It was a warm early fall morning in October. Colourful, dying leaves crunched under my feet as I walked up the winding hiking trail, leaving civilization behind. I put my headphones in and started listening to my favorite band, deftness. I was lost in the music looking at the beautifully coloured trees that surrounded me. Nature is beautiful I thought, a smile spreading across my face.
I made it pretty far into the woods before I felt a strange sensation throughout my body, almost like a vibration...a negative one. My mind screamed at me to run, but instead I took out my headphones. Everything around me looked normal, but the sound was off. It was almost like everything was muted. There was no sound at all, not even rustling from the wind that blew around me. I wanted to turn and run, but instead my feet carried me further up the trail. As I walked the silence turned into a low hum, and the slight morning light peeking through the trees slowly started to fade. They sky almost looked like it had turned to night with the moon and stars covered in a think veil of clouds . By the time I reached the end of the path a glow started from the sky and was oozing red, the trees around me looked like they were melting, and the hum had grew to an almost deafening intensity. In front of me stood a man. It was not a normal man. His face was youthful with no wrinkles or blemishes in sight, and his eyes were black voids. I felt like if I looked into them that I would literally see hell. His long black hair fell past his waist and he was dressed in entirely all black. I kept my eyes adjusted to his polished black dress shoes, to afraid to look in this monster of a man's eyes. We stood in silence for a few minutes, neither of us moving at all, until I heard his low gravelly growl. " Run!"
Suddenly I could work my legs again and they started running back down the trail as fast as they could. I could feel the man's presence behind me as s ran. It felt as if he could reach out his long bony fingers and hook them on my back if he wanted to. My heart was flying faster than it ever had before. It felt like it might burst. But as I made it further and further down the trail everything started returning to normal. The hum slowly went away and the slight early morning light started to peek through the trees again. I couldn't feel that dark presence anymore. I realized at once that things around me had changed. I was not in the same part of the woods I had started in. Finally after the ringing from the hum in my ears went away I started hearing people call my name. I was so terrified from what had just happened that I just ran down to them and collapsed in a stranger's arms. What they told me when I returned home chilled me to the bone.
What had felt like 20 minutes of running from the evil man had actually been 5 days. The search party that found me was combing an area of woods that hadn't been searched yet and was miles away from the trail I had started on.everyone asked what happened and I told them my story, but they all acted like they didn't believe me. My parents even asked if I had used drugs and maybe hallucinated but I was completely sober when I left that morning for my hike. I guess the explanation they finally settled on was that I had a mental break from the stress of school that had just started a couple months before. I know that wasn't it, school hadn't even gotten very stressful yet. What I saw on that trail was real, and I think I played a messed up game of chase with the devil and survived to tell the tale.
Posted by u/Monitonon92