It might have been the peak of stupidity, but there I was again, listening to those horror stories.

I was 12, and had just discovered an endless supply of horror. Every day followed the same routine,

waking up, listening to people read these stories, and then being unable to sleep

at night. Now that I'm older, I find it humorous how I would regret it at night, and then be

filled with excitement during the day. That's just who I was. I had loved the idea of cryptids

and skinwalkers roaming in the thick woods and deep in mountain caves, but as I grew

older and my rational thinking overtook my naivete, those thoughts became just that. Thoughts.

It may come as a surprise, but I don't believe in the supernatural. With the digitalization of the

world, how could there not be video evidence of the supernatural? Sure, there are

videos out there, some easier to debunk than others, that claim to have definitive proof of

the supernatural. I never found a video convincing, and as I studied CGI and SFX, well,

a video could no longer cut it for me. I had to experience it.

I guess that's what pushed me into solo camping in the first place.

Experiencing something firsthand would change my entire life and way of thinking.

It'd go beyond my thought that all we were here for is to be, just as a leaf blows in the wind.

But let me reiterate, this story I'm about to tell

isn't about the supernatural. No, it's about a horror that's scarier than any ghoul, ghost, or

cryptid. It's about a horror that can only be produced by one thing, another human. At the tail end of

my last year in college, I had finally decided what I wanted to do with my life.

I moved to Lexington, Kentucky, while continuing my studies of CGI and special effects.

I'm from New York, and found that Lexington provided the perfect balance of city, life, and space to keep me happy.

On Friday nights, I'd go out on the town, and on

...