Christmas of 2019 was the year me and my two best friends, Mark and Tyler, decided to rent a cabin instead of doing the usual family stuff. We were all in our early 20s, living far from our families, all kind of burnt out from work. And honestly, the idea of lying around for a few days doing absolutely nothing sounded perfect.
The cabin we found was about an hour outside of town, tucked halfway in the woods, but still technically in a neighborhood if 10 other cabins spaced a mile apart counts as one. We got there on Christmas Eve, bringing tons of food, snacks, and beer. And Mark even brought over his Xbox, so we drank and played video games until 2:00 in the morning.
It wasn't exactly a Hallmark holiday, but it was definitely fun. By the time we all went to our rooms to go to bed, I passed out almost immediately. The place was freezing and the cabin creaked like every other old wooden building, but I was tired enough that none of it mattered, at least until I woke up.
It was probably 3:00 or 4 in the morning, still pitch black outside. I didn't know what time it was exactly, but I knew I'd been asleep for a while and that something woke me up. Soft, slow footsteps from the main living area.
Not walking normally, more like someone taking careful steps, trying not to wake anyone. I blinked a few times, half asleep, and figured it had to be one of the guys, maybe getting water or using the bathroom. I laid there listening, waiting for the footsteps to go down the hall or to the bathroom door, but the sound just stayed in the same area.
The creaking boards near the front of the cabin, almost pacing. I wanted to call out and ask if everything was okay, but I didn't feel like yelling from a dark room or going out there and startling them. Eventually, the footsteps stopped.
The cabin settled back into silence. I rolled over and fell asleep again. When I finally got up in the morning, sunlight was coming in through the big living room windows, and the guys were already in the living room.
First thing I did was jokingly ask who was creeping around at 4 in the morning. I expected some stupid answer from one of them about losing their phone while drunk or something. I don't know.
But both of them gave me the exact same confused look. Mark said, "Dude, we all went to bed at 2:00. " >> And Tyler shook his head, saying he didn't get up once.
I laughed it off at first. I figured maybe I'd imagined it or dreamed the sound and mistaken it as real. But then I glanced over toward the front door.
The lock was undone. Not just the deadbolt, the handle lock, too. fully unlocked.
The door was still shut, but the locks weren't turned. I asked if either of them had gone outside this morning. They both said no.
And when I pointed out the door, I saw both of their faces fall flat, as we all kind of realized I might have actually heard someone last night. I mean, we were all fairly sure that we had locked the door. But after a minute of thinking about it, Tyler said, "Maybe the wind shook it loose, or maybe the old door just didn't latch right.
" You know, the usual excuses people make when they don't want to consider anything else. I think it was because all of us wanted to believe that it was nothing, that we eventually just let it go. We ate breakfast, bundled up in our winter coats because it was still absolutely freezing in the cabin, and spent the afternoon hanging around, playing video games, watching movies, and just having a good time.
We also handed out small crappy gifts we'd gotten each other for Christmas, and spent some time facetiming our families. It was snowing too much and way too cold to spend any time outside, even though we all had wanted to go hiking while we were up at the cabin. Over the course of the day, the whole creaking and unlocked door incident faded into just an odd mystery.
But as it got later, I guess I started to get a weird gut feeling. We were all in the living room playing some dumb party game on the Xbox, laughing and yelling at each other. And every so often, I'd catch myself glancing toward the window.
I hadn't noticed it much before, but now the blackness outside felt too close, like someone standing just a few feet back could watch us clearly while we'd never see them. I knew during the day there were some trees just outside of that window, like literally 10 ft away. And yet it was too dark to even see that.
I didn't want to mention the bad feeling I had because I didn't want to kill the mood, especially when I really didn't have a reason to feel the way I did. I never actually saw anything because we had stayed up so late last night. We only stayed up until around 12:00 a.
m. when Mark decided to head to bed early. Me and Tyler stayed in the living room for another 30 minutes chatting before both also going to bed.
I laid in bed awake for a while. Hard to tell the time just sitting there, but it felt like an hourish. There were no curtains or blinds, so the window next to my bed made me feel really uneasy.
And then I heard it again. The soft, quiet footsteps at the front of the cabin in the living room. I sat up and listened as intently as I could.
I knew this time that it wasn't one of my friends because I would have heard them leave their rooms and walk down the hallway. So really, I was just listening to see if it was just the house creaking or if it was actually a person. And after a while of listening, I was absolutely sure that what I was hearing were footsteps.
And with whoever it was just pacing around the room, I finally decided to get up and maybe try confronting them. But as I walked over to the bedroom door, suddenly the footsteps moved from the living room to the hallway. They got closer and closer, walking all the way down, passing by my door, and going toward what I think was Mark's room.
And then it was quiet. I didn't hear anything for several long seconds. I very quietly grabbed the door handle and pushed my door open just slightly enough to peek out into the hallway, not making a sound.
I saw a large man. I mean like maybe 6'5 or taller with long hair and a thick beard. He was standing still facing Mark's bedroom door and just standing there motionless in the dark.
I didn't risk looking for too long and moved away, but left the door cracked open still because I didn't want it to make a click sound if I closed it. And at this point, I didn't know what to do. I froze up, unsure how to get us out of this situation.
But just 20 seconds later, I heard a slight creek in the hallway. And before I could even react, my door was suddenly pushed open. The man stood in the doorway, staring at me with wideopen eyes and an emotionless face.
I yelled at the top of my lungs, and the dude didn't even flinch. Before I knew it, Mark and Tyler came running out of their rooms. And I couldn't see much, but Tyler immediately saw the guy and tried to stop him.
But this dude was huge and basically just slammed Tyler against the wall and threw him to the floor. And Mark was probably just frozen still after seeing that. But then the guy ran off.
Didn't try fighting all of us. He just took off out of the cabin and from what we could tell into the forest. We quickly locked up the place and called the police.
It took over 20 minutes and the whole time we were anticipating the man coming back. All of us were holding whatever temporary weapons we could find like kitchen knives and the iron fireplace rod, but he didn't come back. Really, we got no answers.
And most of the situation fell onto the owner of the cabin as he was the one who had his cabin broken into what that man wanted from us or from the cabin. We don't know. From our few theories though, the one that stands out to me is that he might have been there looking for the owner and not knowing it was a rental.
It would explain him staring at me and seeing all of us and not really bothering with doing anything afterward. But again, it really is just a theory. He just as likely could have been there to harm us and just saw it was three people and decided to run.
Whatever the case, we're all just glad it didn't come down to an all-out fight because I genuinely don't know who would have won in the end. This happened in winter right around Christmas time. I live with my girlfriend [music] who I'll name as Sarah.
And being that we lived pretty far from our families, we almost always went on road trips around the holidays. This year, we were going to Sarah's family's home for Christmas. The drive was just under 11 hours.
Usually, this drive wasn't too bad, but maybe we just gotten lucky the years before. We packed and shoved all our bags and suitcases into the trunk, then left for the road trip on Christmas Eve, hoping to make it there at night and have all of Christmas Day with her family. First couple of hours were quiet.
Think a lot of people had already done their driving for the holiday, so the roads weren't crowded. Eventually, I pulled off at a small gas station to top off the tank and just take a break for a minute before continuing the drive. There wasn't a single other car there.
Sarah waited inside the car with the heat on while I ran inside to pay for the gas and grab us some drinks. The wind was harsh and cold, and the lot hadn't been plowed yet. So, there was basically half a foot of snow I had to run through just to get up to the building.
I opened the door and walked in. And right away, I noticed how quiet it was. I didn't see anyone.
I looked around for a second, but figured they were probably in the back or something and would come out once I was ready. I grabbed a couple of drinks and walked up to the counter, but nobody came up. I called out hello and tried just peeking into the back room, but I didn't see anyone or even hear anyone.
I think the place was actually empty even though the doors were unlocked and the lights were on. It was strange, but after a couple of minutes, I just put the drinks away and went back outside to hopefully at least be able to use the gas pump. As soon as I stepped out, I saw a guy standing at my girlfriend's window.
Looked like he was trying to talk to her, knocking on the window and looking in. He was bundled up in heavy winter clothing, so aside from what he was wearing, I couldn't get a good look at him. I started hurrying over, but as soon as he saw me, he backed up and started quickly walking away.
I got up to the car and watched as he continued walking down to the road. He clearly wasn't the missing worker at the gas station, so now I was even more concerned. I got in and asked Sarah what that guy was doing.
She seemed a little flustered. She said he came up out of nowhere as soon as I walked in, and all the guy was saying was to roll down the window, constantly knocking on it. He didn't say why or really anything else.
Obviously, she found it very creepy and had a bad feeling about it, so she kept the doors and windows locked and didn't respond to him. I didn't even bother staying. I turned on the car and drove out of there, hoping we'd reach another gas station along the way.
That place just had an unnerving feeling to it, and neither of us wanted to be there a second longer. Unfortunately, because of that whole thing, we ended up having to take a detour to a different gas station because a longer main route, the next one was too far and would have risked us running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere and in the freezing cold. And it became pretty clear that things were not going to work out the way we wanted.
With the detour and the snow slowing us down, we were way behind. It was well into the night already, and we were still 4 hours away. Both of us were tired and figured we could stop at a cheap motel to sleep at for a few hours and just arrive at the house early on Christmas morning instead.
Sarah called her family to let them know, and I found a motel just on the side of the highway, a few miles down. The 24/7 motel sign was still on, but the parking lot was empty. I mean, Christmas Eve night is an odd one to spend at a motel.
I pulled in and walked up to the door, feeling relieved to see a clerk inside. I got a small room for the night and headed back out to get our travel bags and get us into the room. We were exhausted and pretty much passed out within 30 minutes of getting inside.
I set an alarm for 2:00 a. m. so that we could get up and make it to our family's house by 6:00 a.
m. I think both of us slept like rocks. I never woke up once during the 5-ish hours we were sleeping.
When my alarm went off, I groggy got up, not even wanting to get out of bed. I let Sarah sleep in for a bit while I packed what little we had, then went outside and tossed all the stuff in the back seat. It still looked like nobody else had come by the motel at night.
It was incredibly cold and the wind was awful. It wasn't even snowing that hard, but the wind was blowing all the snow dust up from the ground, making it hard to see. I ran back in and told Sarah it was time to go, then headed back to the front of the building to check us out of the room.
I walked into the small office room where the clerk was, but they weren't there. I stood still for a moment, feeling the deja vu of what had happened at the gas station. But this time obviously I had seen them earlier.
I took a few more steps closer to the desk and again called out but still nobody was there. However, I saw a bunch of papers all over the floor behind the desk. It looked like the worker had left in a hurry.
I felt this really bad feeling start coming over me as I backed away and ran back out to get Sarah. I sprinted down the row of room doors, opening hours and telling Sarah we had to leave right now. She hurried out and into the car while I grabbed what was left and then also got in.
I noticed my hands were shaking as I turned it on and was just barely able to get the car going through the snow covered parking lot. It was as I was pulling back onto the highway that I passed the side of the building [music] and just caught sight of a man on the side of it. Even from that quick glimpse, I saw it was the same guy from the gas station, same winter coat and everything.
Knowing something was definitely wrong, I got onto the highway and Sarah called 911. We met officers at a gas station 15 minutes away. And this is where it got a lot more disturbing and creepy.
One of the officers brought up how impossible it was that the random guy could have been following us without us noticing. And sure enough, he found a tracker stuck right under the back wheel well on our car. The guy must have stuck it there when he went up to our car at the gas station.
It took over an hour for separate officers to go to the gas station and the motel. and me and Sarah went pale when they reported back that both workers were confirmed missing. So obviously this guy that was following us had something to do with it.
My guess is that he had done something to the worker at the gas station before we arrived. And then when I got there, maybe he thought I saw something that I shouldn't have. So he followed us to probably get rid of us, too.
Can't say for sure because they never found the guy. Only evidence was a blurry image from a gas station CCTV camera. It definitely was the most unsettling way to spend our Christmas morning.
And really, we were thinking about it for the entire holiday week, but ultimately that seemed to be the end of it. After that week, we got no updates on anything. Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything back about either the gas station worker or the motel worker.
So, I think it's safe to assume they're both still missing, which makes it even more eerie to think that both me and Sarah could have been still missing as well had we not gotten out of there. This was 2016. Because of my work and where my family lived and a bunch of scheduling things, this was one of the few times I spent Christmas alone.
I had a nice small house in a good neighborhood. And although being alone on the holiday wasn't great, I still enjoyed the day, either just staying in watching Christmas movies or going for walks around the neighborhood if the weather was decent. That year, Christmas Day started calm.
I woke up to quiet snow falling outside. Not a full storm yet. I made coffee, put Home Alone on in the background, and ate breakfast on the couch.
It was honestly kind of nice. Around noon, the snow started picking up a little, but nowhere near blizzard levels. I decided to go for a quick walk anyway before it was too late.
The neighborhood had the whole holiday feeling to it with lights on the houses, wreaths on the door, and no cars on the road. Just a calm, empty, quiet neighborhood. I only saw one other person on the whole walk.
A guy shoveling his driveway two streets over. Other than that, it was quiet. When I got home, though, the wind was starting to build, blowing snow in little spirals across the street.
I figured the forecast had been right about the storm coming in the evening, but I didn't mind. I had food, blankets, and movies, so I was all set to stay in. The storm hit faster than expected.
Around 5, it went from snowy to white out in under 30 minutes. The wind started shaking the windows. Not enough for me to worry, but enough to remind me that I probably shouldn't go outside again.
And with all that noise outside, the house almost felt extra quiet. I made dinner and kept watching movies. By 8, though, the storm had gotten bad enough it was drowning out the TV.
I could hear things thumping around outside, branches, or maybe loose Christmas decorations. At the time, I didn't think too much of it. It was about an hour later, so around 9, when I heard the first knock.
Not loud or frantic, just a single knock on the front door. Sharp enough to cut through the wind and definitely be a knock. Not a thump like I'd been hearing.
I froze on the couch. No one ever came to my door on Christmas, and no one should have been out in that weather anyway. I muted the TV and waited, listening.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the storm. Then another knock. Three this time.
I got up and walked toward the door, but not close enough for anyone outside to be able to see me through the side window. I didn't say anything. didn't move the blinds either.
I just listened. My door didn't have one of those holes you could look through. It just had the side windows, which of course if I looked through, then whoever was out there would also see me.
I stood there until my nerves started catching up with me. I really couldn't hear much of anything over the storm, but whoever it was didn't knock again, and I figured I should probably just leave it. There was no way I was going to answer the door anyway.
Eventually, I went back to the couch, still tense, but trying to brush it off. I turned the movie back on, but it only took about 5 minutes for me to hear something else. I quickly paused the TV and listened.
It was very faint, but sounded like something being dragged through the snow, slowly moving from the front door all the way around the house. I followed the sound with my eyes until it went up to the back door and stopped. There was no curtain or anything covering that door, so I was hesitant to even peer around the corner and look.
But then there were those three knocks again. I almost couldn't believe it. I stood up and tried to slowly lean around the corner and look at the back door.
Instantly, I saw a pair of eyes piercing in at me. It was so dark, though, I could only barely see the man before I moved back out of sight. What the hell was he doing here?
I felt this was enough to call 911 even if nothing else happened because of how creepy this was. I got my phone and got on the line with an operator. I still stayed in the living room though, honestly just too scared to move and be seen by the man again.
Something about the look in his eyes was horrifying. I think I was standing there on the phone for 2 to 3 minutes when suddenly there was a slight scraping sound and before I could even think of what it was, there was a sudden loud crash against the back door. I heard the glass shatter and parts of the door slamming and falling onto the floor.
The wind instantly flooded the house and covered up any other sounds I could have heard. I assumed the man got inside the house, but I couldn't hear any footsteps or anything, and there was no way I was going to look over there. I quickly hid behind the couch.
Not the best hiding spot, but I didn't know what else to do. The fact that I couldn't see anything and couldn't hear anything other than the heavy winds made the next 5 minutes excruciatingly anxious and tense. I knew the man had to be walking around looking for me or maybe stealing stuff from my house, but I didn't dare try looking.
And then finally, I heard knocks at the front door and a police officer's voice call out through the wind. I got up and sprinted to the door, letting the officer in, but the man was already gone. There were wet shoe prints going throughout parts of the house.
I don't know if he was looking for me or what, but it seemed like after breaking in and barely searching, he just left. His shoe prints in the snow went toward the field in the backyard and were covered up by the blizzard within minutes. Even after the police left, I didn't sleep.
I just sat on the edge of my bed with every light in the house on, listening to the wind rattle what was left of the back door. At some point, the storm let up, but the silence that followed felt even worse. Every creek in the house made me flinch.
The officers returned when the sun came up to take another look. They told me they'd patrol the area for a while, but with the storm burying everything, there wasn't much else they could do. Before they left, one of them said something I still think about sometimes.
He told me that with storms like that, it wasn't uncommon for people to wander looking for unlocked houses knowing the blizzard would cover their traces. But I mentioned the knocking and how he circled my home. The officer just shook his head.
He said that some people test the doors first to see who answers or if anyone does. So, by not answering the first time and then showing myself to him at the back door, if he was trying to find out whether I was alone, I basically gave him the answer. I never really realized how every small choice I made that night sort of led to what ended up happening.
I just got insanely lucky that the man wasn't more determined to find me, because I can only imagine how things would have ended if he did.
