Hello and welcome to mini episode 38 of Real Life

Gold Stories. How you do? To kick things off this week we need to thank our newest Patreon subscribers. We would like to thank Sylvia Oliveira's Gabi B, Ashley Mawai, Ricky Donohoo, Emily Sargent, Aaron Nelson, Ali Wait, Stepf Dears, David Ranson, Bethany, Serena, Shane Hoskins, Tobias Schmacher, Jess, Stephanie Farmer, Amy Williams, Simone Simpson,

Sharon Monique Rogers Dunworth, Vlad The Enhailer, King Moonbird, Mackenzie Saxon, Phil G, Susan Trail, Jenny Jackson, Alice Oak, Jenny Umana Reyes, thank you so much for being our Patreon subscribers. We appreciate you. Yes we absolutely do and I've actually only got one story for you this week. Only one. Does that mean we're finally getting the Sunshine Lollipops extravaganza that I've been hoping for?

Extravaganza, that's very RuPaul's record, I loved it. And in a very synchronicistic, is that the word? Turn of events? Our story this week is all about the wilds and the wilderness in the woodlands.

Ooh, isn't that exciting? So our story this week comes from Joe. I previously wrote to you about the things I experienced in my childhood home.

And my brother suggested I also share stories from our hunting property of North. Now when I say up north, I mean Northern Wisconsin. So deep in the woods that your phone won't even work.

I love it there. It's one of the few places I ever actually feel at peace and happy. I've been camping there my whole life.

And when I say that, I mean I spend a total of four weeks every summer and a week every fall every year at this property.

I cannot remember a time when I did not spend my weekends in those woods. I know the trails of the property like the back of my hand.

I wandered them in the pitch black of night without ever getting turned around or lost. I have a myriad of stories.

Some mine, some told me by hunting buddies or family members. But a few are incredibly similar. Some are downright terrifying.

But I'll start off with a rather lighthearted and easily explained story for Dansek.

So it was me, my brother Josh and our cousin Brad. It was late 2 a.m. or so. We had stayed up after our parents had all gone to bed to continue drinking by the fire.

There was no moon that night and it felt like the world ended at the edge of the fire's light.

We couldn't even make out the silhouette of my uncle's cabin or even closer yet our trailer. It was just a pitch black abyss.

We had started talking about the weird things that happened in the woods and how we all experienced similar things without ever talking to one another beforehand.

Lights in the woods, strange footsteps and trail cams none of our hunters had placed.

When all of a sudden the woods behind our trailer was lit up it seemed far away like it was a few miles off at the edge of the property.

Now we knew two things for certain. Just a few miles that way was an air face where they open-tested weapons and there was a lightning storm rolling in.

But it was too close to be the base and it was below the tree line. So the light had to be emanating from inside the woods.

Or at least that's what we were all sure of. But keep in mind we were so drunk we were probably flammable at that point.

We kept trying to scare one another with stories of aliens and how it was so dark that we could literally be surrounded and we would never know.

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