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Now on to the episode. As I'm walking away from the the
campsite, I could hear someone moving behind me.
Just encountering someone in this, you know, environment.
Something's going on here that I shouldn't be Privy to from HP
Studio. This.
Is unnerved. Welcome back to the Unnerved
podcast. It's where normal people share
their abnormal stories. And if you enjoy true stories of
the strange and terrifying, then you're in the right place.
I'm your host, Chris Frickey. When I was a kid, my brother and
I borrowed our uncle's metal detector for the day.
We had a blast searching for buried treasure, and I think we
may have found a hubcap, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Metal detecting can be a quiet escape, listening to the soft
rhythm of beeping signals beneath the soil all around us.
The ground we walk on, though calm and unassuming, sometimes
hides things never meant to be found.
In today's story, a detectorist named Ray went to explore a
forgotten trail in San Angelo, TX.
It was supposed to be a simple day of treasure hunting, but it
soon became a descent into something much darker.
This is his story. My name is Ray Tice.
I'm 35 years old and born and raised in Central Texas and went
to college between 2008 and 2014 in San Angelo, TX, which is not
extremely far western Texas but in the western part of it.
I was a history major specializing in Texas history,
and when I was in college I had the dream job of a history
major. I got to work at a historical
archives repository called the West TX Collection and I worked
there from 2009 to 2014 when I had to leave college.
I've been pretty much an avid metal detectors all my life and
being a history major and working in this historical
archives had access to a lot of old maps that most people don't
normally get to see and a lot of them that you can only find in
historical archives. In San Angelo there used to be a
an old military Fort during the Old West days.
It was called Port Concho. It was established in 1867 and
abandoned in 1885, I believe from Port Concho was a pretty
major outpost on the what was then the West TX frontier.
And so they had all these old Calvary trails, Buffalo Soldiers
where they headquartered there. And a lot of metal detectorists
would found the old trail sites and even some battle, you know,
minor battle sites and whatnot like that.
Being where I was at, at the historical archives, I had
access to old military maps from the time of the Fort, you know,
actual military maps that show the old trails and their their
location and whatnot. And there was one in particular
that I never really heard many other metal detectors talk about
metal detectors. It was South of San Angelo and
on the opposite side of the South Concho River.
And basically it was old military trail that went from
Fort McCabe, Texas to Fort Concho.
It was kind of tucked back in an isolated area right on the edge
of a large ranch, a private property.
And anyhow, nobody ever really wanted to, you know, wade
through the, the woods and the, the brush and whatnot, which
wasn't like a rainforest. It was just the kind of thick
woods, oak trees, corn trees, stuff like that.
So anyhow, I always wanted to metally detect that trail, that
part of the trail, because no one else that I knew had ever
done it. I think it was around 2013.
I remember I was dating the girl who become my wife.
She was at work. I had the day off and can't
remember, it was late January or early February.
Brush was not scenic. It was kind of just right up and
you know, weed, you know, hit by winter.
I didn't have to worry too much about, you know, snakes coming
out or anything like that because it was still pretty cold
outside. I decided, well, you know what,
I'm going to go hit up that old trail and see what I can find.
I got my gear on which I had my metal detector, 1/2 apron with
pockets on the front, and then I had a triangular shaped shovel.
The nearest parking space was maybe half a mile from where the
trail was physically at. And I got all these distance
from Google Earth, you know, researching the trail and
whatnot. You know, it's probably about
mid morning. I get to the parking lot and I,
you know, have a pair of cowboy boots on and just head into the
brush. I said I knew, you know where
the trail was at and I knew the direction from the parking lot
and I didn't have to worry about snakes or anything like that
because it was still cold. So I was like, you know what,
I'm just going to head straight into the brush instead of
following the river, then get to the trail and turning into the
brush. I probably got, well, probably
halfway to the site when I started passing through these
thick cluster of trees and 40 to 50 yards back from the river, so
they would be South of the river.
And I get to this 20 foot wide clearing that kind of tucked
back into to the trees. It's kind of like natural
clearing. And the first thing I see is
cans laying on the ground. Yeah, it looks like, you know,
just like a can of beans without the wrapper on them, you know,
just silver. You can tell they weren't old,
but you can tell someone had been there these for, you know,
half a day or you know, a day. I'd been camping there and so
that kind of struck me as odd. I walked a little bit further
into the clearing and I come across this roughly made
campsite that basically was a tent made out of a blue, blue
canvas. That's like a blue canvas tarp.
You'd find that Ace Hardware or wherever.
I remember there being some clothes, I want to say they were
kind of half in the tent, half not out, you know, not in the
tent. Now looking back now, it looked
like female clothes, like a kind of like a female checkered
shirt, you know, like a Pearl snap shirt or whatnot.
I initially thought it was just a formal campsite of an illegal
alien, you know, and that's one thing they leave around is
clothes. San Angelo in that area has a
lot of illegal immigrants. So I was like, well, you know,
if someone's around here, I'll just mind my business.
They mind theirs. You know, about the time I'm,
I'm starting to leave, keep going towards a trail which was
still back a little ways from this campsite.
This guy comes out of the brush. I startle him as much as he
startled me and he was kind of a hagger looking guy, a beard that
needs to be trimmed up a little bit.
And the clothes were kind of all dirty and muddy.
And he kind of jumped back and he saw me in like that and did
the same. We kind of made little idol
chitchat. You know, he was like, hey.
And I was just kind of like, hey, just encountering someone
in this, you know, environment automatically triggers, you
know, a sense in me that something's going on here that I
shouldn't be Privy to, but, you know, had to stay calm and not
not show it. You know, he asked me is like,
hey, what are you doing back here so far back?
You know, he could see all the stuff on me, you know, the.
Yeah, all the gear I was carrying.
Yeah. I told him just a metal
detectorist. And, you know, I was out looking
for, you know, just kind of poking around and he's like,
what are you looking for? So I told him I was like, yeah,
you know, there's this old military trail back here.
And while I was kind of talking with him, you know, the inner
voice, my head said, hey, I kind of need to fit a little bit just
to ensure that if now he's a threat that, you know, he just
kind of leaves me alone. So, you know, I started telling
about the military trails, but I told them, yeah.
Yeah. A lot of metal detectorists know
about it. It's kind of a common place to
come just for people to poke around and, you know, not be
disturbed by kids coming up and wondering what you're doing and
stuff like that. When I told him that, he kind
of, you could tell it kind of took him aback a little bit
because he kind of started, like, looking, you know, flicker
in his eyes somewhat. You tell he was just kind of
like, oh, in his mind kind of thing, hey, maybe I should move
my camp somewhere else. Overall, seemed like a pretty
nice guy that, you know, he said that he and his wife had had a
fight and she somewhat kind of kicked him out and he just
decided to stay in the woods for a little while.
You know, really, the story didn't make any sense to me.
You know, I was like, man, that's kind of, you know,
roughing it a little more than I would expect after, you know,
kind of a dispute with my wife. But, you know, I wasn't married
at the time. I was engaged but not married.
You know, they will people, people do their own things, you
know, and work through it in their own ways.
I kind of thought, well, man, like, you know, keep going and
what not, and I just wish the best for you and what not.
The simple little conversation kind of broke a barrier he had
in place. You know, he's saying, hey, you
know, you seem like a pretty good guy and, you know, just
don't come, you know, metal detect around my camp.
And he'd ask like, have you, you know, looked in my tent or
anything? And I told him no.
And truthfully, I hadn't because I just didn't want to be that
invasive, you know. And so I told him no, you know,
I'd accidentally stepped on one of the cans because it was kind
of in a high patch of grass, but that was about it.
And the guy's like, well, you know, don't come to the backside
of my tents because I just used the restroom back there.
I was like, hey, man, you know, you don't have to worry about
that with me. And like, I'm just going to keep
head to this trail over here. So after that, you know, we
parted ways. As I'm walking away from the,
the campsite, you know, I'm just like, man, it just seemed like
he was kind of following me, you know, at a distance or
something, just keeping his eyes on me.
And every so often, as I, you know, getting closer to the the
trail, I could hear someone moving behind me.
I've been an environmentalist all my life.
You know, I say environmentalist, but you know,
kind of hunt, grew up hunting and whatnot like that.
So I could tell the difference between human footsteps and
animal footsteps. Just something you develop
overtime into hunting and whatnot.
I'm trying not to pay it into mind, you know, just act like
I'm just keeping minds in my own business.
But I know that he's trailing me.
You know, I had a number of things I could have used in my
defense if the need arrived, you know, my belly, Packard, traded
shovel, whatnot. I got closer to the site and I
just didn't, didn't feel right. I won a medal to take in the
trail because I've been, you know, wanting to do it forever
now, but I don't know if I want to do it today.
It's kind of that, you know, that Spidey sense, I guess you
could say just going off. So I decided I'm not going to
metal detect today because I don't know who that guy was.
It's kind of weird. He had campsite back here in the
middle of nowhere. So I decided to make a hard left
towards the river. If I could find like a shallow
spot in the river to cross away to cross, I would just so I
could put the river between him and me.
So that's what I did. I turned towards the river and
when I reached it, I started following it back towards the
where the area where I parked my truck.
I never saw the guy, you know, on the way back to to my truck.
I I still think I heard I'm moving around a little bit, but
you know, never saw him again. I got to my truck and load up
and go home. Life goes on, and about two
years later, my wife and I had moved, relocated from San
Angelo. I see an article in this little
kind of local amateurish newspaper outlet in San Angelo
that posts a lot of stuff to Facebook and their website and
everything. And I'm reading through the
through the article and I see this headline the, I can't
remember the exact, you know, how it was worded, but suspect
apprehended in murder of his wife, you know, kind of, you
know, big title whatnot. And reading the article and it
showed a picture of the suspect who had basically murdered his
wife after an argument and buried her in that area of the
woods where I was metal detecting that day.
And the picture was of the guy that I had met in the wood that
very day. He had murdered his wife and
buried her. I don't know if he had done it
on the very day that I was there, but he had been on the
run for about two years because they couldn't find him when they
apprehended him. Yeah, he confessed to it all.
And he led them to the burial site, apparently, and retrieved
her remains. Like I said, I don't know if he
had done the ACT that day when I was out metal detecting, but
just thinking back to the campsites, you know how kind of
nervous, you know, I don't, I don't recall seeing any blood on
him, so to say, or anything like that.
But he definitely was very muddy and, you know, like he had dug a
grave. Is there any way of knowing for
sure if that's the exact campsite where he did bury his
wife? Unfortunately, I don't know
about that one. Yeah, that would be, I probably
had a police report and whatnot. But I do remember reading, like
I said in the article, that her body was found in that general
area and exactly how far back, you know, from the campsite and
whatnot like that. Yeah, I don't have those
details, but clearly wasn't too far back from where we were at.
Have you ever considered going back to that site?
I have actually like, you know, I'm still, there's still that
lingering things like, man, that that trail, I know it has, you
know, it kind of has a, that tantalizing effect.
That trail, you know, has never been metal detectors, you know,
telling what to find. But then it's kind of like,
yeah, I don't know if I want to go back there or not.
That was just a huge slap of reality to me as a metal
detectorist. From that point onward, any time
that I go metal detecting in kind of remote or isolated area,
I always make sure I carry an actual knife with me, an actual
booty knife or something, just because that whole event, man,
it was pretty unnerving. And you know, for anyone that
might be listening to your show, that in the metal detecting or
getting into metal detecting, the best advice I can give you
after all this is #1 make sure you know what you say in case
you encounter someone like me. If I, I don't know what would
have happened if I told them that.
Oh, yeah, the trail's not really known by anybody.
Yeah, always, always have a good line, good bluff in your head
and follow through with it. And if the need arises, and
always make sure you carry something that you can at least
use in your defense if you need to.
And always make sure you're aware of aware of what's out
there, what you, what you could encounter.
After doing some deep research to find an incident report on
this story, unfortunately neither Ray or I could track
down coverage of this event. I searched the San Angelo Live
Facebook page where Ray originally read the story, and I
mainly saw a similar story where a husband buried his wife at a
nearby Speedway track. Ray confirmed that this location
wasn't correct and the picture of the husband wasn't the same
man he encountered. I also reached out to the San
Angelo Police Department, but they haven't replied.
I searched for countless hours for additional news, audio clips
and resources. But I simply ran out of time.
So if any of you would like to track down this story, please do
so. Reach out to me on Instagram or
comment below. What you found out in the end
Ray's story is a stark reminder to keep your wits about you,
because you never know what or who you'll encounter in the
woods. Thanks again for listening to
Unnerved. If you enjoyed this episode,
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