The Don't Look Back! Special - Snap Classic

It's the Nightmare before New Year's with a very Spooky episode from Snap… where guardian angels don't get snow days. Two stories from the mountains full of holiday spirit(s). Snap Judgment presents, “The Don’t Look Back! Special.” Amazing stories from the land of the unexplained from our evil-twin podcast, Spooked https://spookedpodcast.org/. Spooked, features supernatural stories told by people that can barely believe it happened themselves. Want more Spooked? Episodes drop weekly -- listen on any podcast platform! STORIES Cliffhanger Bill is home from college, on his way to meet his girlfriend, when his car swerves off the road. This story contains one brief scene of graphic material. Big thanks to Bill Love for sharing your story with us! Produced by Annie Nguyen, original score by Leon Morimoto. Cowboy Ghost Valerie is lost in a snowstorm in rural Montana. She thinks she might not be able to get out, when she sees two headlights coming to her through the storm. Help is on the way – she hopes. Thank you Valerie for sharing your story. Valerie’s story comes to us from the book “Trucker Ghost Stories” https://www.amazon.com/Trucker-Ghost-Stories-Highways-Encounters/dp/0765330350edited by Annie Wilder. Produced by Eliza Smith, original score by Leon Morimoto, artwork by Teo Ducot. Snap Classic - Season 15 – Episode 57 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

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• 0:53Glynn Washington?

  Discover the best deals happening now at ember.com/snap. Go to ember.com right now, and when you're asked where you heard about them, let them know it was Snap Judgment. That's ember.com/snap. Understand, I get it. It's bad form to talk about how good you look. I know this, I get this, but I also know it's unfair to keep secrets. If you could see how good I look in my Quince, Harrington, suede, leather jacket, you'd say it's unfair not to tell anyone as well. Now, you, I mean, let's say someone on your holiday list, not you, someone else who needs

• 1:37Glynn Washington?

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• 2:20Glynn Washington?

  And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was snap judgment. It's the best way to support the show.

• 2:36Glynn Washington?

  It was maybe, maybe the happiest I've ever been.

• 2:41Glynn Washington?

  Hold my brand new baby boy. You couldn't tell me nothing. Joy, joy, joy, joy. And I'm thinking I have a little girl. And now I have this baby boy, both of them perfect, created in love. Everything I've always wanted come true.

• 3:02Glynn Washington?

  I weep with happiness, with gratitude.

• 3:08Glynn Washington?

  And this bliss, it followed a few moments later

• 3:14Glynn Washington?

  by the most horrifying time in my life.

• 3:18Glynn Washington?

  We realized that something is wrong.

• 3:23Glynn Washington?

  And I can't tell you that story right now.

• 3:31Glynn Washington?

  Not right ever. I can't. I will tell you that a few days later. Exhausted, spent, terrified for my little man. I'm leaving the neonatal intensive care unit, the NICU. Waiting for a moment to go home to hug up my baby girl, maybe shower, eat something before returning to the hospital.

• 3:56Glynn Washington?

  My father's at my house for some reason. I don't know why. It's all a fog to me. What I do recall is that he says, "Son,

• 4:05Glynn Washington?

  I know we don't share the same beliefs, but I want you to know that I'm praying Jesus. I'm praying on Jesus for you both and I'm praying on Jesus for that baby."

• 4:15Glynn Washington?

  My father and I, we don't share the same beliefs, but I can't recall telling him, "Pops, if you have any prayer, any God, any faith, any magic, any healing, any power that you can send to my little boy right now, whatever you have to do, do that. Do that." And he does. Bows his head to his God right there, and I bow my head too, to a force I had long ago stopped believing in.

• 4:57Glynn Washington?

  They say there are no atheists in foxholes. There are no atheists at the neonatal intensive care unit either. Crystals, magic lamps, ambulants, give me all of it, I don't care, just help my baby boy. Help him. And a few weeks later, pushing that stroller out of that place with that boy, I thought I was happy before. And Pops, he asked me later, "Isn't his God good?" And I don't know who did what.

• 5:42Glynn Washington?

  The prayers, the gods, the nurses, the doctors, the faith, the angels, I don't know who let us depart from that place, as if escaping a tomb. I do not know. And I do not care. Today, on Snap Judgment, we proudly present the Don't Look Back special. My name is Tim Washington. You don't know what you don't know when you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 6:49Glynn Washington?

  Now, every year right around this time, we do a Look Back special. But this year, we're chaining up the soup and featuring amazing supernatural stories from our sister show, Spooked. In our first story, it does have a tiny bit of squeamishness, but not to worry, I promise. Because we get to meet Bill. And Bill's headed home from college for the holidays, driving to see his high school sweetheart. But he's gotta make it through the Appalachian Mountains first.

• 7:21Glynn Washington?

  Snap judgment.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  It's a kind of a rainy, misty, Sunday morning.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  I'm driving through an area that there are trees on the left, trees on the right, and I'm going down a hill.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  And it kind of swerves back and forth, back and forth, you know, like a snake.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  But my father used to say, you know, going around these curves, we can almost look out the car window and see the back of the car.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  But, you know, I was gonna see my girlfriend. So it's all worth it.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  The road makes a big swing to the left, right there. And on the right-hand side is this big muddy gully. And when I tried to make that curve into the left, I slid off the road into the gully.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  But I gunned the motor, trying to get out of the ditch and back on the road, like you do.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  And when the tires were spinning really fast and they caught, I sped up.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  And when I got on the road, I started to slide diagonally

• 9:07Speaker 01

  across the road, over this cliff. And I realized at one point there,

• 9:15Speaker 01

  I'm not going to stop. This car's not gonna stop.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  And then, once I left the road

• 9:27Speaker 01

  and started going down that crevice,

• 9:33Speaker 01

  I don't remember that part.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  The next thing I knew, the car was right side up, down at the bottom of that hill, sitting in a little creek bed, which had some water in it because it'd been raining.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  And there I was, sitting in the car, still inside.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  And I looked down and

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I had little pieces of broken glass in my arms.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And it had just started to bleed. So I figured, well, I haven't been here very long.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  You know, I just blacked out there for a second as I came down and here I am. So I got out of the car, and this is the strangest thing.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  I locked it, and then realized this car was a total loss.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  The windows were all broken, the engine was almost out, it had been dislodged. And I thought, well, I'm gonna have to get out of here and get some help. And what am I gonna tell my father? So I looked at where I was, and I realized that I'm over a cliff, out in the middle of nowhere. Anybody driving down that road, even if somebody does come down the road, they don't know I'm down here. They're not gonna be able to see me. And it's raining, and I really thought about this too. They're gonna have their windows up, because it's raining.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  So I can yell all I want to, and nobody's gonna know I'm down here. There's not gonna be any help. If I make it, I'm gonna have to get out of here myself.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  The cliff was very steep. There was a light rain happening at the time, so all of the leaves and the little saplings and everything, everything was wet. And I looked up at the saplings, and I thought, well, you know, maybe I can grab a hold of them, you know, pull myself up, and maybe put my foot on some of them, maybe I can actually get up there. And I tried to do it, and when I leaned over, and something wet and sticky ran over the front of my face. What in the world is this?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  And I reached my hand up, wiped it off my face, and it was blood.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  And I put my hand up to my head and I could feel my scalp.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Because my scalp had been cut from ear to ear and flipped backwards. So my hand is on my bare skull.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  So I grabbed my skin and pulled it back over like a little flap.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Then reached back again to grab a sampling.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  But I was losing a lot of blood. I mean, a lot.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Because now I'm covered, covered in it. My pants, my shirt, everything's bloody.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  And that's when I got really scared.

• 14:02Glynn Washington?

  Ooh, don't go anywhere. Bill's car has just gone off the edge of a cliff. He's alone. It's raining. He's injured. Find out what or who comes next. Snap judgment.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or

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  Politics.

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• 14:45Speaker 02

  Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not-science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  And hopefully make you see the world anew.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  Wherever you get your podcasts.

• 14:59Glynn Washington?

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• 15:43Glynn Washington?

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• 16:26Glynn Washington?

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• 17:11Glynn Washington?

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• 17:30Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. You're listening to the Don't Look Back Special. We're featuring stories crafted in the dark of night from our sister show, Spooked. And when last we left, Bill had just crashed his car off the side of a cliff in a remote area. And he was severely injured. He began reaching for saplings on the side of the mountain to try and somehow make his way to safety. Snap Judgment.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  And I tried to pull myself up. And I got up a little bit. And I was able to get one of my feet on a rock to try to push myself up a little further. And I looked up the cliff. And I realized it's almost straight up.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Then I reached up to try to grab another sapling.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  I just, I was, I just didn't have the strength. I didn't feel like I could do it.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Up about another 40 feet or so, I felt somebody looking at me up to the right.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  And there's a guy sitting on the front porch of this house,

• 19:00Speaker 01

  wearing a fedora hat, slacks and a shirt, sitting on the edge of the porch. And he had one leg propped up. And he was smoking a cigarette.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  But from where I was down in that creek bed, the house was, it would have been a tough, a tough walk up to that house.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  When our eyes met, then he took a cigarette and flipped it on the ground and walked over and got in his car. And started backing out that driveway. And when he came to the end of that driveway, I lost sight of him. I couldn't see that part right there where his car came to the main road. And then all of a sudden, he kind of appears up above me. So he's up on the main road and I could see him from maybe the shoulders up. And he still had on his fedora.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  He stuck his head out the window and he said, "Hey buddy, if you can get up this hill, I'll take you in town to the hospital." Yes, when he made his offer to me, I was still pretty far down that cliff and it was almost straight up. So, that's when I started climbing up the hill. There were enough of those little tree saplings, about the size of your wrist, they were about that size, that I could grab one, pull myself up and then put my foot on that one and reach

• 21:01Speaker 01

  up and grab another one and put them... And you know, it seemed like I had, I don't know, when I first tried to do it before I noticed him, I couldn't do it. But when I knew he was up there, suddenly I just, I don't know, it was like I had some kind of superpower. I could hoist myself up that cliff. I was surprised that I did it before I knew it, I was at the top.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  When I got to the top of the little cliff, and I reached up and I grabbed his door handle, and opened the door,

• 21:47Speaker 01

  and I got in, I'm really bloody. I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a mess.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  His car was an, kind of an older car, probably from the late 40s.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  It seemed like his entire car, the clothes he was wearing, the house and everything, had no color to it.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  There was, there was no red, there was no, everything was gray and brown.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And he drives maybe a quarter of a mile or so, and he had this jacket kind of wadded up in the, in the seat between the two of us. He picked up his jacket, and without looking at me, looking straight ahead, handed it over to me and said, "You know buddy, I was in the war, and I've seen people hurt like this. And if you don't do something about it, you're gonna die. Take my jacket, put it on your head and hold it real tight."

• 23:08Speaker 01

  I took the jacket from him, and when he handed it to me, I recognized it immediately because my father had one exactly like it. His jacket was a military jacket. An old waist-length jacket with kind of stretchy sleeves and a stretchy bottom and zipped up the front.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  But I just tucked it to the top of my, I do remember reaching up and making sure that my little piece of skin was in the correct place there, my scalp. And I, I put the jacket down on the top of my head and held it really firm and I held it there all the way to town.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  When we got close to my hometown of Paintsville, he said, "Which hospital do you want to go to?" And I said, "Well, my mom used to work at the clinic, so let's go to that one." So, in about a minute or two, we're at the clinic, which was on Main Street. He pulled up in front, and he said, "I can't get out of the car. Can you, are you okay? Can you make it?" And I said, "Yeah, I think I'm gonna be okay." I was really weak, but I opened the door, got out, and it was only like three steps

• 24:39Speaker 01

  that I had to step up. And he drove off. So he turned to the left and drove back in the same direction we had come in. You know, I can't really remember much. I'd lost a lot of blood. When I got into the hospital, somehow, I got upstairs to where the operating room was. The next thing I realized, that I was lying on an operating table, and somebody had a

• 25:18Speaker 01

  kind of a bowl underneath the back of my head, and they're sewing me up. They had called my mother, she came there, and she was saying, "Are you okay?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm all right. I'm fine." And she said, "Yeah, they gave you 55 stitches. You've got a cut all the way across the back of your head. You know, thank goodness you got here. And who was, who was the guy that brought you?" And I said, "I have no idea."

• 25:54Speaker 01

  After I got out of the hospital, after about three days, I believe, my father said, "Why don't we go back out there and talk to that guy and talk to him about cleaning his car up because you evidently bled in it a lot." So, we drove out to the scene where this happened. We just pulled out right there and he said, "You know, right down there is where you went, went over and you could see the place where, where the car slid over and you could see the place in the, in the gully that I had made on the right-hand side. And you could see on the left-hand side of the road where I'd gone over the cliff and where I'd hit this rock.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  And there was glass and stuff still down at the bottom of that little ravine. When we went out there, we pulled up to that little driveway. We just pulled out right there and he said, "There's no way you could have been in that driveway." That little road that led from the main road, Highway 40, over to his house was grown up with weeds. Weeds like waist-high, some of them really big weeds, and there was no way a car could

• 27:17Speaker 01

  have been parked between that road and, and that house. We were talking about three or four days. There's no way those weeds could have grown up in just three or four days. Now, I know I just had a traumatic accident, you know, I got hit in the head, so maybe I don't remember things correctly, but I distinctly remember his car sitting in the driveway and him walking out and getting in that car.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  So I ask, you know, my girlfriend's mom and dad and other people that lived around there, "Who is this guy?" They said, "Nobody has lived in that old house for a long time." So whoever he was, he doesn't live there.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  You know, at the time, yeah, I was only 19 years old. I was just happy to be alive and healing up and back to school, get on with my life. But as time has gone by, I think about this.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  I don't think I'm special, or, you know, that somebody saved me for something. But I've always wondered if maybe there's something I'm supposed to have done, or have done.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Maybe I've already done it. Or maybe I haven't done it yet.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Have you ever heard the story about the little old lady whose car is broken down and a guy comes along and stops and helps her? And she says, "Thank you very much. Can I pay you?" He goes, "No, no, no. You don't owe me anything. Just..." The chain of love continues. She goes in a little restaurant for a bite to eat and a waitress who's pregnant comes over. And the lady says, "I'll pay it forward," and leaves her a big tip of like hundreds of dollars. And then that night, the waitress is home with her husband and says, "A lady

• 30:00Speaker 01

  gave me this big tip." And her husband is the guy, the guy that helped the old lady. I believe in that.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Ten years later, almost exactly ten years later, it was Christmas Eve 1971. I was driving home to see my mother in Paintsville, Kentucky, and in the middle of the exit ramp was a car upside down. And I had heard that sometimes people do block exit ramps, and when you get out to help, you know, they waylay you. So I parked on up the exit ramp. So I was, I don't know, 50 feet away or something like that.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I opened my trunk and got my tire iron. Big metal iron out, and I kind of held it behind my leg as I walked down there. Well, I realized pretty soon that this really was a wreck. And the two guys that were standing there evidently had come by next, and they were both drunk, they didn't know what to do. And I came up and I said, you know, what's going on? They said, you know, this guy's wrecked and we can see him in there. And the car started burning a little bit. It was upside down.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  And when the hot gas hit the muffler, it started to flame. And this thing is going to burn up pretty soon. So one of the guys said, you know, we need to break that window. I happened to have that tire iron in my hand. You know, we mashed the window out, broke all the glass out, and one of those guys pulled this guy out of his car. And one of his Christmas gifts. One gift out of his car, and he had it full. I mean, he was surrounded by li...

• 32:30Speaker 01

  And these were all wrapped, packages with ribbons, and they were all around it. He must have had the whole back of that car full of gifts for his family.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  When the car caught on fire, they all burned up, burst into flame, and we gave him the one gift that we've been able to save out of the car.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  In the meantime, they called the local fire department. They were putting out the fire, and I drove on home to see mother.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  But I just wondered, maybe that was it.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  It happened almost exactly 10 years later.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Or, maybe it hasn't happened yet.

• 33:42Glynn Washington?

  Spooksters, let this be a reminder to you, always take extra care when rounding those tight curves. You never know who's gonna be nearby, watching over you. A big thank you to Bill Love for sharing your story with The Spooked. The original score for that piece was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Annie Nguyen.

• 34:36Glynn Washington?

  Ooh, don't go anywhere, because after the break, we're back on the road, headed to rural Montana, and a snowstorm is coming. Stay tuned.

• 35:00Glynn Washington?

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• 35:44Glynn Washington?

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• 35:58Glynn Washington?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Americans United has spent the last 80 years defending your right to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Through film screenings, speaking engagements, and valuable resources like the Know Your Rights and Public School Guides, AU empowers people nationwide to recommit to the separation of church and state, protecting individual freedoms and strengthening our democracy for all. Freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more at au.org/TENC.

• 36:46Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. You're listening to the Don't Look Back special. My name is Dem Washington, and we're sharing stories from our supernatural sister show, Spooked. Now, I've heard some people driving, listening to Spooked, they get so engaged, they forget to make their turn. I understand. But what if you really did get lost? Really lost? Who'd come to save you? Our next story comes to us from the wilds of rural Montana. Snap Judgment.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  I was an EMT, which is Emergency Medical Technician, in Dillon, Montana. This story takes place on New Year's Eve, 1987. I was having dinner with my boyfriend. At that time, his name was Hank. And we were having New Year's Eve dinner. I was on call 24/7, and so I just wore a pager all the time. And I got a page, and the page said, "Man down in alley."

• 38:06Speaker 04

  And so I immediately responded, and I said I had to go on this call. So I got to the young man. He was about 14 years old, and he was having seizures. The boy had freckles. He was a red-headed, green-eyed boy. So we were trying to contain him enough to protect him. But he was 14. He was a pretty good-sized boy. And it took a lot of the police, and these guys are big guys, to control his bodies enough

• 38:48Speaker 04

  that we could strap him down. We transported him to the hospital, which was about three minutes away. And they immediately did blood tests, and they came back and told us that there was cocaine in his system. And they said there must have been something else in there, laced it with something, and that they were going to keep him, you know, put him in ICU right away. And actually, as I'm thinking about this, I remember with that boy making eye contact with him at one time.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  And he knew he wasn't going to be okay. He knew. And yet, we went for it anyway. We did everything to save that boy's life.

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Even though his body was still there, there was something missing. He wasn't dead. His body was alive, but his soul had already moved on.

• 40:06Speaker 04

  So I'm going to ask you just to imagine that it was New Year's Eve in your life, and you had just seen a young boy in grandma seizures. And then you find out that the reason this boy is so seriously ill is because he got some cocaine that was laced with something. Would you get mad? Especially if you knew that the man that possibly brought in the drugs was your boyfriend?

• 40:41Speaker 04

  When I went home, I just couldn't sleep because I knew that Hank was bringing in drugs. And it was just so upsetting to me that perhaps that boy got one of his drugs. I went to bed for a little bit.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  It's about 3 o'clock in the morning. And I got in my car. And that's one way that I can calm my little spirit is by going into nature, going for a drive.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  It's cold. It's dark. And in Montana, these old roads, I mean, they're just two-lane highways. And I just headed to where I knew where it was always calming for me, which was Yellowstone Park, which was about three hours away. So it was a nice little drive. I probably hit there maybe 5:30 in the morning or something. It was still dark. And I remember turning off. And then I just went, wow, this road doesn't seem like the same place that I usually go.

• 41:52Speaker 04

  It was cold. It was very cold. And there was probably about 2 and 1/2, 3 feet of snow.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  I think the biggest thing I was thinking was, I knew that they were bringing those drugs in. And it made me very mad. And so my mind was really playing tapes of, if I did this, I could do this. If I did that, I could do this.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  I realized I was lost probably about an hour up the road. And it was just, the wind was shaking the car when I was driving. It was just blowing so hard, this blizzard. And it was like, I knew I couldn't try and turn around because I would get stuck. And then I went, man, this is not good. As I'm driving, the snow was literally just coming over the car. It was so deep, I was pushing through it, and it was coming over the top of the car. And I reached down into my jockey box to see if I had any food, and I had a half a piece of gum.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  And I didn't have any water, I didn't have any other food.

• 43:15Speaker 04

  I still had about a half a tank of gas or so. And I decided that if I would stop and then just turn the engine off until I, you know, got really cold, and then I would start it up. I probably had enough gas for about six hours. I don't even know where I am. And there is so much snow, and the blizzard is happening. If this continues, my car will be completely covered. They won't find me. And I went, this is it. This is where I'm gonna, this is where I'm gonna die.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  And I just kept thinking about my daughter, Brandy.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  And then I heard a truck come up behind me. And this guy pulls up. He's got this, about, I think it was about a 60 Ford pickup. Blue and white. He had a cowboy hat on, he's got the guns in the back.

• 44:17Speaker 04

  I would say he was probably in his 50s.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  He was really tall, he had a brown hat, and his hair was kind of that dirty blondie brown. It was all straggling, he had a beard and, uh, blue jeans, and his face was full of wrinkles.

• 44:42Speaker 04

  And he just said, "What in the hell are you doing out here?" And started yelling at me, and, and I'm like, "Oh, I don't really know what I'm doing out here."

• 44:56Speaker 04

  And I think I told him, "I think I'm lost." And, and he, he just kept asking me, "Who are you, who are you?" And I was trying to tell him who I was, but he wouldn't listen to me. He just kept on, "Who are you, what are you doing, what are you doing?" And I really started getting scared because he was getting pretty loud, you know? And the rifles were in the truck. And he looked at my plates. He says, "You're from Montana." I said, "Yeah." And he says, "Well, do you even know where you are?" And I said, "I have no clue." And he said, "Well, you're in Idaho."

• 45:30Speaker 04

  And he said, "I'll, I'll follow you, and I'm gonna show you how to get out of here." And, so I got in my car and I started driving, and there's still no road.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  And he was so close to me that I could, I could see him. He had green eyes, they were emerald green eyes. And he was right on my tail. And then he starts honking his horn, just laying on his horn, so I stopped.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  And then he walks up to my car, and he, and he says, "Okay, down there, you're gonna, do you see the telephone post?" And I could see him in the distance. And he says, "Just follow the fence line." And you could see a fence line down there.

• 46:15Speaker 04

  And he says, "It'll get you to that town." And then he says, "There's a gas station down there. Go to the house and lock on the door in the back of the gas station, and they'll help you."

• 46:28Speaker 04

  And I got in the car, and I'm driving, and he's right on my butt again. I was watching where I was going, but also watching him.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  And then he just vanished, just disappeared.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  And I, I thought, well, he must have taken a road or went off the road, you know? Off somewhere. And so I stopped and I got out and, and then I backed up a little bit because it was like, where could he have gone? He just disappeared. There was no sign. And then I looked down and there was only one set of tracks. And they were my car tracks.

• 47:17Speaker 04

  There was no other car tracks. There were no truck tracks.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  This is weird. Like, how could that have happened? Because I know he was there. I never touched him and he never touched me, but I could smell his breath. I, you know, I could feel the heat coming off his body. He was so close to me. For him just to vanish like that, it was like, what could have that have been?

• 47:56Speaker 04

  I got chicken skin, you know, like, I, I, even though he was really angry, that man was really angry at me, there was a genuine caring about me.

• 48:12Speaker 04

  I remember looking into his eyes and wondering, where, where did he come from?

• 48:21Speaker 04

  And then I remembered that boy. And he had the same kind of eyes.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  They were green, although the little boy's eyes were all bloodshot and stuff. It was like the same eyes. Same color eyes, that, that emerald green. Oh my God, it was the spirit of that boy. And I know that's who came.

• 48:51Speaker 04

  I got back in my car after checking out the car tracking and headed headed towards the telephone post. And I got to a little town called Dubois. And I stopped and went to the house, knocked on the door. They gave me some gas. And then I headed back to my brother's house where they were having a New Year's Day party.

• 49:40Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, Valerie, for sharing your story. Valerie's story comes to us from the book Trucker Ghost Stories. It's edited by Annie Wilder. Original score was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Eliza Smith.

• 50:30Glynn Washington?

  Oh, yes. This is but one episode crafted in the dark of night. If you want more Spooked, if you need more Spooked, the new season of Spooked is streaming right now. Spooked: Season of the Wolf. Amazing stories from people who can scarcely believe it happened themselves. Available this very moment on each and every podcast platform. Spooked.

• 51:02Glynn Washington?

  Spook was created by the team that walks under the light of the full moon, except of course for Mark Ristich. We can't get those roller skates off him. There's Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrik, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Davy Kim, Renzo Goryo, Taylor Decot, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Fergno, Tiffany Deliza, Anne Ford, Doug Stewart, Isaiah Sims. The Spook theme song is by Pat McSweeney Miller. My name is from Washington. Know that people tend to hide the things most dear to them in the darkness, in the underground, in the shadow. The first mistake is to fail to consider who you are hiding your secrets from.

• 51:46Glynn Washington?

  As for me, everything I hold dear, I like to keep it close, and I never, ever, never, ever, ever turn out the lights.