Paranormal Story Archives
March 2002 –
Page 5
"I
Followed You"
by Josh S.
In the winter of 2000, a friend and I went on a weekend trip to South Cumberland State Recreation Area near Monteagle, Tenn. We planned on hiking a few miles and camping overnight to hike back to the car the next morning. We walked for several miles out to a place called Raven Point that overhangs a very deep valley cut by the river below. We dropped our packs and I stood looking over the ledge while my friend, Steven, slipped off of the trail behind me to relieve himself.
A minute or two later I heard a voice say, "I followed you." It wasn't quiet or loud, and it didn't seem dreadful, urgent, benevolent or sadistic. It had no real feeling or emotional characteristic to it at all. It was monotone, but spoken very clearly and casually, in a conversational manner. I assumed that it was Steve, and even after he returned several minutes later and denied the accusation, I was convinced that it was him. Raven's Point was such an attractive location that we decided to sleep there for the night. It was warm for November and there wasn't a cloud in sight so we skipped pitching the tent and just unrolled our bags on whatever flat space we could find on the rock. I slept miserably for a couple of hours, then the day of hiking and the long car trip that morning caught up with me and I fell into a solid slumber.
I vaguely remember dreaming about black shapes and a sense of something dangerous, but I typically have a lot of nightmares and it was nothing out of the ordinary. I woke up in the middle of the night and as soon as my eyes opened they were focused on Steve, standing stiff as a board and swaying gently from side to side. It took me a moment to realize that he was so close to the edge of the overhang that a slight nudge would have sent him over. "Steve," I said quietly, not wanting to startle him. "What are you doing?" He turned to me after a brief pause and said "Let's go to the car." I was groggy from sleep and completely puzzled. It was around 1 a.m. and the car was seven miles away. I explained this to Steve and his response was simply, "We have to leave." Steve started rolling up his bag and stuffing his pack while I was still sleepily trying to make sense of the whole situation. Then he turned to me and in a very distressed and almost angry voice he said, "Josh, get up now and pack your **it! We have to go. It wants me to jump."
I didn't know for sure what was going through Steve's head, but the possibility that he might jump from the ledge and most certainly die was enough to get me moving. If he was having some sort of breakdown or suffering from hallucinations it would be better for it to happen back at the car than here next to a 200-foot drop.
The walk back was long and I was too tired to give Steve any crap about his weird behavior. I just kept my mouth shut and tried to imagine that I was still wrapped warmly in my sleeping bag. Nothing too bizarre happened until we made it back to the car and were stowing our gear in the trunk when I heard the voice again. "I followed you." This time Steve turned and looked over his shoulder, so I knew that it wasn't just me. I glanced nervously around the parking lot and saw nothing but empty space between us and the tree cover many yards away. The voice was so clear and sounded so near that I was sure it had come from right behind me. Steve just shut the trunk and got into the passenger side of the car. I looked around for another minute, searching vainly for the form of a man in the darkness. There was no one.
I got into the car and started the engine and drove to the park entrance. The gate was closed for the night, but not locked, so I got out and opened it, somehow with the understanding that Steve didn't want to get out of the car again. I tried questioning him on the way home, but he didn't talk much, and what little he said was in a wavering voice that trailed off into whispers that I couldn't quite catch. The most I could get out of him was that he walked to the ledge half awake and half in a dream, and that when I called to him he was shaken out of it, but he could still hear the voice telling him to jump, even as we were packing to leave.
A few nights later after, everything seemed normal again. I woke, to my surprise, standing in the middle of my living room with a shard of glass in one hand and the TV remote in my other. The television volume was so loud that I immediately activated the mute button. I looked around clueless, but absolutely awake. Why was there a piece of glass in my hand? I stopped into the bathroom on my way back to bed and found the mirror broken into several pieces and scattered across the floor and in the sink. There was no blood, so if I had done it then I must have done it with something other than my hand. I have never walked in my sleep before and find the incident very difficult to attribute to somnambulism.
Throughout the following week, I could hear a tapping sound, like metal on ceramic coming from the bathroom every night as I tried to sleep. One day in the garage, as I was cleaning out my car, I heard the voice again. "I followed you." It didn't just seem odd or out of place this time. It was genuinely frightening and it took all of the self control that I have not to run as I moved back into the house. I have heard it two more time since. Once in the bathroom as I was taking a shower, and once in the kitchen as I was cooking dinner and there were two other people in the house, but not in the same room.
Steve refuses to talk to me about the camping trip now, and I haven't mentioned it to anyone else. Things have begun disappearing infrequently around the house. It always happens in spurts. Nothing will happen for a couple of months, then over the period of a week, I will lose several things at once, and more often than not it includes moderate sums of money. I try not to keep cash on me any more because I have lost track of over five hundred dollars that I know of. I'm not sure if this is related to the rest of my story or if I am simply growing paranoid and even somewhat delusional. One thing that I do know for sure, is that my dog will not follow me into the bathroom any more and he whines incessantly whenever I have to use the room.
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