I will never ever forget this experience. In October of 2008 when I was 14 years old, my older brother, older sister and I decided to go visit my mom in Big Bear Lake California for the weekend. At the time we were living with our grandmother about 2 hours away and didn’t get to see our mom often due to her drug habits but hey she’s my mom so I was excited to go visit her. We arrived at my moms house and right away, some of our friends came to the house right away and invited us to a friends birthday party. I didn’t think I was entitled to go at first due to the fact I was only 14 and my brother and sister were 20 and 21 so everyone knew there would be alcohol there. My brother and sister felt bad so they promised my mom they would take care of me if she allowed me to go. Which means I couldn’t drink any alcohol but oh well I was just happy to get out of the house. We arrived to the party and everyone besides me already started to drink and have a good time. My brother walked over to me and gave me a beer which I was actually excited for because I just wanted to know what it would feel like for the first time. I chugged that beer like it was a soda, gagged a little bit but hey I did it. Even though it was only one beer I felt dizzy and very lightheaded. An hour had passed and I had drank about 3 beers and my brother, sister and 3 of our friends decided to leave the party to go for a walk around the town. I say we walked about maybe 10 minutes down the road when we saw headlights in the distance. I’d say the car was maybe about a football field away when I noticed they were a police officers headlights. Everyone being scared including me for underage drinking, we all ran off the road into the woods in fear of getting arrested and getting locked up in jail for the weekend. Everyone ran in different directions but I decided to follow my older brother because I remembered he promised my mom he would take care of me so I surprisingly kept up with him. I’d say we ran about 15 mins into the woods when we finally stopped and hid behind some bushes and trees that were fallen over. I ended up throwing up everything out of my stomach after I ran because I wasn’t in the best shape and never ran that fast that much before. After I stopped throwing up my brother whispered to me “be quiet” and put his finger over his lips. He said he heard footsteps in the distance and twigs snapping. I’ve never been this scared in my life. My heart beating a million miles a minute. I started to tear up after I heard a voice in the distance say “wherever you motherfuckers are, I am going to slit your throats, stab your hearts and gouge out your eyeballs. We heard the footsteps moving closer and closer towards our hiding spot. I closed my eyes and prayed to god. Thinking about my family and friend I didn’t want to leave behind. My brother held me tight and whispered to me “no matter what happens, I will always love you and you will always be my little brother.” Then we both realized the footsteps walked passed us and were fainting away in the distance. When we were sure we didn’t hear the footsteps anymore, we ran as fast as we could out of the woods in the same direction we came from. We must’ve token a wrong turn at some point because we never ended up back on the road but we did end up in a residential neighborhood. We were running down the streets screaming and begging for help. Until we came across a house that had all of its lights on. My brother and I didn’t hesitate and we ran up to the door banging on it screaming for help. An elderly woman answered and threatened to call the cops on me and my brother because she thought we were both on drugs or something. We told her the whole situation and she invited us into her house to use her phone to call the cops. But for some reason we didn’t call the cops, my brother ended up calling my sister so she can come pick us up. About 15 mins later my sister came to the house to pick us up and asked us what happened. We told her the whole situation and she froze in fear and was just happy nothing happened to me or my brother. We drove back home to my moms house after that and we all actually fell asleep pretty quickly. We never told my mom about the situation because we were afraid she wouldn’t let me ever go out with my brother, sister or even my own friends again. I’m 25 years old and my mom still lives up in big bear to this day. Even though this happened 11 years ago, I am still afraid of coming across that man again if I ever do decide to hike through the woods up there ever again.
Author: Blake Crowson