Breathing Outside the Tent: A Backcountry Nightmare

That's at three am. I heard breathing right outside the tent, slow deliberate breathing. Welcome to Tell Me a Ghost Story. The late night call in podcast where we delve into the world of the supernatural and explore the eerie and unexplained. I'm your host, Michelle Newman. This podcast features true stories from our callers that will send shivers down your spine and leave you questioning the existence of the afterlife. So grab a cozy blanket, turn down the lights. My name is Erica, I've called before. I'm from San Diego, California, currently residing in eastern North Carolina. I've been thinking a lot about stories I told to. Y'all on this podcast, and I happened to remember one that lived my mind. So. I grew up in a abusive household. My father was abusive physically and mentally emotionally to. My mom before I was even born, and that did trickle into my childhood. Unfortunately, I'm the oldest of six siblings between both my parents, and I got to see a lot of traumatic events firsthand. Unfortunately, I grew up on a block that was very closely by. I had neighbors for family members, and it didn't stop my dad from being so cruel to my home. I remember during the times that they would be fighting, I would run and go hide in my bedroom to what I. Believed was a closet space. So it's a long time ago. So I'm trying to remember, but I do remember living in the dew flix next to my grandmother's home where she still lives to this day, and listening to my parents by from this area of my home that I was always alone in to theared I guess I would go there retreat there too, to be able to have those big feeling without being told not to. Anyway, I remember. I have these flashback memories of all the kids on my blog who I grew up with. I still know them to this day. I you'll see them to this day when I go visit back home on my grandmother's street. I remember specifically there was this one girl who always used to make her way into my home. Her name was Sally, and thinking. Back on Sally's actual appearance now is a little bit gary. Sally. Even though she was considered a friend, I wasn't afraid of her. Her Her appearance was fatterly, to say the least. She had this longer type faith and very dark eyes that I don't remember being able to see the whites of. Miss friend of mine, Sally. I recently remembered she ten in my life. She would tend to show up when my parents were fighting or after they had just gotten to a big fight that led to some physical abuse verbal abuse. I remember she would constantly find me in what I think looking back, was like a safe space for me, this closet space in my shared bedroom with my sisters at the time. And mind you, like I mentioned, we used to live nearby a handful of cousins, friends on the block who we went to school with, who were all about the same age as so we were constantly outside. But I do remember in times where I would get caught during the fighting to happen to be inside. I was too scared to leave my room to try to leave the house and fear that it would draw my dad's attention to me. So it was always during those times where I would find my. Friend Sally coming to check on me. And like I mentioned, her appearance now that I think back on it, it was very unsettling, but she, I guess in the moment, I wasn't scared of her because she offered me a sense of comfort, I guess you can say, because she would always come up to me while I was retreated and alone in the spot in my bedroom closet, and she would always ask me if I was okay. She would always have this really sad appearance to her too. I do remember her face looked a little elongated. She looked like she always had a frown on her face, just it was like there that was her face. It looked like a frown, and her eyes were a little bit oversized and hollow like I do remember thinking to myself as a child. Like why why her I like that? Why do her eyes look like that? Vally tended to come to me during times of distress for me, during times of having to deal internally with the back and forth fighting between my parents, the abused inflicted on my mom from my dad that I was written think firsthand my whole life up to that point especially, and she in my memories, she offered me a sense of comfort. She cared, She asked me what was wrong. She'd listen to me, she'd empathize with me in her body language, in her faces, in her work. She would ask me if I was okay, and she would always encourage me, why don't we go outside, because. She would appear to me like at any time of the day. I remember specifically seeing her in the daytime, seeing her cool shaded dinner time. I didn't see her like in my room in the middle of the night. It wasn't anything like that, but it was definitely memories of her coming through the backside of my parents. My parents had a deeplex at the time, and it was easily accessible from the front yard by going through the back flighting door and the back fighting door led to our bedroom. They didn't lead. To like a communal space, so she would really encourage me, let's go outside, let's go out in play with our friends. And I don't have any memories of Sally and the rest of my friends. In fact, I I still know all of those people that I grew up playing with because their families still live on that same block that my grandma still currently lives onto. And I remember asking a couple of those friends if they remember Sally, and none of them can confirm if they remember a girl named Sally, So that was probably would creep me. Out more than anything about this story. Well, Thanks for listening. I appreciate you letting me share. Have a great name. Thank you, Erica from San Diego. You know, I don't even think it matters that no one remembers who Sally is or if she was actually there, because she was there when you really needed her. Hey, Michelle, this is Bobby calling from Little Rock, Arkansas. My grandparents lived in Texaarcana back in the forties, and I want to talk about where the hook man legend really came from, because most people don't know it's based on an actual unsolved serial killer case. So in nineteen forty six, Texarcana was terrorized by someone they called the Phantom Killer. He targeted couples parked on lovers lanes. The first attack happened in February. A couple was sitting in their car when a man in a mask forced them out at gunpoint, assaulted them, but then headlights appeared and he fled. They survived. In March he killed a couple. In April he killed two more people. By May, he'd murdered five people total, three men and two women, all shot while they were parked in secluded areas, and then he just stopped. The case is still unsolved. My grandmother was a teenager in Texarkana during this time, and she said the whole town was paralyzed with fear. Nobody went out at night. Police were doing everything they could, but the phantom was like a ghost. He'd striking vanished. She told me that after the last murder in May, people started reporting sightings of a man with a hook a funk for a hand, lurking near parked cars. It wasn't true the phantom used a gun, but they needed to put a face to the terror, so the hook became part of the story. And then about a decade later, the hook man urban legends started spreading. You know, the one couple parked on a dark road they hear on the radio about an escape mental patient with a hook for a hand. They drive away scared, and when they get home there's a hook hanging from the door handle. That story went national. Every teenager in America heard some version of it. But it came from Texarkana. It came from those real murders, from the phantom killer who was never caught. My grandmother never parked on secluded roads again, not as a teenager, not as an adult. Never, And when I was old enough to drive. She told me the real story, not the hookman version, the phantom killer version. She said that story everyone tells. That's not a story that happened here, and whoever did it, they got away with it. Thanks for letting me. Share that, Bobby from Little Rocks, thank you for sharing your grandmother's story. Your grandmother lived through terror and she never forgot. But the rest of us we made it into a cautionary tale for teenagers, and in doing so, we sanitize real monsters into myths. And that's the scariest part. Michelle, Hey, this is Rob from Eugene, Oregon. I'm calling because I went camping last ball with my buddy Chris, and something happened that I can't explain. We'd been planning this trip for months, backcountry camping in the Cascades, about eight miles from the trailhead, no cell service, no other people, just us and the wilderness. We're both experienced tigers, done plenty of overnight trips. This wasn't our first rodeo. First day was perfect. Got to our spot around four pm, set up camp near this small creek, made dinner, watched the sunset. Everything was good. We were joking around, having a few beers, feeling pretty accomplished for me at that far in sun goes down around seven point thirty this time of year. We built up the fire, kept talking. Around nine pm, we started hearing something in the woods, branches snapping, maybe fifty sixty feet out from camp. Chris thought it was a deer. I figured maybe an elk. We weren't too worried. Animals are curious, they check you out, they leave, We've dealt with that before. But then it started circling us. We'd hear it behind our tent, and five minutes later it's off to the left and in front of us, then back to the right, always staying just outside the firelight, never coming closer, never leaving, just circling for two hours. I grabbed my head lamp and tried to spot it a few times. Nothing just darkness and trees. But we could hear it clear as day. Footsteps, heavy footsteps, not four legs like a deer, or bare two legs like something walking upright. Chris looked at me and said, that's not an animal. We stopped talking, just sat there by the fire, listening to this thing walk circles around our campsite. I had my knife out, Chris had the bear spray. We were both trying to act calm, but I could see his hands shaking. Around eleven PM, it stopped, just completely stopped. No more footsteps, no more sounds. The woods went silent, and I mean silent, Michelle. No crickets, no wind, nothing like everything in the forest was holding its breath. We sat there for another hour waiting for it to come back. It didn't. Eventually we crawled into the tent and just laid there, not sleeping, listening for any sign of it. At three AM, I heard breathing right outside the tent, slow deliberate breathing. I elbowed Chris and he heard it too. We didn't move, We barely breathed ourselves, just laid there fro and while something stood outside our tent breathing. It lasted maybe five minutes, and it walked away, and I mean walked on two legs. I could hear the footsteps moving back toward the tree line. We packed up at first light, didn't even make coffee, just shoved everything into our packs and got the hell out of there. Made it back to the trailhead in like five hours, when it should have taken seven. We didn't talk much on the way down. What was there to say? I looked up that area later. There have been reports other hikers talking about being circled at night, footsteps, breathing. Some people think it's sasquatch, Others say it's a wendigo or some kind of forest spirit. I don't know what it was. All I know is something was out there with us, something that walked on two legs and knew we were there, something that circled us for hours, like it was deciding what to do with us. I haven't been back to that area. Chris won't even talk about it. He's done with backcountry camping altogether now, says he's sticking to car camping from now on. I'm not sure what I believe, but I know what I heard, and I know that whatever it was, it wasn't human and it wasn't any animal I've ever encountered. Thank you Rob from Eugene. Being circled for two hours by something on two legs, staying just outside your firelight, that's primal terror. And then breathing outside your tent at three am. That's why I don't go into the woods. Hey does just then he catcher frame on Indiana. I got one last guest story for New They It's called my dog Tamera. The Pechanese was haunted by a ghost. Well this was back in night Ga one dream. I had a favorite Pechuanese dog that was brown and white, and her name was Tamrath and she also had the dog's mother. When her friend have passed away, she adopted the two dogs from her friend. So this made her second owner. And I said, I don't know if I want to own it a third time. Who knows what would happen to me, But it seems like what the other person that hand trying and contact with her hand died. It was one of the main ladies relatives until at that point name wanted to give it to somebody. I could understand that, but why it apps me us? So anyway, everybody that seemed to contact with that dog died and it was almost we eventually figured out it was the owner that was haunting the dog and so she didn't want to let over her favor pet. Well that's understandable. Well, anyway, the first night I had her, I felt like I was being watched. I looked around the room and I said, Brian, are you in here? That's my brother, And there was no answer, and I said, mother, are you in here? And I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, and the dog pursumed was lying on the floor, and she looked up and she's starting to crowl, and she was looking wildly around her. She spuinly sat up and started barking. And something I couldn't see it that bro I was becoming scared to death and so but anyway, what happened was when the dog kept growling night and lady, leave us loan and peace. You're no longer living, I than Tambra wants to be with us now. And suddenly the window flew open in my bedroom and the dust of wind came through, and the lights went off, and the dog went down the most piercing lawn, depressed how and suddenly the light came back on in the bedroom, door open and shut by it. So anyway, I told my mom what happened. She said, Sydney, you still want to keep the dog, and I said, yes, I do. It's not the dog's fake, So I said, I think we should help her. But anyway, the dog jumped on my lap afterwards, and I wrapped her up in a blight, and I said, Tambor, it's to to be okay. We left her for ten years after that. So this is the city Catcher nave On, Indiana. Sometimes impossible is possible, So this is the city you. Thank you, Cindy for a touching story. You gave that dog ten more years and that's beautiful. Sometimes ghosts just need to know their loved ones will be cared for and then they can finally rest. That's all we have this week, folks, Do you have a ghost story? Call seven oh one four eight four two six six six. That's seven oh one four eight four two six six six, or go to tell me a Ghoststory dot com and leave your story there. Thank you to all the callers who left messages this week. I'm your host, Michelle Newman, signing off. See you next week. Might have been there.