This is part six of my American road trip, in which I'm narrating one scary story from every US state. 25 have already been covered, so be sure to check out all the other episodes in the series after this one. Don't worry, they aren't in any particular order. Now buckle up, as we make our way over the halfway point of our journey down Route 6 6 6. I grew up in a small community in Pennsylvania. I was young at the time... maybe four or five years old. This is the earliest thing I can remember in any detail, mainly because it's the kind of thing you can never forget. My parents went out for dinner one night with friends. They'd arranged for one of our neighbors (a teenager called Laurie) to come over and watch me. She was a nice girl, friendly and always smiling... let me stay up and watch TV past my bedtime, so she was cool in my books. That particular night I remember I was watching Aladdin for the four or five hundredth time. Eventually, Laurie came in and told me it was time to go to bed. She led me upstairs into my room, tucked me in and made sure I was okay. Then she flicked off the light and wished me a good night. Not long after, I awoke to the sound of a car pulling up outside our house. My parents must be home I figured. I was wrong. Within seconds of hearing the car outside, Laurie came rushing up the stairs. "Sam! Sam, sweetie, get up!" She came charging into my bedroom, desperately trying to hide the obvious look of fear on her face. What had rattled her so much? Before I had a chance to ask what was wrong, she lifted me out of bed. "Sam sweetie, don't be scared, okay," she said in a hushed tone. She quickly pulled open my closet door with her free hand... then she sat me inside it. "Whatever happens, just stay in here, okay?" "Don't make a sound. Just like in hide-and-seek. You have to stay real quiet. Got it?" My little heart was beating fast, but I didn't know what to say, what to ask. Were we playing a game? Was something bad happening? I remained silent and confused. "You promise you can stay quiet?" she asked me. I nodded my head: yes. Laurie flashed me a smile. Even as a kid I knew it was forced. Then she lifted her finger up to her lips. And with that she closed the closet door. I sat inside that dark closet, hunched up in a ball, listening intently to what was going on. I heard Laurie speedily make her way down the stairs. Then I heard the sound of the front door opening. She was talking with someone. I don't know who. A man with a deep voice by the sounds of it. Then another male voice chimed in. I don't know what was being said, but within 30 seconds things had escalated. There was shouting, followed by a whole lot of screaming... Laurie's screaming. To this day I've never heard anything like it. High-pitched cries of pure terror, as if from an animal that knew it was about to be slaughtered. I could hear scuffles, and the men were shouting. Soon Laurie's voice began to fade, as if she was being dragged outside by the men. Then I heard her screams no more. Everything below me went quiet. Whoever was down there had now left the building, taking Laurie with them. I kept to my word and stayed hidden in the closet. From the outside I could just about hear a single set of footsteps entering the house again. Whoever it was was walking around the entirety of the lower floor. I could trace their movements from the sound of their boots pounding on the floorboards. They moved from the hallway into the living room, through the dining area and into the kitchen, then back to the hallway once more. They began to make their way up the stairs. Sweet lord. They made their way through each room. Their footsteps were slow and methodical. I heard my bedroom door creak open. From the crack under the closet door I could see the shadow of someone's feet standing in the middle of my room. It wasn't Laurie. I raised my hand to my mouth to silence my breathing. They stood there, presumably scanning the room... then, after a few seconds passed, made their way back out, and walked back down the stairs. A car engine began flaring outside, and the house fell silent once again. I didn't move. I couldn't. I stayed hidden in that closet, terrified that there was someone outside waiting to get me. After what could have been an hour or an eternity, my parents finally arrived home. I was safe. Nobody ever saw Laurie again. The authorities never found her. Nobody knows where those men took her or what they did with her. Despite all the screaming and there being neighbours around, apparently nobody saw or heard a thing... which to me has always seemed weird. I don't know who came to take her that night. I don't know how they knew where she was, what she had done to them or even what they wanted. Now I'm a fully grown adult, and looking back, I wonder if she got mixed up in some bad business. Mixed in with the wrong crowd so-to-speak. Whatever the case, I remember she was a nice person, and she didn't deserve what happened to her. She definitely saved me that night though. For that I'll be eternally grateful. i remember moving house not long after that incident. My parents couldn't stand the thought of living in that neighborhood after that. I live alone in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. One night I was home alone, watching TV all by my lonesome. I found company in the good people of Frasier, my favourite sitcom. Nothing like a little bit of light-hearted comedy to end the day with. I had turned up the volume relatively loud and was in that tired state of mind where I wasn't really thinking about anything in particular. I was just zoning out in my comfy chair. Halfway through the episode a shadow appeared on the screen. Soon it dawned on me what it was... From the light in the hallway behind me I could make out a silhouette reflected on the TV screen. I wasn't expecting company. I turned around to see a man I had never seen before in my life standing behind me in my living room. He must have been 6'2", was wearing all-black, and was holding a sharp blade. I hadn't heard anybody come in, nor any footsteps. He'd been creeping up on me, his movements masked by the sound of the canned laughter. We stared at each other for a good 10 seconds, neither of us moving or even blinking. Just 10 seconds of solid expressionless eye contact. "Wrong house," he said, before turning and walking out into the hallway. I watched as he slipped on the shoes he had taken off, and then casually strolled out the front door. I jumped up to bolt the front door, only to find that the lock had been tampered with. I wasn't going crazy. I had locked it when I got home. First thing I did the next morning was go and get a new, stronger lock. Strange to think how one moment you can be relaxing without a care in the world, and in the next everything could be taken away from you without warning. I live in a small town that sits alongside Bayou Teche, a huge body of water that stretches on for 125 miles in the heart of Cajun country. Where we're from there's a little-known urban legend. Only folks who live around the Bayou seem to know about it, and even then only in certain circles. I only came to learn about it after I had an encounter with this 'thing' myself. I'll get straight to it. I was out walking with a couple of friends of mine a few years back. One of those boring summer afternoons where you don't have anything to do but wander around aimlessly. Out of nowhere, all the sounds around me stopped. All I could hear was an eerie, loud breathing filling the air. It wasn't my breathing, nor the breathing of my friends. It was coming from elsewhere. But it was loud, and it was prominent, and it was literally the only thing I could hear. "Do you guys hear that?" I asked my friends. Well, I think I asked... I could feel the words escape my mouth, come out of my throat, but I couldn't hear them. I couldn't hear what my friends were saying back to me either. Their lips were moving, but all I could hear was that damn breathing. No birds or rustling or footsteps or any other natural sounds at all. It was surreal. "Hold up," I said... tried to say... and motioned for my friends to wait for me. I then moved towards where I thought the breathing was coming from: behind a few trees next to the Bayou. As I got closer, the sound of the breathing became louder and louder. I knew what curiosity did to the cat, but nonetheless I followed that damn breathing to its source. It's hard to explain why... I just felt compelled to. It was like a magnet drawing me in. The weird part was the different sound of each breath. They were more like gasps if that makes sense. Like the person was struggling to breathe. They were all different from each other too, as if every breath was coming from a different set of lungs. I continued on to where I thought it was coming from. I came to a break in the foliage. There, 30 feet ahead of me, sitting on the edge of the Bayou... was a man. He was wearing a western-style hat and a brown leather jacket. That's about all I could make out, seeing how his back was turned to me as he looked out across the muddy water. He was completely motionless, like he was really focused on something, but there was no doubt in my mind that the breathing was coming from him. Despite the weirdness of the situation he didn't seem scary to me. I felt calm and serene. For whatever reason I thought about approaching him. I managed to shake that thought out of my head and instead called out a soundless "hey!" Only the man's head moved. It slowly turned around to face me. His skin was the same shade as the leather of his jacket, and he looked to be half decayed. He had no lips, no eyes... just exposed teeth, and two huge black holes. After staring at me for a few seconds the man began to stand up. All sounds came back to me in that instant. As I looked into those dark pits in his face my sense of calm disappeared. Now all I was filled with was dread. I bolted and ran back to my friends, told them we needed to leave immediately and explained everything on the way. Most of them told me I was crazy, but one of them told me to come and talk with his grandparents. You see, the folks whose family have lived around Bayou Teche for generations... they know about the man. I've heard several names floating around for him. Swamp Man, The Cajun Devil, but most just call him the Bayou Man. They say he's like a siren, that he travels around the circumference of Bayou Teche on a continuous loop and draws people away from their friends and families. Brings him out to him. Then he lures them to the water's edge and holds them under the muddy water until they expire. He leaves them at the bottom of the Bayou for the gators. His weird breathing... they say it's made up of the final gasps of each of the people he's ended. "You can sleep tight now," they all tell me. "The Bayou man, he'll only try to get you one time... You got lucky." I guess I did. I'm glad I didn't fall for his trick. I was in Hawaii, visiting my girlfriend at the time. I had rented an Airbnb apartment to stay in which was a little different to say the least. To get into the building you needed to be buzzed in via the intercom system, then once you'd made your way through the front door there was a small stairwell that led up to a sort of 'second front door'. From there you could walk into the apartment. Two layers of defense so to speak. As such, when night fell, I only really bothered to lock the first front door. I wasn't expecting any visitors while I was there... well, other than my girlfriend of course, but we spent pretty much all of our time together so I never needed to buzz her in. As a result I never bothered to work out how the intercom system actually worked. There were three unmarked buttons on it, all of which did God knows what! It was my sixth or seventh night there, and my girlfriend needed to spend the night at her parent's place. I was going to be staying in Hawaii for a few weeks, and she couldn't exactly spend every night with me obviously. We'd spent the day on the beach together and she left right before dinner time. As I recall it was around midnight. I was still awake, lying in my bed, watching something online. That's when the intercom sounded... Strange. Like I said, I wasn't expecting any visitors, so I figured someone must've got the wrong house. It buzzed again, so I got up and walked over to the intercom. Not sure which button I was supposed to press, I held down the one on the left. "Hello," I said. "Can I help you?" I could hear someone on the other end of the intercom. They weren't making much noise, but it was obvious someone was outside the building. They didn't say anything. "Hello, can I help you?" I could still hear rustling on the other end of the intercom, but there was still no reply. Obviously my first thought was that they couldn't hear me. I figured I had to press another button to talk to them. I tried pressing a different one. When I pressed it, there was a distinctive metallic *click*. By pressing the button I had accidentally buzzed whoever it was in. I heard somebody walk through into the stairwell that led up to my apartment. I then heard footsteps making their way up the stairs towards me. My thoughts turned to the lock. In a nick of time I managed to press my body up against the door and dead-bolt it. Two seconds later the doorknob rattled. Somebody was trying to get inside. Had I not reacted quickly enough, they'd have already been in there with me. I twisted the main lock on the door for good measure and peered through the eye hole. On the other side of the door were not one, but two men, both with their hoods over their heads. The one in front was concealing something in the pocket of his hoodie. "Your girl... is she home?" one of the men said through the door. My body tensed up and I didn't respond. "We saw you on the beach together." I worked up the nerve to shout back "get lost before I call the cops!" He tried the handle again, rattling the door hard. The door pounded a couple of times as he threw his weight up against it, trying to barge in. Thankfully it was sturdy and held firm. I heard a low grumble, and then movement on the stairs. I watched through the eye-hole as they both walked back down the stairwell and out of the building. They left the first door wide open. I waited a few minutes before rushing down myself and closing it. I went back inside and made sure to lock the second door. I ended up staying at my girlfriend's parent's place for the rest of my trip. A lot less fun, sure, but a heck of a lot more safe. The thought that those men were watching us while we were on the beach, and the fact that they have planned something... That's the part that gets me. In my late teens I used to take part in competitive snowboarding. One of my competitions brought me to Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia. While I was there I couldn't shake this a weird feeling. I chalked it up merely to pre-competition excitement, to the constant gray skies, and the fact that I had to cross two state lines to get here with my mum driving me. I made friends with some of the other competitors, one guy in particular. He and I both practiced the course together from time-to-time. It soon became quite apparent that not all of these courses were as well maintained as they ought to be. "Watch out for that one kicker," I was told. "It's dangerous." For reference, a kicker is a type of jump in a sense. While normal jumps are wedge-shaped and shoot the snowboarder upward, a kicker is more curved and launches you forward. They can be dangerous because if you hit them wrong, you're basically throwing yourself headlong in any direction but the way you want to go, and there's little you can do to recover at that point when you're speeding down the slope at roughly 25 miles an hour. None of us wanted to hit that kicker very hard. There were too many trees around for our liking. The thing is, with this competition guaranteeing the winners a spot in the Nationals, many of us were itching for as many points as we could get. The day of the competition came. It was a weird day, grey clouds... Everything felt heavy and off. I took my run among the first. I made it down the mountain, making decent time. On the way back up I saw it... Those iconic red jackets and a long stretcher covered up. Instantly I knew. My buddy had gone hard on that kicker after all. The officials tried to play it calm, but there's no coming back from a broken neck. A dark mood hung over us all. It was getting late and my mum was ready to go home. Frankly, so was I. As soon as I got my awards my mum hurried me into the car, and I managed to slip into the driver's seat still in my gear. The drive back home was going to be a long one. It led us down winding, ill-lit back roads all the way through the mountains. The clouds from that morning never went away, covering the stars, nor did that weird feeling. I was tired, sore, and the thought of my new buddy (now deceased) hung in the back of my mind. I just wanted to get away from there. After driving for a while I started to bake inside my heavy snowboarding gear. I told my mum I needed to pull over and take some layers off. It was very dark, and the only traffic on this road other than us were a few semi-trucks. Thick wooded slopes and mountain rock faces lined the highway. No off-ramp until we got down from the mountain. Up ahead, I saw a small curved dirt turn-off, barely the length of three cars. I quickly pulled in towards it. As the car eased to a stop I noticed something in the dim reach of my headlights: a large, painted boulder with something sitting on it. Reaching for the car door, I strained my eyes to see what it was. It looked like a large, weird shaped, upright rock with thick branches. "What is that," I wondered. Suddenly, my mum started to hit my arm. "Get us out of here!" she ordered, frantically. "What? What is it?" I demanded, still trying to make out the shape. "Drive!" she shouted. I could feel the weight of her hand hitting me through all my thick layers. Then my tired eyes focused, and I could make out what was on the rock. It wasn't a log. It was a severed deer's head. It was perched upright on the rock, its cloudy eyes shining in the headlights, its tongue hanging out, red oozing down the side of the boulder staining it a dark colour. My heart started pounding in my chest. I looked around and noticed there were no other cars or trucks in the small pocket and there was room really for only one or two cars. "Drive!" my mum shouted again. I Had to wait for a large semi to pass by first before pulling back out onto the main road. All the while that thing was staring at me. It was only a few minutes but it felt like an eternity. I could barely think between my mum shouting and the flood of panic squeezing my chest. As soon as that truck passed, I peeled back onto the highway. Where did that thing come from? Who put it there? And more importantly, why? There were no other people in the area that I could see, and no way for someone to park a truck or car. Was it some sick prank? Was there something waiting in the trees just out of sight? Was it really some sort of trap meant to throw us off? Or was it just some sort of omen related to my now gone buddy? I have no idea, and I really don't want to know. But yeah, that's my story. Just be careful if you find yourself driving through the mountains of West Virginia. Always be aware, and don't take chances unless you have to. We made it down the mountain okay, and I've been back to Snowshoe since then. Thankfully. I've never come across anything like that again. It was just a weird day, I guess... a very dark, weird day. Well, we're over halfway through our journey now, so I hope you guys are enjoying the ride. A huge shoutout to Ranger Reeb for creating that new outro for me, I think it looks amazing, so guys, please make sure to check him out via the link down below in the description. That'll take you to his Instagram page and you can check out some more of his animations and amazing artwork. Speaking of artwork, another shoutout to Antony Salinas. He made the thumbnail for this video. A link to his stuff can also be found down below. Finally, a huge thank you to all of my supporters on patreon, especially my biggest supporters: samuel cotton, cat myers sara ramirez Maricruz Cedano Matthew J. Bower anime wimp, fun with failure, crazy mask parade, James labor John Crouch, Pro Cupidine Nata Gina Valera Philip Westre Alex Greensall Monica Mendoza Scion of the Emperor Crawford K McDonald, Marley Wright and Ray Price Burton. A salute to all of you. Thank you. I'm actually going away to Japan for a couple of weeks, but don't worry, I'll still be releasing a video while I'm out there. Until then guys, you all stay spooky... and remember: The best things happen in the dark.
