The People in White

34m

In 2008, a teenager was hiking through a forest in California when he decided to stop and set up camp for the night. He walked several hundred feet off the trail into the woods where he found a small clearing in the trees, and set up camp there. A few hours later, the teenager woke up suddenly and thought he heard something moving outside. It was the middle of the night, so it was pitch black outside, and he had no windows on his tent anyways, so he just laid still for a second, and listened. A few moments later he heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps slowly moving toward him.

The audio from this story has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.

Story name, preview & link to original YouTube videos:

  • #1 -- "The People in White" -- Teen solo hiker lives a nightmare in California forest (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx6YxG8SD_A)


For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallen

If you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballen

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Listen and follow along

Transcript

In 2008, a teenager was hiking through a very dense forest in Northern California when he decided to stop and make camp for the night.

He walked several hundred feet off the main trail into the forest where he found a small clearing and there he would set up his tent and he would climb inside and go to sleep.

A few hours later, he would wake up because he thought he heard something outside of his tent.

But there were no windows on his tent and it was totally pitch black outside so he can't see anything.

And so he's just laying there listening, trying to discern what's going on outside.

And as he's laying there, he hears it again and it's the sound of footsteps slowly approaching his tent.

Today's story is the remastered audio from Feral People Hunt Teen Hiker, which is a very popular video on our main YouTube channel.

The link to the original YouTube video is in the description.

But before we get into today's story, 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 on Monday and once on Thursday.

So, if that's of interest to you, please hide a Bluetooth speaker in the five-star review button's bedroom and then proceed to play Siberian Husky screaming audio at full volume all night.

Also, please subscribe to the Mr.

Bolland podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.

Okay, let's get into today's story.

This episode is brought to you by the HBO original drama series Task, from the creator of Mayor of East Town.

Set in the working-class suburbs of Philadelphia, an FBI agent heads a task force to put an end to a string of violent robberies led by an unsuspecting family man.

Don't Miss Task, starring Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelfrey, streaming September 7th.

The show is brought to you by Progressive.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

In 2007, the now famous cult classic movie, Into the Wild, was released to movie theaters for the first time.

The movie, which is based on a true story, centers on the life of a young man named Christopher McCandless.

In 1990, Christopher graduated from a really good school with honors, and by all accounts, he could have gone on to get a really good, high-paying job, but Christopher didn't want a job.

He wanted freedom.

And so without telling his parents, because they would not have been happy about this idea, He gave away all of his possessions, he gave all his money to charity, and he headed off to Alaska to live off the grid by himself.

He eventually would find this rusted-out old city bus in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, and he would make this bus his shelter, and he would live inside of this bus for 113 days before he unfortunately died of starvation.

While Christopher's story is obviously tragic, the movie about his life, Into the Wild, really focuses on Christopher's unrelenting spirit and his constant drive towards getting the thing he wants the most, which is freedom.

And so at the end of this movie, the audience is left feeling not sad, but inspired.

Inspired to take big risks in life and seek out adventure before it's too late.

One audience member who was totally inspired by Christopher McCandless's life story was an 18-year-old young man named Matt Higgins who lived in Oregon.

Matt was about to graduate high school, and unlike a lot of his peers, he had no idea what he should do after graduation, whether it was get a job or go to school.

But after watching Into the Wild, a third option appeared to him, which was to head off into the wild, just like Christopher McCandless had done, except not permanently.

Matt quickly fell in love with this option.

He viewed it as a chance to kind of take a break from reality and go find himself.

And then at the end of his stint in the wild, he could come back and, you know, get a job or go to school.

And so Matt's official Into the wild plan was that he would graduate in 2007, and then in the spring of 2008, he would hike the entirety of the California section of the infamously rugged and beautiful Pacific Crest Trail.

And he would do this all on his own.

This section of the Pacific Crest Trail that he planned on hiking was roughly 1700 miles long.

It began on the border of Mexico and Southern California, and it wound its way north up to the border of Oregon.

The trail cut through deserts and up and over mountains, and there was lots of dangerous wildlife to contend with.

And on top of that, there were many points along this trail where hikers were very isolated.

They were not anywhere near civilization.

And so if anything were to happen to them, they'd be on their own.

And so, naturally, this hike was not a beginner hike.

However, Matt was not a beginner hiker.

He had grown up hiking and camping all over Oregon and the western United States.

He had spent time in totally well-marked and safe areas.

And he had also spent time hiking around very dangerous and isolated areas where there were cougars and bears and unmarked cliffs everywhere.

And so Matt felt like, with his experience in the outdoors, he was perfectly suited to take on this big of an adventure.

And in many ways, that was true.

However, Something was going to happen to him while he was out on the Pacific Crest Trail that no amount of hiking or camping experience could have prepared him for.

So, Matt graduated from high school in 2007, and in keeping with his plan, in the spring of 2008, he packed up his stuff, he headed to the airport, and he flew south to Southern California.

And when he got there, he made his way all the way south to the border of Mexico, and there he picked up the start of the Pacific Crest Trail and he began heading north.

For the first few weeks of his hike, Matt would spend the entire day hiking as far as his body would allow him, and then at night, when it got too dark or when he got too tired, he would just set up his campsite right off the edge of the trail, and then after a quick bite to eat, he'd climb inside of his tent and he'd go to sleep.

And then the next day, he'd get up early and he'd do it all over again.

During those first few weeks, the only real adversity that Matt ever faced, beyond just kind of normal fatigue from long distance hiking, was at one point he got a little dehydrated, and another time he almost stepped on a rattlesnake.

So besides those two things, really the hike had actually been fairly routine by Matt's standards.

But when he reached the Lassen National Forest, which is a very dense forest in Northern California located about 150 miles from the end of his hike, so the border of Oregon, When he got there, this hike of his would become anything but routine.

Not long after stepping foot in Lassen Forest, Matt found himself walking along this winding dirt path where the trees on both sides of this path were pressed tightly up against the edges of this trail.

And because of how densely packed the trees were together, it was almost like he had these walls on either side of him that extended 100 feet into the air.

And so it was very quiet and it was very dark as he was walking along.

But Matt was enjoying it.

All he could hear was the chirping of birds and the insects buzzing around him.

It was peaceful.

And so Matt's just kind of meandering his way through the forest.

He's in no rush.

And at some point, the trail he was on banked hard to the right.

And so he makes this turn.

And as he does, he looks up, and what he sees kind of startles him.

About 20 feet away from him, off to the right side of the trail, is this big boulder, and sitting on this boulder are two middle-aged people, a man and a woman.

They were both dressed head to toe in white.

They both looked very dirty and disheveled.

The man had this big, unkempt beard, and both of them were just staring daggers at Matt.

And so Matt felt awkward and he immediately looked down as he continued walking towards them, but as he got within a few feet, he looked up and kind of awkwardly smiled at them and waved and said hi, and they didn't respond.

They just continued to stare at him with no discernible expression on their face, and they watched him as he walked right past them.

And so after Matt walked past these two people in white, he felt really uncomfortable because he knew they were still definitely staring at him as he walked away, and he didn't want to turn around and meet their eye contact.

And so he's just kind of walking away, feeling that uncomfortable feeling of someone staring at him.

And he's thinking to himself, why didn't they at least wave or acknowledge him in some way?

Especially considering the fact that on the Pacific Crest Trail, people go days without seeing other people.

Matt, in fact, had not seen another person in days until he saw these two.

And so he's thinking, you know, how rude is that to just completely not react when another person walks walks past you on this trail?

But Matt told himself, you know what, I don't know these people.

I don't know what their issues are.

You know, for all I know, they're foreign and they didn't understand what I said.

And so maybe that's why they didn't say hello back.

Who knows?

But you know what?

It's none of my business.

And so Matt just continued walking along.

He never turned around to look back at these two people in white.

He just carried on.

A few hours later, when the sun was starting to set, Matt was still walking along this winding trail with these huge trees on either side of him.

And so visibility was getting pretty poor.

And so he began looking for a place to make his camp.

But because of how close these trees were to the edge of this trail, and considering how dense these trees were, there was no spot for him to make his campsite without completely blocking the trail.

And Matt did not want to block the trail for other people.

And so what he did is he left the trail and he walked 300 feet or so into these thick trees where he found this little clearing.

And that's where he set up his tent.

Once it was all set up, he made some food for himself on his little stove, and then after he was done eating, he packaged up all of his leftover food inside of a waterproof bag, and he sealed that up, and then he tied some cord to the bag and threw the bag up and over a branch of a nearby tree and kind of tied it off so the bag was sitting well off the ground.

This was to make sure no bears could get to his food.

And so after his leftovers were secured high up in a tree, it was totally pitch black outside.

And so Matt just climbed into his tent, he zipped it up, climbed into his sleeping bag, and he fell asleep.

The next morning, Matt got up right as the sun was starting to rise.

And so it was still pretty dark outside, but there was a little bit of light.

And so Matt unzipped his tent and he looked outside.

And the first thing he noticed was his bag of food that he had put up in the tree was gone.

And so Matt stepped out of his tent and he looked around, thinking, you know, maybe it fell to the ground or something, but it wasn't there.

It was just gone.

And so Matt thought to himself, you know, know, I didn't hear anything last night, but I guess a bear must have come into the campsite, found the food, and run off with it.

And so Matt began walking over to the tree where he had strung the food up to begin looking on the ground for bear prints to confirm his theory that that was who took his food.

And so he walks over, he's looking around, he doesn't see any bear prints, but he does see two sets of human boot prints, neither of which were his.

And before he could even process that, he realized these prints, these human prints, were not just underneath this tree where the food was.

These prints, as he looked around him, extended all the way up to his tent and all around his tent and all over his campsite.

And so as Matt is looking at this crazy trail of human prints all over the place, he's thinking to himself, how is this possible?

I went to bed last night when it was already pitch black outside and I got up basically right at sunrise, so it was still dark outside.

So these two people that were walking all over my campsite and cutting my food down, they somehow navigated here 300 feet off the main trail in the middle of nowhere.

They navigated here in total pitch blackness and they did it silently without waking me up.

How is that even possible?

And so after running through this thought process, Matt realized the only logical conclusion was that the two people he saw on the rock, the people in white, had followed him after seeing him, they saw where he left the trail, and they had waited until he fell asleep and then snuck out and robbed him.

As Matt's thinking about this, he suddenly realized that maybe they're still around, maybe he's still being watched.

And so he began whipping his head around, looking in all directions, almost expecting to see the man and the woman in white kind of poking out from behind a tree.

But when he looked around, he couldn't see anyone.

However, he started to get that sense that he was being watched.

And so feeling really uncomfortable, he quickly packed up his campsite and walked as quickly and calmly as he could toward the trail.

And as he walked, he kept thinking to himself that these people are going to jump out from behind a tree or they're going to grab me from behind.

And so he's walking faster and faster and faster.

And he finally gets to the trail and he looks down the trail and up the trail.

He kind of looks all around.

He doesn't see anybody.

And so he tells himself, okay, they're gone.

So he took a deep breath, he composed himself, and he started walking north again along the trail.

Matt walked for several hours, periodically looking over his shoulder, again, expecting to see the man and woman in white, but he never did.

And eventually, this narrow path kind of cutting through the dense forest opened up to this big, beautiful field.

And by that point, the sun was high in the sky.

And so Matt's walking in this very beautiful open area.

He can see in all directions, there's sunlight beaming down on him.

And so even though he was totally rattled by what had happened the night before, he found himself kind of becoming more at ease about the situation.

He was far less paranoid.

And he began telling himself, you know, as creepy as it is that those people in white almost certainly followed him and snuck up on his campsite in the middle of the night, as bad as that is, he thought, you know what?

They probably were just super hungry and they clearly needed the food more than he did.

And so, you know what?

Those people can have my food, whatever.

And so, Matt just continued on telling himself he would never have to deal with the people in white ever again.

However, he would be wrong.

Are you searching for a romantic summer getaway?

Escape with Rich Girl Summer, the new Audible Original from Lily Chu.

The phenomenally talented Philippa Sue returns to narrate her fifth Lily Chew title.

This time, Philippa is joined by her real-life husband, Steven Pasqual.

Set in Toronto's wealthy cottage country, aka the Hamptons of Canada, Rich Girl Summer follows the story of Valerie, a down-in-er-luck event planner, posing as a socialite's long-lost daughter while piecing together the secrets surrounding a mysterious family and falling deeper and deeper in love with the impossibly hard to read and infuriatingly handsome family assistant Nico.

Caught between pretending to belong and unexpectedly finding where she truly fits in, Valerie learns her summer is about to get far more complicated than she ever planned.

She's in over her head and head over heels.

Listen to Rich Girl Summer now on Audible.

Go to audible.com slash rich girlsummer.

Whenever I'm shopping online and I finally make it to checkout, I always look to see if the site has a shop pay button.

If it does, I know my shopping experience is going to be way more convenient and safe.

Now, maybe you know this, maybe you don't, but the shop pay button means that store is actually powered by Shopify.

And that's why so many business owners power their website with Shopify, because customers like myself know they're going to have a smooth experience.

And so now imagine being a business owner and knowing that if you use Shopify, you can literally guarantee that shopping will be convenient for your customers.

But not only that, with Shopify, you can offer both shipping directly and also local pickup.

Everything is made simpler so customers can shop how they want and your team has the tools to close the sale every time.

Stop seeing carts going abandoned and turn those sales into.

Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash Mr.Ballin.

Go to shopify.com slash Mr.Ballin.

Shopify.com slash Mr.Ballin.

Most people know that the smallest of mistakes can actually cost you really big when you're planning your financial future.

I mean, I can't even count how many times overdraft fees or waiting on a paycheck have thrown off my plans in the past.

That's why I really appreciate how QIIME makes managing your money so much easier.

They understand every dollar counts.

With QIIME's direct deposit, you can actually get paid up to two days in advance.

And with qualifying direct deposits, you're eligible for fee-free overdrafts up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals.

My younger self certainly would have benefited from the overdraft protection because that is a huge relief when things don't line up perfectly between your paychecks.

With QIIME, there are no monthly or maintenance fees, and you get access to over 47,000 fee-free ATMs.

To date, QIIME has spotted over $30 billion to customers.

That is banking done right.

Work on your financial goals through QIIME today.

Open an account at chime.com slash Ballin.

That's chime.com slash Ballin.

Chime feels like progress.

Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank.

Banking services and debit card provided by the Bankwork Bank NA or Stripe Bank NA, members FDIC, spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply.

Timing depends on submission payment file.

Fees apply it out of network ATMs, bank ranking, and number of ATMs, according to U.S.

News and World Record 2023.

Time checking account required.

1988.

A small New Jersey town is shaken by horror.

A devoted mother brutally murdered.

Satanic symbols scattered throughout her home.

And her teenage son vanished without a trace.

Was it demonic possession or something even worse, something more sinister?

Based on the Hit Wondery podcast series, The Devil Within, comes Let the Devil In, a four-part documentary that unravels this haunting true crime.

Through never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, we will explore a case that divided a community and exposed the dark underbelly of America's satanic panic.

Executive produced and hosted by horror maestro Eli Roth, this chilling investigation will make you question everything you believe about fear, faith, and the monsters we create.

Let the Devil In.

Now streaming, new episodes on Sundays.

Available exclusively on MGM Plus.

Over the next three days, Matt continued making his way north through the Lassen Forest, and the trail he was on would weave between those big, beautiful open areas, back inside those very densely forested areas where the trees were practically right on top of you.

And during those three days, Matt did not see the people in white.

He did not have any nighttime encounters with anybody.

Nothing got stolen.

And so that only reinforced the idea that, you know, he had been a target of opportunity.

They had taken what they wanted from him and they were no longer following following him.

But on the fourth day after the food stealing incident, things would get spooky for Matt again.

On that fourth night, Matt was once again forced to leave the trail he was on.

He was in one of those very densely forested areas and walk well off the trail to find a clearing for his tent.

And so he walked, you know, several hundred feet away.

He finds this clearing, he sets up his tent, and then also he sets up a perimeter of sticks all around the outside of his campsite.

This was a precaution he had begun taking after the food stealing incident.

These sticks were an early warning system, where if any animal or person came too close to his campsite, they would step in theory on these sticks and they would break and they would alert Matt in the middle of the night.

And so after his campsite was all set up and all prepared, Matt sat down and had a quick bite to eat.

And then after storing his food, he climbed inside of his tent and he fell asleep.

A few hours later, Matt suddenly woke up.

Now, when he woke up, he opened his eyes, but it's pitch black in his tent.

There are no windows in his tent, and it's pitch black outside.

So even with his eyes open, he can't see anything.

And so he's just laying there with his eyes open, but it's total darkness, and he's just listening intently because he doesn't really know why he woke up, if something startled him, or if there's no reason at all.

And so he's just laying there and he's listening.

And as he's listening, he hears the distinct sound of something stepping on one of the sticks in his perimeter.

And so he hears the stick break and his heart just starts racing because he knows that an animal or a person is just a few feet away from him.

And so instinctively, he kind of begins to pull his arm as quietly as he can out of his sleeping bag and he reaches over and he grabs his hunting knife.

And as he grabs the handle of the knife and he brings it closer to him, he hears the sound of more footsteps.

Whatever has stepped on the stick has not slowed down at all.

They don't care about the sound they just made.

They're still moving towards his tent.

And so Matt's starting to get really freaked out because he knows that, you know, it could be an animal, but just a couple of days ago, two people were in his campsite stealing his food and walking all around his tent.

And so that's what's going through his head.

And so Matt's laying there preparing himself to potentially have to slash out if anybody came close to his tent.

I mean, he's in the middle of nowhere.

If a person is out here, it's not his friend.

And so he's laying there.

He's kind of shaking and he's listening really intently.

And the footsteps are just getting closer and closer and closer to his tent until they stop right next to his head.

They are literally about a foot away from him.

And so he can't see anything.

He's just listening really intently.

And then he starts to hear whispering.

But the whispering is not coming from this person right here.

The whispering is coming from everywhere in the forest.

It's coming from all different directions.

And so Matt doesn't know what to think about this.

And as he's hearing this whispering, which is getting more and more frantic, whoever is standing right outside of his tent begins circling his tent so now he hears footsteps just walking in a circle around his tent while frantic whispers are coming in from all directions and so at this point matt is so terrified he's just frozen he knows that he's holding that knife but he won't be able to do anything with it he's just petrified and then as soon as this total nightmare had begun it just stopped the whispering silence The footsteps stopped.

And so in a way, it was kind of relieving, but in another way, Matt's laying there thinking, I want to hear the sound of footsteps retreating into the forest, leaving, but I haven't heard that.

It went from footsteps all around the tent and whispering everywhere to silence as if whoever is out there is still out there.

And they're just standing there waiting for him.

And because it's so dark, he can't even look.

He can't look outside and see.

And so he's left just laying in his tent, wondering if one, two, three, four, five, ten people are just waiting outside of his tent.

He's got no idea.

And so finally, the sun would come up in the morning.

And again, Matt has not heard the sound of retreating footsteps.

And so maybe they're still just standing outside.

But once the sun had totally come up and there was some light outside that he could see through his tent, Matt decided he just had to check.

And so he reached over and he quickly unzipped the flap of the tent and he looked outside.

He didn't see anyone.

He leapt outside with his knife ready to confront anyone who was out there, but there was no one.

And so Matt, he's not thinking, oh, great, you know, they're gone.

He's thinking, you know, are they just like a few feet away hiding behind trees?

And so for a few minutes, Matt just began looking all around his campsite, kind of expecting to see, you know, those people in white or other people he doesn't know, but he doesn't see anyone.

And then Matt starts thinking to himself, you know, was this just a nightmare?

Did that not even happen?

Am I imagining this?

But when he looked down, he saw clear bootprints all over his campsite, including a nice track all the way around his tent.

And so this nightmare really had played out in real life.

And so he quickly gets everything back into his pack, he throws it on his shoulder, and he just starts running back towards the trail.

And when he got to the trail, he continued running north.

And as he's running along and looking over his shoulder the whole time, he's telling himself, I just need to get out of Lassen National Forest.

I need to get out of the people in White's turf, get away from this place, and I'll be left alone.

And so that motivated him to spend the whole day moving as fast as he possibly could.

And by that afternoon, he had finally escaped Lassen National Forest.

He was out and he was in one of the smaller towns that kind of butted up alongside this forest.

And so that night, he camped out right near this town.

He wanted to be as close to civilization as possible to ensure his safety.

And so as he's laying in his tent that night, he began thinking about what had happened over the past couple of days.

At this point, he was nearly certain that the people in white that he had seen on that boulder, they had to be behind these nighttime encounters.

They just had to be.

And so he's thinking to himself, okay, well, the first encounter I had with them, you know, when they stole his food, yeah, that's creepy, but it makes sense.

They followed him, they went to his campsite, they stole his food.

Okay, fine, that makes sense to him.

But the second encounter, the one that had happened the night before, that didn't make any sense.

Assuming it was, again, the people in white responsible, that meant they had been following Matt the whole time and he had not seen them somehow.

Even though over the last couple of days, he had been looking over his shoulder constantly looking for those people.

But he didn't see them and they still managed to follow him all the way over several days to this other unmarked campsite hundreds of feet off the main trail.

So how did they do that?

And then two, once they were at his campsite and he's laying there listening to them, walking around the campsite, whispering to each other, what were they doing?

And then how did the footsteps and whispering just stop immediately and he didn't even hear the sound of of them retreating into the woods.

You know, how did they do that?

And so Matt would go over this and over this until finally he would fall asleep.

And then the next morning when he got up, it was the first thing he was thinking about, the people in white.

What were they doing and why and where were they?

And so as Matt packed up his campsite that morning, It did cross his mind, you know, that maybe he should just stop the hike right now and call his family, have them come pick him up and get out of here.

But this hike, this huge hike he had planned, was really important to him, and he was only about 100 miles away from the finish line, which meant he had already hiked over 1,600 miles, and he just didn't want to quit.

He wanted to finish what he started.

And so he packed up his stuff, he threw it over his shoulder, and he continued on.

And so that day, Matt would leave that little town, and he would make his way up into another very dense forest called the Mount Shasta Forest.

Mount Shasta was a lot like the Lassen Forest, except Mount Shasta has a very disturbing backstory.

Specifically, lots and lots of people go missing inside of Mount Shasta, and often they go missing under baffling circumstances.

The most frightening of these missing persons reports are when someone comes back, the survivor of the event, and they will say, you know, they saw their hiking companion, they clearly saw them.

And then they turned their back on them just for a few moments, few minutes, whatever it was.

And when they turned back around, the person they were with was now gone.

No trace of them, nothing, they're just gone.

And despite a massive search for them, they're never found again.

There is a distressing number of missing people in Mount Shasta that sound just like that.

It's totally terrifying.

So with that in mind, Matt makes his way into the Mount Shasta forest.

And even though it totally stressed him out to once again be walking on these dirt pathways where the trees are very tight on either side of you, they're very dense.

And as he's walking, he's kind of looking in both directions, expecting to see somebody watching him.

Despite feeling that way, Matt just continued to stay focused and kept telling himself to just continue on, continue on, because you're so close to the end.

And so the first three days that he was in the Mount Shasta forest, Matt would just keep his head down and very stoically every day, he would just hike as far as he possibly could.

In the evening, he would set up his campsite either right off the trail or maybe a little ways off the trail in a clearing.

And he didn't have any run-ins with the people in white or anybody else for that matter.

He was totally left alone.

But on his fourth day in the Mount Shasta forest, all that would change.

On that fourth day, Matt found himself not inside one of those very dense forested areas, but rather in this very open trail that was up on the side of this mountain.

And because this trail was fairly high up in elevation, the tree coverage was fairly sparse, and so there was great visibility.

He could see miles ahead of him, and when he turned around, he could see miles behind him.

And so Matt is just walking along this trail, kind of enjoying the day.

It's beautiful outside.

And at some point, he turns around and looks behind him.

Now, all day he'd been doing that, and he had not seen anyone.

But this time, when he turned around, he saw two little white dots miles and miles back, slowly making their way along the trail that he was on.

It was the people in white.

They were back.

At this point, Matt was at least 50 miles or more away from that first place he had walked past the people in white when they were sitting on that boulder, which meant, one, Matt was right.

These people in white really had followed him and almost certainly were responsible for the nighttime visits he was getting.

And two, for reasons unknown, they were still following him.

Matt suddenly didn't care at all about completing his big hike.

He just wanted to get the heck away from those people.

And so very quickly he pulled out his map and he looked and to his horror, he realized he was in one of the most isolated portions of the entire hike.

He was at least 25 miles away from the nearest civilization, a little town called Castella, California.

And so without a better option, Matt put the map back in his pocket.

He took one last look at the people in white who were making steady gains on him.

And then Matt just turned away from them and began booking it down the trail.

And Matt would run for hours and hours and hours without stopping.

Even when he turned around and could no longer see the people in white, he just kept on running.

And then when the sun set and he could barely see the trail, he just kept on running.

It literally wasn't until it was so dark outside that he actually couldn't see the ground anymore that Matt finally, totally exhausted, came to a stop.

And then from there, he turned and left the trail and walked way away from the trail, hundreds of feet deep into the forest to get as far away from these people in white as he possibly could.

And so finally, he found this clearing very far away from the trail.

He set up his tent right in the middle of it, and then he very diligently laid out his perimeter of sticks around his campsite, making sure there were no gaps.

And then he climbed inside of his tent.

He zipped it up, and then keeping on all of his stuff in case he needed to make a run for it, he got inside of his sleeping bag and he just laid there with no expectation that he was going to sleep.

He was terrified.

As he laid there, he thought to himself, okay, I have now run at least several miles ahead of them.

I know that was them.

I know I got some distance on them.

There's no way they saw where I turned off the trail and where I've set up this campsite, so they can't possibly find me.

And so Matt would lay in the tent for several hours, just waiting to fall asleep.

And then finally, he would start to get tired because at this point, it's totally quiet outside.

He hasn't heard anything.

And so he begins to doze off to sleep.

And as he's getting more and more tired, he hears the sound of someone stepping on his perimeter of sticks.

And as soon as he hears that stick break, he hears the all too familiar whispering pick up all around the forest.

And then something new happens.

Before Matt can even do anything, his tent lights up like a Christmas tree.

Someone is shining a light on his tent.

Someone has snuck up on his campsite in the middle of nowhere, hundreds and hundreds of feet off the trail in the middle of the night.

They've found him and they're shining a light on him.

And then the light clicks off and it's silent.

And at this point, Matt's fight-or-flight instinct kicks in and he rips off his sleeping bag.

He jumps outside and begins screaming nonsense and flailing around with the knife, trying to intimidate these people to get away from him.

And then after he stops for a second, he hears a stick crunch right behind him.

And he whips his head around to look at who is standing right behind him.

And as he's turning out of his peripheral vision, he sees a dark figure running towards him.

He doesn't think twice, he just turns and begins running away from the campsite.

Now remember, it's pitch black in the forest.

There's trees everywhere.

And so Matt's smashing into trees, branches are hitting him, he's falling to the ground, but he is on a pure adrenaline high and he is just sprinting as fast as he possibly can away from this person who is likely still chasing him.

And after five minutes of running, he stumbles and falls forward and kind of lands at the base of this fallen tree.

The tree had landed in such a way that it was kind of propped on a rock.

So there was a small gap underneath the tree.

And so Matt, thinking quickly, kind of slid himself underneath this log and positioned himself so he was looking back in the direction he was running from.

And as he laid there, he saw in the distance this light bobbing around.

These people are looking for him.

They're searching the forest for him.

And so he watched in horror, tucked underneath this log, as whoever had the light and whoever else was with them, they moved closer and closer and closer, but they did not find him tucked underneath the log.

They just walked right on past him.

And so Matt would remain underneath this log all night until finally the sun came up.

And at that point, even though it was fairly obvious that whoever was looking for him, they were now gone, Matt was still terrified.

And so he stayed under the log for several hours until it was about early afternoon.

And then he finally pulled himself out from under the log and he looked around.

He couldn't see anyone.

And then then instead of going back to his campsite and getting his gear, he just totally abandoned it.

He was worried that these people in white or whoever it was, that they were still going to be there.

And so he just turned and continued running away from his campsite, back out to the trail.

And once he got the trail, he continued running on the trail all the way to Costella, California.

And when he got there, he hitchhiked his way to the town of Mount Shasta.

And there he would speak to police as well as the Forestry Service about what he had experienced.

And so they would take all of his information down and they would put him up in a motel for the night.

And then the next day, Matt would get in touch with his family and they would drive from Oregon to Mount Shasta.

They would pick him up and they would take him back home.

Months later, Matt would contact the Mount Shasta police and the Forest Service and would just follow up and say, hey, have you learned anything else about these people in white?

Have you caught them?

Has anybody else come forward?

And the police would say, you know, they did have a number of people coming forward saying that things had been stolen from their campsites.

are people that were in Mount Shasta, in Lassen Forest, and the surrounding forests.

But Matt was the only one who had reported being terrorized by this mysterious couple in white.

And so to this day, Matt has no idea who those two people were, what they wanted with him, beyond obviously the food they took.

I mean, they continued to stalk him for nearly a hundred miles, and he has no idea how they were able to keep finding his campsites that were hundreds of feet off the main trail in unmarked areas that they would somehow navigate to in total darkness without alerting Matt.

It's all a big mystery.

Thank you for listening to the Mr.

Ballin podcast.

If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please hide a Bluetooth speaker in the five-star review button's bedroom and then proceed to play Siberian Husky screaming audio at full volume all night long.

Also, please subscribe to the Mr.

Ballin podcast on Amazon Music, because starting November 1st of this year, 2022, our podcast is only going to be available on Amazon Music.

However, from now until November 1st, you can still get the podcast on all platforms, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, everywhere.

This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr.

Ballin.

We now have a registered 501c3 charitable organization called the Mr.

Ballin Foundation that makes it as easy as possible for you to join me, my family, and my team in supporting those whose lives have been most impacted by violent and heinous crimes.

Monthly donors to the Mr.

Ballin Foundation Honor Them Society will receive free gifts and exclusive invites to special live events.

But the real reward is helping to create a new ending to the story for victims of violent crime.

Go to mrbalin.foundation and click get involved to join the Honor Them Society today.

If you want to get in touch with me, please follow me on any major social media platform and then send me a direct message.

My username is just at MrBallin, and I really do read the majority of my DMs.

Lastly, we have some really cool merchandise, so head on over to shopmrballin.com to have a look.

So that's going to do it.

I really appreciate your support.

Until next time, see ya.

Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr.

Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the Amazon Music app today.

And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry.com survey.

I've got 20 minutes to run club meets, and it's time for a quick pre-workout snack.

Go Go Squeeze Active Fruit Blend to the rescue.

Made with Select B vitamins to help release energy.

It's an easy, squeezable pouch made to move with me.

The taste, so good.

And made with real fruit.

Even better, whether I'm hitting the trail or meeting my friends on the court, this is my go-to on the Go Snack.

Quick, easy, ready when I am.

When it's go time, I go with GoGo Squeeze Active.

Snack yours on your next door run.

Search for GoGo Squeeze on Amazon.