Hey, campfire crew, let's get it on.

I was feeling generous.

I'm Thanksgiving by J Persnickett.

It was Thanksgiving twenty eleven and I was celebrating at my grandparents' farm in the little town of Seville, Florida.

It's north of DeLand.

I had had way too much to eat that holiday and was about to leave to drive back to school in Tallahassee.

I stopped at the one little gas station in town to fill up before getting on the highway.

I had just finished filling up when a lady walked up to me.

She was really ratty looking, with crazy blonde dyed hair, but this is the backwards of Florida, so no judgment.

There were really kind people who like that in those parts.

She started talking to me about how her car had run out of gas, and she pointed to an old junker parked over near the convenience store and if I could possibly give her some cash to get home.

I usually don't say yes to things like that, but it was Thanksgiving weekend, so I was feeling extra generous.

I told her that I'd be happy to fill up her car a little to get her home.

Then it started getting weird.

She kept insisting I give her cash, and that the car was so empty she couldn't drive it to a pump.

I don't know why I didn't leave right there and then, but again I was in a very good mood.

I told her if she had a gas can, I would put some in, but I didn't feel comfortable giving her cash.

She kept objecting, but eventually went over and pulled a gas can from her car.

I started filling it up.

She put her hand on me and said, do you have a girlfriend?

I told her no politely.

She said she wanted to pay me back somehow for the gas and asked if I wanted to come to her place.

I told her no, less politely.

She kept touching my shoulder, thanking me, and then offered me a blowjob behind the station.

So I stopped at the gas pump, got in my car, and left her there with the gas can.

I called my mom a little later and told her about the creepy, sleazy encounter, and she paused and asked me if the lady had ratty blonde hair and looked like she was on drugs.

I confirmed that yes, that was what she looked like, and how could she know that this lady was apparently all over the news.

She was a prostitute in town and had been at a party earlier and exchange had gone south, and her baby had been kidnapped by a client of hers and left under a bush in town.

She hadn't even bothered to call the police about the missing child until later they were both arrested and charged.

Terrifying tradition submitted by Sharon Z.

For many years, I hated Thanksgiving.

A lot of people don't believe me when I tell them this story, but my entire family lived it.

So there's that.

For twelve years, from nineteen ninety eight to twenty ten, every attempt my family made to celebrate together ended in horror.

And it wasn't small subtle things.

Sometimes it was violent, like whatever was causing this hated us.

I remember the very first time Thanksgiving one sideways.

It was nineteen ninety eight and my fiance Bob and I had just purchased a little house in Oak Hill, Ohio.

We were hosting Thanksgiving with family members on both sides.

Everyone was chatting and enjoying snacks and some drinks before early dinner.

Around two, we all gathered around the table with the spread and everyone bowed their heads to say grace.

Just a minute in, the chandelier above the table started swinging violently.

We all looked up and my Bob scrunched his brow and reached out to stop it.

That's when all the plates and things on the table began rattling like we were in an earthquake, and lasted for about ten seconds and then stopped.

And then this strange laughter filled the room, this low, scraping, guttural sound like nails on a chalkboard, but coming from everywhere and nowhere, all at once.

Then everything was silent.

Everything stopped.

We all looked at each other like WTF.

And finally Bob's dad said, that must have been an earthquake.

We'll have to watch the news.

So slowly we all sat down and began passing around the food.

It only took a few minutes and we were laughing back and in the mood and spirit of the day.

Later, when everyone had gone home, Bob and I were having a glass of wine in our living room and we talked about the rumbling.

Bob picked up our cordless phone and called a TV station in Cincinnati and got through to a weather man.

He asked him if we had had an earthquake, and the guy said no, there was nothing on the records that anything like that had occurred in the state.

When Bob hung up, I asked him about the laughing for that.

He had no answer.

Maybe it was the house settling, he said, but we both knew the place had just been inspected and there were no issues there.

Maybe it's ghosts, Bob laughed, but I didn't say anything.

I mean, nothing else happened for months, just that stuff that one time at Thanksgiving.

The next year, we were married in July and I got pregnant in September.

My parents wanted to have more family for the holidays and decided to rent a cabin outside of Wayne National Forest.

The place was beautiful and had more than enough room for all of the cousins, their kids, and everyone.

Everything out there seemed to be perfect, and people were relaxing in the big living room.

There was a fireplace cheerily burning, and the kids were playing board games.

When we began placing the food on the huge dining room table, I remembered what had happened the year prior, but didn't bring it up.

When everyone was seated and we began saying grace.

The fireplace suddenly erupted with giant flames, and my brother and Bob jumped up to see what was wrong.

We were all looking at them when suddenly silverware flew like missiles at them, I mean, just zipped off the table right at their backs.

A few of us yelled, a few of us screamed, and other forks and spoons flipped off their napkins, and everybody jumped back or pushed their chairs away and tried to stand up.

My cousin Tommy had been in the bathroom and was late to the table, and when he walked into the living room from the hallway, a huge, heavy lounge chair shot across the floor backwards at him and almost knocked him over.

Then my niece Annie, who was only nine years old, screamed, and we all turned to look at her.

Her hair was being lifted off her head as if magnetized.

Then there was a bright flash of light that made us all shut our eyes.

In an instant, the fire was back to being normal, all the silverware was back on a table, Annie's hair was fine, and the heavy chair was back in its normal spot.

No one said a word, but Annie burst into tears and ran into my sister's arms.

It took more than a few minutes for everyone to calm down and my father in law to saying, okay, folks, let's just sit down and try to eat.

There's got to be a rational explanation for all of this.

I noticed his hand shaking as he started to carve the turkey.

We did our best to enjoy the meal, and things were okay for the rest of our long weekend.

But Bob and I stayed up late every night wondering about the occurrences.

We couldn't come up with any answers, and so it went.

No matter where we went, no matter the size of the group, something like this would happen every Thanksgiving.

Every time we said a blessing, craziness would ensue.

No one ever got hurt, but no matter who hosted things, something would happen.

By two thousand and five, both of our families noticed that when we were not part of things, everything was calm.

It's not that nobody wanted us around, but everyone was wary of getting together.

We have a solid family, and they never didn't invite us, nor did we ever turn them away.

That year, my mom and mother in law suggested we try a fancy restaurant.

I didn't know it at the time, but their theory was that if we had dinner out somewhere in public, nothing would happen wrong.

The moment we moved to sit down, ten of us in the group, every chair skidded backwards towards us or passed us across the wood floor.

A wineglass on the table shattered, thankfully not hitting anyone, and the silverware did its trick again, flying off the table.

This time, however, there was no flashing back to normal.

Everything stayed the way it was.

Thank god we were in our own private room, as our yells and screams caused enough of a disturbance to others at the restaurant.

As it was our waiters, they were there to see it too, including the manager.

Everyone just kind of stood there, silent, and then the manager began apologizing, saying he'd never had anything like that happen before.

Bob, under his breath kind of said dryly, and we have that.

God I only heard him.

The waiters scrambled to get everything back in order, and though the room continued to have this heavy feeling in it, we were able to sit down and have our meal.

Honestly, by that point, not much was really going to phaze us.

After that, we realized the theory that being out in public didn't mean diddily squat.

Whatever was disrupting our Thanksgivings was not stuck in our homes or in special places like that cabin.

Whatever it was was following us.

For the next few years, it got worse.

The meals would start out with the insanity of the jumping plates and silverware, but we began to hear voices calling out our names throughout the dinner, usually from the next room, and sometimes the voices were in different tones, like little kid voices to older people's voices, and sometimes they called out names of people from our family who had died.

Enough was we called a priest After two thousand and eight.

He came to our house, heard our story and was perplexed as to why things only happened on Thanksgiving and not at any other time of the year.

He didn't have any answers for us, but he sat a blessing and prayed with us, and amazingly, the house did suddenly feel lighter and more cheery, as if we were so used to living in a gloom that we'd forgotten how much we loved our house when we moved.

In Thanksgiving of two thousand and nine, we gave it another shot, and at first things were awesome.

No crazy sounds, no shaking plates, no silverware jumping around, no voices.

We couldn't believe it, and I was so happy.

I didn't have to try to explain anything to my little one as to why things were crazy.

She was getting older.

But everything was great.

Then, as we took a break from the meal and cleared the table to get ready for dessert, the ten of us were in great spirits forgive the term.

I was getting ready to pour some coffee for everyone when Bob stopped and stared.

I looked at him and said, what's wrong, sweetheart?

He just said look and nodded.

At the dining room window.

In the fading light of the afternoon, there stood a dark shadow.

It wasn't quite in the shape of a human, and it was wispy.

It looked like a pillar of smoke.

Actually, my jaw dropped, and that's when there were three heavy blows to the side of our house and the most god awful scream slash howl that filled the house.

Scared the shit out of everyone.

It lasted for like ten seconds, and then the two of us watched as this shape slowly disappeared before our eyes.

Everyone was shaken up, and my husband proposed that we all go bowling and just get out of the house.

We'd experienced a lot, but we had never seen any thing like that, and sticking through it didn't seem like an option anymore.

So everyone grabbed their coats and out we went.

By twenty ten, we didn't even try, no invitations, no turkey.

We just had sandwiches by ourselves and nothing happened.

But it didn't matter.

I was pregnant again and we were planning on moving into a new house at the end of December.

We did move, and nothing else happened after that.

We've had plenty of holiday parties and nothing as much as a bad joke or negative discussion has happened since we left.

I have no idea what was in or around that house, but it was obviously not happy with what we were doing as a family.

But I won't lie.

I get nervous every year around this time that something else might happen again.

Thankfully it hasn't.

Here's to having another wonderful Thanksgiving this year with our family and no paranormal activity.

Stalked home on Thanksgiving Eve.

Submitted by Sally Mander.

The night before Thanksgiving in my town is like a second holiday.

Everyone's back from college.

The bars are packed, the streets are full and loud.

When this happened, I was twenty three, visiting family and catching up with friends I hadn't seen in forever.

We all laughed, reminisced, and I had a few drinks.

Nothing wild, but I did stay later than the others.

They were all leaving in pairs or groups, calling out their goodbyes, and I told them that I was fine.

There was only a ten minute walk to my house.

I'd done it countless times.

But when I went outside to leave, I noticed this guy Immediately.

When I stepped outside, there was a man in a gray jacket leaning against the brick wall, and the head lowered and hands in his pockets.

I mean, there was nothing really strange about that, but I could see that he wasn't looking directly at the ground.

His eyes were up and he was kind of watching me.

I felt his eyes track me as I adjusted my coat tighter and then start walking.

By this time, there weren't tons of people out on the streets, and about a half block later, I heard footsteps behind me.

Not the casual, uneven rhythm of someone minding their own business.

These sounded deliberate, like they were matching my pace.

I crossed the street and whoever it was cross too.

I turned a corner, and whoever it was turned too.

I didn't want to believe it was happening, so I told myself I was just imagining things.

At the next corner, I spun around and snapped, Hey, do you need something.

The guy kept walking towards me without blinking.

The guy in the gray coat, it was like he hadn't heard me at all.

His face was expressionless, blank, almost slack, like he wasn't fully there.

Something about the way he moved just felt wrong, like his body wasn't syncd with his intentions.

I panicked and ducked into the only business open that light on Thanksgiving Eve, a twenty four hour laundromat.

The lights were bright, there were a few machines humming, so someone was in there, and I did notice a guy off in the corner.

The man following me stopped right outside the glass door.

He didn't come in He just stared at me through the window.

I pretended to put coins into a washing machine, hands shaking, and the big guy who was in the corner doing his laundry eventually walked over to me and asked if I was all right.

All I said was that guy out there is following me.

And the guy's expression changed instantly.

This big dude marched to the door, stepped outside, and the man in the grid jacket turned and sprinted, I mean, not run.

He was busting ass.

He vanished around a corner and into the night.

I called my dad to come pick me up, and I refused to walk alone at night for months.

But two days later, out of curiosity, when the place was open, I called the bar that I was at and asked to check some of the exterior cameras that he had out on Main Street, the ones the bar owner had access to.

He said sure, and the cameras had caught that guy.

He had started following me the exact second I had left the bar.

He was close behind, too close, like he had chosen me before I even noticed him.

And for one point, and just for a second, right before we walked out of the reach of the camera, footage the man reached his hand out towards the back of my neck and almost touched me.

We shared everything with the police, but they couldn't identify on but every Thanksgiving Eve since, when the bars are full and people are out having fun, I wonder if that guy is still out there waiting for someone else to walk home alone.

Stay the f out of Alachua, Florida rest stops by home for Thanksgiving.

I'm a proud Floridian.

At the time of this story, in early two thousands, I was going to college in South Florida and lived with my family and my hometown in the Florida Panhandle.

It's about a seven hour drive up through central Florida to get between the two places, so mostly I only went home for the holidays.

It was Thanksgiving of my junior year, and I was excited that I had managed to rearrange my midterms to be able to leave campus three days ahead of everyone else.

I was expecting to beat the masses of traffic and was hoping for a quick trip back home.

My roommates wanted to have a last meal together before we all left for break, so I ate in the campus dining hall around four pm and I set off on my journey around five thirty.

Around ten, I had just passed my two thirds mark, where I always stopped at this little mom and pop type of diner by the side of the highway to grab a snack, use the restroom, and called my dad to let him know I was okay, and I didn't have a cell phone yet.

Well, I hadn't been there since summer and the place was out of business, so a little bummed out that I wasn't going to get my chocolate chip pancakes, I just kept going.

There really wasn't much built up around there at that time, so when I saw signs for a rest stop in of all places on God's Green Earth, some bumfuck town called Alatua, I went for it.

I went and parked directly under the street light for safety, and used the facilities, called my dad, etc.

Etc.

I didn't see anyone else there except for a very exhausted looking woman who approached me asking for directions, saying that she was with her husband and two small children from Virginia and they'd made a wrong turn trying to get to Disney.

I left the rest area and was walking back to my car when I noticed a beat up unmarked gray or bluish work van parked this close to the driver's side of my ninety five Honda Civic.

Yeah, okay, I thought it was pretty weird.

It had Florida tags on it, so it couldn't have been the lady I talked to in the bathroom.

I mean, I distinctly remembered she said she was from Virginia.

I turned around and high tailed it back to the rest stop, promptly running into some random middle aged guy with two little boys getting to talk to him.

It turned out it was his wife I had spoken to as she emerged from the bathroom a second later, so I felt comfortable speaking to him.

I told him what was going on with the van and that I didn't know what to do.

He said he'd go out and check it out.

He left the kids with his wife and me and strutted up to the driver's side of the van.

He stood there for a moment before speaking.

His voice awkwardly quivered, but we could hear him yell it from where we were standing some one hundred feet away.

Excuse me, gentlemen, we already called the police, so I'm going to have to politely suggest that you get out of here.

Then he ran back to us, grabbed his wife and kids, pointed to me with a swift you, and said, come on, let's all get in the car now, and we ran together.

So there I was confusedly sitting in the back of the stranger's SUV while he went and used the payphone to presumably call the police.

Meanwhile, the van peeled out of there like I've never seen someone get the fuck out of there quite like they got the fuck out of there.

They ran up on the curb on their way out, and they burned rubber.

It was hummost comical.

The cops got there and I found out what happened.

The man went to check out the van, and he could see in it pretty well because they had also parked under the street light.

The first thing he noticed was that all of the seats except for the driver's seat, had been removed.

There was a guy sitting in the driver's seat and another guy sitting in the back, a tarp laid out, and a bunch of other random items back there.

He couldn't immediately identify.

Neither of the guys were reading a newspaper or a map or anything.

They were apparently both just sitting there.

It still makes me sick thinking about it.

Uncle Bill and the Thanksgiving I thought I remembered.

Submitted by Randy T.

It was Thanksgiving of nineteen ninety four.

I was nine years old, and my family drove up to the coast of Maine from Connecticut to spend the holiday with my uncle Bill, my mom's older brother, my aunt Laura, and my cousins.

Uncle Bill's house sat near the marshes.

It was quiet, cedar sided and right on the edge of the water.

The place was gorgeous.

We left early enough to get there late morning, and me and my brother and cousins ran straight outside for football, archery, BB guns and chaos.

It felt like the holiday had started early.

Inside the men talked, drank beer and whiskey, watched football and laughed, and the women were preparing the main meal, sipping wine and chatting away.

Pretty soon we were called inside as it got darker out.

Our family never ate early.

We always sat down around five o'clock, so it was dark as it was on the East coast.

I thought I noticed something was wrong with the way my mom called a sin, like she was nervous or something, but none of us dwelled on it.

When we got in the kitchen, my mom said, surprise dinners in the basement movie night too.

We all looked a little weirded out, but we didn't hesitate.

Plates in hand, we filled up and made our way downstairs.

The basement was finished and my aunt and mom had put up TV trays, spread blankets across the floor, and made the basement furniture just right for kids to eat and watch a show.

Both my mom and aunt stayed close by but didn't eat, and whenever of us needed something, they quietly went for us.

Honestly, it was really cozy.

It was kind of magical.

Even we'd never done anything like this before, and eating dinner and watching movies was about as great as it could get.

Not having to listen to our parents yam or around about things we didn't care about around the table and us kids just being kids was awesome.

We ate, we laughed, we had pie and desserts afterwards, and by the time we were done, we were all curled up in a pile of blankets, full, happy, and completely unaware of what was happening upstairs.

That was the memory I carried for years and years, that is, until I was in my twenties.

When I asked my dad why we only got movie dinner Thanksgiving one time, he froze.

He wasn't annoyed, he wasn't confused.

There was just something else, something heavier in his eyes.

You really don't remember the other part, do you, he asked.

I said, no, What what are you talking about?

He said, don't tell your mother, but you are old enough now to know this well.

We were still outside messing around.

The phone rang at the house and Uncle Bill answered it.

Dad noticed his face go pale, like the color had been completely sucked out of him.

He returned to the room, insisting that it was just a wrong number.

My mom asked him what was wrong, and he shook his head.

After a minute, Uncle Bill whispered to Aunt Laura and then motioned to my dad, but didn't say anything, just that gesture to follow him.

So they got up, left the room, and then came back with two shotguns.

My mom started to panic, and my aunt quickly called us in and got us in the basement.

I already explained that part of the story.

Someone up there called the police, but my dad didn't remember who did that.

My dad really still had no idea what was going on, but knew obviously something was up and just followed Uncle Bill's lead.

About five minutes later, headlights cut through the living room windows and it made my uncle whisper fuck she found me.

Dad said it wasn't the car itself, it was the woman behind the wheel.

She had a history with Uncle Bill, and suddenly everything became clear.

My mom and aunt went into action again, regathering everyone, even the kids that had wandered up, got more pie milk, and then led us back to the basement.

I tried to keep everything normal, more movies, treats, but every laugh and every smile was a shield against what was happening upstairs and outside.

Up there, Uncle Bill and Dad stepped down to the porch.

The stranger got out of their car and stood next to it.

The trunk opened and they were swaying slightly.

I could tell it was a female, and in her hands she was holding a gun.

My dad said he'd never felt fear climb through his ribs like that moment.

The woman raised the gun awkwardly and fumbled with it like she didn't know what the hell she was doing.

Uncle Bill took his chance and advanced, telling her to stop.

She stumbled drunk or desperate, but no matter.

My uncle struck her heart across the side of the head with the stock of his shotgun and she collapsed.

Dad pinned her down, while Uncle Bill picked up her gun and held it off to the side until the sheriffs arrived a few minutes later.

What was in the trunk told the story.

There were gasoline cans, pro pane cans, papers with Uncle Bill's name on them, and a bunch of other junk.

Her intention was to burn the house down and everyone in it.

After she was taken away, Uncle Bill told the truth years before or after he'd come home from the service.

Everyone in the family sort of lost contact with him.

My parents were starting out our family, and my uncle was the kind of guy that was always hopping all over the world from this place to that.

What we also didn't know was that he had met and married a woman from California and quickly found out he'd been trapped with a maniac.

Their fun, loving relationship, hell, they even got married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas, went away in a matter of weeks, and suddenly she was completely different towards him.

She always tried to isolate him manipulate him, and then freaked out if he ever left their apartment, even for his job.

She started threatening to tell people that he was beating her, and once even knocked her own tooth out to show him that she wasn't kidding.

She wanted full control of him.

She still went to work, went out, and lived a life, but she would go ape shit the minute my uncle tried to do anything that didn't involve her.

She even cleared out his bank account, spent it on clothes and booze, and she was a heavy drinker.

Eventually she left him with nothing.

He finally escaped.

She went to work one day and he got in his car with all his stuff and started driving.

He eventually got in an annulment based on fraud, and she didn't even show up at the court proceedings.

She never contested anything, and Uncle Bill moved back e thinking that chapter was behind him.

He got back in contact with our family, married my wonderful aunt and had my cousins, and for over a decade he didn't hear anything until that night.

She had tracked him down and even hired a private investigator to find out everything she could about my uncle, and then drove across the country with one goal, this revenge, but her drinking got the better of her, her drunken mistakes, her inexplicable phone call before she arrived, and her drunkenness.

Did I mention that helped save all of us.

She went to jail, but only briefly.

When she got out, court orders prevented her from remaining in the state.

But we all know stuff like that isn't a guarantee with a psycho.

My dad told me all of that a long long time ago, As I mentioned when I was in my twenties.

Uncle Bill and Aunt Laura are now in their seventies, and so were my parents.

That woman, so is she even now?

Though the thought that she's alive somewhere sends a shiver down my spine.

That Thanksgiving didn't end anything, it just paused everything.

I mean, everyone hopes age and maybe even turning her life around will keep her away, But like those court orders, and hope isn't a guarantee either.

My family hosts Thanksgiving now and everyone in my extended family always comes to my house, including my cousins, their kids, and my uncle Bill and Aunt Laura.

But knowing that woman is still out there, kind of scares me.

I mean, some threads never untangle, some dangers never disappear completely.

But I hope she's out of our life for good.

Oh and by the way, I brought back Turkey in a movie night for my kids nieces and nephews on Thanksgiving.

They absolutely love it.

Country Roads by Loosened Valkyrie forty two.

Last Thanksgiving, I was driving home from college with my friend.

We're both females and we're twenty one at the time.

I live in a very isolated part of Arkansas that requires driving through an hour of hairpin turns in the mountains.

There are lots of blind turns, and the whole time you're driving on the edge of huge drop offs with no barriers.

I'm usually pretty confident driving through the mountains, but we were in my friend's car, so I was going slower than usual, driving about five over the speed limit.

As soon as we started the roughest part of the drive, another car was tailgating us pretty close.

This was stressing me out, and as soon as I saw somewhere I could pull over, I did.

I pulled into a church parking lot and my friend offered to drive the rest of the way, but I declined, as it was completely dark and she'd never driven that out before.

We got back on our way, and a few minutes later I had to come to a screeching halt as there was a car stopped in the middle of the road.

It wasn't on the shoulder at all, just stopped dead in the middle of the road.

My friend was saying that they must have broken down, but couldn't call it toe because there was no service in that area.

I immediately had a bad feeling and locked the doors.

I told my friend to stay in the car no matter what.

She was starting to get scared at that point and pointed out that she thought it was the car that was following us.

I couldn't tell, but I was very scared at that point.

It was parked right before a hairpin turn, so I couldn't pass it.

My friend started frantically telling me to go ahead and pass it, but I didn't want to get hit by a mack truck or fall off the mountain.

I honked my horn.

Nothing happened, and there was no chance of calling for help as there was no cell service out there.

We waited there for a while doing nothing.

My friend was crying and freaking out, but I was too scared to try to pass this car, so I honked a couple of times more, and eventually a guy got out of the car, came around back, and leaned against his car, just staring at us.

My friend was freaking out even more and I was just frozen.

I told her not to make any eye contact, and I was ready to floor it if he did something, but he just stood there staring.

He wasn't checking his car or anything.

I tried to stay calm and pray that another car would come along soon.

And it went on for what seemed like forever but was probably fifteen or so minutes.

He was just casually leaning against his car looking at us.

Eventually we saw car lights in our rear view, and then the guy jogged to his door, got back in his car, and sped off, going dangerously fast, so there was nothing wrong with his car.

I also started driving, not wanting to cause a wreck.

We didn't see anything else for a while, but we passed the same car parked along the highway a while later, and it pulled back on and started tailing us again.

I tried to speed up and get rid of him, but he kept following we had cell service at that point, but I didn't know if we should call the cops because nothing really happened.

I did call home and tell my brothers what was going on and told them to wait on the porch for us.

The car followed me all the way home down the really long drive to my house.

I pulled in front and my two brothers were waiting on the porch holding their deer rifles.

I pulled in and the car just went to the end of the drive, looped around, and sped off the way it came.

We tried to see its plates, but we couldn't make them out.

Me and my friend were really freaked out, but when I told other friends the whole story, they didn't think it was that big of a deal.

Crazy Thanksgiving night, by wonder are not lost.

So.

I'm a male nurse at a large hospital in San Francisco.

I work in the er and as is usual accustomed Thanksgiving night was very busy.

My wife is also a nurse for the same hospital.

When she works in labor and delivery.

Between babies being born left and right and the people coming into the er, we hadn't had a chance to take a break together as we tried to do every shift, so when she called, I figured it was to say she wanted to meet up for a bite to eat in the cafeteria.

When I answered, I heard a male voice screaming profanities in the background, and my wife, who's fluent Spanish, trying to calm the guy down.

She told me her pager wasn't working and she needed security stat I quickly hung up, called for security and told my fellow nurses what was going on, and ran for labor and delivery.

That's when I ran almost square smack dab into this visibly angry man.

He wasn't huge, but bro definitely worked out, and not at the gym.

He was covered in prison tattoos and was obviously a banger.

I mean, I work out regularly, but I knew this guy could kick my ass.

He looked at me, gave me this sick grin, and started heading towards me, spouting off in Spanish.

I don't speak fluent Spanish, but what I could understand scared the living shit out of me.

I was backing up as fast as I could, and I started buzzing the door to the er frantically for them to let me in.

The guy was literally a foot away from me, and the door opened and I was pulled into safety by a doctor.

Gang banger guy.

I punched the door a few times and made a dragging sign across his throat while grinning at us both.

Next thing I knew, police rushed into the corridor he was in and it took two security officers and two cops to subdue that dude.

I finally made it to my wife, who thankfully was just shaken up but unhurt.

She explained to me what happened.

A young girl only fourteen came in high fever, vomiting and distended belly.

The banger claimed he was her brother and they needed to cut her open to get her baby.

They did an ultrasound and to their horror, they realized she wasn't pregnant.

She had a bag of drugs in her stomach.

It's very common for drug mules to bring over young women from Mexico carrying drugs that way, so homeboy freaked out when they informed him his sister needed emergency surgery and no, he wasn't getting his drugs.

Thankfully, the girl survived, but the sad thing is she'll most likely be deported once she recovers the unwanted intruder at Thanksgiving dinner.

Submitted by Rick for three.

Hey, uncle Jay, that story that you just shared about the guy living in someone's attic got me to share this thing that happened to me about ten years ago.

Every year, my family insisted on me having Thanksgiving at my house because my house was cozy.

That was their polite way of saying cramped but sentimental.

It was my first house, and I bought the place cheaper because it was old, but it had a lot of interesting appointments, but was technically in need of cosmetic love, which is real estate code for this place is cheap because you're going to find a lot of weird shit all over the place for the next ten years.

Still, it had its charm, and I'd grown used to its occasional creaks and groans.

But Thanksgiving in twenty eighteen, one sound didn't fit with everything else.

We'd all just sat down, my parents, my brother, my sister, and her kids.

Everyone was making small talk, clinking glasses, passing dishes, the whole nine.

I remember lifting the carving knife to cut the turkey when I heard a noise, a soft but unmistakable creak from the basement door down the hall that kind of creek.

That's a slow opening, the hinge makes.

I paused, knife suspended in mid air.

No one else had reacted, so I figured they didn't hear it, and I tried to brush it off, telling myself it was just old wood settling from the heat of the oven.

That was until I heard the footsteps, slow dragging steps coming up from the basement.

My stomach dropt, and I whispered to my brother, did you open the basement door by any chance?

And he just shook his head.

Before either of us could stand the basement door opened, just slightly at first, and then fully, and a man stepped out into the hallway.

He was filthy, he was gaunt.

He had wide eyes, like he'd just woken up from something terrible, and for a minute he didn't move, he didn't speak, He just stared at us, frozen in the doorway, like a wild animal that had accidentally wandered into a trap.

My mom screamed and my knee started crying, and I stood up so fast I knocked my chair backwards.

The guy lurched forward, not toward the front door of the exit, but straight through the dining room.

He moved fast, but clumsily, like he hadn't been on his feet that long.

When he reached the sliding glass door in the kitchen, he slammed into his shoulder, first, leaving a greasy smell, before fumbling the latch open and then bolting into my backyard.

By the time the police arrived, he was long gone, but what they found stayed with me.

There was an unused room in the front of my basement.

I never went in there, even for storage.

Behind that door were blankets, half eaten cans of food I didn't buy, and all kinds of other junk.

The cops thought he'd been living there for days, maybe weeks.

I had no idea how he had gotten in.

At some point, I must have left my door unlocked.

I have no idea when he was moving around, or when he was coming or going.

He must have always waited for noise upstairs before moving around, and then maybe misjudge the timing that night because we were just sitting at the table quietly well.

I replaced the locks on the basement, my front door, my back door.

The next day, I pulled everything hard to make sure everything latched, and even now every Thanksgiving, I checked that door three or four or five times before anybody comes over, because sometimes late at night, when the house is quiet, I hear that same creek, soft, slow and deliberate, and I never know if it's just old wood or someone's still down there.

I always convinced myself it's just in my head.

The shadow in the woods submitted by the Karakoram Warrior.

I've hunted on Thanksgiving morning since I was a teenager.

It was tradition.

The cold, the silence, the sunrise through bare branches.

It's usually peaceful, usually predictable.

A couple of years ago it was different.

I'd barely stepped into the woods when I felt it, a straight stillness, like the trees were holding their breath.

It was still dark out, but getting close to dawn.

There weren't any birds chirping.

There was no rustling of trees in the wind, just nothing.

I chalked it up to the cold and kept walking, and about twenty minutes in I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.

I turned, expecting some animal, but what I saw was nothing like it.

It looked like a tall, thin silhouette, too sharp edged to be a person.

And too smooth to be an animal.

And it was sliding between the trees.

I mean, it wasn't walking, it was gliding, even though it was still pretty dark out.

I raised my binoculars.

The thing froze, and that's what I realized.

This shadow I was looking at wasn't cast by anything.

I mean, the sun wasn't out yet, there were no angles that made sense.

It was just a figure shaped standing in that darkness, on its own, darkness on dark.

As I lowered the binoculars, it slipped behind a cedar and then disappeared.

I mean, every instinct in my body said leave.

But hunters, we don't like to admit fear, and I tried to convince myself it was just my imagination until I started hearing it.

It was a whisper, not quite words, more like breath scraping through something hollow.

It came from my left, then it came from my right, and then it was behind me.

I turned slowly, heart pounding.

The shadow thing was back and it was closer, much closer.

It leaned between two trees, and at this point it seemed impossibly tall, seven or eight feet, and then it moved towards me.

That's When I ran, I tore through branches.

I nearly dropped my rifle couple of times, and I was constantly tripping over roots because I was not looking where I was going.

In the darkness, the whispering followed me, rising and falling and sometimes sounding almost like laughter.

Every time I looked over my shoulders, the shadow appeared between trees and always ahead of where it should have been, as if though it wasn't following me, but hurting me off to the left, off to the right, then right behind me again.

The moment I broke into the clearing where my truck was parked, the sounds of the whispering and the laughter stopped.

The world was silent again.

The sun was just starting to break through the trees, and things were a little bit lighter than when I first gone into the forest.

I looked back and the shadow thing just stood there inside the tree line, still as stone and taller than any person I've ever met, And as I walked, it simply folded itself back into the darkness like it had never existed.

I got into my truck and drove home, shaking so badly I could barely shift gears.

I took a year off from hunting.

But I've been back out, but not in that forest.

I'm not going back there.

I've never seen anything like what I saw that morning.

Shadows don't chase people, not unless something is inside them.

Hey, gang, thanks for listening to this episode.

If you have a true scary story of any nature that you'd like me to narrate, send it to Uncle Josh True Scary Stories at gmail dot com.

I read them all.

And if you have any winter holiday stories Christmas, New Year's, that sort of thing, send it my way as soon as you can.

I will be working on a special episode for that coming up.

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Everybody happy Thanksgiving be excellent to each other and until next time, be wary of things that go bump in the night.

It could be anything a ghost, a monster, or the guy next door.

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