Lurking In The Shadows

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Today's podcast features three unique stories that all involve stalkers.

The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.

The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called Stick, and it's about two park rangers who get harassed by something in the trees.

The second story you'll hear is called Stalker, and it's the story behind a very suspicious live interview.

And the third and final story you'll hear is called He Had Plans for Her, and it's about a young woman who discovers that her family has been hiding something from her for years.

But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once once on Monday and once on Thursday.

So, if that's of interest to you, please sneak under the Amazon Music Follow buttons chair and tie their shoelaces together.

Okay, let's get into our first story called Stick.

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By the summer of 2007, Chris had been working as a park ranger in southeastern Pennsylvania for a number of years, and by and large, he enjoyed his occupation.

Some of the time he got to do what he loved, which was hiking in the forest.

And some of the time time it required doing something he hated, which was office work that usually required staying late at night.

On one of those late nights in August of 2007, Chris's boss, Mike, said that he needed to leave the office and go down the access road to this tool shed they had.

He needed to get some equipment and bring it back up to the office for some reason, and he said he'd be back in about 15 minutes.

As soon as Mike left, Chris decided, you know what, I'm going to take a break from my work and I'm going to step outside for a minute.

Right in front of the office building was a little staff parking lot, and then about 50 meters beyond that was the edge of this really dense forest where the access road that Mike had just gone down to get to the tool shed basically split right through the middle and went straight out past the office.

When Chris stepped outside to take his break, he sat down on the front steps that overlooked that parking lot and the access road, and he was just kind of looking out towards the forest, not thinking about what he was looking at, just kind of mindlessly sitting there.

When all of a sudden he just started to feel like someone's watching me.

And instinctively, he turned around to look back back into the office as if maybe someone was behind him.

But he remembered that he and Mike were the only ones there that night.

So no one's going to be behind him.

And so he turned back around and he looked out at the parking lot and he didn't see any movement.

And he looked down to the edge of the forest, which he could see because the moon was fairly bright that night.

So the illumination was pretty good.

And there was no movement against the tree line.

There was no animals.

There was no people.

And Mike had not come back yet.

So there's nothing going on in front of him.

There's nothing going on behind him.

But he just could not shake this feeling that someone was watching him.

And so Chris, you know, he's not easily spooked.

He's used to being out in the forest in the daytime and at night.

He's used to being at this office.

A lot of times he worked at the office on his own at night.

So he's used to this environment.

And so he thought, you know what, I'm gonna go look around.

And so he walks down the steps and he walks into the parking lot and he begins looking behind some of the cars.

There's only a handful in the lot.

There's nothing in the lot.

And he keeps walking until he's about 10 meters away from the edge of the forest.

And he looks into the forest and it's too dark to see anything.

anything and there's nothing out here there's no movement there's no animals mike is still not back yet and so even though he could not shake this sense that someone is watching him he felt like you know what i did my diligence and there's no one out here so it's just got to be in my head and so he decides he's going to go back inside and so he turns around and he starts walking back up towards the office when all of a sudden he hears this whooshing sound come past his head and he didn't know what it was but it sounded like someone took a stick and threw it overhand so it's spinning like a tomahawk as it passed by its head.

And because the sound was so loud and he was already on edge about someone potentially watching him that he actually dove as soon as he heard it and fell to the ground and scrambled around and looked at the tree line from where this thing came from, but there's no one there.

And he scrambles to his feet and he's still looking around and he starts backpedaling towards the office with his eyes still on the forest.

And his attention kind of shifts from the forest to what was just thrown at me.

And he turns around and starts walking around looking for something on the ground like a stick to see if something really was thrown at him but he can't find anything he didn't do an exhaustive search he didn't look under every single car but an initial scan turned up nothing and then he turns back to the forest and he doesn't see anything out there and even though again he feels totally stressed out like something's out here and i can't see it he's like am i going crazy Did that really happen?

Because I can't find this big stick that apparently flew past my head.

So is this all happening in my head?

But regardless, he's totally freaked out and he sprints back inside the office and locks every door.

20 minutes later, Mike comes blazing up the access road.

He stops in front of the office and runs up the stairs.

Chris goes over, unlocks the door, and he lets him in.

And Chris is about to tell him about this crazy stick-throwing incident, but he can tell Mike is really upset about something, probably more upset about whatever happened to him than Chris is about the stick-throwing thing.

And so Chris tables his story, he locks the doors behind Mike, and he turns to him and he says, what's going on?

What's wrong with you?

At first, Mike doesn't say anything.

He just paces back and forth inside the office.

And then finally, Chris calms him down and he gets him to explain what happened.

Mike tells him that he was down at the tool shed, which is about a half mile down the access road and about 20 meters off the road into the forest.

And he's at the shed, it's open, and he's pulling out the different pieces of equipment he's going to bring back to the office.

And he says, all of a sudden, all the hairs in his body stand up.

He's got goosebumps.

And immediately he thinks, someone's watching me.

And And he turns around and there's no one there.

He looks to his right and his left.

He kind of pokes his head in the shed like is someone hiding in the shed.

There's no one in there.

He walks to the back of the shed.

There's no one behind the shed.

And he's just totally stumped why he's feeling this way.

He goes back to the front of the shed and he's going over in his mind what made him feel this way and he can't put his finger on it, but he cannot shake this feeling of someone watching him.

And it's making him totally anxious.

So he gets all the things he needs from the shed as quick as he can.

He locks it up.

He turns and he starts speedwalking back out to his truck.

When he gets about five meters away, he hears footsteps running right to left behind him back where the shed is.

And because he was already completely on edge about someone watching him in the woods somewhere, he doesn't even turn around to see what that is.

He knows he needs to run to his car and get inside and put steel between him and whatever is out there.

Once he's inside, he locks the door, he turns on the ignition, and looks one last time in the direction of where he came from.

And to his horror, there is a man walking into the woods right next to the shed, turning the corner behind and disappearing into the woods.

His instincts were spot on.

He was being watched.

And that's when Mike hit the gas and sped back to the office.

Chris then tells Mike about his stick-throwing incident because all of a sudden that seems a whole lot more real.

And they both agree that whoever threw something at Chris is probably the same guy who was hiding near the shed with Mike.

Concerned this guy might come back and break into the office, they stay the night there and they watch the whole time.

They don't see him again.

And the next morning, they file a report and they tell the incoming park rangers what happened.

But after this, there were no more reports of this strange hooded figure roaming around the forest.

And to this day, Chris and Mike have no idea who he is or what he wanted, but they can both agree, whoever he was, he was bad news.

Our next story is called Stalker.

In June of 2011, law student Lauren Giddings was only one test away from completing her dream and becoming a public defender.

Even though she had a ton of studying still to do, she had taken off the first week in June to go to her sister's wedding where she was the maid of honor.

Right before she left the wedding to go back to school, she joked with her family that she was going to be locking herself in the library and just studying 24-7 and that nobody should get in touch with her.

But when she got back to campus, none of her classmates that she studied with saw her at the library.

And in fact, when they didn't see her for a couple of days, they started reaching out to her and texting her and calling her to see if she was okay.

But she never picked up, she never wrote back, and so no one knew what was going on with her.

One of Lauren's classmates would reach out to Lauren's sister and would ask her, hey, have you talked to your sister at all?

Because we haven't seen her.

And Lauren's sister would write back and say, oh no, everything is just fine.

Lauren told us before she left the wedding that she was going to be locking herself away and just studying 24-7, so I'm sure everything is just fine.

But this classmate wasn't convinced because this felt very uncharacteristic of Lauren to not study at the library and then not to pick up any phone calls or text messages.

So she would call the police and say, hey, can you please go check on Lauren's apartment because I think something's wrong.

So a police officer goes over to Lauren's apartment and knocks on the door.

Lauren doesn't answer.

They try the door.

It's locked.

The officer goes outside and looks around the outside of her apartment.

There's no broken windows, there's no obvious signs of a break-in.

And so the officer leaves and says, I can't do anything else unless you guys file a missing person report.

So a couple of days go by and there's still no word from Lauren.

And at this point, Lauren's family is now concerned and they do file a missing persons report.

So the police go back to Lauren's apartment.

They try knocking.

She doesn't come to the door.

The door is still locked.

So they get the owner of the apartment building to open up her door.

And when they go inside, Lauren's not in there.

And at first, it doesn't seem like anything is wrong until they notice her cell phone, her keys, her purse and her laptop are all still in there.

This made the police think there could be something sinister happening here and so they went to Lauren's friends and family and they asked does she have any enemies?

Does she have any reason to be fearful for her life?

Initially they said no no one would want to harm Lauren.

Everybody loves Lauren.

But Lauren's sister would say to the police that there was actually one comment Lauren made a year ago that now seemed a little bit more relevant.

Lauren had just got back from a vacation and she noticed there were things in her apartment that seemed like they had been moved, like someone else had been here, but no one was supposed to be in her apartment.

And so she told her sister and the two of them talked about it a little bit, but it was quickly forgotten about because there wasn't a reasonable explanation and Lauren was so busy with school, she didn't pursue it.

After police have done a thorough investigation of the inside of Lauren's apartment, they move outside of her apartment and begin scanning the exterior of the building and they make a huge discovery.

An officer who was looking in the dumpster noticed this big black trash bag that looked out of place and when he tried to move it, it was very heavy and when they opened it, they found a human torso and it was Lawrence.

Right before this discovery was made, a news crew had shown up outside the apartment building and was trying to interview people that lived in the apartment complex because they had been tipped off that somebody who was living here had been missing for over a week and now police were getting involved.

They saw what looked like a resident of the building looking visibly shaken up watching the police doing their investigation and they went over to interview him.

It would turn out his name was Stephen McDaniel and he was Lauren's neighbor and he was a classmate of hers in law school.

The interviewer asked Stephen, what was your last interaction with Lauren?

And Stephen became really focused on how he had not seen her in the last week.

And in fact, speaking on behalf of my other classmates, no one's seen her.

She must have just vanished.

As they're doing this interview, right on the other side of a bush, this police officer discovers Lauren's torso and the news kind of gets out to the interviewer, they've found a body.

And the interviewer says out loud to Stephen, it looks like they found a body.

And Stephen just completely changes and he goes, a body?

And then he goes completely silent to the point where the interviewer says, are you okay?

And he just stands there looking completely distant before walking away from the interviewer, sitting down with his back turned and hyperventilates before the interview ends.

Once this case went from missing person to homicide, the police started searching all the rooms on Lauren's floor.

And Stephen's room is right next to Lauren's, so he was the first room they searched.

Apparently, as they began searching his room, he was standing just outside the door and sweating profusely and drank over 10 bottles of water.

In his apartment, they found a key to Lauren's apartment.

And what he would do is whenever she was gone, he would sneak into her room and download her hard drive, as well as steal little souvenirs like small articles of clothing and other things that he would hoard in his apartment.

When they went on Steven's computer and checked his browser history, basically the only things he did on the internet were look at Lauren's Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

But the creepiest thing they found was this camera that was literally duct taped to this long pole.

And on the camera were all these surveillance videos of Lauren because what he would do is he would go outside and he would hoist up this camera and he would film her through her windows in the middle of the night.

Steven was quickly charged with Lauren's murder, to which he pled guilty, and he would openly confess to the details of how she died in court.

Most times, he used this surveillance footage to confirm she was not in her apartment so he could sneak in and steal from her.

But on the day she was murdered, he would use that camera technique to confirm she was home.

And shortly after confirming she was in fact home and asleep, he put on a mask and used his key to get into her apartment and walked right into her room, which woke her up.

According to Steven, she apparently sat up and said, you need to leave.

At this point, he jumps on the bed and in their struggle, his mask would come off, and Lauren would recognize it's clearly Steven, and she would plead with him by name to stop.

But he didn't stop, and he would strangle her to death.

Afterwards, he dragged her into the bathroom and began cutting her up into fairly small pieces.

Some of those pieces got flushed down the toilet, the others were put in bags, and only one of those bags was ever discovered, and that was the one of her torso.

Stephen was ultimately given a life sentence.

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The next and final story of today's episode is called He Had Plans for Her.

In 2014, a young woman named Jen was sitting in her sister's living room looking out their back window where her son and her two nephews were playing.

And as she's watching them, one of her nephews named Harrison walked over to this tree and began peeling the bark off of the tree.

And for Jen, this brought back a very strange childhood memory that she hadn't thought about in decades.

And without meaning to actually say the words out loud, Jen kind of blurted out what was going through her head, which was, so weird.

And her mother, who was in the other room, heard her say that and she yells into the room, hey Jen, is everything okay?

What's so weird?

And Jen, feeling a little bit embarrassed that she just said that out loud and that her mom heard her, is quick to try to dismiss it by saying, Oh no, sorry, it's nothing.

I didn't mean to say that.

But as she's trying to dismiss it, her mom had walked into the living room where Jen was and saw Jen was looking out the back window towards the boys.

And so her mom walked right up next to Jen and goes, What are the boys doing out there?

That's so weird.

Are they doing something they shouldn't be doing?

And Jen's like, No, no, it has nothing to do with the kids.

I just saw Harrison who was doing something that reminded me of some weird thing that happened to me and I blurted out my reaction to it.

That's all.

And Jen's mom looks at her and says, well, you got to tell me the memory because I'm totally intrigued.

Jen says, okay, mom, I'll tell you the story.

I don't know if Frankie's mom ever told you this or not, but when I was eight years old, I spoke to Frankie and he was doing some homework and he told me to come meet him outside of his house and that when he was done, we could meet up and go play together.

And so I walked over to his house and I was standing across the street in front of that small group of trees that we called the pine cone forest, even though it was just a handful of trees, but we all called it that.

Anyways, I was standing over there and I was just kind of mindlessly peeling the bark off of the tree.

I don't even remember consciously deciding to do it.

And so as I'm peeling the bark off the tree, watching Frankie's house, waiting for him to come outside, I noticed to my right, there's this guy walking through the forest towards me.

And then I look at him and I've never seen him before.

And before he got even within 10 feet of me, I could smell cigarettes.

He reeked of cigarettes.

And his teeth were very yellow.

He's missing a number of teeth and i noticed right away when i looked at his hands i don't know why i was looking at his hands but i looked at his hands and he had these pointy yellow fingernails that almost looked like he was intentionally growing them out to be long and jagged and he comes walking up to me and stops completely in my personal space and instead of looking at me he looks at the spot on the tree where i had been peeling the bark off and he's literally like one foot away from me so close that i had to lean back because i didn't want to be rude and run away so i'm leaning back to avoid being right next to this guy.

And all I can smell is cigarette smoke.

And he turns from the tree to me and he goes, what do you think you're doing?

And I'm like this and I'm like, I'm waiting for my friend.

And he says, no, what are you doing to the tree?

And I remember looking at him and then the tree and saying, peeling the bark off?

And that's when he raised his hand up and pinched my arm with his nails, not with the pads of his fingers, but he was using his nails and he's pinching down on my skin and through gritted teeth.

He says, how would you like it if someone peeled your skin off?

I remember as he's pinching me, I was so terrified that I didn't do anything.

I was like in a trance and just stood there looking at him, wondering what's about to happen.

And then as luck would have it, Frankie's mom just happened to come outside and yelled, hey, come on inside.

Frankie's done with his homework.

And so that kind of broke me out of my trance.

I pulled my arm away and I began running away from him across the street towards Frankie's house.

And I turned around once, kind of expecting him to be chasing me, but he wasn't.

He was still standing next to the tree that I had pulled the bark off of, except now he was watching me.

And I ran up onto the porch and ran inside, and that was that.

I remember wanting to tell you about it when I got home, but for some reason I didn't.

And then days turned into weeks, turned into months, and before long, it was just a distant memory.

And I never really thought about it.

And at some point, did forget about it until just now when I saw Harrison peeling the bark off of the tree, and it brought it back.

And that's why you heard me say, so weird.

That was my reaction to it, because I'm wondering, who was that guy and what happened to him?

Like, that's so creepy.

After Jen told her mother this story, she was expecting her mom to be a little bit horrified by it because it is a pretty startling story about her own child.

But Jen's thinking it's been so long since this happened and nothing came of it that her mom would probably quickly move on from it.

But Jen noticed her mom looked very concerned and she turned to her and she goes, mom, this happened like two decades ago.

Like this is not a big deal.

And her mom looks down for a second and then looks up and she has this look of guilt on her face.

And she says to her daughter, Jen, I should have told you this when it happened, but it's just you were so young and I felt like it was going to ruin your childhood and so I just didn't tell you and it seemed like you forgot about it, but obviously you didn't and so

I guess you got to hear the full story now.

Jen's confused at this point and she says, what are you talking about?

And her mother, who now looks really uncomfortable, you know, she's touching her face and she looks very anxious, she says to Jen, it's time you learned who that man really was.

Before Jen could ask any more questions, her mom just says, honey, just sit down and I will explain everything to you.

So they sit down and Jen's mom is still acting pretty uncomfortable.

This is obviously a difficult subject for her.

And she starts by saying, okay, so do you remember how in our neighborhood where you grew up, everybody seemed to know each other?

You know, it was a really tight community of people.

And Jen's like, yeah, I remember that.

And her mom was like, well, because of that, it made it really easy to spot people that were, you know, outsiders that didn't live in the neighborhood.

And so if if a car came down the street and I didn't recognize it, I would find myself looking out the window and watching the car to see where it was going because there's no reason to be in this neighborhood unless you're a visitor or you live here.

And so I was in the habit of people watching anybody that showed up that I didn't recognize.

And I know a bunch of the other mothers in the neighborhood did the same thing, one of them being Frankie's mom.

Anyways, on the same day that that creep came up to you and pinched your arm when you were eight years old in 1995, well, that morning, Frankie's mom, Sonia, she happened to look out her front window and she saw a vehicle she didn't recognize.

And it was a work van, a white work van.

It didn't have windows in the back and it was parked across the street near the pine cone forest.

And so she assumed it must be a work truck and whoever had brought it here was, you know, working on one of the houses in the neighborhood.

But where it was parked, it was not close to any one particular house.

And there was lots of places you could have parked on the street.

So it seemed odd if you're going to be doing work on a house that you wouldn't just park in front of the the house.

Like, why would you park, you know, inconveniently farther away in front of this random forest?

And so that got her thinking that something's up with this van, but she didn't, she didn't think it was bad.

She just was trying to make sense of it.

And so all morning, she found herself going to the window and looking out to see if someone was going to claim this van, but she never saw anybody go near it.

She didn't see workers going in and out of it.

She didn't see any activity that was related to the van.

It was just this empty van parked randomly across the street.

And by the afternoon, when still no one had claimed this vehicle, she was getting ready to call the police.

So that same day, you and Frankie had spoken the phone and planned to meet up at the Pinecone Forest after he was done with his homework, and he didn't tell his mom about these plans, and so she didn't know that you would be very close to this van.

Had she have known that, she would have told you to not wait out there, but instead to come right inside and don't go near this van.

So at some point in the afternoon, when Sonia is getting ready to call the police and you were actually already over at the Pinecone Forest waiting for Frankie, Sonia is looking out the window and she sees the back two doors fly open and that guy who pinched you jumps out of the back and starts running into the pine cone forest.

And from where Sonia's looking, she can only see part of the forest.

The other portion of it is to the right.

It's out of her view through this window.

And so she turns and runs in her house to the side window of her house.

And she looks out at that section of the pine cone forest where this guy has run to.

And she sees you standing in front of the tree.

And she sees this guy sprint right up to you and sees him pinch you in the arm.

And he's talking to you and that's when she ran out onto the porch and yelled for you to come inside and she would tell me later that when she did that she tried to sound very natural she was worried if she sounded like this was an emergency not only would it frighten you but it might trigger this stranger to grab you or take you because now he's been made you know someone realizes he's a bad guy and he might take you And so the whole time she's watching you, she was watching him to see if he was going to chase you.

And so when you came inside, she did her best to be totally calm and told you to go play with with Frankie.

And as soon as you were out of the room, she ran around the house and locked all the doors, all the windows, and then called me.

And we decided it made sense to call the police.

Even though you were safely in the house, we didn't know who this guy was.

And it seemed like he was intentionally targeting you, like he was waiting for you the whole time.

And so Sonia calls the police and a police cruiser was sent over to our neighborhood.

And they quickly found the white van that matched the description.

They pull up next to it and they walk to the driver's side.

And sitting inside the car is a man that matches the description of what Sonia gave and he's acting really weird.

You know, he looked like he was on drugs or maybe he was drunk or something was wrong with him.

Something was off about him.

And so the officers had him step out of the car and they search his car and in the front two seats there was nothing but you know cigarette butts and trash and there was a partition wall between the front two seats and the back workspace of the van.

They went around to the back of the van and they see this guy has screwed a latch onto the back of the two doors right across the middle and there's a padlock through it.

So there's an additional lock on this back door clearly he doesn't want anybody getting in the back of this thing and so the police turn to this guy and they're like we need to get in the back of your truck can you please open this and at first he was you know making excuses why he couldn't open it but finally he relented and pulled out a special keychain he was carrying that had two distinct keys on it and he used one of them to undo the padlock he opened that up and then he swung open the doors and he backed up and the police look inside and they can't believe what they're looking at inside of this van all over every surface in the back, were pictures of you taped to the walls, to the ground, to the back.

I mean, everywhere you looked, there was a picture of you, and they weren't just recent pictures of you.

There was at least a couple pictures of you when you were six years old, and you were eight when he approached you.

So we know he was following you for at least two years.

Also in the back of the van were binoculars, as well as a camera that presumably he was using to take these pictures of you.

But that's not even the worst part.

After this guy got arrested, one of the officers pulled out that keychain that had the key to the padlock on the back of his van, and he noticed the other key on the keychain was not just a duplicate key to the same padlock.

It was a different, unique key.

And so the police go over to this guy and they show him the key and they say, what is this to?

And he says, it's to my storage locker.

And so the police track down his storage locker and they go over there and they unlock the lock with the key and they open the door and what's inside is straight out of a nightmare.

The entire storage locker, the ceiling, the floor, the walls, all of it it was covered in clear plastic wrap.

And behind the plastic wrap, you could see on the walls were hundreds more pictures of you.

And in the middle of the storage locker was a dentist's chair that had been anchored to the ground.

Next to the dentist's chair was this silver tray like you would see in a dentist's office, except on it were all these knives.

And they were not surgical or medical knives.

They were like meat cleavers and hunting knives, crude instruments.

And then next to that, on a table, was an anatomy book where he had used printouts of you to bookmark different parts of the book that he was taking notes on and highlighting, all of which had to do with the female anatomy.

In the back of the locker was a rotted mattress that was just sitting on the ground and anchored in the back on the wall were chains with handcuffs extending off of them and then next to the bed were dozens of empty five-gallon drums.

When the police showed us pictures of the inside of his van, we were very shaken up.

It was just so awful to imagine someone taking advantage of you in that way, you know, watching you.

But when they showed us pictures of the chamber that he had created inside of his storage locker, that's just something I'll never get over.

He clearly had plans for you.

After hearing this story from her mother, Jen is a mixture of angry with her mom for not telling her sooner, but also sad, you know, that her mom had to go through that with her child because now Jen is a mother and she can only imagine how horrible that must have been for her then and even still now.

And so all Jen could think to do was give her mom a hug.

After they embraced, Jen asked her mom, you know, what happened to this guy?

You know, where is he?

Did he go to jail?

And her mom told her that he had confessed to stalking Jen and he confessed that everything they found in the storage locker in his van was his and that he understood the implications, but he never gave his real motives for it or really what his intentions were.

He was ultimately put into a high-security mental institution for the criminally insane, and her mom said she has no idea if he's still alive or if he's been transferred, but that was the last she knew about him.

And so, Jen wound up doing some homework and figured out where he was being held.

And she asked to have a meeting with him because she wanted to ask him to his face, what were you planning to do to me?

I want to know why you did this.

And he agreed to take this meeting, but the day before they were supposed to have it, he took his own life.

And so, Jen doesn't know if that was brought on by their impending meeting.

It certainly seems likely, but unfortunately, that's it.

She doesn't get any more answers, and it will end with a big question mark: what was he going going to do to me?

And why?

Thank you for listening to the Mr.

Balin podcast.

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