Greetings, lazy legion, and welcome to my new series. Over 10 videos, I'll be taking you on a road trip across the USA narrating one horror story from every state. From the mountains to the valleys and from killers to urban legends. We'll discover why you sometimes have to be brave in the land of the free. Question is which part of the country has the most chilling story to tell... Well, there's only one way to find out. So, sit back, relax, and get ready for a trip down route 666. It's gonna be a bumpy ride... There used to be this old abandoned house just outside of Madison, Wisconsin. A real run-down two-story building that had just been left to rot away. In our teenage years, my good friend Sam and I were keen explorers, so this place seemed like prime real estate for us to check out. We dreamt of finding some lost treasures hidden in the attic or something cool left behind in the basement. We had occasionally walk past the place and stood outside looking at it, talking about actually going inside. Well... One weekend we decided that's exactly what we were going to do. It was the early afternoon around 1:00 p.m. Like I said, this house wasn't actually in the city, it was relatively secluded, so we felt confident that no one would disturb us. We approached the house and tried to look in through the windows... They were so dusty that we couldn't make out anything inside. I tested the handle to the front door and was surprised it had been left unlocked. It creaked open and we were immediately hit by this horrible stale smell, the kind of stench that so many abandoned places have. - Hello...? - Sam shouted half-joking half serious. There was of course no reply, so we stepped into the dark hallway and tested the light switch. No power, so no dice. Because of the dirty windows there was hardly any light coming into the house, so it took a moment for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once they had, we crept into the living room on our left, both of us a little nervous and excited at the same time. Those emotions turned to confusion when we saw what was inside... There... set up on a tripod was a large video camera. It looked completely out of place. This house had obviously been deserted for many years and all of the furniture inside was old and decaying, yet there stood a brand new camera set up and ready to go. It stood out like a sore thumb. It was pointing at the wall. The floor just in front of it had been completely covered in sheets and all of the furniture in the room was covered in plastic. A sinking feeling started swirling in my gut and became heavier when I heard a horrifying noise... Somebody had just locked the back door. Panic set in and the two of us turned and made for the front door we'd just entered through. The silent house was now a flood with noise as we heard the creaking of floorboards above our heads and the muffled whispers of people coming down the stairs. It sounded like there were four or five people all charging down towards us. We made it outside back into the light of day. As we bolted off, I turned and saw something I'll never forget... A man outside the front of the house who had obviously been creeping around to lock the front door as well. I don't know how many people were upstairs when we escaped, but had that guy managed to lock the door before we got out, we'd have been trapped inside with all of them. I don't wanna think about what they had planned with that camera, but I knew we'd just got incredibly lucky. The man outside simply watched as we ran as far away from that house as our legs would take us. We told our parents about the incident who, in turn, told the cops. They eventually got around to searching the place, but by the time they did, it was completely empty and there was no sign of any video camera. Nothing else seemed out of place and nothing else ever came of it. That old house has since been demolished. I hope those men never found some other place to lure people into... Then again, they were all inside there already, waiting for somebody to walk in, so I'm guessing this wasn't their first attempt. And I'm also guessing explorers like us sound so uncommon after all... I hope I'm wrong... Back in the late 70s early 80s, my aunt used to work at this... Ahem... Let's call it a gentlemen's club out in Anchorage. Not as one of the dancers actually, but as a bartender serving drinks to the red-blooded males of Alaska. It was the usual clientele, you know, the bored younger guys looking for some fun, the "desperados" who didn't have a wife or girlfriend to go home to and, of course, the married guys who did, but who were in no rush to go back and see theirs. The club had plenty of regulars and my aunt got to know most of them. You have to be pretty sociable to be a bartender, especially in a place like that... Anyway, there was this one regular... He was always polite and friendly, albeit a little shy. He had acne scars and glasses, and my aunt figured that he'd never been a hit with the ladies. Not even in his younger days... - That's why he was always at the club - she reckoned, but he was always the best tipper, so my aunt naturally became friendly with him. By all accounts, he was a nice guy and, after a while, he started opening up to my aunt. One day, he even invited her to a birthday party that he was having at his home. He said that it was going to be a huge shindig with lots of people coming over. He even offered to give her a ride there, saying it wasn't far from the club. Well, that was nice and all, and my aunt was flattered, but she told him that she had something else she had to do that night. Honestly, she felt a little bad about saying no, but this guy was a customer and she didn't want to mix business with pleasure. Not to mention, something didn't quite ring true about his story... This guy was the stereotypical nerdy type of guy. It didn't seem likely that he was going to be having a huge party with tons of guests. On top of that, several workers from exotic clubs had disappeared in the area in recent years. She figured it was smarter to be safe than sorry. My aunt said that the guy seemed quite disappointed and there was no big tip that night. Time went by and eventually the guy stopped coming to the club altogether. My aunt completely forgot about him. Then, several years later, she was hit by a blast from the past... There... on the television, was the picture of a man, his name appeared under the picture on the screen. - Robert Hansen - He captured at least 17 women, brought them back to his shack in the Matanuska Valley just north of Anchorage, and then hunted them. I mean, literally hunted them for sport. He'd released them into the wilderness, give them a head start and then hunted them down with a rifle and a knife. Once he had killed them, he'd keep pieces of their jewelry as souvenirs. His final victim managed to escape his clutches and thankfully, Hansen was arrested for his heinous crimes. My aunt has no doubt in her mind that he planned on playing a sick little game with her as well, a little game of life and death... I heard somewhere that 5 out of every 1,000 people go missing in Alaska. I'm just glad my aunt wasn't one of them... My friend John recently convinced me to share this story that happened to us near McCall, Idaho. We'd like to hear what you all make of it, 'cause it sure beats the hell out of us. John's parents owned a lakeside cabin, and we had decided to spend the weekend there with our other friend Tom. We just planned on kicking back with a few beers, going out and enjoying nature. This place was quite a ways out of town and pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Not another living person around for miles in any direction. We shared some laughs on our journey there, talking about all the things we were going to get up to. The place was a small but stunning log cabin overlooking this picturesque little lake. We spent what was left of the daylight unpacking, cracking open cold ones and swimming in that lake. We dived off the wooden dock into the water. Cannonballing each other and just generally having a fun time. Night time rolled around and the three of us were playing cards inside the living room area of the cabin. It was a nice peaceful evening, and we were starting to wind down after the long day. Now it was a relatively quiet night, but at around 11 p.m things became real silent... Any rustling outside had stopped along with the sound of the breeze and the hooting of birds. Out of nowhere, this eerie silence just filled the air... There was nothing suggesting danger, but we all looked at each other like we all felt something strange in the atmosphere. It's hard to explain... But for a few seconds the nothingness felt like something, something horrible. That's when this loud splash broke the silence. It sounded like something huge had just fallen from a great height into the lake. We rushed outside to see what it was. That's the curious part... The water was completely still, no ripples whatsoever. But there was something there, something large floating in the lake. We got nearer to the water's edge to take a closer look. We could make it out now... It wasn't a thing, it was a person... A body floating facedown in the water, arms outstretched. It looked like a man and it seemed as if we were too late to help. The body was bloated like a waterlogged corpse. Where the hell had he come from?! Nobody else was meant to be around anywhere nearby. We all started freaking out and John ran down to the wooden docks walkway to try and pull the guy out. I fumbled for my phone to call for an ambulance. Tom looked on in horror as John got to the end of the walkway and kneeled down to grab the body as it floated by the dock. As I was on the phone, I heard John shriek. Something had spooked him real bad. Tom ran to his aid, but John came rushing back to intercept him pale as a ghost. - Guys, there's nothing we can do for him. He's gone. Come on, let's get back inside. Upon hearing this, Tom looked concerned. - Dude - he said - we can't just leave him there. We have to get him out! Tom started moving towards the body. - No, Tom - said John - not you! Come on, back inside, now! John's tone was so serious. I hadn't heard him speak like that in the longest time. It kind of frightened me to be honest. And it definitely convinced Tom who turned back and hurried inside the cabin. We all waited in the living area for the ambulance to arrive, looking outside every now and then to see the body still floating facedown in the water. The old red and blue lights took a long time to get to us, but as soon as they pulled up, we rushed out to greet them. We told them about the body in the lake and went to point it out to them. But that's the thing... It wasn't there. The corpse was nowhere to be seen. Where the hell had it gone? Had it sunk? Divers searched the small lake and found no trace of a body whatsoever. The water was empty. There were absolutely no tire tracks near the cabin, nothing unusual or out of place. Nowhere for anyone to go... Where the hell had the corpse gone? The man had been facedown in the water for ages. He wasn't exactly in any condition to just stand up and walk away. If this was some guy just messing with us, we had no idea how or why. This whole experience shook me up pretty bad, but I honestly wouldn't be sharing this story if it wasn't for what John told me... Remember that John shrieked? Well, he hadn't told us what scared him so much that night because he didn't want to freak Tom out. But, in private, John confessed to me what had happened... He said that as he leant down to examine the body, the corpse's head turned up to look at him. Its hand grabbed his arm. Its face was charred, Its eyes milky-white. - It looked at me, bro - said John - it looked at me and it said: - Why you, not Tom? John told me this with complete sincerity and I for one believe him. We've never been back to that cabin since, and I think we'll keep it that way... My boyfriend and I were driving through Northern California. This was some time ago now, so I forgot which city we were heading to. We were only going to take some pictures. My boyfriend was a photographer and he needed to snap something specific for work. We didn't know where we were going and we took a wrong turn somewhere. We ended up in the middle of nowheresville, so we pulled on over to the side of the road to work out where the hell we had gone wrong. As we were discussing directions, this rusty old pickup truck comes moseying on down the road behind us. It pulls up just behind our car and this tall beardy cowboy looking fella steps out. He approaches the driver's side window of our car... My boyfriend winds it down. Instantly, the smell of booze hits us. This guy reeked of it. The man asked where we were headed and we told him. - Oh, yeah! That's just up yonder in these hills. No more than a couple of miles - he said in a deep gravelly voice. His throat had obviously been punished by years of alcohol abuse. - You just need to take a quick picture, right? It's easier if you just get in with me, I'll drive you back here afterwards. He kept on aggressively insisting that we get in his truck with him, that he'd drive us up into the hills to our destination. - Get in! Come on! I'll take you, get in! I knew this guy wasn't to be trusted, so many bad vibes. My boyfriend on the other hand was on the verge of getting out of our car and joining him. Had I not been there, I'm sure he would've. I hit the "lock all doors" button and told my boyfriend to floor it. He looked confused, but obliged. As we sped away, we heard the guy shout something since my boyfriend's window was still open. We heard him clear as day: - You made the right choice... - he cackled as he turned away. We soon learned that our destination was 20 or so miles in the opposite direction, not up the hill like this man had said. What did he have planned for us up there? I don't like to think about that too much... ~~This story reminds me of the "The Bag Lady" ~~ Where I live - semi-rural East, Tennessee - we have our very own version of Freddy Krueger. If you're from my neck of the woods, you may have heard of him. He's known as Skinned Tom. In life, Tom was a good-looking guy who liked the ladies. Once he'd dated all of the available girls in his area, he started seeing a girl in the next town over, not knowing that she was married. Eventually, her husband got wind of what was going on and found revenge on the two of them. He told his wife that he was going out of town for the weekend. Then, he hid in the woods behind their house. As he had guessed, that evening Tom showed up to take the lady out. The husband followed them to a nearby Lovers Lane. Things were getting pretty hot and heavy when all of a sudden the car door was jerked open and Tom came face-to-face with one very huge very angry looking man wielding a hunting knife. - Oh, God - screamed the girl - it's my husband. - That's right, you dirty tramp - yelled her husband - And I'm about to teach you a lesson you'll never forget. He pulled her off Tom, ran the knife into her stomach once and then tossed her aside. Then, he turned back to Tom grinning maniacally. - Don't hurt me - begged Tom - I swear to God I didn't know she was married. But the wronged husband didn't listen. There... deep in the forest, he pulled Tom out of the car, dragged him deep into the woods and skinned him alive with the hunting knife. The husband then handed himself in to the police. When the cops went to investigate the crime scene, they found a whole body's worth of human skin hanging from a tree branch. What they never found, however, was Tom's body. It had disappeared along with the hunting knife. It's easy to see how an urban legend was born out of this killing. To this day, many people still say that they've seen the specter of Tom walking in those woods. Stories of alleged sightings have circled around East, Tennessee for years... He's described as a bloody skeleton in 1920s clothing carrying the knife he himself was skinned with. All the teenagers around here grow up hearing: "Don't go to Lovers Lane if you don't want to be Skinned Tom's next victim". That image of a bloody red man with a knife has always creeped me out... He won't catch me around Lovers Lane, I can assure you of that. A big thank you to Anthony Salinas for making the thumbnail for this video. You can check out more of his artwork by following the link in the description below. I'd also like to thank my biggest supporters on patreon: John Crouch ReyPriceBurton Marley Wright Crawford K McDonald Scion of the Emperor Monica Mendoza Alex Greensall Philip Westre Gina Valera Bobthedavil ProCupidineNata and Lester Llido Thank you for supporting the channel guys, and thank you all for listening. Stay spooky and remember... The best things happen in the dark.
