In my eighteen years of life, lots of things have startled me.

Whether it was a cheesy scary movie at five, a haunted house at seven, or the crippling fear of rejection at fourteen, my life had been evenly sprinkled with spicy bits of fear. However, most of these things were mundane and harmless. A scary movie or an uninterested person isn’t going to kill you, after all. But, as I recall all the scariest moments in my life, one sticks out in a way that brutally reminds me of how precious life is.

When I was eleven years old, my parents had a pretty messy divorce which resulted in my dad moving out. It was a confusing time for everyone, but my mom had no intention of keeping me away from my dad and wanted me to be around him.

So, every weekend or so, I would stop over his house for about a few hours. My dad wasn’t exactly sober enough to do anything constructive with me, so I ended up being bored a lot of the time. I realized a friend of mine from elementary school lived very nearby, so I would take the short walk to visit her. That’s when she told me about the neighbors.

“Watch out for the people next door to me,” she told me sternly. “They’re really weird. My friend told me that they killed somebody once.”

My eyes lit up the way any inquisitive 11-year-old’s eyes would when hearing a juicy urban legend.

“Really?” I said excitedly. “That’s so crazy!”

My friend nodded. “Yeah, but seriously, you better watch out. They drive around super late at night and they’re really sketchy.”

I nodded back, filled with revulsion and excitement that someone so interesting lived nearby. When I left to walk home, I took special note of the house next door. It was white and small and unassuming, with a big white truck sitting innocuously in the driveway tucked behind the house’s right wall. The lawn was trimmed, and a dog barked in the backyard.

I remember telling my dad about it, but he brushed it off. Dad isn’t really one to believe rumors, and he’s certainly a people-pleaser. He told me that he never heard of anyone in our town being prosecuted for murder, let alone in this neighborhood. Being more liable to listen to my dad, I agreed with him. But, the thought of something so terrifying stuck in my mind.

Months after my friend had first told me about her neighbors, I got my first skateboard. My mom had won it in a raffle at her job, and it was a big beautiful longboard beast. After fearfully gripping the car for a few weeks as I learned to balance on it, I soon got the hang of using it and wanted to skate further and further distances. So, one day, my dad and I took a walk.

We walked down the isolated street and up the hill it was paved over. When the street connected to the highway, we turned back and I jumped on my board. My dad urged me to be careful, but I insisted I would be fine. I sped further and further away until I realized I had arrived at the crest of the hill.

My heart pounding with excitement, I pushed off and sped down the hill. My dad’s figure became smaller and smaller until even his yells for me to slow down were overtaken by my joyous laughter.

Eventually, I reached the end of the hill and my board slowed down. I realized I was right by my friend’s house, and I smiled. Maybe I could see them and show them my cool new skateboard. Suddenly, a big white truck tore out of the little white house’s driveway.

I coasted my board into the grass and grabbed it, deciding it was a good time to wait for my dad to catch up. I fully expected the car to pass me, so I was caught by surprise when I heard a chirpy “Hey there, kid!” coming from the car that had slowly stopped.

I shot my head up. Two greasy looking men were staring at me. One looked young, maybe in his twenties, the other looked older than my father. They were both smiling big toothy yellow grins. One of them waved, their hand stained with soot and dirt. “That’s a really cool board!” they said, not dropping their grin.

“Thanks,” I said, more confused than scared. Adults never usually talked to me, especially strangers. “It’s new.” Despite not fearing them, I took an instinctive step back.

“Can we-” one started, when the other suddenly slapped him on the leg. The man looked through the windshield, immediately hit the gas, and sped off. There was my dad, running towards me and panting. I started to question why he was running, but he immediately began lecturing me on the dangers of strangers and asking me why I would ever talk to someone in a car.

At first, I didn’t see the big deal, but when I got home, I realized how stupid I had been. They were everything a Stranger Danger video would tell you to run away from screaming. I was shaken up and nearly cried every time I saw a white truck pass through our neighborhood, but thankfully I was okay. I told my mom about it, and she too gave me a lecture. But after that, that was the end of it.

My dad moved to a new house about a year later. It was a lovely home that we shared with the house owner and her older son. It was nestled back into the woods and was one of only a couple other homes. It was really only half a mile from my dad’s old house, so not much changed other than the address. I was much closer to my friend’s house, to my delight. But, I was also close to her neighbor’s house, too.

This was around the time I got into creepypasta. The horrifying little stories kept me awake all night but excited me like no other form of media. I would pass my boring days at dad’s house reading the stories, scaring myself so bad I couldn’t go into certain parts of the house alone. It was so much fun.

One of the staples of creepypasta is the infamous Slenderman, the tall faceless being that, if seen, would track you down until it got the chance to eat you alive. For whatever reason, I wanted to find it. Much in the same way people try to find Bigfoot or aliens, my quest was to find the Slenderman. I wanted to become his ally so I would never have to fear him again.

So, I looked up all I could on him to see what I would have to do. While some of the “manuals” on how to summon him involved salt, chanting, and chicken sacrifice, I decided to go the much tamer route and find him in his natural habitat. The woods. And luckily for me, there was a trail across the street that could lead me deep into the forest.

So, I grabbed a bottle of water and set out.

At dad’s house, I gained a lot of early independence. When your dad is drunk as a skunk all the time, it’s easy to slip out of the house. I tossed him a vague goodbye as he vegged out on the couch and set off. The second I reached the trail, I knew I had come at just the right time. The sun was setting, casting lilac and burgundy light into the fading blue sky. Perfect.

I walked down the trail cautiously. I was playing music in one ear to relax, but the other was sharply tuned to pick up any foreign noise. Soon, the entrance to the trail became shrouded in trees and growing darkness, and I was alone.

I scanned the infinite amount of trunks, searching for a snippet of a white face or a black suit in the sea of green leaves and bushes. My heart was thumping in my chest, but I pressed on. Thankfully, I had been walking on these trails before. My dad loved nature and exercise, and he took me out into the woods on bright warm days.

The bitter sting of winter wind did not affect my memory of the right twists and turns to take to get back to the road. However, as the sun dipped lower and lower and my fear grew at every snap of a twig or leaf, my woefully small common sense screamed that it was time to go back home. I turned around, ready to walk back the way I came.

I saw a man on the trail.

Now, these were public trails. It often had a couple cars parked around it in the daytime during hunting season. But, this was no hunter. No orange vest, no camouflage, nothing. Just a dirty white shirt and shorts. He wasn’t even walking the trail, he was just stopped in the middle of the dirt path, staring at me. I was frozen in horrible burning fright.

Suddenly, a bang. A hunter from a dozen yards off shot his gun. Like the starting shot in a race, I turned and ran. I cut through the woods, crashing through thickets and bushes and spiderwebs, running on pure adrenaline. Thankfully, I was very close to the road. I ran through someone's backyard and onto the main road, only yards from the entrance to my neighborhood. I ran all the way home and never looked back.

My dad moved house again only a few months later, settling down in a development miles away.

I’ve never told anyone about my evening in the woods. I have no idea who the man was –– if he was one of my friend’s neighbors or just a dude who spooked me on the trail. I debated with myself about the culprit, but I’ll never know for sure. I just know that whoever it was, they were not friendly.

No one stops dead in the middle of a trail like that. No one.