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There's something in the woods using familiar voices to lure children into the woods. I wonder, does that have anything to do with all those missing person cases across the American wilderness?

Welcome back to unexplained encounters. I'm your host, Darkness prevails, and you can follow me on Twitter at dark prevails where I retweet skinwalker birds and discuss why Bluey is the greatest family show ever.

Today's episode features disturbing demons and terrifying child stealing creatures. Enjoy and be sure to send me your scary stories at darkstories.org. I'm looking for scary trucker stories.

Also check out eeriecast.com for more scary podcasts like this. Now, let's begin.

Superstition or Reality. From Returner 0173.

I'd recently turned 28 years old and felt a sudden urge to look back on my life. There are people, friends, and teachers I wanted to see again. At least, it felt like that. But oddly enough, I don't remember their full names or their faces.

Instead, I decided to look up family I hadn't seen in a long time since immigrating to the United States. That's when I started to feel unease as certain memories flooded back. My dad's family immigrated to the US a long time ago, which leaves my mother's side back in the Philippines.

When I was younger, I would visit them during times when school was out of session. They live on the northern part of the archipelago in a very rural area called Agou-O-La-Unyan.

The area is surrounded by rice patties and tree lines that housed fishpons that also transitioned to more rice patties, and the home itself is two hours away by foot from the beach, if you cut through the rice patties.

The exact memories causing the unease occurred during the only and last full year I'd spent there. It was right before our family immigrated to the US.

Due to how the school system worked, despite having completed more advanced subjects, the K-12 system in the US would force me a year back.

So the family decided I would go ahead and spend a full year with my mother's family in La-Unyan, while they finalized the paperwork and while my mother settled things with her company.

All my other visits prior to this had been great.

The Spanish colonial style of home was made almost entirely out of some red-colored hardwood, and the furniture looked as though it had been made specifically to match the house.

It felt scenic and more relaxing than the modern city life I'd been accustomed to. That made me curious.

However, my grandparents and the family that lived there had one rule.

Do not try to open a specific room on the second floor, and if you somehow find it open, do not remove the cover of the mirror and side.

I never questioned this rule before, but this time around I had a full year, and I was 10 years old.

I spent about six months, curious, but no unusual goings on.

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