming. I knew right away it wasn't from
my fans. It was very deep and I could
actually feel it in my body. Our house is near train tracks,
so at first I thought it might be a train, but I quickly
realized it wasn't. While I was lying in bed
wondering what it was, I noticed for the first time that my door
was open. My door is never open during the
night or even during the day. Never ever.
And I could see a light shining down the hallway into my room.
At first I thought maybe my dad was going to the bathroom and
had his flashlight out, but then I realized the light was wrong.
It wasn't the right color. As I watched, it started to get
brighter, as though someone had set up a white, blue LED array
at the end of the hall in the kitchen.
As the light got brighter, so did the humming.
I tried to jump up to investigate, fearing an
intruder, when I realized I couldn't move.
Let me clarify. I could move my hands, my neck,
my feet, but it felt like someone had strapped down my
limbs and torso. After a brief moment of utter
terror and confusion, I thought, OK, maybe this is sleep
paralysis. I'd read about it before, but
never experienced anything like this.
Right after that thought, I realized I could no longer feel
the bed under me. I started rising into the air
and gently floating, for lack of a better word, to my doorway.
And. Toward the light.
I know how this sounds, but I'm 110% serious.
Please stay with me. As I levitated through the
doorway and into the hall. I had a clearview into my
parents room. Their door is right next to mine
on the left side of the hall. If you step out of my room, turn
90° and take another step, you're in their room.
I could see them lying on the bed and I started screaming,
begging for help. They didn't move, in fact I
couldn't even see them breathing and at that moment I was
convinced they were dead and I was next.
That moment of pure, unadulterated panic caused
something to snap. In the blink of an eye, I found
I could move my arms again and I flailed helplessly in the air.
I eventually got my hands on the door frame and clung on for dear
life because in that moment I truly believed it was a matter
of life and death. To my dismay, my fingers slowly
started to slip as I continued to be pulled inexorably down the
hall toward the kitchen. I dug my nails in as hard as I
could to stop it. Then, in a quick burst of pain
and terror, I lost my grip and continued to float.
A few more seconds of terrifying levitation and I was in the
kitchen, floating with the top of my head facing our back door.
It's a large sliding glass door, and I could see that the light
was coming from just outside it. Something as bright as the sun
was hovering right above our pool.
We have a large in ground pool almost in the middle of the
backyard which is surrounded by a 10 foot privacy fence.
Whatever this was had to be directly over the water, maybe a
couple of feet off the ground. I took this in within a
heartbeat and was still in a state of terror.
I'll never adequately explain. When I felt a breeze, my back
door was wide open, but I can't tell you if it had been open all
along or if it had just opened. At that moment, I slowly began
to settle back onto the floor. I felt the cold surface against
my back as my shirt lifted slightly.
Right as I touched the ground, I saw them.
If I thought I was afraid before, it was nothing compared
to this one. Stepped in and stood over.
Me on my left side. Even from my perspective on the
floor I could tell this thing was huge.
If I had to guess, I'd say at least 7 foot 10 to 8 feet tall.
We have 9 foot ceilings in the kitchen and its head was
surprisingly close to the ceiling.
The light was so painfully bright at this point that I
didn't get to see a lot of detail because it was
silhouetted by the light behind us.
Two more entered and stood on either side of my shoulders near
the door, almost like guards. Keep in mind, all of this
happened quickly and at that moment I began to realize what
might be going on. The terror was unspeakable.
I remember thinking they looked nothing like the movie
portrayals. They were skeletal and their
skin seemed, well, I don't know what it was, but it wasn't like
ours. The one standing to my left held
something in its hand. As I turned my neck to get a
better view, I could see a little more of its form.
Its fingers. Christ, I can't describe what
seeing those fingers did to me. They were almost spider like,
way too long with too many joints.
To this day, that's probably the most haunting image.
It was clutching something black, maybe gun metal or dark
silver. It reminded me of an iPhone that
was turned off, but it was thinner shaped, more like a
remote or a short rod, with a square ish shape and rounded
edges, a smooth glassy thing. As its fingers moved over it,
every muscle in my body tensed up, my lungs filled as if they'd
been forcefully expanded, and every limb shot straight out
like I was a plank of wood. My jaw clenched so tightly I
thought my teeth might shatter. I lost all control.
The only thing I could move were my eyes, and even that was
limited. It was like the signals from my
nervous system were completely hijacked and some other signal
was overriding them. The two behind me, above me, I
was still on my back, moved closer and I started to rise off
the floor again. I felt fingers on my shoulders
as I began to hover out the door.
The second I got outside, the light became overwhelmingly
bright. And then nothing.
I woke up in my bed at 5:45 AM, sweating profusely.
My stomach hurt. I got up and started my morning
routine, trying to dismiss the experience as just a dream.
And it worked until I was about to get in the shower and noticed
a sharp pain. I looked in the mirror and saw
bruises everywhere. Arms, ankles, thighs, but the
worst were on my shoulders and back.
They clearly look like handprints, albeit elongated
ones. I threw up almost instantly.
I pulled myself together and went back to my room.
I saw the door frame and I saw the scratches.
They lined up with my fingers. There was wood and blood under
my fingernails. I've never come to terms with
it. My fiance has encouraged me to
share, but it still feels deeply uncomfortable and jarring to
walk through it. As I type this my hands feel
like they're sub zero and my whole body is shaking.
I'm sure if I asked my fiance she'd say I'm extremely pale,
even more than usual. This happens every time I think
about it. Many nights spent doing
research, watching YouTube videos of ufologists, reading.
Reports. It's always the same
physiological response. After a lot of reading and
watching, I realized I'd had another experience when I was 5.
It's my clearest childhood memory, and my earliest.
Most of my childhood is hazy. I have only snapshots, but this
memory is exponentially clearer than anything else.
Until recently, I shrugged it off as a quirk of being young.
I was never the imaginative child who claims to see what
they imagine. I always had a firm grasp of
reality versus imagination, which is why this earlier memory
stands out. I was five, it was Easter
morning and I woke up excited to see my Easter basket.
My mom always went overboard and it was essentially Christmas and
spring, only child perks. I jumped up and snuck out of my
room. It was just before dawn, still
dark, but the horizon was starting to glow with dawn
light. I crept down the hallway, aware
my parents were still asleep, hoping they'd wake soon so I
could dive into a giant basket of candy and toys.
As I neared the end of the hallway and peeked into the
living room, I saw it. At first I thought my parents
were up, but as I got a better look, I realized this thing was
big, tall, and Gray, and something about its skin made me
think of short fur. Naturally, I assumed it was the
Easter Bunny, or my dad dressed as the Easter Bunny.
The exact form eludes me. It was just tall and Gray.
The weird thing is that when I picture it in my mind, the rest
of the scene is crystal clear. Everything except this being.
It's like someone put a blur filter over it, the kind they
use to obscure faces on TV. Maybe that's where I got the
impression of fur, Or maybe it was genuinely blurry, like act
of camouflage, or it was obscured afterward.
Assuming this memory is what I believe it to be.
As I said, that experience can't be proven physically, so I used
to shrug it off. But it still pops into my
thoughts sometimes, like when I go to the dentist, everything is
fine until they lay me back with the light in my eyes and the
drills and suction going and suddenly I feel a primal terror.
Since the main encounter, the Easter Bunny memory is less
frequent, but it still happens. All these tiny and not so tiny
details I never really thought about before now make a scary
kind of sense in light of the experience I wrote about.
I don't know for sure what happened to me, I'm not going to
pretend I do. All I know is it wasn't a dream,
it wasn't sleep paralysis, and I've never slept walked.
There was physical evidence of something happening.
I'm angry at myself for trying to suppress it and not
documenting everything. Although the scratches are still
visible on my parents door frame, I can definitively rule
out what it wasn't. And after eliminating other
possibilities, well, you know how that saying goes.
I apologize for any spelling or grammatical mistakes.
As I mentioned, I'm on an iPhone and at this point my hands are
shaking like I'm in a freezer. If anyone has questions I'd be
happy to try answering them, but what I really want is to hear
from people who've had similar experiences, how it compares,
what's the same, what's different.
I contacted the Mutual UFO Network.
And they did a phone interview for two or three hours, then
gave me the name of a hypnotherapist in Chicago.
But the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth because they
kept trying to spin it as a positive experience, saying the
beings were benevolent. I can conclusively say there was
nothing benevolent about them. They may not have been overtly
malevolent, but they were utterly unconcerned with my
well-being. I looked into one's eyes.
Most of its face was shadowed, but I could see its eyes.
And there was nothing kind or benevolent there.
In that moment, I was simply a thing, not a sentient being to
it. It didn't necessarily feel
robotic, more like a loof. I could be mistaken, but I'm not
mistaken that it was in no way shape or form a positive
experience. Since then I've been diagnosed
with severe abnormal hormonal imbalances.
I already had nerve damage and an implanted neurostimulator in
my spine, so I've had a lot of scans done.
It was put in when I was 16 after an electrocution injury
that fried most of the nerves in my left leg.
They've examined my brain many times, but now I can't have an
MRI because of the spinal implant.
The CT scan revealed an abnormal mass in my brain that wasn't
there in previous scans. They say it's benign, but they
can't see it in high enough resolution to make a definite
diagnosis. I also have a strange black
object under the skin of my left kneecap, exactly where the nerve
damage is, like a piece of lead or something.
I tried having it removed once. But the doctor couldn't get it
out and said it wasn't bothering me or causing problems, so I
should leave it. Aside from the nerve damage,
everything else arose soon after the experience.
I have another strange side effect, although I'm not 100%
sure if it's caused by the neurostimulator changing my
body's EM field or something else entirely.
I blow out light bulbs. I can document it.
Friends, family, professors, and even strangers have witnessed
it. It happened so reliably that
based on my proximity to certain types of bulbs, I can almost
predict when it'll happen. I used to keep a lamp next to my
bed and the bulbs kept burning out or exploding.
I tried different sockets, tested everything with a multi
meter. Nothing was abnormal, but moving
them away from me fixed the issue.
A professor in the engineering department even took an
interest, thinking I was joking him until he witnessed it
himself. I once walked down a hallway
with a low ceiling and four fluorescent bulbs burned out in
sequence as I passed under them. It happens all the time, but
it's more of an odd quirk than a true problem if we ever figure
out the exact. 'Cause I'll definitely post it.
I'm sure I left some things out and I've rambled on quite a bit.
I'm sorry it's the anxiety. If you've had a similar
experience I'd really appreciate your insight.
What was similar and what was different?
I've thought about doing the hypnotherapy, but a bigger part
of me doesn't want to know. I'm convinced that whatever
happened after my memory stops was horrific.
I can't explain it, it's just a feeling.
Absolutely nothing about the experience was pleasant and I
can't imagine anything good about being taken.
To those who've had similar experiences, does it get better,
does it go away? Or will I always have these
subconscious triggers? I suspect it won't just
disappear. If I try to watch a movie about
abduction, like Fire in the Sky or The 4th Kind.
I have an overwhelming physical reaction.
I watch a ton of horror movies, my favorite genre, and I've
never had a reaction like that to anything else.
I lose all color, start shaking uncontrollably, my jaw chatters
as if I'm freezing, and my hands become clammy and cold.
I've even blacked out once. Those two movies are by far the
worst, but I have lesser reactions to others or to
situations that vaguely remind me of it.
Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night and everything is
quiet, I get absolutely terrified that I'll feel that
vibration or see that light again.
I guess I just want someone who's gone through something
similar to tell me it gets better, but I don't know if it
ever will. I remember the exact moment I
first pulled up to Redwood Glen Mill.
Even in that early light, the whole place looked worn and
tired, like it had seen too many storms and never quite
recovered. I hopped out of my old pickup
and felt the ground crunch under my boots, a reminder of how
remote this spot really was. No paved roads or fancy signage,
just gravel, timber and the low hum of machinery starting to
wake up. The mill itself loomed ahead,
this hulking mass of corrugated metal that dominated the
clearing. They called the main saw Big
Ripper, and you could tell right away why.
Even from a distance it stood out like some mechanical beast,
cables and blades jutting everywhere.
I'd heard stories about saws that could RIP clean through a
three foot trunk in seconds, but actually seeing it up close sent
a jolt of nervous energy through my gut.
I tried not to focus too much on those rough edges.
At that hour, our little crew usually gathered by the office
trailer, sipping coffee that tasted more like bitter water
and swapping small talk to wake ourselves up.
We had Leroy, our supervisor, scanning the daily logs on a
clipboard. We had Jeff, who cracked corny
jokes that nobody really laughed at, and me leaning against the
trailer wall taking it all in once we drained our cups.
We spread out to our stations. The bunk houses weren't far off,
some old trailers scattered behind the main yard.
It amazed me that a few thin walls were all that separated me
from the noise of logs rolling in at all hours.
When I did manage to sleep, it was usually a restless doze.
The nights here weren't exactly quiet machinery.
Word tree branches tapped on tin roofs, and occasionally there
was this weird echo like something was moving around by
the fences. People said it was nothing.
Raccoons. Maybe a stray dog, But I
overheard whispers. A veteran named Gus claimed he
spotted footprints near the log pile that didn't belong to any
of us. He tried laughing it off at
dinner, but his eyes told a different story.
Nobody likes entertaining the idea of intruders, especially
when there are rumors floating around about sabotage at other
mills. We brushed it aside, but it
still nagged at me later that night.
The next morning, I joined a group clearing debris near the
log deck. As we hauled broken branches and
stray bark off to the burn pile, I started picking up on tension
in the air. People were glancing around
more, double checking the fence line.
A few days before, there'd been reports on the radio about tree
spiking in northern counties, something about metal spikes
hammered into trunks to wreck cutting equipment.
It sounded like a grim urban legend, but we all knew it had
happened in real life to other crews.
There wasn't much talk of it, though.
Didn't want to jinx ourselves. Thing is, Redwood Glen wasn't
exactly the pinnacle of security.
We were far from any town, practically in the middle of
nowhere, with miles of forest around us.
The idea that someone could sneak in without us noticing
felt too easy to dismiss. But every so often, Leroy would
hover by Big Ripper, scanning the yard as if waiting to catch
someone out of place. By the time we finished our
shift that day, I was bone tired and more jumpy than usual.
Back at the bunkhouse, I lay on my bunk listening to the wind
scrape branches against the thin metal walls.
My Co worker on the top bunk dozed off, but I just stared at
the flickering overhead bulb, wondering if those strange
footprints were more than just rumor.
Some of the others tried to lighten the mood.
Over a few. Beers telling jokes about
Bigfoot or local legends. But under the forced laughter,
you could tell we weren't entirely convinced it was just
silly talk. We'd all heard enough to know
that sometimes people do crazy things to make a statement.
And if a spike was out there, hidden in any one of those
massive logs, that spelled danger for everyone in the mill.
I tried to shrug it off. We had a job to do, right?
Show up before dawn, cut wood, ship it out, get paid.
But I found myself craning my neck at dinner, peering out the
window into the darkness beyond the yard lights.
I swore I saw movement just past the tree line, but when I
blinked, it vanished. That's the thing about Redwood
Glen. Your mind is never quite at
ease. Every shadow feels a little too
long, every bump in the night a little too close, and I had no
clue how quickly that tension would explode into something far
worse. I woke up feeling like the air
itself was taunting me. Heavy, claustrophobic, just
plain wrong. Over in the bunk, my roommate
was already gone, leaving behind 1/2 empty mug of cheap coffee on
the rickety table. I gave myself a pep talk,
telling myself it was just another day at Redwood Glen
Mill. Just another round of logs,
saws, and the steady hum of machinery.
When I got to my station, Leroy was pacing, clipboard in one
hand and a deep scowl etched into his face.
He kept mumbling about how we were behind on orders and
telling me I'd need to hustle. I remember shrugging, trying to
hide my nerves. In the back of my mind, a
question simmered. Were those whispers of sabotage
just rumors or something worse? The morning began like any
other. We examined Big Ripper, made
sure the belts were secure, and tested the blade with a low
spin. Everything sounded smooth.
No rattle, no squeal. It was oddly reassuring, so I
let that tension seep out of my shoulders as the first log
arrived. I motioned for the loader
operator to roll it onto the feed track.
That log looked normal at first glance.
Long, rugged bark, a few knot holes, nothing we hadn't seen
1000 times before. I threw a lever, guiding it
forward. The saw roared to life, that
familiar shriek of steel against wood.
But a couple seconds in, the pitch shifted.
Like the machine was biting into something denser than usual.
A high pitched whale tore through the mill louder than I'd
ever heard. My hand shot to the lever,
desperate to stop the feed, but it was too late.
In a flash, something inside Big Ripper gave.
Way I saw sparks, someone screamed.
It might have been me, or it might have been the loader guy.
I couldn't tell. The blade blew apart with a
thunderous bang. Shrapnel whirled through the
air, shards glinting under the fluorescent lights.
I was knocked backward, ears ringing so fiercely I could
barely think straight. The world seemed to spin.
My knees hit the ground and the pain that sliced up my arm told
me a chunk of metal must have found its mark.
The taste of iron filled my mouth, and when I spat, there
was blood on the floor. My brain struggled to register
the chaos. Co workers yelling, alarms
screaming, the heavy thud of something crashing onto the
concrete. Smoke or dust swirled, making it
tough to see who was hurt or how bad.
I forced myself up, adrenaline pumping.
My arm stung like fire. I pressed a shaky hand to it and
my fingers came away smeared red.
Somebody lunged toward the shut off switch for the Mills
conveyor system while Leroy barked frantic orders.
People were stumbling, trying to dodge the scraps of wood and
twisted metal scattered everywhere.
Then I spotted the log. It had split open, revealing a
vicious, rust flecked spike driven straight into its core.
The thing glimmered in a sickening way, like it was proud
of what it had done. For a second, I couldn't wrap my
head around it. This was no random accident.
Someone had hammered that spike in there.
Terror turned to anger as the reality sank in.
Sabotage. Those rumors we'd heard about
activists spiking logs to sabotage Mills weren't just tall
tales. This was it.
Right in front of me, lying amid the wreckage of Big Ripper and
the blood on the floor, a Co worker grabbed my shoulder,
trying to steady me. My vision swam and the pain in
my arm pulsed harder than any throbbing I'd felt in my life.
I gritted my teeth, stumbling forward as Leroy yelled for
someone to call an ambulance. But we were hours away from any
decent hospital, so another guy hollered about using a pickup to
get me and whoever else was hurt to the clinic.
I let them drag me away from the saws shattered remains, every
step jarring the torn flesh in my arm.
A small part of me still wanted to check on the others, see how
badly they were injured, but my body was on the verge of
shutting down. My mind kept latching onto the
image of that spike. I pictured the person who had
driven it in, hammering away with no care for the carnage it
might cause. Someone got me onto a makeshift
stretcher. I leaned my head back, refusing
to pass out. My breath sounded ragged and
wheezy in my own ears. It took everything I had not to
black out, but I knew if I did, I might never get another chance
to see the sunlight glinting off the mill roof again.
As they hoisted me into the pickup bed, I caught a final
glance of the shop floor. Twisted metal scattered
everywhere, Co workers trembling, bloodstains trailing
across the concrete. The entire mill seemed frozen in
shock. Leroy climbed in beside me,
shaking so hard he could barely dial his phone.
His voice cracked as he spoke to the dispatcher, trying to
explain the disaster. I closed my eyes, clutching my
arm, my thoughts bouncing between pain and outrage,
between fear and the gut wrenching truth that someone had
targeted us before the truck peeled off.
I heard new voices echoing in the yard, a wild mixture of
terror and disbelief. A spike in one log was all it
took to turn Redwood Glen into a nightmare zone, and now we were
going to find out just how bad one act of sabotage could hurt
us all. I remember waking up to a
piercing white glare overhead, my head buzzing like a broken
radio. It took me a few seconds to
recognize I was in a hospital room.
My arm, battered from the explosion at the mill, throbbed
dully beneath layers of gauze. The entire space smelled of
disinfectant and stale coffee, and I could hear the rhythmic
beep of monitoring machines nearby.
A nurse appeared at my side, her eyes sympathetic.
She leaned in and told me they'd managed to remove the biggest
fragments of shrapnel. I was lucky, she said.
No main artery had been severed, though I'd lost a sickening
amount of blood. That was a tough pill to
swallow, knowing how close I'd come to something even worse.
I noticed the stiff bandaging on two of my fingers and felt a
pang of dread. She explained gently that the
damage was severe and I'd need additional surgeries.
The rest of her words blurred, but the message sank in.
I would never regain full use of my right hand.
That would have been tough to handle under any circumstances.
But the knowledge that this was no random accident, this was
sabotage, gnawed at my insides. As I stared at the bandages, my
mind began looping through questions.
Who hammered that spike into the log?
Did they realize how much pain they'd cause?
And if they did, did they even care?
I drifted in and out of sleep for the next couple of days.
The staff checked my vitals and changed dressings while doctors
murmured in the hall about follow up surgeries.
When Leroy finally showed up, he had a haunted look.
There were dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn't rested
in days. He told me the authorities had
swarmed Redwood Glen after the incident.
News crews, cameras, the whole circus.
Our story had become a headline. Eco terror at local sawmill was
plastered across every channel. It made me feel exposed, like
the entire world was gawking at my mangled arm.
I asked about my Co workers and Leroy's voice lowered.
Three others had been hurt in the blast, none as badly as me,
but one guy took a flying chunk of metal to the leg.
A few folks had minor wounds, cuts on their faces or arms.
Some watchers on shift had dodged most of the debris, but
the shock did a number on everybody's psyche.
And then there was the log, that single sabotage trunk that
nearly took my life. A couple of days later, I was
propped up in bed, mindlessly flipping through stale daytime
TV, when a local reporter somehow snuck past the nurses.
She poked her head into my room, microphone in hand, asking if I
had any statement to make for the news.
The frustration boiled inside me.
I was half medicated, confused, terrified for my future, and she
wanted a sensational sound bite. I told her to leave.
She flashed an apologetic smile and mumbled something about the
public's right to know. But the heaviness in my stare
must have convinced her she'd gone too far.
That night sleep was impossible. My dreams turned into chaotic
flashes, the shriek of the blade, shards of metal spinning
me, clutching my arm. Even in that hospital bed, I
felt like I was still at Redwood Glen, bracing for the next
disaster. Whenever I managed to doze off.
I jerk awake, half expecting to see the silhouette of someone
hammering a spike into my IV pole.
Leroy came by again just before I was discharged.
He said Redwood Glen had shut down temporarily.
The company had rushed to install metal detectors and new
safety protocols, but production had ground to a halt.
Word was the entire operation might be sold if they couldn't
guarantee worker safety. He looked devastated, like the
place he dedicated years to had been gutted from the inside.
I. Finally got to go home, though
home didn't feel much like a comfort.
My family tried to help me settle in, cooking meals,
fluffing pillows, making sure I took my meds on time.
But I couldn't silence the anger pumping through my veins.
This was supposed to be a steady job, a place where the biggest
dangers were the ones we were trained for.
Mechanical failures, Missteps around heavy logs.
Not sabotage, not some hidden piece of metal waiting to turn
my life upside down. My phone buzzed non-stop with
calls from Co workers, some sounding enraged, some just
plain scared. One close friend confessed he
was so rattled he hadn't been able to sleep for more than a
couple hours a night. He was paranoid someone else
might have set spikes. Another told me he was quitting,
said he couldn't face the daily tension anymore, always glancing
over his shoulder for hidden threats in the logs.
It felt like Redwood Glen was disintegrating, piece by piece,
torn apart by the memory of that single morning.
A local radio station invited me to share my story on the air.
I refused. Dealing with the press didn't
appeal to me. My arm still stung every time I
shifted in my makeshift recliner, and I couldn't hold a
cup of coffee without trembling. My mind raced back to the
battered log each time conjuring up that savage spike.
Would they catch whoever did it? Would the saboteur be proud to
see me like this, half crippled, struggling to button my shirts?
The physical therapy was grueling.
The therapist tried to mask her pity by cheering my baby steps
forward, wiggling a few digits on my right hand, fighting
through scar tissue. But I saw the look in her eyes
whenever I flinched. She knew I was battling more
than just torn muscles. I was grappling with sleepless
nights, nasty daydreams, a constant hum of anxiety that
never let up. Not long afterward, Leroy called
to tell me Redwood Glenn was limping back to life.
Metal detectors beeped over every log.
New security guards patrolled the perimeter, and the main saw
had been replaced with a slower, supposedly safer model.
But morale was shot. Half the crew wanted out, afraid
of another spiking incident. Some openly talked about revenge
or teaching those activists a lesson, which scared me more
than I wanted to admit. Anger was swirling around like a
storm, and I couldn't see a clear path forward.
Eventually, the time came for me to decide whether I'd ever go
back. I'd always prided myself on
being a dedicated worker, the sort who showed up early and
stayed late. But now I couldn't imagine
stepping onto that concrete floor again, hearing the saw
roar and wondering if a hidden spike might RIP the blade apart
again. My heart pounded at the mere
thought of walking past Big Ripper's replacement.
So I made the call. I quit Redwood Glen for good.
The decision felt like a betrayal of everything I'd
known. My livelihood, my routine, my
identity. But every new ache in my wounded
arm reminded me that I had to. Protect what little peace I had
left. My family needed me alive, not
living in perpetual fear. Some nights I still flashback to
the moment the blade shattered the air thick with metal shards
and choking dust. I see that spike lodged in the
log, mocking our idea of safety. With its cold glint.
But at least now I don't have to stand in front of another saw,
waiting for history to repeat itself.
I wish I could say I found closure.
Maybe I never will. Part of me hopes they catch
whoever's responsible, make them see the devastation they caused.
And another part of me just wants to forget it all, to stop
picturing that sabotage every time I hear heavy equipment.
In any case, Redwood Glen is behind me now.
The scars are permanent reminders that no paycheck is
worth risking life and limb against an invisible enemy,
someone willing to use nails and metal rods to prove a point.
And whether they cared or not about who got hurt, I still have
to deal with the damage they left behind.