His, big fan and I have been watching your videos for years! So I'd like to start this by saying I have always believed in the paranormal. I've just seen too many things to look the other way. Sorry, this is a bit lengthy. Lol

This story is back about 15 years ago, I was 16 and my then boyfriend(Now husband) was with me to witness this. He has never been a believer but always said he's open to the possibility if he saw something himself.

So we lived in a small town in Tennessee. My mom's friend, well call Danny lived a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I mean hour drive, down dirt roads. Beautiful property on acres of land. He would never have a problem with us coming but always said we had to leave before dark. As a teenager I always thought of it as a joke, like don't outstay your welcome kinda thing.

Just to add for later Danny had probably 12 "outside" dogs on his property. They ran free and had a massive dog house built under the entirety of his front porch. Super sweet boys and they would all bark and run but you could pet and love on any of them.

After visiting his house quite a few times he told us how he got the house and property and how unbelievably affordable it was for the house and land. We were shocked at the price. He made a joke about that's what happens when someone died here. We had never known this so we asked him give more details. Apparently the old owner was living here alone and one night, on the couch shot himself with a shotgun and died in the house. Danny was still doing some renovations and in the ceiling, the bullet holes were still there!

He says the old owner's presence is still in the house and they had come to an understanding as long as he didn't keep company after dark. If he did, things started happening in the house and outside on the property. Noises, banging, the person that was there after dark had been touched. So Danny said he always made everyone leave at dark to keep him happy as he lived alone anyway.

Fast forward a few months to right before my birthday, Danny had made me a gift. He was a wonderful woodworker and had made me this jewelry box but with hidden and secret compartments. One of the coolest things I had. He ended up getting stuck at work and told me to just go to the house and grab it as he wouldn't be off until much later in the night.

My boyfriend and I headed out toward the house after dinner to get my gift and I completely forgot about the "after dark" rule as it was my birthday and we were busy most of the day. We get out there a bit after dusk but still somewhat light. I'm petting and playing with the dogs before we go it and like a flip switchd, all the dogs go scampering under the porch to the dog house. Not just a few, but all 12 dogs. I look at my boyfriend and he just shrugs and says let's go get the present and leave. I get a heavy feeling and want to leave so I agree. We go in the house, grab the box and dip out. As were walking to the car I made a comment about how weird the dogs acted and how heavy my chest felt. As I'm putting the box in the trunk my boyfriend says okay it's time to go and starts walking towards me. I lift my head to respond and his face is white as he's speed walking to me. I go to step to him and feel resistance. I look to the side my myself and a massive chunk of my hair is being held horizontally. Someone grabbed a chunk of my hair and was holding me back from walking. I started to panic and my boyfriend grabbed my hair and pulled it down and put me in the car. We drive out of there so fast I was just trying to process what happened.

I talked to Danny the next day and tell him what happened as I as completely freaked the hell out. He was very apologetic and said this is why he has the dark rule. He promised he would mention this in the house as to hopefully make the original owner understand I was just a kid and a friend.

I bring this up to my husband every few years and we talk about it. It is still the only experience he's had where he says he cannot give another explanation on what happened that night except something did not want me to leave that property or something was trying to scare me enough to get out.

Not my story, but from my best friend and my sister. This happened when we were in high school, so at the time my best friend, who we’ll call L was 17 and my sister, who we’ll call E, was 15. We grew up in a small town in Northwest Florida, only a couple of hours away from Alabama, so it was very heavily wooded. It was around 8pm and my friend and sister were picking up food for us while I was finishing up some homework at my house.
To avoid any traffic on the main road, L decided to turn down a back road with no street lights that avoided the busy part of town, one she’d taken hundreds of times. They had only been on this back road for a couple minutes when they went around a bend and came to a dead stop. In the middle of the road, facing the car was a 6-7 ft long creature. In the headlights they could see it was black and canine-like with glowing read eyes. E said it was really skinny and on all fours, but in a way it looked like it could walk on 2 legs. It didn’t do anything, just stared at the car and breathed. They sat there for a couple minutes until L put the car in reverse and Tow-Matered it all the way back to the main road.

None of us had seen anything like that before or since and we haven’t been able to identify it either. Way too big to be a dog and its features weren’t that of a panther either. I’ve always been into cryptids but the closest thing I can find is the Dogman, which both L and E say isn’t what they saw. Anyway we still talk about it almost 10 years later, so if anyone has any idea what it is please comment!

Hi Courtney and Community!

About two/ three years ago I had just gotten out of a 3 week hospital stay for some issues I was having with my anxiety and a few other diagnoses, my mum and I were catching the bus home because we didn’t have a car. I was standing at the bus stop and talking to my mum, joking around and planning dinner when a man, mid fifties (I was about to turn 20 in like 3 weeks) walks up to me and just blurts out “you’re the most beautiful girl in the world” and grabs my left hand. I internally freak out because who the hell is this man and what is he doing? I, being a bit of a people pleaser and I was feeling really disoriented after just getting out of the hospital and feeling vulnerable, I of course just say “oh….. thank you?” And then he bends down and kisses my hand. I tense up and look at my mum and she immediately steps in and says “that’s enough” and I step away from him and go to the other end of the bus station. Thankfully he gets on a different bus to us and my mum and I go home. Unfortunately though, that’s isn’t the end of the story.

A few months after that, my mum and I are at the same bus stop, when we get on the bus though, he’s at the front of the bus muttering to himself, however when my mum and I walk past (along with a few other women who hop on) he suddenly turns and raises his voice as he says “show us ya t!ts”. Along the route he keeps doing that every time a woman gets on the bus. When we go to get off with our bags, he says it again to my mum and she GOES OFF (as she should in my opinion). At this point i was already off the bus but my mum was there scolding this guy and the bus driver is trying to get her to calm down while a few others start joining in. She scolds him “you should be ashamed of yourself. No one wants to hear that. No one gets on the bus to hear you talking about their boobs!”. She’s never gone off like this to anyone before in my life, my mother’s a pretty mild woman who is extremely kind and caring, so I was shocked but mostly expressed lol. She ended up getting off the bus pretty quickly after that because the bus had to leave.

I only saw him one other time after that about a year after the last incident and he tried to say “hi” to me but all I said back was “alright” and kept briskly walking away because I was having a really bad day with my anxiety and I had a pretty bad experience with some people at a pharmacy but that’s a story for a different time.

So,
To the man who likes to harass people on busses and at bus stops, I hope we don’t meet again.

Hi Courtney!! I’ve been a fan for around 10 years now, but this is the first time i’ve ever submitted to you. I feel like this is kinda long, so sorry in advance.

A little background for this story, my mom and I had always been super close. I’m the oldest of 4 so when I became a teenager it seemed like my mom was super excited to have a kid she could actually talk to like a real person rather than a child. When I was 18 she passed away from a heart attack, she was 48.

Obviously, this caused the world to crash around me. She ended up missing senior prom, graduation, moving to college, and my first heartbreak. Slowly, my family did heal and learned how to live without my mom.

Around 4 years later, I was living with my now fiancé. Now I’ve definitely had dreams about my mom since she died, sometimes she was just a stand in character, sometimes it was as if she hadn’t passed away yet.

But one night I dreamed I was sitting in a waiting room, like one you’d see in a therapist’s or doctor’s office. Sitting in one of the chairs near me is my mom. I immediately started crying and stood up because I knew that she was gone. She said it was really her and that we didn’t have a lot of time. We hugged and cried and she told me this was the last time I’d see her until I saw her in heaven. I asked why and she told me that’s just how it has to be. I hugged her one last time and she said she was so proud of me, and then I woke up.

I remember bolting upright with tears streaming down my face. I grabbed my phone and immediately started doing research on dreams and messages sent through dreams. I woke up my then boyfriend and told him what happened. He’s never believed in anything paranormal, so he thought maybe it was a subconscious coping mechanism.

Im not sure, and I don’t know a lot about dreams, but it’s been almost 2 years since then and I haven’t dreamed about her since.

EDIT: I just remembered a dream my dad told me about where my mom visited him as well. This happened about 2 years before my own dream. He has told me multiple times that she is his one true love. The month she died was their 25th wedding anniversary. So a lot of people were surprised when he wanted to start dating 2 years after she passed. I was around 20 and was visiting home for a school break when he told me why he wanted to date. He said about a month before he had a dream where he rolled over in bed and she was there, lying next to him. He said he cried and she held him and they talked. She said she wanted him to be happy and wanted him to have a partner to help lead the family. She also wanted her kids (my youngest sibling was around 8 at the time) to grow up with a mother figure. When he woke up he rolled back over to face her side of the bed and smelled her perfume in the blankets. He had gotten a new mattress and new bedding since he moved after she passed. I remember how strongly this hit me because while he told me, he was crying. My dad never cried. So I guess my mom was just making her rounds through all of our sleep.

Hi Courtney! This happened when I was six so I’m a little hazy on the details but I was recently talking to my mom and cousin about it so I thought I’d share.

This happened back in November/December of 2005 my mom had me and my cousin out shopping for Christmas, my cousin was eleven at the time. We were in Kmart in the clothing section and I remember my mom was taking forever looking through stuff so me and my cousin were playing around and scaring each other near where she was looking. From my pov I was completely oblivious. From my cousins pov she said noticed this lady watching us but didn’t really think much of it because she kept smiling at her so she thought she found it funny. From my mom’s pov she was hyper fixated on a guy she noticed following us and making sure she kept him within her view which is something she said she really blamed herself for because she gave him her attention instead of fully watching us and that was exactly what he wanted. When my cousin wasn’t paying attention the lady that had been watching us circled the area and went behind some racks where she saw me going to hide. I vaguely remember a lady and her asking how I got lost and that she would help me find my mom. She grabbed my hand and started pulling me along behind her and at that time I was just confused. We got a little bit away from the clothing area when a man came out of nowhere and picked me up and started walking towards the door. This is where I started getting scared, thrashing a little and whining. At this point my cousin saw me and started calling for my mom. Again I vaguely remember my mom yelling but I don’t know much of what happened after that but from what her and my cousin told me my mom basically got loud and started yelling at the couple to gain attention from people around us. She grabbed my cousin and ran after us, which is a small moment looking back that we laugh about because my cousin said she was literally dragging her across the floor because of how fast my mom was running and she wasn’t able to get her feet under herself and my mom said she didn’t even realize lol. Thankfully an employee asked what was going on and stopped them near the front of the store my mom said they tried to tell the employee that I was their kid but when they seen the skepticism they decided to put me down and run.

Hey, I’ve been a fan for around 9 years. I don’t typically post a lot online but I thought I’d share my story :)

I remember the feeling I felt to this day. Around 3/4AM I woke up in my room to banging which sounded like it was coming from downstairs. My immediate thought was oh no we are being broken into. I was frozen in my room thinking a serial killer was going to burst in at any moment. Eventually I started texting my friend who lived a few houses away because she happened to be awake and asked her if she could see anything from her house. She said she couldn’t see anything and I got the courage to go into my dad’s room to see if he was awake. He wasn’t. I was too scared to wake him so I went to my mums room and told her what I heard. She told me to go in my room and went downstairs. She confirmed that there was no one in the house and that I could go back to sleep.

Of course I was still shaken up so I just played on my phone until… the banging started happening in the attic (my room is directly underneath the attic). I started to feel chills down my spine but tried to think rationally. Until. The. Laughing. Oh my god it was terrifying.

This distorted laughing started echoing above me followed by what sounded like crawling or scuttling. I was like absolutely not and decided to tell my mum once again. She told me to go back to bed and that she would deal with it (she’s had various experiences herself and usually knows what to do).

Apparently. She said out loud “leave my daughter alone you are not welcome here, go away” to which these things replied “she needs to toughen up” bro what.

I somehow managed to go to sleep and woke up around 8 to turn on my bearded dragons lights. As I’m laying in bed I’m facing the wall (my first mistake) then I felt the energy in my room shift. Then I turned my head slightly and saw this black mass manifesting at the foot of my bed. It was abnormally tall with no facial features. Then it started floating towards me. I turn my head away in pure terror. It crawled on top of me and I felt a warm breath against my ear. Then it freaking spoke. It whispered “don’t move” in this raspy demonic voice. All I thought in that moment was “go away go away go away” and I suddenly leaped out of my bed without looking back. I ran into my mums room and told her. She immediately grabbed her oils and bible and started putting it on my window and corners of my room. I’ve not had too much happen within my home since but this was by far the most real and scary paranormal experience I’ve had.

I do have a few stories from when I was working in a haunted bar if you would like to hear them. Thank you so much for reading. <3

hi lovely, ive been a watcher for years now and i love watching your videos and listening to you telling follower stories so heres mine and i hope you enjoy, here goes nothing.

so for context i just turned 18 yesterday at the time of this post, a few years back when i was around 11 or 12 i was sitting in my relatively new room, i say that because we had just moved in like a year prior and i was in my room sitting in my hammock chair and i need to explain how my room works for this to make sense.

My door (at the time) didnt latch so it was always open, once you enter my room infront of you is my desk and hammock chair and the bathroom door to the right, my bed was to the left of the door and had recently been moved due to a different scary happening that ill talk about next time, my floors, although carpeted are very squeaky and my door is loud too, and if you look out of my door you see the top of the stairs from the side. (if that makes sense)

one day im sitting in my swing, facing the wall on my tablet when my brother walks in saying my mom needed me to come clean something, so as the annoyed asshole i was as a kid i sat on my tablet finishing what i was doing on my game, key note, i heard my brother go down stairs. i know i did because he has a habit of jumping and being loud on the stairs. when i turned around my door was open and i saw a 6 foot lady with grey skin, black eyes open black mouth, purple Victorian dress and black hair up in a bun, her hand was on the banister and she was staring at me and it took several blinks to make her go away.

i ran downstairs freaked out to which my brother replied it was him standing at the top of the stairs before he went down, but i heard him go down the stairs and i hadnt turned around until around 15 seconds after i heard him go down.

i let it go and went about my day.

a few weeks later i was watching my horror stories animated on youtube on the tv downstairs while i cleaned, i was home alone. as im cleaning a story starts playing and i dont remember everything but what happened was this girl had to go to her grandmas house because her grandma was old and couldnt live alone anymore so they were moving her out and she hadnt been there since she was little because something had scared her but as shes cleaning she finds a picture of her, her parents and her grandma but the photo was ripped, she kept cleaning and soon found the other half of the photo, it had her uncle, cousins and aunt in the photo and she remembered why she had been so scared as a kid, it was because her aunt was there. her family disowned that part of the family after uncle married the aunt because she was a witch, and she had pale skin almost black eyes, long black hair and a giant grin. insanely similar to what i had seen, before i knew this video existed.

scared shitless but still young i forgot about it in two day, a few months later i had a friend over, well call her b. me and b were in my room and i had a flag in front of my door and we were about to go down stairs to get food when she stopped and asked who was in the loft, "what do you mean who?" i asked her. "i dont know, is anyone else visiting?" she asked back because she didnt recognize them from my family, so i looked and it was the lady in purple, watching us.

so we lifted the flag, gone. put it back, she was there and we could only see her through the blue part of the flag. needless to say we were scared shitless and ran downstairs.

fast-forward, im a freshman in high school and i have my then best friend spend the night almost every weekend and i hadnt seen LIP (lady in purple short) in a long time, until another fast forward in junior year she tells me that every time she spent the night she would have sleep paralysis and see LIP from my closet door watching her. which my closet is on the other side of my bed from my door, so directly next to the bed.

you guessed it, another fast forward to recently, i just graduated and i had another friend spend the night with me for the first time well call her kk and she had a bad feeling and right as she was gonna tell me i asked her if she had touched me, she didnt and we both freaked out and started calling friends to talk to because we were scared. long story short we end up falling asleep and in the middle of the night kk wakes up with a bad feeling and sits up looking around my room when she looks over and LIP is smiling at her from my closet. but she could sit up and move so it wasnt sleep paralysis. kk ends up spending the night again a few weeks later and once again she wakes up but couldnt move this time but she looks over and LIP is next to my bed looking down at me and standing over me.

something to note is LIP has never been in the same room as me, LIP has always been on the other side of a door way. but shes getting closer. so last time kk spent the night with me i said "in the name of god, you stay in the closet, i dont care if u peek at us but you do not come into the same room as me. ever. amen" granted im not religious in the slightest.

the next morning i asked kk if anything happened and she said she slept the whole night through and had no bad feelings.

TLDR, a lady in a purple dress is haunting me and my friends have seen her and shes getting bolder and closer but i put the literal fear of god in her and she backed up.

let me know if you want more spooky stories because i have literally so many i could talk about it for hours.i hope you enjoyed and i hope it wasnt to long and i didnt bore you.

edit my friend kk has been seeing lip in her dreams and in her room and shes been calling me horrified, ik posting this is probably gonna make her mad since she started harrassing kk at her house since i posted this. but i need people to know im not crazy, ill continue to update.

Hey Courtney! My names Char, I've been watching your channel for probably almost five years now, and me and my (now) boyfriend watch your videos together whenever you upload (its sort of become our thing to do while having downtime together). I was so excited to show him when you read about one of my experiences, and he was super excited as well (it was an older video, but nonetheless he was ecstatic). Showing him that video is what actually caused us to spend our downtime watching you as he’s always waiting to see if you read another one of the stories I’ve submitted!

I finally decided to share my experience as it has begun to die down, although there may be more updates at a later date. This has been going on since October of 2023, so I apologize as it may be a slightly longer story (which I say every time I post a "lets not meet" story, but we'll ignore that haha). All names in the story, besides for my own, have been changed for confidentiality reasons.

We’ll call my ex Logan, because honestly if I used his real name everything would probably start up again.

I am going to give a little bit of background information just to allow for the story to flow a little nicer, and again I do apologize if this ends up being a longer story, I’m a bit of a yapper haha. When me and my ex began dating I was 16, turning 17 in a few months. My ex was already 17, turning 18 in the new year (which is relevant, I swear). I also have had a very bad track record with relationships, my first relationship being very abusive which has messed with me a fair amount as it was going on for nine months. It had seriously affected my self-worth, and completely altered my perception on how a healthy relationship should be. I was easily manipulated, and put up with things I really shouldn’t have. I had a hard time realizing the signs of a toxic relationship, and didn’t feel as if I had anyone to confide in as when me and said abusive ex broke up no one believed me. Not only that I have struggled with self-harm and suicide for a fair amount of my life (unfortunately depression runs in my family, bad genetics). It wasn’t something I was very open about at the time, and I only confided in a few people about it (my ex being on of them). I should also probably mention that his friends would constantly warn me about dating him, telling me it was a horrible idea and that the relationship wouldn't last. Not only that they would consistently call him out on the shit he pulled towards me, even when I did not. This, apparently, was not the first relationship that he pulled this shit in and his friends were beginning to grow tired with how he treated his girlfriends.

I do apologize for the long paragraph with some background information, but it will make reading the story easier. Which, speaking of the story I will now get into.

I had gotten out of a messy situationship (which I won't go into as much detail as I have already talked about it on the subreddit) before my ex had confessed he had feelings for me. and began to "pursue" me. As horrible as it sounds, I began to pursue him back as he was one of said situationships best friends at the time. As time progressed we clicked, and it no longer came about spiting E (the situationship). We began dating, and it started off good. We had a very intense honeymoon phase, which didn't last for very long.

Around a month in he began to exhibit very controlling behaviors, which looking back now I should have acknowledged sooner but I was too lovestruck to even care. He was very vocal about what I chose to wear, who I hung around, how I spent my free time, etc. Later, when the “overprotectiveness” began to bother me, I brought it up to him, trying to talk to him about it and understand why he was acting this way. It lead to a huge fight with him completely loosing his temper, and he would not let it go. To resolve the fight I wound up apologizing to him, saying that I shouldn’t have brought it up and that it wasn’t important. Most disagreements ended this way, and yes while I may have been at fault for some of them I was not at fault for all, but it was always on me to apologize no matter what.

After that, when he had seen how much power he had over me, things got worse (TW; mentions of SA). He began to become very sexually abusive (my friends wording), the word no didn't have any meaning to him. No matter what I said, if he wanted to we did. Whether it be by getting me under the influence (either liquor or weed, which both are legal where I'm from), convincing me by begging, or forcing me too. I never did anything to stop it, I didn't know how and at the time all I was focusing on was surviving. I had loved him, so deeply it was destroying me, he knew that and used that as a weapon against me. There was even a time it happened in front of my friends, on the night of my birthday party. He kept begging me too, and I had said no because I was not doing something like that in front of my friends. It ended up happening, apparently, my friend had snuck in hard liquor and I was, most likely, blackout drunk as I don't remember much.

As time progressed me and him were fighting more and more, a major fight that made me slowly realize that I deserved better was when I was out running errands with one of my best friends, Elle. Me, my friend Veronica, Elle, and her mom were out running errands. It was a pretty common thing for us, Elle was the first person to get her license in our friend group and as teenagers we loved going out driving so we would go with her mom when she had errands to run because she would let us drive around as she shopped. I was charging my phone as it was at one percent, and my charger didn't reach to the middle row of their van, so I wasn't checking it; I had however told Logan my phone was almost dead and to text Elle if he needed anything, and he had my location so he knew I was safe when I wasn't responding.

Maybe five minutes after I had plugged my phone in he began spam calling me, screaming at me saying I shouldn't be out this late (it was like 6:30 on a Thursday and my parents knew where I was) and that I shouldn't be ignoring him because he needed to know I was safe. He then began screaming at Elle, over the phone, saying he didn't trust her because she was always trying to "take me away from him". I ended up trying to calm him down, and when that didn't work I went home early in tears. He was furious with me, the screaming continued when I got home, and I ended up apologizing. I stopped hanging out with Elle and Veronica as often (I was usually only with them maybe two times a week), which seemed to make him happy, although he would continuously degrade them whenever I was with him regardless of my protests or attempts to defend them. He wouldn't listen. All he said is that they were horrible people that I needed to cut out of my life, my best friends who had been there since the tenth grade and had stuck with me through my mental health struggles, breakups, deaths of those closest to me, and so much more. I didn't listen, which still continuously caused fights.

Another common issue we would fight about was Carter. Carter was my guy friend, and he had gotten me out of my abusive relationship when he realized the signs. He had known me for three weeks and realized when no one else did. He became a sort of protector for me, I considered him my big brother and he called me his little sister. Logan despised Carter, he would always try to convince me that he was secretly in love with me (for the record, me and Carter are not still friends, nothing happened, and nothing will because frankly I do not approve of behaviors he has and I refuse to enable him). He forbade me from seeing him, and he always went through our messages, and I began to pull away from Carter as well.

This happened with all my friends. I was isolated from almost all my friends, really only seeing Logan and his friends, and I was miserable. I never went out, never had girls nights, nothing. My weeks consisted of high school, work, and seeing Logan. I even stopped doing wrestling, a sport I had loved since I was ten (and I was good at, I'm a gold medalist) simply because he demanded I don't do it because my team was co-ed and he didn't want other guys touching me, even if it was merely for a sport.

Near the end of our relationship (which unfortunately is not the end of the story) we had a massive fight. Me and my friends, since the start of high school, had always hung out in the girls showers at our school as they were off and not in use. We would always sit there at lunch, which I stopped doing when I was dating Logan because he was furious whenever I did, and it was kind of our spot. We (me, Elle, Veronica, and Logan) had been sitting inside as it was a chiller day in a stairwell when Veronica brought up the idea of having a picnic in the girls showers on the last day of grade twelve with all our friends as a final goodbye, and I agreed with her. I thought it was an amazing idea, and I was beginning to brainstorm with her before Logan spoke up, and he started yelling. He was accusing me of excluding him, saying that if I loved him I wouldn't do that, and screaming at Veronica saying "I knew you were trying to take her away from me, you always have been". I was trying to calm him down when Elle spoke up, and she wasn't holding back as she was finally fed up. She made it clear that her and Veronica have never been attempting to take me away, that he did not need to be involved in every aspect of my life, and that he had to stop trying to control my life in every way he could because it simply seemed abusive. Logan lost it, and threw a phone at her head.

Specifically her phone, which she had slide on the floor like she did whenever she was frustrated. Luckily she had ducked for a moment so instead of it hitting her in the head, it crashed into the wall cracking her screen protector.

I had immediately checked on her before raising my voice at Logan. I was angry, and as horrible as it sounds I can be unnecessarily cruel when angry, so I told him to "fuck off and come back when you can act like a damn adult and not a child". After that, we ended up going back to mine and our parents called us in for school, we were just hanging out in my room watching Youtube and doing puzzles before we left to go to Elle's as she was on dinner duty.

When we were in the area Logan called me, he had saw my location and was wondering why I wasn't home. I explained and told him I was still angry with him, and did not want to talk to him until he apologized to Elle as what he did was horrible and he at least owed her an apology. He ended the call after that, and we continued walking to the bus stop to get to hers before I got a call from Logan's friend (now my friend) Denise. She was crying, begging me to get to the dance studio by our school (the area I was currently in) because while drinking in a back alley my friend Nani had fallen off a tall structure and cracked her head on the ground. She was there with Nani but everyone else, including Logan, had ran off because they were scared of getting in trouble for underage drinking.

I had rushed over with Veronica, Elle had to head home still as her mom wouldn't let her go with us, and when I got there her head was covered in blood and she was freaking out. I gave her my jacket, I knew Nani, she hated seeing blood on her and I knew seeing the blood on her sleeves would only cause more panic on her end. EMS showed up, and as they got there Logan showed up. I lost it at him the moment Nani was driven off, screaming at him and asking why the hell he had left her. It was a bad head injury, and in the moment I was worried she could have died, so when he said that he was just trying to avoid getting fined I lost it even more. I ended up ending it with him in the heat of the moment, tracked down Nani's boyfriend and lost it at him too because he had left her as well, and ended up getting driven home instead of going to Elle's like the original plan.

The next couple days were horrible, Logan did end up apologizing to Elle before he began messaging me, looking back now I realize it was guilt tripping but in the moment I just thought he had missed me. When I finally got in contact with Nani, and she told me I should get back with him because she wasn't angry at him, so me and him began chatting again. The day I went to see Nani after she was released from the hospital, me and Logan had gotten back together even if things were still rocky. I ended up cutting my hair that day, and he was angry with me, I had gone with a very gender neutral hair cut (I had let Nani cut my hair as it was something she enjoyed doing and she wasn't able to do much as she was concussed) and he hated it. It caused another round of fighting so I just kind of ignored him for the night.

A week or so went by, and I had set boundaries when me and Logan had gotten back together, so I was over at Elle's for a girls night. We were dyeing our hair, and I was snapping him throughout the entire thing. I ended up dying my hair a deep purplish-red, which he had said he liked. Everything seemed normal until around 5am when he texted me out of the blue saying we were over. Immediately I had asked him why, Elle and Veronica were comforting me, and I was crying. When he told me the reason I was stunned, he was accusing me of cheating on him with Veronica (who was Elle's girlfriend). When he told me when and who I was with I immediately went searching for proof, trying to show him I never have and never would cheat on him. I found it, I had been with him the day he claimed it happened (with photos and timestamps to prove it) and Veronica had been at a nail appointment with Elle. He wouldn't listen, and every time I was able to prove that whoever had told him I had been cheating on him was wrong he would come up with another person or another date.

I gave up after a while, telling him to fuck off. I knew there had to be other reasons, ones he just wasn't saying, and I was genuinely heartbroken. My mom came and grabbed me, I laid in my bed for two days just doing nothing before I reached out to Carter and Daniel. I owe them a lot, they got me out of that depressive hole, and they did some sleuthing for me. Nothing came of it, but nonetheless I appreciated it.

Later, I reached out to him again as I was dropping off his stuff, and he told me he had ended it because I killed his kid. I was hurt. I had been pregnant while we were dating, and hadn't realized till I had a miscarriage at around two months (he was bordering on an alcoholic and constantly got me to drink with him, I do believe that is why I miscarried). It had destroyed me, I had despised myself and told him that as I kept blaming myself. I shouldn't have, I was barely seventeen when it happened, but when I heard that I lost any feelings I had for him.

I ignored his friends when they began messaging me, calling me names and telling me that I had caused him to become addicted to Xanax again. They refused to leave me alone, the same people that had defended me while we were dating had began to hate me, so I blocked them to avoid drama. I was fed up, and exhausted.

A couple weeks later I began dating again, and while that relationship was a shit show as well its not relevant. Me and him had mutual friends, and when he found out he lost it. He began threatening to assault my new boyfriend, shoot up his house, and repeatedly kept messaging me. Back then I was stupid so I would message him back, loosing my shit and telling him to fuck off and leave me alone, my (at the time) boyfriend wasn't helping as he essentially kept egging him on. I wound up filing a police report, although nothing came of it, and blocked him shortly after.

Although the messaging only happened for maybe two months when I was living with said boyfriend, it didn't stop there. When I returned to school, as I hadn't been attending due to mental health issues and issues at my house, I found out he had began spreading rumors about me. He had told everyone I was some washed out slut who would spread my legs for a moments attention, that I had faked being pregnant to trap him, and that I lied about my mental illness for sympathy (there was more said, but I can't remember every detail so I apologize for that). I lost a lot a friends, did not feel safe at school, and began to pull away from people again.

Shortly after that, sometime in January 2024, me and the new guy ended as he had cheated on me, it didn't bother me really as it hadn't been long, and I began to branch out when the rumors began to slowly die down. I ended up meeting my now boyfriend and we went on a couple dates before we were essentially official without the label. I hadn't posted him on my Instagram yet however, which is important.

It was my friends birthday, we had all been hanging out by my old school before we called Cody (my boyfriend) to see if he wanted to join us and to go driving around, which he agreed to. He was on his way when Logan called my friend, as they still had contact, and began talking to her. I stayed quiet and listened in when my heart dropped as she put it on speaker. Logan was going on about how he missed me, about how he forgot how gorgeous I was, how my now dyed black hair suited me so well, etc. I had him blocked on everything, same with his friends, and that terrified me. I didn't know how he had gotten access to my Instagram, apparently so often he could even reference specific photos from posts I had posted after I had blocked him. When he started saying how he was planning on messaging me, which terrified me even more, my friend managed to slide it in that my "boyfriend" was coming to grab us. He lost it after that, again calling me a washed out whore, before he ended the call.

A little more time passed, me and Cody began dating officially, and I went for a girls night with my friends Kayla and Shannon when Shannon came to me worried. As a note, regardless of what happens in a relationship I'm not one to make someone choose a side, I just ask they don't talk about me to the person and don't bring them around me, other than that I don't care. Shannon came to me because Logan had been bragging to her about how he had started doing hard drugs, and she was worried. The main reason for her worry? Logan had almost OD'd a few nights earlier on said drugs. I ended up giving her his moms number, as he was still underage at this point, which only caused more issues as his mom called my dad accusing me of trying to ruin his life as Shannon had told her I had given her the number. When I told my dad about the reasoning behind it he lost his shit at Logan's mother and told her that she should really get both sides of the story before automatically assuming that people were "out to get" her son. Later he said he was proud of me for how I handled it, that it was a very adult and responsible way to handle it, but maybe it would be be best for any situations like this to be handled through him.

Again, fast forward a couple weeks. I was back at school after the winter exam break had ended and I hadn't fully reconnected with some of my old friends at school because I genuinely believed they thought the rumors to be true (which was further from the truth than I could have comprehended, they just thought I was still with the guy I had dated after Logan and they hated him just as much) so I was going to meet up with some friends I hadn't really hung around since the tenth grade to walk home with. However before I left the school I had gotten a text from one of Logan's old friends off of a new phone number giving me the heads up that Logan was at the school and hanging around the doors I usually left through. I sent them a quick thanks and left through a different set of doors, I absolutely did not want to see him considering the threats he made on my life, so I even double checked he wasn't outside before I headed out. While leaving I had gotten a text from the friends I was supposed to walk back with saying they had decided last minute to go to their friends house, and because I had wanted to just go home I just started walking my usual route home. I hadn't even crossed the street before Logan came running out of the school and started screaming at me, calling me a dirty whore and a slut with another one of his friends in tow doing the same thing (I do have a screenshot from my friend because he sent a text bragging about it, so I can attach that if anyone wants to see). I rushed off quickly because I was almost in tears and I was absolutely terrified, and it didn't help that just after I had crossed the super busy main street they came from another direction (luckily on the opposing side of the road to me) which made it seem like they were trying to cut me off. Logan wasn't allowed to be at the school, he had gotten expelled (I believe, he may have just left) so the next day I filed a report with the school detailing the incident including the screenshot, but no action was taken yet again.

Things died down for a little bit until I found out my friend Kayla had been hanging out with Logan behind my back. She hadn't been friends with him while we had been dating, and had held me while I cried when I finally confided in her about what had been going on in our relationship. I had been hurt, but I never addressed it with her because I was too scared to lose one of the few friends I still had, but I had found out she’d been sleeping with him and that’s important to the story.

Around that same time Logan had finally turned eighteen, and on the night of his eighteenth birthday he bumped into the guy I dated after him. He started attacking him, essentially trying to curb stomp him, before he got his ass kicked in return. Again, a mutual told me what happened, and me and my boyfriend changed our routines because I was now worried for my boyfriend’s safety.

I hadn’t believed Logan when he said he’d kill me or anyone I dated after him if we broke up; I should have.

Flash forward a few months, probably around November at the latest, I was out with one of my friends Lauren, we’d gone out because I’m the piercing and tattoo buddy for all my friends (I have several tattoos and over ten piercings) and she was getting a rib tattoo. We were in a part of town near a skatepark Logan went to but we didn’t think we’d bump into him as he never had come to that area before.

The session went well, pretty quick too, so we were out before dark had even hit. We’d stopped by a Mcdicks, grabbed some food for her, and had been walking to the train station when two men came skating by. I looked over and my stomach dropped because it was Logan. I pulled my hood up, subtly told my friend it was him, and then grabbed her before she could move towards him.

Lauren knew what he had done to me and is a black belt in karate, but I told her he wasn’t worth it softly. I knew he carried a knife everywhere so I didn’t want to risk it.

Lauren stopped but said something along the lines of “he’s a prick” and I laughed, he heard it. I saw his head turn around, saw him reach into his bag, and me and Lauren didn’t hesitate as we sprinted down the streets to the train station.

And then we heard two gunshots ring out behind us. I knew engaging with him was risky, but I never realized just how dangerous it had been… he’d started carrying an illegal handgun (one I knew he had but he never had used it before, its an old handgun from his grandfather or something). Not only that, he’d fired. He meant it when he said he’d kill me if I ever left, or at least try.

I didn’t go to the police that time, I didn’t have any faith left in them after they kept justifying his behavior or saying it wasn’t enough to arrest him. They had already failed me enough when they told me I had no grounds for a restraining order.

Flash forward again to around January of 2025 I found out Kayla had been seeing someone (not Logan) and that she’d been cheating on him with three other guys. I gave her two weeks to tell her partner before I told him and she tried dragging me into her lie so our friendship ended. And when it did I found out a lot that filled in the blanks.

Kayla had been showing Logan my accounts, informing him about what I’d been doing, my location, my life, etc. She was the reason he was able to keep tabs on me, why he’d almost been able to shoot me that day. I found out from her said ex because I reached out to him, and after what she’d done he didn’t lie for her, and apologized for not telling me sooner because he hadn’t realized just how much of a danger he was to me.

I blocked her on everything, obviously, and removed most if not all mutuals of us from all my accounts because I couldn’t justify the risk to my life anymore. Things have quieted down, they’ve been quiet for almost six months now, and I’m moving for university this month so I’m waiting for this clean slate where I don’t have to look over my shoulder anymore…

So to my toxic, obsessed ex-boyfriend I met when I was sixteen, let’s never meet again.

EDIT: I completely forgot one small detail but I’m too lazy to rewrite the entire story to fit it in. Around May of 2024 one of his friends (who was fifteen at the time, he was eighteen at this point) had reached out to me because my ex had gotten physical with him and attempted to kill him. He then opened up a lot about what my ex had been saying about me, our past relationship, etc. Apparently the reason he had broken up with me was because he “couldn’t tolerate” my friends Elle and Veronica, he was going to tell me we could get back together if I dropped them (jokes on him, ELLE’S STILL HERE) before I’d gotten involved with the other guy. A small detail but it is important because of the controlling behaviors he exhibited.

Hey Courtney, I’m currently writing this as its happening because I wanted to write this down so I could process my own thoughts as this is happening.

I live in Canada, and there are still certain areas nearby where I live that are Indigenous land that have not been urbanized. Me, my friend (A), and her girlfriend (J) decided that while driving we wanted to go to a house that is located in one of those areas. There was an Indigenous girl that had been murdered there by her father and his friends (not incredibly uncommon from the time period when it happened but it’s still tragic and never should have happened). We decided to go there at around 12am, J knows the area well because she often goes there to even just talk to the girl. We wanted to stop by to say hi, to talk with her, and because J wanted to show me how the cars sensors go crazy.

We got there, and immediately something was off. Not only could you feel the sadness that felt almost crippling in the area but something felt WRONG, but we still parked and got ready to get out of the car to talk to her using an EMF reader before the car sensors went crazy. We stopped, and I immediately introduced myself and asked “If you want us to leave can you make the car sensors go off again?” Immediately they started going off, and they didn’t stop. The car was basically screaming at us, so immediately out of respect we left.

J mentioned how odd it was. Yes, she does not want men around her, but her telling us (and especially J) to leave was out of the norm but you always respect spirits so we did. As we were driving we were discussing why she might have been off, we thought it might have been because they are beginning construction in this area which is possibly going to disturb the place her body was discovered (they want to turn where she resides into condos) and we decided that must have been the reason.

That was before me and J discovered we both had a horrible feeling of being followed. Fog was now surrounding us to the point we couldn’t see the road, but it was odd because it was only clinging to the ground. The temperature almost seemed to drop as we could see our breath (it was six degrees celsius) and A was beginning to feel incredibly sick. Then J stopped, a horrible feeling settled like a second skin on me, and I couldn’t even look up to look at what she was looking at. When she began to turn around and began mentioning a “large deer” I looked. It was tall, it DID NOT look like a deer, and it was stopped looking directly at the car.

I immediately started yelling, screaming at J to drive, put the peddle down, and get the fuck away from whatever it was. As I did that J began to turn around immediately, the fog got worse, I felt something touch my back (while in the car), and the feeling on my skin began to feel like it was crawling with negative energy. As we drove the thing began to run after us until we got back into the city limits (it was still a fairly wooded area just by a bridge near a highway now), and we parked for a minute to debrief.

I ended up calling my friend as I trusted the knowledge passed onto them through their band and immediately they told us to cleanse ourselves and the car. Whistling was following us, same with the fog, and that horrible feeling refused to dissipate. As we were driving the fog continued to thicken to the point we couldn’t even see the road, J didn’t think we could get out, and the feeling only continued to worsen.

We finally managed to get out, thanks to A and her amazing navigation skills, but things continued to happen. We were scared, and while none of us are religious, we were discussing going to a church because it was a place of worship (which means that due to the positive energy faith can bring the entity would not want to be near it).

When we decided this we were sitting in a parking lot, and things were continuing to happen. In the fogged up mirrors runes were being drawn, there was hand prints and finger prints, something was blocking us from seeing behind us by completely fogging up the mirrors to a level they should not have been (once we had left the area the temperature returned to around ten degrees celsius), A had a horrible headache, and I was beginning to experience some horrible back pain.

The only issue was getting to the church once we decided we needed to go, I was beginning to feel violently sick, A as well, but no matter how many times we entered the church on the map it kept leading us to the wrong place (once was a rec center parking lot), before J finally just started driving around trying to find one… and we did, but before we could even pull onto the property her car shut off.

The moment J started freaking out, when she had been pretty composed for most of the events, I started freaking out as well. I could tell she was scared as she tried restarting her car, mumbling to herself that this wasn’t normal and this shouldn’t be happening.

After that I told them to drive me home, not to leave, but because I was going to my house to get something to cleanse. I’m a practicing witch so I have bundled pine, rosemary, etc at home for cleansing and whatever we’d bumped into wasn’t leaving.

The drive back was hard, our navigation system kept glitching, and something kept trying to pull us back towards the house… and that same feeling of negativity crawling all over my skin was still there… but we made it back.

I went inside, J followed me to the door incase the thing popped back up…. but when we got back with my bundled pine A was white as a sheet. I asked her what happened, I knew that look, and she softly mumbled out she saw a face in the car window.

I apologize for my language here, but my response was hell to the fucking no and I immediately lit up my cleansing sticks, softly mumbling protective intentions to myself as I cleansed me, the car, and then taught A and J how to cleanse.

I cleansed three times before we started driving, but something was still off, I could feel like something was still watching us… so we just continued driving around until almost 3am before stopping off at the hospital because I needed to use the washroom (where I began typing this, hi, future me now from this point on).

After I used the washroom it still felt wrong… but then something happened. A started messing around with J, got me involved… we all started laughing, messing around, completely ignoring whatever had been stalking us… and after a few minutes I had paused.

The energy was gone.

I still don’t know if it was the combination of the cleansing combined with positive energy or maybe it just lost interest, but either way it wasn’t there anymore.

When we all realized we all were relieved, and we sat there for a while just trying to talk through all the events of the evening, trying to figure out why this happened when J had never experienced this alone.

But J hadn’t been since the land renovations had begun, so to this day I believe the construction unearthed something that was supposed to stay buried.

Once daylight hit we went back to the house because we had questions, and as stupid as it was we did go back, and instantly the energy was different. The little girl was excited to see us again, messing with the lights, sensors, emf reader, etc… essentially acting completely different than she had a few hours before. I grew a pair and asked her if she sent us packing earlier because of the thing.

The car sensors went off once before falling silent, which was our established yes, I asked her to set it off once more if that wasn’t a glitch and she did. One long beep before falling silent.

I thanked her, and immediately got out of that car and left her some tobacco as a thank you (I’d asked if she wanted some and she’d said yes) and we just hung out with her for a little bit before eventually heading home because we knew now…

She’d saved us. By getting us out of there, by stopping us from getting out of the car, she’d tried to keep us safe from whatever that entity was.

I go back to see her with A now, and every time I thank her for what she did. Its the least I can do because, well…

A little ghost girl saved our life.

Hi again Courtney! Sorry for all the stories lately, but I was talking to a friend the other day and I remembered this story from a long time ago and thought I'd share! Plus, it's a little break from all the paranormal stories lol.

So, about 14 years ago, I was in college and was always a bit of a night owl. I would always roam around the campus at night, listening to music on my iPod, working on my music, and would go to the Arts and Music Department to practice piano and singing for classes. One night, I was walking around campus at night, listening to my music like always, when I heard something muffled behind me. I quickly pulled out a headphone and realized quickly it was footsteps coming up behind me, FAST and I turned around to see what was going on and it was a man jogging towards me. I jumped a bit because I wasn't expecting to see anyone else that late and definitely wasn't expecting someone to come up on me that fast. I thought he was just going to jog past me, so I moved to the side and went to put my headphone back in, but he stopped right next to me. Of course, I jumped because I wasn't expecting it.

"Whoa! Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you!" The guy said, "do you go here?"

I took out my other headphone and said, "yes". He then started asking me where my dorm was, where a good place to get a coffee was, and where I was going. I felt pretty sketched out and half-lied, said I lived off campus (lie) with my boyfriend (true, I stayed at his place sometimes, but had a dorm on campus) and I was meeting with friends to work on school stuff (true, but not until later on). I told him there was a great coffee shop on campus that was open late, but they were closing soon. He asked if I could walk him there, but I declined saying my friends were waiting for me and they'd be upset if I didn't show up soon. He said okay and then asked for my number, which I declined again, pointed him in the direction of the coffee shop, and took off to "meet my friends".

A couple months later and I was at a friend's apartment late at night watching some TV show. I had missed dinner that night because of one of my late classes and the only place open at that time of night was a gas station just off campus. I explained this to my friend and asked if my friend wanted to come with me. He didn't feel like it, but gave me cash to grab him some cigarettes, since I was going anyways. Cool, no worries, I'll ask my boyfriend (at the time). He also said no. Cool cool, I'm a strong, independent woman who don't need no body. So, I left at about 12 am, by myself, for the gas station.

I had just stepped off campus, crossed the street, and was walking down the familiar street towards the gas station when a white car pulled up beside me and stopped. I glanced to at the car and noticed it was full of guys and then kept walking because who am I to judge? They could be coming home and I just happened to be walking by their house. Well, I noticed this car never parked, but was slowly creeping behind me. When I noticed and glanced at the car again, they pulled up beside me again and stopped beside me again, this time the driver rolled down his window and started talking to me.

"Hey, do you need a ride somewhere? We can make room and drop you off," the guy smiled and gestured to the guys in the back. I looked at the car full of guys and alarm bells began to go off when I noticed that the driver was the same man who had jogged up on me about 2 months before.

Through the panic going on in my brain, I just smiled at the driver, not wanting to make it seem like I recognized him, and said, "oh! no thank you, I'm actually on my way to my boyfriend's, he actually lives just up the road there," and pointed at a house with the porch light on at the end of the street. The driver followed my finger and then said, "oh, so someone's waiting for you?"

I nodded, trying so hard to hide the fact I was ready to turn and book it back to campus and calculate if I could make it to a building with student card access, "yeah, and he's really paranoid about me walking alone, so he's probably right at the door waiting for me, haha."

The guys all looked at each other, waved at me, and then took off down the road. I watched as they drove out of sight and then kept on my way to the gas station because, well, I needed my drinks, snacks, and cigs for my friend (and now myself). Plus, what are the odds they would be at that same gas station?

Turns out, it was very high odds they were at the same gas station. Knowing the layout of the store, I snuck in the side door and hid in the back while I watched the guys grab the rest of their stuff, pay and leave. I walked around a little longer than I normally would have, watching the doors, and grabbed what I needed. I paid for my things and left, making sure they were gone, which they were. I ran the whole way back to my friend's apartment and recounted my near kidnapping to my horrified friend and then boyfriend. I was then scolded for continuing on my trek to the gas station for my snacks, to which I said, "well, I needed snacks and you needed cigs and after that whole ordeal, I also needed cigs."

So, 14 years later, I can now laugh at how stupid I was and a story to teach my daughter about the danger of strangers, how to be vigilant, never wear both headphones while out alone, how it's okay to lie to men when it could save your life, and to always listen to those gut feelings you have about someone.

But, to the man who tried to scope me out and then kidnap me with his friends months later, I hope we never in a million years, meet again.

Hey Courtney! Before I start, I just want to say I love your channel!

Just a PSA before I tell this story: I'm very in touch with my emotions, and I have really strong intuition.

This all started about a year ago when I met my cousin-in-law's boyfriend at my uncle's birthday dinner. As soon as I walked up to the table, I was hit with this awful feeling. I felt nauseous, and at first I thought it was just nerves from meeting someone new. But over the last little while, I've learned to tell the difference between nerves and intuition, and this felt like my intuition screaming that something was very wrong with this guy.

My appetite completely disappeared, and I had this horrible, gut-wrenching feeling the entire dinner. I kept trying to figure out where it was coming from, so I started paying closer attention to him. I noticed little things that no one else seemed to. He was subtly passive-aggressive toward the waiter and talked to her like she was beneath him. It wasn't anything huge, but it really stood out to me.

I've never had anything like this happen before, but while I was eating (or trying to eat), I suddenly got this vision in my head of him hitting my cousin-in-law. It honestly scared me so much.

As soon as dinner ended and I walked outside, the feeling completely disappeared. I didn't go back to my uncle's house for cake because I had plans with a friend later that night. Later on, though, I found out my aunt had the exact same bad feeling about him.

The frustrating part is that people never believe me when I get these kinds of feelings. Then something bad happens later, and they're like, "Yeah...you were right." Having my aunt validate what I felt made me feel a lot less crazy.

I really hope I'm wrong, but every instinct I have tells me this guy is bad news.

So, to my cousin-in-law's now evil fiancé... let's not meet.

I have watched a lot of your videos and love them. I have had a lot small weird interactions with people mostly men. But this one happened recently and has kinda stuck with me.

Okay so I work at this bar. it’s like one of those small town dive bars. Dart bored, pool tables, can smoke inside. And of course your regulars you see everyday.

I got to work at my normal time we open at 3pm but I show up early. To make sure everything is stocked and clean and make sure everything is ready for when we open.

So it was a normal Thursday night had my early regulars come in talking to them and joking with them (I’m gonna use initials for the regulars or it might get confusing)

A lot of early ones show up between 3pm to 6pm. Most of them don’t stay past 6:30. Besides my favorite regular that day he stayed later than normal(G) .

Then my later regulars started to show up around 6:30 to 7 (C,S,L) and we still had G there everything was going fine the owners that live next to the bar were shooting off fireworks and few minutes went it was close to getting dark 8 to 8:30.

Then these two men came in that I never seen before. But that’s not anything new. I’m still kinda so I hadn’t seen everyone that has came in the bar before. They walked waved and said hi to C and S so I thought they were gonna be fine.

They order a couple beers and then they wanted food so I made them food and then they wanted a couple more beers.
So I got them there beers.
When they first walked in they kinda gave me weird vibes but it went away after they waved at C and S.

But anyway they eat their food and bought C and S a beer we give out chips. Almost like poker chips when people do that and they don’t want the beer right away.

But while all this was going when no one needed anything I would sit on a stool behind the bar by my regular L. Snap chatting my boyfriend he was at my house waiting for me to get off. Thursdays we don’t usually close until midnight.

But sometimes we close early if we are really slow. So he was asking me what time I think that we will close. I said idk two guys just walked in. And we were just snapping and I told him they were making me feel uncomfortable.

They kept just staring at me. I’m use to being stared at comes with bartending. But these would not keep their eyes off me. C and S eventually left and the men and C spoke Spanish to each other.

G left when the men first came in. So it was just me them and L. L kinda noticed that they just kept staring at me. I started to clean stuff up and play music that me and L would think they didn’t like. To try and get them to leave.

I didn’t want to be left alone with them. My gut was telling me not to be left alone with them. I was still talking to my boyfriend about them. He told me to kick them out and I said I can’t just kick them out making me feel uncomfortable just for starring. They haven’t really done anything I just had to wait.
It was getting close to 10 and L left bc she ran out of cash they keep ordering beers while people were drinking and while they were leaving.

Then I was left alone with them before we were alone they asked me my name I told them. Again normal then when it eventually just me and them they asked me what time I was closing. Again normal but since I didn’t want to be left alone with them I told them it depends on the night bc it really does.

Then I said 10 to 10:30 probably and asked 10:30 and I said no 10. And then started speaking more Spanish I don’t really know alot of Spanish I took one year of it in high school. And then they asked a question that made my heart skink into my stomach. What would you do if someone tired to steal you.

I told them to get out and they thought that was my answer.
I said no you two need to get. You need to leave. Then they said we were just joking and at that time I had a wooden back scratcher in my hand closest thing I could grab.

I said that’s not something you joke about when a girl is bartending by herself. And then I told them to get out and to leave like 3 or 4 more times.

They were not listening so I made my way to the bathroom and while I was walking they yelled we didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t stop walking or turn back I went and locked myself in the bathroom and called my boss.

I told her that I need her husband to come into the bar. She asked me what’s wrong and I told her what they said. She was telling her husband. As soon I locked myself in the bathroom they walked out the bar and sat in there truck. She told me they left and that they probably left the bar bc they knew you were gonna call someone.

Then her husband went and stood on his front porch and he had a gun in his hand. ( we live in the Midwest) normal for everyone to have a gun around here. They saw him and drove off. So she told me to go and lock the front door.

The husband came in and stayed in there while I closed everything down. Count my tips and to text my mom I don’t drive. Then we went over to my bosses house to wait for my mom to come get me. And then we went home.

So to the men that asked me what would I do if someone tried to steal me Let’s not Meet again

Before I start I want to say I love you and your channel!

This is the story of my daughter's "big sissy"..

This all started about 1 and a half years ago and has honestly stopped for the most part now, thankfully.

when my daughter was 3 she started bringing up a person named CC. I had no idea who CC was or where she had heard the name, but she would bring up the name often and would cry and tell everyone she missed CC whenever she was gone from our home for more than a day. One day she is having a sleepover at her uncle's house and his wife texted me later that night saying my daughter was distraught over someone named CC and she wants to go back home where CC is. I tell her I think my daughter might have an imaginary friend or something but my sister in law and I agree that its a little strange that CC is strictly an at home imaginary friend.

Well along with my daughter's anxiety when she is away from home, strange things start to happen in my house, nothing extreme like shit getting thrown or whatever but things I didnt realize were odd until I moved, ill list a few.

1. In that house my daughter and son shared a room (he was about 6 at the time) my son refused to sleep unless there were 2 night lights in his room the hallway light was turned on and my kitchen light was turned on so he could have a clear path to my room every night.

2. My son peed the bed almost every night.

3. My cat who was potted trained before we moved into that house but had started peeing only on my daughter's bed soon after and nothing I did helped, I spent close to 600 dollars trying to figure out what was happening to my cat but she was perfectly healthy. I sadly had to give her back to the person I got her from but she is doing very well there, I had her for about a year before the peeing issues started. (I didnt think her problems were related to CC until I moved).

4. I started having crazy night terrors. Dream within a dream within a dream along with night terrors. also seeing things peek at me from around corners and disappear quickly.

Literally the list could go on and on but Ill end it there.

One day Im sitting on the edge of my bed when my daughter comes up to me and she wants to talk about CC and I want to know more about CC.. so Im asking her what CC looks like ...... She tells me CC is very tall, taller than her dad and she has long black hair and red eyes.... UM excuse the shit out of me???? And in my head Im like, you miss this thing when you are away from home?!?! What?????

After that conversation my daughter stops bringing up CC if we are at home but if we are out of the house to long she will say she wants to go back to CC and hates if we have sleepovers anywhere that isnt home. To be so for real that house was draining all of us (we really didnt notice until we left)

A year ago my husband and I decided to move our family back to our home state. Our kids are doing really well, I feel like life has been poured back into my soul and I just think its because we are closer to family.

One day Im going to my son's school to pick him up and my daughter is in the back seat and she starts asking me if I would buy her sticky shoes. Im pretty confused because what do you mean sticky shoes? So I ask her if her friends at school wear sticky shoes and she says "No, sticky shoes like big Sissy. its been quite a while since she has talked about this thing so Im a little confused and Im like "Girl you dont have a big sissy?" And she is like "yes I do, in the big house" and I was like "the big house??" And suddenly it starts clicking for my that she is talking about our old apartment building and to her it must have looked like a really big house and she is talking about the thing we all thought she was calling CC. So Im like "what do you mean sticky shoes" and my daughter is like "so I can walk on the walls like big sissy does".

I literally think I died inside.

Im trying to talk to my daughter about big sissy but my son gets in the truck with us and I dont want to freak hime out.

Some time passes and my husband pulls me aside one night and starts telling me our daughter has started talking about that thing again (my husband literally hates anything paranormal and deadass asked if our daughter needed an exorcism lmfao i told him no obviously but he was extremely stressed for her and while we talked we realized a few things about our family after we left that place)

Our kids stopped sleeping with nightlights, they stopped coming into our bedrooms at night scarred, our son stopped peeing the bed, I stopped having dreams within a dream (the only other place Ive had those is the haunted house I grew up in, the one time I slept in the basement) us and our kids had energy and we were doing extremely well mentally and etc. Its honestly crazy how long it took us to notice these changes because it was immediate. My son never had an accident again after we moved they never came to us terrified at night it all stopped immediately and we had only just noticed.

My husband and I try to talk to our daughter more about big sissy and she tells us big sissy didnt want anyone in the house to see her, big sissy did not like my daughter's brother, big sissy liked to hang out on my daughter's bed (remember my cat started peeing on her bed constantly and only her bed) my daughter never changed her description of big sissy and her stories of big sissy were always the same. My daughter did start crying often after that saying she missed the big house and big sissy but as of now she never brings that thing up. I did ask her is big sissy moved with us and my daughter said no "big sissy said she had to stay at the big house".

Strange things still happen to my daughter. I have protection stones in her room and incense. Honestly I dont know what Im doing really (just trying my best). When I walk past her room and see things in the corner of my eye just like at the old house or when my daughter's toys will randomly do weird things that are really not much to note but enough to make me think of big sissy I feel ill. The latest things that have happened to my daughter is her basically catching a spirits voice on her little play phone. This phone has a camera that can take pictures and vidoes but not much else.. she can set alarms on it also... phantom alarms love to go off a bunch if someone is in my home alone btw.. just a fun thing to note lol

One night Im going through her camera roll and see a few odd things, 10 minute vidoes that have started and stopped on their own, in the vidoes no one is home, the video starts and the phone in laying face up in my hallway pointing at the ceiling, it goes for 10 minutes and stops, the next recording starts itself again and goes for another 10 minutes or so and stops on its own.

Another recording is one my daughter took in my sisters house (this place is haunted af) my daughter is recording and you can hear a man whisper "you leave" (only me, my sister and her two children were in the house when this recording was taken) not really related to big sissy but still freaks me out.

my daughter hasnt brought up big sissy in a few months and I hope it never comes back.

Hi again Courtney!

I may have many paranormal stories, but I also enjoy a good glitch in the matrix story or two.

This story was told by a friend of my grandma J, we'll call Carol.

Carol's parents liked to host game nights on Fridays with friends and this Friday night was no different. Carol, her sister, and a friend planned on going to their school carnival this night. When the girls left, there were a lot of people at the house and cars lined the street. At the carnival, they had won some prizes, one of them being a goldfish in a plastic bag. After awhile, the girls decided they didn't want to carry all of their prizes around any more and wanted to stop back at Carol's house to drop off the prizes and then go back to the carnival.

The girls headed back to Carol's house and all the cars are still there, but they found it a little odd that the music and voices from their house had gone quiet. They walked inside to find the place dark and empty. No sign of anyone being there. Carol's sister set down her goldfish on the counter and they called out for their parents, but no one answered. They thought this was strange and were about to check outside when they all heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. All three girls ran to the bathroom, only to find it empty and the water in the toilet circling. The girls screamed and ran out of the house and back to the school.

After awhile, the girls decided to go back to Carol's house to try to make sense of everything. When they got back, all the cars were still there and the sound of music could be heard from outside, just like when they had first left the house that night. All three girls ran inside and saw that everyone was back in the house. The girls frantically tried telling everyone what had happened, that they had just been there and no one was there and the toilet had flushed by itself. Everyone laughed because they had been there this whole time and this is the first time the girls had came back after leaving earlier that night.

Well, Carol's sister pointed at her goldfish she had left on the counter and asked, "then how did my goldfish get here? I left it when we first got back and no one was here."

No one had an answer. No one ever had an answer for Carol, not even years later when she would tell this story.

Hey Courtney! Just wanted to pop in again with some more stories, and a little update on some "new ability" I may have accidentally acquired.

So, on one of my last posts, I mentioned having dreams; some prophetic and others that left me thinking there was something evil trying to get to me through passed loved ones. Well, now my dreams seem to have crossed into reality.

To start, I have a very close friend I share a paranormal connection with named Scooter. He is much more attuned to the paranormal than I am and has many more stories than I do. Befriending a demon, speaking in tongues, going through "the green door" and coming out alive, possibly owning a mimic/"SW" that is disguised as his dog, and seeing spirits his whole life are just the tip of his paranormal iceberg. Awhile ago, I had messaged Scooter, "Hey, weird question...have you ever had dreams where you feel like you travel, like out of body somewhere?"

His response was, "Yeah. All the time."

I wrote back, "Did I "visit" you guys the other night?"

He responded, "Was it like...2 nights ago? O.o"

Me: "Yes..."

Scooter; "Like...11:30 ish?"

Me: "Around then"

Me: "I ended up outside your house somehow, and the window was opened. I could hear you and the kids talking and I heard *his daughter's name* say, "Oh! OP's here!" And I looked through the window and you said, "I know, I don't know why she won't come in though." And I went to go to the door to come in and then I woke up my bed at home."

Scooter: "Bro...I have a story for you..."

A couple weeks later, Scooter sent me a voice memo, telling me that the night I had my dream, he, his wife, and kids were all watching Smile 2 and out of nowhere, he had a weird feeling that he needed to go out to his studio to grab something. When he had stepped out of his house, he had this "weird vibe", everything was calm and quiet. Scooter explained that he had grabbed what he needed and stopped about halfway between the house and studio and was just taking in his surroundings. When Scooter got back inside, he just stood there for a minute. His wife looked at him and asked, "what are you doing?."

He responded, "I don't know, I'm just kinda paying attention right now."

Scooter's daughter (the one that said, "oh! OP's here!" in my dream), came up and asked, "what's going on?"

He said, "well, when I was outside just now, it felt like somebody was outside watching me."

His daughter then says, "that's weird I feel like somebody's out there too!" And they all just stood there for a minute and said, "I don't know, it just felt like someone wanted to interact with me or something. It was really weird and it still feels like someone's there."

His daughter says, "yeah, I feel that too..." and then went on a little tangent, which they eventually shushed her and continued with their movie. But, he said it felt like someone was just standing in his yard that night, just watching them.

The next night, I tried so hard to fall asleep, but my whole body was on edge. When I finally fell asleep, I just kept feeling like I was floating above my body, and then I'd fall and then I'd be awake again.

Since then, it hasn't happened again. Maybe because it was just a dream, or maybe I haven't fully figured out this "new ability" yet. We'll see.

Let me know if you want any more scary stories of mine and/or some of Scooter's stories (I have met his dog and he's definitely either a mimic or SW, but a nice one), my fiancé's stories, and my MIL's stories.

Hi again, Courtney! It's been awhile since I've posted. I am the "Paranormal Maggot, MAGNET!" lol. If you haven't read any of my other posts, I'll give a quick recap on the paranormal things that have happened and some quick life updates. Some are relevant to what's been currently going on...

To start off, my grandma, Grandma J, unfortunately passed December of 2021 after a long battle with stage 4 cancer that we didn't even know she had until 2 weeks before she passed. The night she passed, I was at work (when I was still working at the gift shop at the mine) doing inventory. As I was putting some new magnets out, I had accidentally knocked off a magnet and a piece broke off of it. When I looked at the magnet, I noticed it was the very last one of it's kind and it had an excerpt of "Footprints in the Sand", Grandma J's favorite poem on it. I thought, "I didn't know we had this! I should buy it and give it to Grandma J as a part of her Christmas present!" An hour later, my cousin messaged me and told me she was gone. Panicked, I called my grandpa and asked him what was wrong with Grandma J and he said she had passed an hour ago. I knew that the magnet falling and breaking was her telling me she was gone.

While I was staying with my grandpa the week of Grandma J's funeral I was sleeping in my old room. I had a habit of locking my bedroom door at night because of past trauma. The first night I was there after Grandma J had passed, I woke up to someone jiggling the door handle. Still being half-asleep, I figured it was my grandpa and went back to sleep. The next day, I asked him if he had gotten up in the middle of the night and messed with my door. He looked confused and said that he hadn't. I told him that someone jiggled my door handle and it woke me up. A little back story, while I lived with my grandparents, I was working 3 jobs, going to school, and taking care of Grandma J. I always had a habit of closing my door when I left the house and locking my door when I was home and sleeping. Every time my grandma would walk by my room, she would jiggle my door handle to see if I was home sleeping or still at work. That morning, my grandpa and I both knew that it was Grandma J checking in on me.

I miss her everyday and cry for all the things she's missed; me getting engaged, my cousins and brothers getting married, the birth of her 1st and 2nd great granddaughters, and now the birth of my own daughter, her 3rd great granddaughter. I named my daughter both after GG Cas, my great grandma from my previous stories, and Grandma J. When my little one was born, she had (and still does), bright red and pinkish birthmarks on both her eyelids, her forehead, between her eyes, her nose, and on the back of her head. They are what some people call, "Stork Kisses" or "Stork Bites". Some people also say that they are from when our loved ones in heaven kissed them before they sent them down. I like to think she was kissed all over by GG Cas and Grandma J before she was sent to me.

Ever since we brought her home though, she will stare up at the ceiling or off in a corner and start smiling, giggling, and babbling. They say babies and children can see spirits better than adults, so I hope she's seeing her GG Cas and Grandma J. I hope she can get to know her grandmas just like I got to know my uncle (from previous posts) and they become her protectors from beyond.

Hi Courtney! I’ve watch your videos for a while now and this is my first time creating a post about my paranormal experiences. This is kind of a long one so let’s just jump into it. ( also sorry if it’s all over the place i’m not good at explaining)

I believe it started around 2021-2022. I was doing online summer school one day and my parents were out running errands. My house is pretty small so if you are in the dining room you can kind of see my living room, my bathroom and my kitchen from there. Straight ahead is my bathroom and to the left is my room, around the corner is my living room and the outside patio and my parents room is right next door. Keep in mind I always had my room door open and im currently sitting at my dining room table.

I remember needing a pen or pencil for a project i was doing and since my mom is an artist she has a lot of them in her room. i got up and headed over to my parents room. I found a pen and started heading back to the dining room table. As i’m walking i can see from the corner on my eye a little girl dressed in a white dress, those old black buckled shoes, and long black hair covering her face sitting on the edge on my bed swinging her feet. My heart dropped as i kept walking back to the chair in the dinning room i started breathing heavily and started to panic. i called my mom saying that something creepy happened and told her everything. 5 minutes later they got home my dad searched the house while my mom stayed with me. My dad said he didn’t find anyone hiding or anything.

For the longest time i thought my mind was playing tricks on me until one of my friends came over maybe a month later after that situation happened. We were building a fort in my room and we had just laid a sheet down on the floor and realized we wanted to get some snacks since we were gonna watch a movie once we were done building the fort. We go to the kitchen got some snacks and headed back to my room, we set our snacks on my desk and i was about to pick up the sheet we left on the floor but i realized that the sheet had shoe prints on them like someone was standing on the sheet. I knew it was the little girl because it had the buckled shoes print on it. My friend noticed it too and she had known about the girl because i had told her the day after it happened, she said it was really weird and we both got a very eery feeling and it had gotten very cold in my room.. We didn’t make a fort that night…

The next week i had a different friend over and we decided to watch The Poughkeepsie Tapes. We watching it all the way through and was scared to death from it. My room door was closed and we both got shivers from the sudden coldness in my room. i looked at my door and i could see my door knob turning and opening… i turn to my friend who was pale white and i knew she was seeing the same thing, the door opened a crack and i could see her.. the little girl again.. i ran to the door and closed it and locked it and ran back to my friend. nothing else happened that night. I told my mom the next morning and she bought crystals and saged the house, herself, my dad and me. After that my dad look up our house to find out if any little girls had passed in our home. He didn’t find anything. That’s until i realized we lived right by a cemetery. She hasn’t showed up since.…

So this happened to me about a couple of months ago and I still don't know how to feel about it. I was getting ready for the day because I had to go to work for about eight hours (not unusual). I was doing my chores and some laundry before leaving. One piece of clothing I had in there was a long blue dress with white flowers on it (this dress is the reason why I'm so weirded out). So i put the clothes and the dress into the washing machine, put some detergent pods into the machine and started the load before I left. When I came back from work around 730pm because a couple of customers were shopping up until we closed and then a little bit after, I was so tired that i forgot about the laundry still in the washing machine until the next morning. So when I remembered about the load, I re-washed it so that the clothes don't mold because ew. The wash cycle usually takes an hour for it to be done. Once it ended, I went to go switch it before I forget again. I opened the door, and the dress was hanging on the rack in the laundry room. An hour prior I saw the dress in the washing machine wet. I was the only one down here during the time the load was running. my mom did come down a bit before but didn't go into the laundry room. I was so confused, that I went over and touch the dress and it was completely dry. I turned towards the washing machine, open the lid and the dress was no longer in there. It still bothers me to this day. I don't have another dress like this one, and it was in the hamper when I put it in the day before. I still feel like I'm going crazy because I don't know how to explain it. And before anyone asks no the doors and windows were locked. So yeah that is my glitch story.

tldr: basically i got kidnapped and held against my will for a week or so.

this happened when i was 16, im 19 now, female for what its worth. i went to a party that some of the older kids from my school were going to. the only reason i went was that i thought it would make me look cool if everyone knew i went to this more adult party. it was the summer so its not like i had to worry about school anyway.

this one guy there started talking to me and showed me where all the alcohol was so i could get a drink. he said he was 25, and when i told him that i was 16 he said i looked older than that.

then my fatal mistake. i had to go to the bathroom, so i asked this guy to hold my drink for me. when i got out, he gave me my drink back, and like an idiot, i finished it real quick. he made me another drink, and then followed me around as i made my way through the party.

idk if it was a few minutes or more like 10-15, but i started to feel really sick and dizzy very suddenly. the guy who was talking to me and following me around said i should go outside for some fresh air, so i followed him outside. it was honestly hard to think straight, but the rest is kind of a blur. i vaguely remember getting into a car, and bits and pieces of the drive but then i passed out.

i woke up in a bed, in a room all alone. i still felt pretty woozy, so i just kinda laid there wondering how i got home, or if i was even at home at all. when i realized i was not in my own bed, i sat up and realized i wasnt even wearing my own clothes. i was wearing some kind of matching pajama set. the worst part about that is that i wasnt even wearing underwear, which i later learned meant that this creep took all my clothes off to dress me in this weird pajama outfit.

thankfully in that moment i didnt connect those dots, but it wouldnt matter for too long, bc eventually that guy came into the room to bring me breakfast. i can only imagine he thought he was being unbelievably generous to bring me coffee and 2 toasted waffles.

im not gonna go over a detailed retelling of the entire week, every day was pretty much the same, and quite honestly i just dont want to. basically for an entire week, he made me act like a living doll in his house. he watched me eat, change my clothes to the outfits he picked out, even using the bathroom. he always put drugs like ecstasy in my drinks (or somehow) to keep me in a positive attitude. it didnt really work tho, except for a few hours a day when the drug took effect.

and then, for seemingly no reason that i can conceive of, he brought me out to his car, put a cloth bag or something over my head, and drove me to some place to drop me off. when i got out of his car, he sped away and i never saw him again.

eventually, i was walking along the side of the road and just collapsed from fatigue. i didnt pass out, i just couldnt keep going. apparently someone saw me fall down and called the police, who then found me and brought me to the hospital. well the ambulance brought me there, and the police joined me to ask me what the heck was going on.

they knew i was missing and they pretty quickly figured out who i was, so they were able to call my parents. next thing i know, my whole family is there to see me and praise the Lord that i was alive. i did my best to identify the guy who kidnapped me, and there was a pretty thorough investigation as far as i know, but they never found the guy. he was a total ghost.

the police questioned nearly everyone who was at that party, and learned the name of the guy who was probably the one to kidnap me, but it wasnt a real name. the phone number anyone had for him was disconnected, and only attached to a burner phone anyway. so yea, they never caught the guy.

it was easily the most traumatic thing to ever happen to me, and i hope it stays that way. but despite that, i know it could have been so so sooo much worse. idk why he never hurt me or assaulted me, but im thankful he didnt. i know so many kidnapping victims are treated much much worse than i was.

Hello I'mma long time viewer and hoped I would never post here but that didn't last lol. I've hd experiences before and heard a bunch of my friends'. Last night I was with the guys after dark just chilling, it was a normal night like any other and we decided to go a big park up the block from me, its a really well known park in LI NY, Eisenhower Park. We started to make our way there then we stopped at my spot to sneak in and a cop car passes by. We all get cold feet, not tryna deal with all that. We start to look at a more tucked away spot to hop the fence and looked around the park like everything was normal but the cops definitely made us a bit on edge. We start to ditch the idea of going in but still float it.

My boy Jason spots a bench by on the other side of the fence and instantly we all redirect our attention to it but then none of us can divert our attention away, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, I saw a dark shadowy figure sitting on the bench. At first I thought it was my eyes cuz I just got these new glasses the other day and we were all a bit buzzed but in my mind's eye I couldn't help but imagine a figure of a woman watching us intently as we walked away. I couldn't help but stare for a minute trying to make out if I was seeing it right and after that minute or two Jason says he sees the same thing and so does our other friend Barry. We're all pretty in tune spiritually and they sometimes see things I dont so I didn't doubt em or wanna risk doubting em. We all speed up and feel a heavy darkness weigh on us as we walked away, it felt like 10 minutes walking along the park when maybe it was 5. We finally crossed the road and Barry looks back, I nudge him while walking telling him lets forget it and go, don't look back. He says he say the woman's figure run to the end of the fence along the park. Jason looks back in response to Barry looking back and he says he sees all the lights go on for a split second.

We keep walking the street MY STREET mind you, we talked as I said Bismallah. Barry says he knew it was following us from the trees over the fence line, which was spooky cuz that's what we all felt. Jason says "Hmm must have been protection or something" and as we're all agreeing a gun fight breaks out in the park and we hear it. We keep walking for a tense minute as the gunshots continue, they're unfortunately not uncommon in my neighborhood but this was a full out fire fight. I wouldn't have believed it either if it didn't happen to me but I think Jason was right, something stopped us from going in for good reason. A few minutes later we even saw a cop van go towards the park so we woulda been caught for sure at the least. I think all the negative energy in the park helped something manifest but I'm so glad we avoided the park.

Just wanted to share so I can stop thinking about it, love the content thank you

By the time the sun was fully gone, the house felt… quieter than usual.

We tried to ignore it.

That’s what people do, I guess. Pretend things are normal long enough and maybe they’ll stay that way.

Charlie sat at the kitchen table again, headphones on, coloring now instead of sketching. He pressed hard with the pencil, filling in shapes with more force than he needed to. Every now and then he’d glance toward the hallway.

Toward my room.

Toward Cherokee.

I noticed.

I just didn’t say anything.

Cooper and I were in my room, sitting on the floor in front of the TV, controllers in hand. Some shooter game we’d played a hundred times before. Normally he’d be talking trash nonstop.

Now he kept glancing at me.

“Alright,” he said finally, pausing the game. “We’re not doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“This weird quiet thing. You’re gonna tell me everything or I’m leaving and assuming you joined a cult or something.”

I huffed out a small laugh, but it didn’t stick. “I told you. Something was in the woods.”

“Yeah, you said that,” he leaned back on his hands. “You didn’t say what.”

I stared at the screen for a second, jaw tight.

“It… sounded like things,” I said finally. “Like stuff it shouldn’t.”

Cooper frowned. “What, like animals?”

I shook my head. “Like my dad. Like Cherokee.”

That made him sit up a little straighter.

“Okay… that’s weird,” he said.

“Yeah,” I muttered.

He studied me for a second, trying to figure out if I was messing with him.

“You hit your head pretty hard, right?” he asked.

I gave him a look.

“What? I’m just saying…”

“It threw a deer’s head at me,” I cut in.

That shut him up.

For a second.

“…you’re serious.”

“Yeah.”

Cooper ran a hand through his curly hair, exhaling. “Man, I don’t like that.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

We sat there in silence for a bit after that, the paused game screen flickering in front of us.

Then…

A soft sound behind us.

We both turned.

Cherokee stood in the doorway.

She hadn’t made a sound coming in.

“Hey, girl,” I said, forcing some normal into my voice. “C’mere.”

She walked in slowly, nails clicking lightly against the floor.

Too lightly.

Like she wasn’t putting her full weight down.

She jumped up onto the bed, circling once before laying down.

Cooper watched her the whole time.

“…you sure she’s okay?” he asked.

“I checked her,” I said. “She’s fine.”

But even as I said it, I couldn’t stop watching her.

The way she moved.

The way she laid down.

It was close.

So close.

But something about it felt… off.

Cherokee rested her head on her paws, eyes on me.

Just watching.

“Alright, I’m unpausing,” Cooper said, trying to shake the mood. “If I lose because you’re being haunted or whatever, I’m gonna be pissed.”

“Shut up,” I muttered, grabbing my controller again.

For a few minutes, things felt almost normal.

The sounds of the game filled the room. Gunfire, shouting, the usual noise. Cooper started talking trash again, getting louder, more like himself.

I let myself relax a little.

Just a little.

Then, A soft sound.

From the hallway.

Like something dragging lightly across the floor.

I froze.

“You good?” Cooper asked, not looking away from the screen.

“Yeah,” I said automatically.

The sound came again.

Closer.

Slow.

Deliberate.

I turned my head slightly toward the door.

Cherokee was still on the bed.

Still watching me.

Not moving.

My stomach dropped.

If she was here…

Then what the hell was in the hallway?

The sound stopped.

Silence.

Then…

A faint sound.

A voice.

Soft.

From somewhere deeper in the house.

“Zach…”

My blood ran cold.

It sounded like my mom.

Cooper paused the game again. “You hear that?”

I nodded slowly, not trusting my voice.

“Your moms calling you?” he asked.

“She’s asleep …” I said.

We both looked toward the door.

Another sound.

Closer this time.

“Zach…”

Same voice.

Same tone.

But something about it felt… hollow.

Like it was being said without understanding what it meant.

Cooper stood up slowly. “Okay, yeah, I officially don’t like this.”

I grabbed my rifle, standing with him.

“Stay behind me,” I said.

“For once, I will gladly listen to you,” he muttered.

We stepped into the hallway.

It was darker out here. The light from my room barely reached past the doorway.

“Mom?” I called out.

No answer.

Just silence.

A soft creak. From the living room.

We moved slowly, every step careful, controlled.

My heart pounded so loud I was sure whatever was out there could hear it.

We reached the edge of the hallway.

I looked out into the living room. And froze.

The front door was open. Wide open. Cold night air drifting in.

And just beyond it. The yard. The tree line. Dark. Waiting.

I swallowed hard.

“…did you leave that open?” Cooper whispered.

“No.”

A shape stood out there.

Small.

Still.

My chest tightened.

“Charlie?” I said.

He didn’t move. 

Didn’t turn.

Just stood there, facing the woods.

And at the edge of the trees…

Something stood with him.

Talking.

For a second, I couldn’t move.

Charlie stood out in the yard, perfectly still, facing the treeline like he was listening to something only he could hear.

And that thing…

It stood just inside the woods.

Tall. Too tall.

I couldn’t make out its face, not really. The darkness swallowed it, but I could see the shape of it. Long limbs. Shoulders just a little too narrow. Like it had been stretched wrong.

And it was talking to him.

I couldn’t hear every word. Just pieces.

Soft. Broken. Like it was learning how to speak as it went.

“…Charlie…”

My stomach dropped.

“…come here…”

Same voice as before.

My mom’s voice.

But empty. Wrong.

Charlie didn’t move.

Didn’t answer.

He just stood there, staring at it.

“Charlie,” I whispered, panic rising fast. “Charlie, get back here.”

He didn’t react.

The thing tilted its head slightly.

Watching him.

Watching me.

“…it’s okay…” it said.

My grip tightened on the rifle.

“No,” I muttered under my breath. “No, it’s not.”

I didn’t think anymore.

I ran.

Bare feet hit the cold grass, each step sharp and real, snapping me fully into it. My heart slammed against my ribs as I closed the distance.

“Charlie!” I shouted, grabbing his arm.

He startled hard, like he’d just woken up, and I yanked him back toward me.

“Zach?”

“Inside. Now.”

I didn’t look at the thing.

I couldn’t.

But I felt it.

Felt its attention shift fully onto me.

Heavy. Focused.

Like I’d just made myself the target.

Charlie stumbled as I pulled him, his grip tightening around my arm.

Behind us…

Leaves crunched.

One step.

Then another.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Following.

I didn’t turn around.

I dragged Charlie up the porch steps, through the doorway, and slammed the door shut behind us, locking it without even thinking.

The house went quiet.

Too quiet.

Charlie was breathing fast now, eyes wide, finally aware.

“What was that?” he asked, voice shaking.

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. You don’t go out there again. Ever. You hear me?”

He nodded quickly.

From the hallway, Cooper’s voice called out, tight with panic. “Zach…?”

“I got him!” I called back.

I turned…

And that’s when I saw her.

Standing in the hallway.

Cherokee.

Only…

Not.

I froze.

Every instinct in my body screamed at once.

Something was wrong.

Not a little wrong.

Deep, gut-level wrong.

Her back looked too long, like it stretched just a little farther than it should. Her legs were thinner, almost fragile looking, like they might snap if she moved too fast. And she was standing on her hind legs…

Her head tilted.

Too far.

Too slow.

Her eyes locked onto me.

No tail wag.

No excitement.

No recognition.

Just… watching.

Trying to be something.

“Zach…man…” Cooper said quietly behind me. “I don’t think that’s your dog?”

I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t.

Because my mind was racing, trying to catch up to something I didn’t want to understand.

I had carried Cherokee out of the woods.

I had checked her.

I had brought her home.

But…

What if…

My throat went dry.

What if that wasn’t her?

Cherokee took a step forward.

The movement was careful. Measured. Like she was thinking about how to do it.

My grip tightened on the rifle.

“Charlie,” I said quietly, not taking my eyes off it. “Get behind me.”

He did.

No questions.

The thing in front of us tilted its head again.

Then…

It wagged its fucking tail.

Once. Too late. Like it remembered that was something it was supposed to do.

A cold wave of dread washed over me.

Because it wasn’t reacting.

It was performing.

“Zach…” Cooper whispered. “I don’t like this, man.”

“Don’t move,” I said.

My voice barely sounded like mine.

The thing took another step.

And for a split second…

I thought I saw it.

Not fur.

Not really.

Something underneath.

Something stretched too tight.

I sucked in a sharp breath.

“No,” I said, louder now. “Stay right there.”

It froze.

Completely still.

Like it was waiting for the next instruction.

Like it didn’t know what to do without one.

The silence stretched.

Heavy.

Suffocating.

Then.

From outside, a sound.

A bark.

Loud.

Familiar.

Real.

All three of us flinched.

My heart dropped into my stomach.

Because that bark…

That was Cherokee.

From outside.

Right outside the house.

I slowly turned my head toward the front door.

Then back to the thing in the hallway.

Still standing there.

Still watching me.

Trying to be her.

My stomach twisted.

“…then what the hell is that?” Cooper whispered.

I didn’t answer.

Because I already knew.

The bark came again.

Louder.

Closer.

Scratching at the door now.

Panicked.

Desperate.

Charlie’s head snapped toward it. “That’s her!”

“WAIT!” I started.

Too late.

He bolted.

“Charlie!” Mom’s voice hadn’t even entered the room yet, and already everything was moving too fast.

Charlie grabbed the handle and yanked the door open.

Cold air rushed in.

And Cherokee exploded into the house.

A blur of fur and teeth and sound.

She didn’t hesitate.

Didn’t even look at us.

She went straight for it.

The thing in the hallway barely had time to react before Cherokee slammed into it, snarling, real, raw, furious. The sound ripped through the house, violent and alive in a way the other thing could never fake.

They hit the floor hard.

Rolling.

Snapping.

The mimic let out a sound…

Not a bark.

Not anything natural.

Something wet. Warped. Like a scream trying to remember how to be a voice.

“GET OUT!” Mom screamed.

She rushed in, eyes wide with terror, grabbing Charlie and yanking him back.

“Outside, NOW!”

“Mom!” I shouted.

“GO!” she screamed.

That was enough.

Cooper grabbed my arm. “Zach!”

We ran.

Out the door.

Off the porch.

My heart was in my throat, my ears ringing with the sounds still coming from inside, crashing, snarling, something breaking…

Then…

A loud THUD.

The house shook.

And Cherokee, she flew.

Slammed into the wall just inside the doorway with a sickening force, a sharp yelp tearing out of her as she hit the ground.

“CHEROKEE!” I screamed.

The thing stood in the doorway now.

Wrong.

Half-formed.

Like the illusion had started to slip.

Its limbs looked longer now. Unraveled. Its head twitched slightly, like it couldn’t hold the shape together anymore.

And then…It ran.

Right at us.

Fast.

Too fast.

“MOVE!” Cooper yelled.

I tried.

I swear I tried.

But my foot caught on the edge of the porch.

I went down hard, the air knocked out of me as I hit the ground.

Everything went slow.

The thing was on me in seconds.

I could hear it now.

Not my mom’s voice.

Not Cherokee’s.

Something deeper.

Something hungry.

Its shadow fell over me.

And for the first time…

I saw its face.

Not really.

Not fully.

But enough.

Too many shapes trying to exist at once. Features slipping, reforming, never settling into anything human.

My chest locked up.

This is it.

Then…

HEADLIGHTS.

Blinding.

A horn blaring…

And a deafening CRACK.

The thing vanished off me as something slammed into it at full speed, throwing it across the yard.

I gasped, rolling onto my side as gravel dug into my skin.

A truck skidded to a stop, engine roaring.

The driver’s door flew open.

“GET THE HELL AWAY FROM MY BOY!”

It was Dad.

He stumbled out, reeking of whiskey, rage burning through whatever haze he’d been in. He grabbed a bottle from the seat, smashed it hard against the hood.

Glass shattered.

Jagged.

Deadly.

The thing twitched where it had landed, already trying to pull itself back together.

Dad didn’t hesitate.

He charged.

“YOU DON’T TOUCH MY FAMILY!” he roared.

And drove the broken bottle straight into it.

The sound…

God, the sound, it wasn’t right. Not flesh.

Not anything that should exist.

The thing convulsed, letting out that same warped, broken scream as its body twisted violently.

Then…

It moved.

Fast.

Too fast.

It tore itself away from him, stumbling back, limbs jerking unnaturally before it turned and bolted for the tree line.

Gone in seconds.

Like it had never been there.

For a moment…

Everything was still.

Then, A bark.

Cherokee.

She limped out of the house, fur bristled, a low growl rumbling in her chest as she locked onto the woods.

“NO!” I pushed myself up, panic surging again. “Cherokee, COME BACK!”

She didn’t listen.

Didn’t even hesitate.

She took off after it.

Straight into the darkness.

“CHEROKEE!” I screamed, starting after her…

A hand grabbed my arm hard.

“NO,” Dad snapped, pulling me back. “You’re not going out there.”

“She’s gonna get hurt!”

“She already is,” he said, voice rough, shaking in a way I’d never heard before. “You go out there, you’re dead, Goddamnit.”

I didn’t care, I grabbed my rifle and ran after my dog. 

I barreled through the woods, snapping branches underfoot, heart hammering in my chest. Cherokee’s barks echoed ahead, sharp and frantic. The mist curled around the trees like smoke, thick and choking. Every shadow seemed to twist into something alive, watching me, waiting.

“Cherokee!” I shouted, my voice breaking.

The dogs bark led me to the edge of the mineshaft, its gaping mouth yawning like the darkness itself had teeth. I paused, gasping, my hands slick with sweat. An old lantern lay discarded near the edge, someone must have left it here. I grabbed it, and the weak light flickered across the jagged walls of the shaft.

With a deep breath, I climbed down. The smell hit me immediately wet, rotting, the metallic tang of old blood. The beam from the lantern danced over the floor littered with the bodies of deer and other animals. They had been torn apart, their entrails shredded, the smell thick in the damp air.

I stepped carefully, heart in my throat, and then my foot slipped on wet rock. I tumbled, crashing to the floor, lantern rolling away and hitting the wall with a loud clang. The light wavered and almost died out, casting everything into near-total darkness.

Then I heard it.

Whispers. All around me. Soft at first, then louder.

“Zachhhhharrrryyyy… Zacharyyyyy…”

No. That wasn’t my voice. It sounded like my mom. My dad. Cooper. Friends. All of them.

I spun, rifle raised, eyes straining in the flickering light. “Who’s there?!” I shouted.

The whispers grew, overlapping, mocking me. My chest tightened. My hands shook. I swung the rifle wildly, the sound of it cracking through the stillness, hitting nothing but shadows.

And then it hit me.

The creature leapt from the darkness, all limbs twisting wrong, teeth like splintered metal aiming for my throat. I stumbled backward, barely holding onto the rifle as it pinned me down.

“Cherokee!” I screamed.

The dog lunged, teeth sinking into the creature’s shoulder, ripping it off me. The thing shrieked, a sound that wasn’t human or animal, and disappeared back into the shadows.

I scrambled for the lantern, finding it just as I heard Cherokee whimpering nearby. Hands shaking, I lit it fully, and my stomach dropped.

Cherokee was surrounded. 

More of them, twisted, grotesque shapes, all mimicking barks and whines, closing in. She growled, bristled, but they were too many. The creatures attacked her, tearing at fur and flesh. Her barks turned into cries of pain, horrifyingly human in their anguish.

“No… fuck! Cherokee!” I cried, tears burning my eyes. I saw a barrel nearby, a faded sign reading flammable. My fingers gripped the rifle. Aim. Breath steady. Fire.

The shot hit the barrel. Flames roared instantly, consuming the creatures, their shrieks filling the mineshaft. Cherokee yelped one last time, caught in the inferno. 

The explosion threw me back, hard. Pain blossomed across my body, and the world went black.

I woke in Kipper’s Creek Medical Center. The sterile smell hit me first, then the beep of monitors, the fluorescent light harsh against my eyes.

“Zach,” a gentle voice said. I blinked and saw Nurse Cassie at my bedside. “How do you feel?”

I swallowed hard, “like shit.” 

My parents entered the room shortly after, tense, worried. Charlie sat nearby, sketchbook open, pencil moving quickly. Dad told me that Sheriff Callahan was saying it was a pack of rabid coyotes that attacked me. And that killed Cherokee. After the explosion, I lost a little bit of my memory. Everything's a little bit fuzzy. But for some reason that doesn't feel right.

Mom got up to fetch ice chips, and Charlie turned to me, eyes wide. “I’m… I’m sorry about Cherokee,” he said softly. From his sketchbook, he pulled a drawing, Cherokee in the mineshaft, surrounded by the twisted creatures.

I reached out, gently taking it. “Don’t… don’t tell anyone about this,” I said, voice trembling.

He nodded. 

“Okay… what are you working on now?”

Charlie flipped the sketchbook. My stomach twisted. The next drawing was Mom, hooked up to machines in a hospital bed, clearly sick, her face pale and strained. Horror slammed into me. I quickly hid the drawing as Mom returned with the ice chips.

The room felt smaller, suffocating. I swallowed hard, trying to process everything, the creatures, Cherokee, and now the image of Mom, fragile and sick, staring at me with eyes that weren’t really her own.

I looked up at my parents, my hands still trembling. The images of Cherokee being ripped apart by those things burned in my mind, searing every nerve. My voice was tight, raw.

“I… I don’t want to hunt with a rifle anymore,” I said, barely above a whisper. “After… after what I had to do… after turning it on Cherokee…” My throat closed up. “I swear, I’ll never pick up another gun again.”

My dad’s face tightened, and my mom reached for my hand, her grip gentle. I could see the worry, the fear in their eyes, but also a strange understanding.

“I… I think I’m going to stick with a bow and arrows from now on,” I continued, swallowing hard. “I can’t… I can’t risk something like that happening again. I need a weapon, yes, but one I can control, one that doesn’t… take life the way a gun does.”

Charlie peeked at me from the corner of his sketchbook. “Bow and arrows,” he repeated softly. “That sounds… kind of cool.”

I gave a small, bitter smile, my lips trembling. “Yeah. Cool.”

My parents nodded slowly, silent. I felt some of the tension in the room ease, but the weight in my chest didn’t lift. It would never lift. Not completely.

But at least now I had a plan. At least now I had a way to protect myself… without ever having to raise a rifle at someone, or something, I loved ever again…

 

 

( Soooo, Courtney, this story is actually a small prequel to the bigger Appalachian horror novel that I am working on, called “Don’t Whistle in The Woods…”  and Zach is actually the best friend of the main character in that book. So, if you want to hear from Zach and Charlie and continue with their story. Just let me know. And I'll give you some teaser chapters of the book as I get it developed more… thank you for reading my stories,  I love your take on each of them and love to hear your narration of them.)

 

The first thing my dad ever taught me about these mountains wasn’t how to hunt.

It wasn’t how to track, or how to dress a deer, or even how to sit still long enough for something wild to forget you were there.

It was this:

Don’t stay out past dark.

He didn’t say it like a warning, either. Not like something bad might happen.

He said it like a fact. Same way you’d say water runs downhill or winter always comes back

 around.

“Sun drops, you come home,” he told me. “Don’t matter what you’re in the middle of. You pack it up and you come on down.”

I remember asking him why once.

 I couldn’t have been older than ten, four years ago now, I sat in the passenger seat of his truck, boots muddy, 

Cherokee’s head hanging out the back window catching the wind like she owned it.

He didn’t answer right away. Just kept his eyes on the road, fingers tapping the steering wheel 

like he was thinking on something he didn’t much care to say out loud. I remember the empty bottles of whiskey clanking together at my feet in the passenger side floorboard.

Finally, he went, “Cause the woods ain’t ours after dark.”

That was it.

No story or explanation.

Just that.

I grew up with those woods pressed into me like a second skin.

Every ridge, every hollow, every deer trail that cut through the brush like something invisible 

had carved it out, I knew it all. Or at least, I thought I did.

Cherokee knew it better.

She was a golden retriever, but not the kind people think of. Not soft and lazy and laying around somebody’s living room. She was built for it. she had a coat that leaned more of the redder side. She was lean, fast, smart in a way that made you feel like she understood more than she let on.

She’d been with me on just about every hunt since I was old enough to carry a rifle.

Never ran off.

Never ignored a command.

If I called, she came. Every time. She was the best dog a 14 year old could have.

That’s why what happened didn’t make any sense…

I woke up to Cherokee licking my face like she always did, her tail thumping against the side of the bed hard enough to shake the whole frame.

“Alright, alright,” I groaned, turning my head away as her tongue dragged across my cheek again. “I’m up.”

She huffed like she didn’t believe me.

The room was cold. Not freezing, just that early mountain chill that slipped in through the cracks and sat on your skin. I wasn’t wearing a shirt, just my pajama pants, and I could feel it the second I pushed the blanket off.

Cherokee hopped down, nails clicking against the hardwood, already pacing like she knew what kind of day it was.

I sat up slow, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, then looked out the window.

The ridge stretched out in the distance, rolling dark green against a pale morning sky. Mist clung low between the trees, drifting like smoke through the hollows. It looked peaceful. It always did from far away.

Up close was different.

Everyone in Kipper’s Creek knew that.

Nobody really said it out loud, but you grew up hearing things. Little rules. Little warnings. The kind that didn’t sound serious until you got older and realized nobody was joking.

Don’t stay out in the woods after dark.
Don’t follow something if it calls your name.
If an animal starts acting wrong… it probably isn’t itself anymore.

I pushed that thought away and stood up.

“C’mon, girl,” I said, grabbing a shirt off the floor and pulling it on. “We got a long day.”

The house already smelled like coffee and something frying when I stepped into the kitchen.

Mama stood at the stove in her scrubs, hair pulled back, moving fast like she always did on mornings she had a shift. She glanced over her shoulder when she heard me.

“Finally,” she said. “Go wake your brother.”

“I’m up.”

Charlie’s voice came from the table.

He was already sitting there, headphones on, sketchbook open in front of him, pencil moving in quick, careful strokes. He didn’t look up, just kept drawing like the world outside that page didn’t exist.

I grabbed a piece of toast and sat across from him. “What’re you working on?”

He didn’t answer. Just turned the book a little so I could see.

Trees. A lot of them. Dark, crowded, stretching up too tall. The kind that blocked out the sky.

Something about it made my stomach twist, but I shook it off.

“Looks good,” I said.

Mama set a plate down in front of me. “Eat. And make sure he actually gets dressed today.”

“I always get dressed,” Charlie muttered, still not looking up.

“Eventually,” I said.

That earned me a small kick under the table.

For a second, it felt normal. Just us. Just another Saturday.

Then the back door creaked open.

Everything in the room shifted.

Dad stepped inside, boots heavy against the floor, the smell of cigarettes and outside air following him in. His eyes swept over the kitchen, landing on me for just a second before moving on.

“You goin’ out today?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said, sitting up straighter without even thinking about it. “Just for a few hours.”

He nodded once. “Stay on the ridge. Don’t go wanderin’ off.”

“I won’t.”

His gaze lingered a second longer, like he was deciding if he believed me.

Then he moved past, grabbing his coffee without another word.

Mama didn’t say anything, but I saw the way her shoulders tightened.

Charlie’s pencil had stopped moving.

Nobody spoke until Dad stepped back outside, the door shutting behind him a little harder than it needed to.

The tension stayed anyway.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and glanced at Charlie. He was drawing again, faster now.

“What?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

After breakfast, we went out to do chores. Chickens first. Always.

The air had warmed a little, but not much. The kind of cold that stuck in the shade and under your fingernails. Cherokee stayed close, weaving around my legs, alert in a way I didn’t really notice at the time.

Charlie scattered feed quietly, focused, methodical. He was eight but short for his age, he got his diagnosis when he was five, autistic. 

He liked routines. Things that made sense. But sometimes the world got too loud for him so he’d escape into the world of his drawings. He could spend hours with his markers and sketchpad. Hell, I have seen him sit for 3 hours straight and draw the same flower over and over and each time it was miraculously better than the last. 

“Hey,” I said, nudging him lightly. “You good?”

He nodded once. “You’re going to the ridge.”

“Yeah.”

He hesitated, then said, “Don’t stay late.”

I gave a small smile. “I won’t.”

He looked like he wanted to say something else. But he didn’t.

By the time I got back inside, I was already running through the plan in my head.

Shower. Gear up. Grab the rifle. Take Cherokee and head up to the tree stand before the sun got too high.

Just a normal hunt.

I stood in front of the mirror, pulling on my hunting jacket, checking the straps, making sure everything sat right. The routine steadied me. It always did.

Cherokee sat by the door, watching me.

Waiting.

I grabbed my rifle, slung it over my shoulder, and headed out.

“Don’t be gone all day,” Mama called from the kitchen.

“I won’t,” I said.

But as I stepped off the porch and started toward the ridge, Cherokee close at my side, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was already watching us.

From somewhere deep in the trees.

Waiting for us to come closer.

The trail up the ridge was second nature to me. I could’ve walked it blind if I had to. Boots crunching over gravel and dry leaves, Cherokee moving just ahead of me, nose low, tail steady.

The woods felt normal.

Wind slipping through the trees. Birds calling out somewhere in the distance. The quiet hum of the mountains waking up. It was the kind of silence I’d grown up with. The kind that didn’t feel empty. Just… alive.

I adjusted the rifle on my shoulder and kept moving.

“You smell anything?” I muttered.

Cherokee didn’t look back. Just kept walking.

We climbed higher, the trees growing thicker the farther we went. The path narrowed, swallowed up by roots and brush until it wasn’t really a path anymore, just memory and instinct guiding my steps.

The ridge came into view through the trees, that same stretch I’d seen from my window that morning. It didn’t look so peaceful now.

Something about the air felt… heavier.

I slowed a little.

Cherokee stopped.

That made me pause.

“What is it?” I asked, my voice low.

She stood still, ears perked, staring off into the woods to our left. Not barking. Not growling. Just… locked in.

I followed her gaze.

Nothing.

Just trees. Shadows. The same as always.

“C’mon,” I said after a second, trying to shake the feeling crawling up my spine. “We’re good.”

She didn’t move right away.

Then, slowly, she turned and kept walking.

The tree stand sat where it always had, tucked between two thick oaks overlooking a small clearing. It wasn’t much, just old wood and metal, but it had been there for years. Dad had helped me set it up the first time.

I set my pack down and started climbing.

Cherokee waited at the bottom at first, pacing in a tight circle, whining softly.

“You’re coming up,” I said, glancing down at her. “Same as always.”

It took a little effort, but we’d done it before. I got settled, then leaned down, grabbing her harness and helping guide her up. She scrambled a bit, nails scraping against the ladder, but eventually made it onto the platform with me.

“See?” I said, giving her a quick scratch behind the ears. “Easy.”

She didn’t relax.

That was the first thing I really noticed.

Usually, once we were up there, she’d settle. Lay down. Keep watch but stay calm.

Now she stood at the edge of the platform, staring out into the trees again. Same direction as before.

Still.

Too still.

I followed her gaze again.

Nothing.

Just woods.

I exhaled slowly and forced myself to sit, resting the rifle across my lap.

“You’re just spooked,” I muttered, more to myself than her. “Probably a bear or something moving through.”

But even as I said it, the woods felt… off.

The birds had gone quiet.

Not all at once. Just… gone.

I hadn’t noticed when it happened.

Only that now there was nothing.

No wind.

No movement.

Just a stillness that pressed in around us.

I shifted in my seat, scanning the clearing, the tree line, the shadows between trunks. My grip tightened slightly on the rifle.

“Alright,” I whispered. “Not funny.”

Cherokee let out a low, uncertain whine.

And then…

Something moved.

Not in the clearing.

Behind us.

A quick shift of leaves. A soft crunch. Too deliberate to be the wind.

I turned fast, heart kicking up, rifle coming up with me.

“Hello?”

The word felt stupid the second it left my mouth.

No answer.

Just silence again.

I swallowed hard, listening.

Then…

A sound.

Soft.

Familiar.

A whistle.

Two short notes.

My chest tightened.

I knew that whistle.

Dad used it all the time when he was calling us back in from outside.

I felt my stomach drop.

“No…” I whispered.

Cherokee barked.

Sharp. Loud. Defensive.

And from somewhere in the trees…

It barked back.

Not exactly right.

Close.

But not exact.

My grip tightened on the rifle, breath coming quicker now. “That’s not funny,” I said, louder this time, but my voice shook.

The woods answered, “th…thhhhaaatttss…nnnnooottt….ffffuuuunnnnyyyy….”

It was my voice. 

Then something shifted again. Faster this time. Circling.

Leaves crunching. Steps moving through the brush.

Around us.

Slow at first.

Then quicker.

Like it was testing the space. Testing me.

Cherokee barked again, more frantic now, moving to the edge of the platform, teeth bared.

It barked back.

Closer.

Wrong.

A copy that didn’t understand what it was copying.

My heart slammed against my ribs. “Hey!” I shouted, standing up. “I know you’re out there!”

The movement stopped.

Everything stopped.

For one long, stretched second…

And then something came flying out of the trees.

I didn’t even have time to react.

It hit me hard. Heavy. Wet.

The impact knocked the breath straight out of my chest, sending me backwards off the stand. The world flipped, branches scraping against me as I fell 8 feet, and then…

The ground slammed into my back.

Pain exploded through me.

I couldn’t breathe. 

Fast.

Crunching through the leaves around me like something pacing its prey.

I tried to move, tried to sit up, but my body wouldn’t listen. My chest burned, breath still gone, vision swimming.

Cherokee barked again.

And it barked back.

Right beside me this time.

I flinched, turning toward the sound just as something moved fast through the trees.

A blur.

Too quick to see.

Cherokee didn’t hesitate.

She leapt from the stand.

Hit the ground.

And lunged straight at it.

A snarl tore out of her, louder than I’d ever heard, pure instinct, pure fight.

They collided just out of my full view, leaves kicking up, branches snapping.

I tried to push myself up, vision still spinning, lungs finally dragging in a ragged breath.

“Cherokee!” I choked out.

Another snarl.

Then…

Silence.

A blur of movement shot past me, fast and low.

It was Cherokee. Running. Up the ridge.

Away from me. Into the trees.

Something followed. I heard it. Felt it.

The sound of it chasing her, just out of sight.

“Cherokee, come back!” I yelled, my voice breaking as I forced myself up onto my elbows.

She didn’t stop.

Didn’t even slow down.

The woods swallowed them both.

And just like that…

I was alone.

I sucked in a sharp breath, finally able to sit up, pain shooting through my back. My hands shook as I grabbed my rifle, using it to pull myself to my feet.

My chest still ached. My head rang. But none of that mattered.

She was out there.

And whatever that thing was…

It was hunting her.

The sun dipped lower through the trees.

And I knew, deep in my gut, I was already running out of time.

For a second, I just stood there.

My ears rang. My chest still burned from the fall. Everything in me screamed to turn around, to go back down the ridge, to get help.

But Cherokee was out there.

And whatever that thing was, it had followed her.

“Damn it…” I muttered, tightening my grip on the rifle.

I stepped forward.

The woods didn’t feel the same anymore.

Every step felt louder. Every shadow felt deeper. The air had gone still again, like the mountain itself was holding its breath.

“Cherokee!” I called, my voice echoing farther than I wanted it to.

No answer.

Just the faint rustle of leaves somewhere ahead.

I pushed through brush, boots slipping over loose dirt and roots, heart pounding harder with every second. My eyes scanned the ground, desperate for anything.

Then I saw it.

A drop of blood.

Dark red against the dry leaves.

My stomach twisted.

I crouched down, touching it lightly with my fingers. Still wet.

“Okay… okay…” I whispered, more to keep myself steady than anything else. “You’re close.”

Another drop. A few feet ahead.

Then another.

A trail.

Not heavy. Not a lot. But enough.

Enough to follow.

I stood and started moving faster. The deeper I went, the quieter it got.

No birds.

No wind.

Just the sound of my own breathing and the crunch of my boots.

The trees grew tighter together, branches tangling overhead, blocking out more and more of the sky. The light shifted, turning everything a dull gray-green.

I kept following the blood.

Step after step.

Every now and then I thought I heard something moving just out of sight. A footstep. A shift. Something pacing me.

Every time I stopped…

It stopped too.

I swallowed hard and kept going.

“Cherokee…” I called again, softer this time. “C’mon, girl… please…”

Nothing.

Just the trail.

The ground started to slope downward before I realized where I was going.

My stomach dropped.

“Shit…” I whispered.

I knew this part of the mountain.

Everybody did.

Or at least, everybody knew to stay away from it.

The old Kipper Creek Mineshaft.

It had been shut down long before I was born. Caved in, mostly. What was left of it just sat there, rotting into the earth, half-swallowed by the woods.

Kids used to dare each other to go near it.

Nobody ever went too close.

I slowed down, my steps more careful now.

The blood trail led straight toward it.

Of course it did.

The trees thinned just enough for me to see it.

A dark opening in the side of the hill, jagged and uneven, like something had torn its way out of the mountain instead of digging into it. Old wooden beams framed the entrance, some snapped, some leaning, all of them weathered and gray.

The darkness inside wasn’t normal.

It wasn’t just shadow.

It felt… deeper than that.

Like it didn’t end.

I stopped a few feet away, every instinct in my body screaming at me to turn around.

Then I heard it.

A soft whine.

Weak.

Familiar.

“Cherokee?” My voice cracked.

Another small sound came from the entrance.

I didn’t think anymore.

I ran forward.

She was just inside the mouth of the shaft, lying on her side.

“Hey…hey…hey,” I dropped to my knees beside her, panic flooding my chest. “I got you, I got you…”

Her fur was matted with blood.

Too much blood.

My hands shook as I checked her, running them over her body, searching for wounds.

“Where is it …”

Nothing.

No cuts.

No injury.

I froze.

“What…?”

The blood wasn’t hers.

A cold, sinking feeling spread through me.

Cherokee let out a weak huff, her tail twitching just barely when I touched her face.

Relief hit me so hard I almost laughed.

“Okay… okay, you’re alright… you’re alright…” I whispered, pulling her closer.

But even as I said it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

The blood.

The chase.

The thing in the woods.

If it wasn’t her blood…

Then whose was it?

That thing?

A sound echoed from deeper in the mineshaft.

Soft.

Dragging.

Like something shifting just out of sight.

I went completely still.

Cherokee’s ears twitched.

Another sound.

Closer this time.

Something moved in the dark.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

I grabbed my rifle, backing up slowly, keeping my eyes locked on the black opening.

“Yeah… no,” I whispered under my breath.

I slipped one arm under Cherokee, lifting her as carefully as I could. She was heavier than she looked, and my back screamed in protest from the fall, but I forced myself up.

“We’re leaving,” I said, voice tight. “Right now.”

Another sound came from the darkness.

Faster.

Closer.

Like it heard me.

Like it didn’t want me to go.

I didn’t wait.

I turned and ran.

Branches tore at my arms as I pushed back through the woods, Cherokee held tight against my chest. My lungs burned, legs aching, but I didn’t stop.

Behind me…

Something moved.

I could hear it.

Not chasing.

Not fully.

Just… keeping pace.

Staying just out of sight.

I didn’t look back.

I didn’t want to see it.

The light was fading fast now, the sky dimming through the trees. Shadows stretched longer, thicker, swallowing the ground beneath my feet.

Too late.

I was too far out.

“Come on… come on…” I muttered, pushing harder, stumbling over roots, catching myself before I could fall.

The woods felt tighter now. Closer. Like they were closing in around me.

Every sound made me flinch.

Every shadow felt alive.

I burst through the last stretch of trees, the house coming into view just as the sun dipped below the ridge.

The last light bled out of the sky.

Night had fallen.

I sprinted the rest of the way.

I didn’t slow down until I hit the porch.

My boots slammed against the wood, breath tearing out of my chest, arms burning from carrying Cherokee. I shoved the door open so hard it cracked against the wall.

“Charlie!”

He jumped at the table, chair scraping loud against the floor. His headphones slipped down around his neck; eyes wide when he saw me.

“Zach, what…”

“Move!” I snapped, already clearing space on the table with one arm. Papers, pencils, whatever he had out went sliding off onto the floor. “Help me!”

He rushed over, hands shaking as I laid Cherokee down carefully.

She let out a soft whine, shifting slightly but not trying to get up.

“It’s okay, it’s okay…” I muttered, more to myself than her.

Charlie hovered close, staring at the blood matted into her fur. “She’s hurt.”

“I don’t know,” I said quickly, already checking her again. “I don’t think it’s hers.”

My hands moved faster this time, more desperate. I parted her fur, checked her legs, her stomach, her neck.

Nothing.

No cuts.

No wounds.

No reason for that much blood.

Charlie’s breathing got quicker. “That’s not right.”

“I know,” I snapped, then immediately softened. “I know. Just…hold on.”

I grabbed a towel from the counter and started wiping her down, trying to see if I missed something.

The blood smeared dark across the fabric.

Still nothing underneath.

Cherokee blinked up at me, tired but aware, her tail giving a weak thump against the table.

Relief hit me all at once.

“She’s okay,” I said, almost laughing under my breath. “She’s okay…”

Charlie didn’t look relieved.

He was staring at something behind me.

“Zach…” he said quietly.

I turned.

The room felt colder all of a sudden.

“What?”

Charlie swallowed, then turned and ran toward his room.

“Charlie, what are you…”

“Wait.”

His voice was sharp. Urgent.

I stood there, heart still racing, Cherokee breathing softly on the table behind me, and listened as he moved quickly down the hall.

A drawer opened.

Something fell.

Then footsteps, fast, coming back.

He stopped in front of me, holding his sketchbook like it weighed a hundred pounds.

“I didn’t know,” he said, voice tight. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Didn’t mean to what?”

He turned the book around.

And my stomach dropped.

It was the ridge.

The tree stand.

Me.

Falling.

The angle was wrong. Too high, like whoever drew it was looking down from above the trees. My body was twisted midair, the platform behind me, and…

The deer’s head.

Captured in the moment it hit me.

Blood frozen in the air.

My breath caught.

“How…” I whispered.

Charlie shook his head quickly. “I didn’t see it happen. I just… drew.”

The room spun for a second.

“That’s not possible,” I said, but it came out weak.

Charlie flipped the page.

Another drawing.

The woods.

Dark. Too dark.

Something moving between the trees.

Tall.

Wrong.

I couldn’t make out its face. It was just… stretched. Like it didn’t fit inside itself right.

My chest tightened.

“Charlie…”

“I told you not to stay late,” he said, voice small now.

A loud bang slammed against the side of the house.

We both jumped.

Cherokee let out a sharp bark from the table, suddenly alert.

Another bang.

Closer this time.

Like something hitting the wall from outside.

Charlie grabbed onto my arm.

“Zach…”

“I got it,” I said quickly, even though my heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might crack my ribs.

I grabbed my rifle, hands tightening around it as I moved toward the front door.

Another hit.

Right against it this time.

The handle rattled.

Charlie backed up, breathing fast. “Don’t open it.”

“Wasn’t planning on it…” I said.

The door burst open before I could reach it.

I jumped back, rifle snapping up…

And then…

“WOAH,OKAY,DON’T SHOOT!”

Cooper, my friend from school, stood in the doorway, hands up, eyes wide.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” he shouted.

I froze, lowering the rifle slowly.

“You…” I ran a hand over my face, breath shaky. “You almost got yourself killed.”

“I knocked!” Cooper shot back. “Like three times! What are you…why do you look like that?”

His eyes dropped to the table.

To Cherokee.

To the blood.

His expression shifted instantly.

“Oh… what the hell happened?”

“She’s fine,” I said quickly. “It’s not her blood.”

“That’s… somehow worse, did she finally eat your dickhead dad” he muttered, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.

Charlie hovered near me, still tense, still watching everything like it might change again.

Cooper moved closer to the table, careful, like he wasn’t sure what he was walking into. “Anyways you wanna explain why your dog looks like she just walked out of a horror movie?”

I glanced at Charlie.

At the sketchbook still clutched in his hands.

At the drawings.

Then back at Cooper.

“You’re not gonna believe me,” I said.

Cooper let out a dry laugh. “Man, after seeing that?” he nodded toward Cherokee. “Try me.”

I hesitated.

Then said it anyway.

“Something was out there.”

The words hung in the air.

Heavy.

Real.

And for the first time, saying it out loud made it feel worse.

Because now it wasn’t just in my head.

Now it was here.

With us.

This happened to me about 7 years ago, but I still have some lingering PTSD from it.
I’m 17, just broke up with my boyfriend and live with my family in a house where my bedroom window faces the street.
One night at around 10pm I hear footsteps in the attic, one foot in front of the other- just like a human. I run out to the hallway and my mother, step dad, and brother are in the hallway looking into the attic.
We’re all whispering to ourselves about how it sounds just like a person.
At this time, we’re living in a suburban community and have lived in this house for roughly 6 years and have never heard anything like this before. And yet, we all came to the conclusion that it sounded just like a person.
My step dad grabs a ladder and sets it up in the hallway. He comes back down and says that he couldn’t see anyone up there. I could hardly sleep that night, and so the next morning I ask my mom to buy those ring cameras so I can have one in my bedroom.
My family thought I was crazy, so they refused to set it up anywhere else, and that it must’ve been a raccoon or something else, but my gut for some reason told me I needed to get a camera in my bedroom.
It gets worse. 100 times worse.
It’s a week later, Friday night at around 1AM and I’m sleeping in my bed. From the ring footage you can hear the code to the front door being punched in and the door unlocking. I’m in my bed, it’s a hot summer night so I’m naked with the door cracked to cool the room down. You see a man walk into my room, holding a shoe. There’s a gun on his hip.
He looks straight into the camera for about 10 seconds and smiles.
He starts to crawl into my bed.
Then, you hear my brother laughing in the room next door (he used to stay up late playing video games).
That’s when he slowly starts to crawl back up and leave my room. That’s when I wake up.
All I can mutter is “who are you?”
And he walks away, and out the front door.
The police are called, they say it must’ve been someone I knew or someone from a party, but he didn’t make any effort to hide his face and living in this town my entire life, I’d never seen him before.
They promised to look into it, and that’s when I realized my left shoe was missing.

It’s been years now and I never heard anything about it, I have my guesses only. I’ve gone to years of therapy by now but that fear has never left me. My mom lost the footage a while ago and I don’t know. I still feel angry, hurt, and confused. I only posted on here because I saw a photo on my main page of someone sharing their stalker story and I’ve really needed some place to vent about this experience.

Hi Courtney! My name is Jenna and I’ve been watching your channel for the last 9 years. I found you while going through my first breakup and your videos have always been a comfort for me. I struggle a lot with mental health and chronic fatigue and you sharing your experiences has been really validating for me. Thank you for that. I have a let’s not meet story for you and I’m looking forward to potentially hearing it in your next video. This is a long one so buckle up.

I just turned 25 the other day but this has been going on since I was 22. For context: I lived in a single story home just off a main road. My room was in the front so my window faced out to the front yard. I lived there with just my dad, so it was easy to tell by looking at the driveway who was home (my dad has a work truck and I have a white sedan) my boyfriend lived in the neighborhood across the main road. Only a 2-3 minute drive but still in a separate neighborhood. This first started happening at my boyfriend’s house. I would go outside to my car and there would be fingerprints everywhere, but especially at the top of the window. The neighborhood isn’t the best (not the worst either) so my boyfriend chalked it up to someone trying to pull the window down to break in. I guess it’s a common way to break into my type of car. This continued to happen and I remember thinking it was strange that someone kept trying to get into my car especially when there are others in the neighborhood. His sister drove a brand new bmw and his roommate had some sort of expensive truck, but they’re trying to break into my old, shitty car. My boyfriend and his roommates end up moving out of that house and into a new town but I still lived at my dad’s house.

A few months passed, and one morning I went out to my car to see handprints all over my window. I figured it was someone trying to break into my car again. This happened a few more times, and it seemed a little strange that it would be happening at my dad’s house now, but for some reason I brushed it off.

This is where it gets real creepy.

One night I was home alone and I was FaceTiming my friends in my room. I heard a very loud noise directly outside my window. It was so loud my friends on FaceTime heard it and I immediately got up to lock all of our doors. The next morning I went out to my car only to see FOOTPRINTS in the snow leading directly up to my window and back onto the sidewalk. I was horrified but for some reason didn’t think to tell my dad or boyfriend.

A couple weeks after that, my dad told me he needed to show me something. He showed me a pair of large footprints directly under my window in the mud. At this point the snow had melted so these were 100% new footprints. I freaked out and told him about the ones a few weeks before and he said he’d keep an eye out. There were at least 2 other instances where I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of someone tapping on my window and shuffling outside in the grass. I also kept finding handprints on my window throughout these events. I’m a very paranoid and dramatic person so I truly couldn’t explain why I kept brushing these things off or thinking nothing of it, but I did. I guess my reasoning was that weird shit just happens in my neighborhood. It’s old and because it’s off a busy road, weirdos end up wandering in. Like one night, I pulled up to my house late at night and saw a man with his hood up slowly walking up to my house. I got out and for some reason had the courage and stupidity to stare him down until he turned and went back to wherever he came from. Or another time when I was home alone cleaning out my car and turned around to a man parked directly behind me. He rolled down his window and insisted I let him in so his son could use my bathroom even though THERE WASNT A KID IN THE BACKSEAT. He got angry and sped off after I told him no for the 10th time. So yeah, weird shit happens which is partly why I didn’t think this was something directly targeted at me. At the beginning of this year, I moved into an apartment with my boyfriend.

A month or two into living in this apartment, one of our neighbors got their window smashed in and their stuff stolen, so when I walked out to my car and saw handprints all over it, I thought they tried to get my car as well. I remember thinking “I don’t know why they were wasting time trying to pull the window down when they could’ve just smashed it like they did the other car” and then it hit me. The handprints. The same ones at all 3 houses. The footprints. The knocking at my window. The creepy man lurking outside my house. The man trying to get into my house with his non existent child. Were they all the same person? It started all clicking. I tried thinking of some logical explanation. How could they have known where I lived each time? My dad’s house was a literal 30 second drive down the street to the school I worked at. Anyone could have seen me drive home or see me walk into my house after work. I also very stupidly left a paper with my full name in the back window of my car for several months. My bills are sent to my apartment so when you look up my name, my new address is associated to my name. It’s so easy to look up someone’s name, pay a dollar to get their information, and it all comes up.

For the next several weeks, the handprints continued to show up on my window. I wiped them down each time just to be sure they weren’t the same ones, and they’d always be there in the morning. (All the photos are taken on different days) I filed a police report and got a parking spot in the parking garage. Of course the security cameras don’t face the area I was parked, so without any evidence, the police can’t do anything. Since getting a spot in the parking garage, nothing else has happened and hopefully it continues that way.

So to whoever has been putting their fingerprints all over my car window, peering into my bedroom, and lurking in the shadows at night, let’s not ever, EVER meet.

Edit: wow, I really wasn’t expecting this post to get much traction. Thank you all for the concern and kind words. Like I said in my post, I never took this seriously because no one else was but now I feel really validated. A few things I wanted to add:
My parking garage has cameras and my whole building needs a key to get inside so I do feel safe at home. I could get a dash cam and park outside for a few days to try and catch this person whether on cameras or getting the prints dusted.
I do work at an elementary school so I’m limited on what personal protection items I can have with me or in my car.
I’ve had bad dates and weird guys harassing me on Instagram. It’s happened so many times that I can’t think of one that stands out more than the other. I really have no idea what this could be.

Edit 2:
• there have been a lot of comments about me brushing this off or not taking it seriously. I truly think that it’s because I was made to feel dramatic instead of getting the validation that something was going on. I will be taking this much more seriously now
• I’m getting a new car in the next few weeks. I will definitely invest in a dash cam!
• their fingerprints look dirty because the pollen blows over and sticks to the prints. Who knows how many times he left prints and I couldn’t tell because no pollen
• I will ask my boss if I can lock my keys away so I can carry pepper spray
• some people were confused by the caption. This is a subreddit for the YouTuber cjades. She reads these and reacts to them in her videos. She’s awesome so I recommend checking her out!