In 2008, a teenager was hiking through a very dense forest in Northern California when he decided to stop and make camp for the night.
He walked several hundred feet off the main trail into the forest, where he found a small clearing and there he would set up his tent and he would climb inside and go to sleep.
A few hours later he would wake up because he thought he heard something outside of his tent.
But there were no windows on his tent and it was totally pitch black outside so we can't see anything.
And so he's just laying there listening, trying to discern what's going on outside.
And as he's laying there he hears it again, and it's the sound of footsteps slowly approaching his tent.
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Okay, let's get into today's story.
It begins here.
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In 2007, the now famous cult classic movie Into the Wild was released to movie theaters for the first time.
The movie, which is based on a true story, centers on the life of a young man named Christopher McCandless.
In 1990 Christopher graduated from a really good school with honors and by all accounts he could have gone on to get a really good, high-paying job.
But Christopher didn't want a job.
He wanted freedom.
And so, without telling his parents, because they would not have been happy about this idea he gave away all of his possessions, he gave all his money to charity and he headed off to Alaska to live off the grid by himself.
He eventually would find this rusted out old city bus in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness and he would make this bus his shelter and he would live inside of this bus for 113 days before he unfortunately died of starvation.
While Christopher's story is obviously tragic, the movie about his life Into the Wild really focuses on Christopher's unrelenting spirit and his constant drive towards getting the thing he wants the most, which is freedom.
And so at the end of this movie, the audience is left feeling not sad, but inspired.
Inspired to take big risks in life and seek out adventure before it's too late.
One audience member who was totally inspired by Christopher McCandless' life story was an 18-year-old young man named Matt Higgins, who lived in Oregon.
Matt was about to graduate high school and, unlike a lot of his peers, he had no idea what he should do after graduation, whether it was get a job or go to school.
But after watching Into the Wild, a third option appeared to him, which was to head off into the wild, just like Christopher McCandless had done, except not permanently.
Matt quickly fell in love with this option.
He viewed it as a chance to kind of take a break from reality and go find himself.
And then at the end of his stint in the wild, he could come back and get a job or go to school.
And so Matt's official into the wild plan was that he would graduate in 2007.
And then in the spring of 2008, he would hike the entirety of the California section of the infamously rugged and beautiful Pacific Crest Trail.
And he would do this all on his own.
This section of the Pacific Crest Trail that he planned on hiking was roughly 1700 miles long.
It began on the border of Mexico and Southern California and it wound its way north up to the border of Oregon.
The trail cut through deserts and up and over mountains, and there was lots of dangerous wildlife to contend with.
And on top of that, there were many points along this trail where hikers were very isolated.
They were not anywhere near civilization.
And so if anything were to happen to them, they'd be on their own.
And so naturally this hike was not a beginner hike.
However, Matt was not a beginner hiker.
He had grown up hiking and camping all over Oregon and the Western United States.
He had spent time in totally well marked and safe areas.
And he had also spent time hiking around very dangerous and isolated areas where there were cougars and bears and unmarked cliffs everywhere.
And so Matt felt like, with his experience in the outdoors, he was perfectly suited to take on this big of an adventure.
And in many ways, that was true.
However, something was going to happen to him while he was out on the Pacific Crest Trail that no amount of hiking or camping experience could have prepared him for.
So Matt graduated from high school in 2007 and, in keeping with his plan, in the spring of 2008 he packed up his stuff, he headed to the airport and he flew south to Southern California.
And when he got there he made his way all the way south to the border of Mexico, and there he picked up the start of the Pacific Crest Trail and he began heading north.
For the first few weeks of his hike, Matt would spend the entire day hiking, as far as his body would allow him.
And then at night, when it got too dark or when he got too tired, he would just set up his campsite right off the edge of the trail.
And then after a quick bite to eat, he'd climb inside of his tent and he'd go to sleep.
And then the next day he'd get up early and he'd do it all over again.
During those first few weeks the only real adversity that Matt ever faced beyond just kind of normal fatigue from long distance hiking was at one point he got a little dehydrated and another time he almost stepped on a rattlesnake.
So besides those two things, really, the hike had actually been fairly routine by Matt's standards.
But when he reached the Lassen National Forest, which is a very dense forest in Northern California, located about 150 miles from the end of his hike, so the border of Oregon.
When he got there, this hike of his would become anything but routine.
Not long after stepping foot in Lassen Forest, Matt found himself walking along this winding dirt path where the trees on both sides of this path were pressed tightly up against the edges of this trail And, because of how densely packed the trees were together, it was almost like he had these walls on either side of him that extended 100 feet into the air.
And so it was very quiet and it was very dark as he was walking along.
But Matt was enjoying it.
All he could hear was the chirping of birds and the insects buzzing around him.
It was peaceful.
And so Matt's just kind of meandering his way through the forest.
He's in no rush.
And at some point, the trail he was on banked hard to the right.
And so he makes this turn.
And as he does, he looks up.
And what he sees kind of startles him.
About 20 feet away from him off to the right side of the trail is this big boulder.
And sitting on this boulder are two middle-aged people, a man and a woman.
They were both dressed head to toe in white.
They both looked very dirty and disheveled.
The man had this big, unkempt beard.
And both of them were just staring daggers at Matt.
And so Matt felt awkward and he immediately looked down as he continued walking towards them.
But as he got within a few feet he looked up and kind of awkwardly smiled at them and waved and said hi.
And they didn't respond.
They just continued to stare at him with no discernible expression on their face.
And they watched him as he walked right past them.
And so after Matt walked past these two people in white, he felt really uncomfortable because he knew they were still definitely staring at him as he walked away and he didn't want to turn around and meet their eye contact.
And so he's just kind of walking away, feeling that uncomfortable feeling of someone staring at him, and he's thinking to himself why didn't they at least wave or acknowledge him in some way, Especially considering the fact that on the Pacific Crest Trail people go days without seeing other people?
Matt, in fact, had not seen another person in days until he saw these two.
And so he's thinking.
You know how rude is that to just completely not react when another person walks past you on this trail.
But Matt told himself, you know what?
I don't know these people.
I don't know what their issues are.
You know, for all I know, they're foreign and they didn't understand what I said.
And so maybe that's why they didn't say hello back.
Who knows?
But you know what?
It's none of my business.
And so Matt just continued walking along.
He never turned around to look back at these two people in white.
He just carried on.
A few hours later, when the sun was starting to set, Matt was still walking along this winding trail, with these huge trees on either side of him, and so visibility was getting pretty poor, and so he began looking for a place to make his camp.
But because of how close these trees were to the edge of this trail And considering how dense these trees were, there was no spot for him to make his campsite without completely blocking the trail.
And Matt did not want to block the trail for other people.
And so what he did is he left the trail and he walked 300 feet or so into these thick trees where he found this little clearing, and that's where he set up his tent.
Once it was all set up, he made some food for himself on his little stove and then, after he was done eating, he packaged up all of his leftover food inside of a waterproof bag and he sealed that up.
And then he tied some cord to the bag and threw the bag up and over a branch of a nearby tree and kind of tied it off, so the bag was sitting well off the ground.
This was to make sure no bears could get to his food.
And so after his leftovers were secured high up in a tree, it was totally pitch black outside.
And so Matt just climbed into his tent.
He zipped it up, climbed into a sleeping bag, and he fell asleep.
The next morning, Matt got up right as the sun was starting to rise.
And so it was still pretty dark outside, but there was a little bit of light.
And so Matt unzipped his tent and he looked outside.
And the first thing he noticed was his bag of food that he had put up in the tree was gone.
And so Matt stepped out of his tent and he looked around, thinking you know, maybe it fell to the ground or something, but it wasn't there.
It was just gone.
And so Matt thought to himself you know, I didn't hear anything last night, but I guess a bear must have come into the campsite, found the food and run off with it.
And so matt began walking over to the tree where he had strung the food up, to begin looking on the ground for bear prints, to confirm his theory that that was who took his food.
And so he walked.
He looks over, he's looking around.
He doesn't see any bear prints.
But he does see two sets of human boot prints, neither of which were his.
And before he could even process that he realized.
These prints, these human prints, were not just underneath this tree where the food was.
These prints as he looked around him, extended all the way up to his tent and all around his tent and all over his campsite.
And so, as Matt is looking at this crazy trail of human prints all over the place, he's thinking to himself how is this possible?
I went to bed last night when it was already pitch black outside and I got up basically right at sunrise, so it was still dark outside.
So these two people that were walking all over my campsite and cutting my food down, they somehow navigated here.
300 feet off the main trail in the middle of nowhere.
They navigated here in total pitch blackness and they did it silently without waking me up.
How is that even possible?
And so, after running through this thought process, Matt realized the only logical conclusion was that the two people he saw on the rock, the people in white, had followed him after seeing him.
They saw where he left the trail and they had waited until he fell asleep and then snuck out and robbed him.
As Matt's thinking about this, he suddenly realized that maybe they're still around.
Maybe he's still being watched.
And so he began whipping his head around, looking in all directions, almost expecting to see the man and the woman in white kind of poking out from behind a tree.
But when he looked around, he couldn't see anyone.
However, he started to get that sense that he was being watched.
And so feeling really uncomfortable.
He quickly packed up his campsite and walked as quickly and calmly as he could toward the trail.
And as he walked, he kept thinking to himself that these people are going to jump out from behind a tree or they're going to grab me from behind.
And so he's walking faster and faster and faster.
And he finally gets to the trail and he looks down the trail and up the trail.
He kind of looks all around.
He doesn't see anybody.
And so he tells himself, OK, they're gone.
So he took a deep breath, he composed himself, and he started walking north again along the trail.
Matt walked for several hours periodically looking over his shoulder again, expecting to see the man and woman in white, but he never did.
And eventually this narrow path, kind of cutting through the dense forest, opened up to this big beautiful field, And by that point the sun was high in the sky.
And so Matt's walking in this very beautiful open area.
He can see in all directions.
There's sunlight beaming down on him.
And so, even though he was totally rattled by what had happened the night before, he found himself kind of becoming more at ease about the situation.
He was far less paranoid and he began telling himself, you know, as creepy as it is, that those people in white almost certainly followed him and snuck up on his campsite in the middle of the night.
As bad as that is, he thought, you know what?
They probably were just super hungry and they clearly needed the food more than he did.
And so, you know what?
Those people, they can have my food.
Whatever.
And so Matt just continued on telling himself he would never have to deal with the people in white ever again.
However, he would be wrong.
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Over the next three days, Matt continued making his way north through the Lassen Forest, and the trail he was on would weave between those big, beautiful open areas back inside those very densely forested areas where the trees were practically right on top of you. and during those three days matt did not see the people in white he did not have any nighttime encounters with anybody nothing got stolen and so that only reinforced the idea that you know he had been a target of opportunity they had taken what they wanted from him and they were no longer following him But on the fourth day after the food stealing incident, things would get spooky for Matt again.
On that fourth night, Matt was once again forced to leave the trail he was on.
He was in one of those very densely forested areas and walk well off the trail to find a clearing for his tent.
And so he walked.
You know, several hundred feet away he finds this clearing.
He sets up his tent and then also he sets up a perimeter of sticks all around the outside of his campsite.
This was a precaution he had begun taking after the food stealing incident.
These sticks were an early warning system where if any animal or person came too close to his campsite, they would step in theory on these sticks and they would break and they would alert Matt in the middle of the night.
And so, after his campsite was all set up and all prepared, Matt sat down and had a quick bite to eat.
And then after storing his food, he climbed inside of his tent and he fell asleep.
A few hours later, Matt suddenly woke up.
Now, when he woke up, he opened his eyes, but it's pitch black in his tent.
There are no windows in his tent and it's pitch black outside.
So even with his eyes open, he can't see anything.
And so he's just laying there with his eyes open, but it's total darkness.
And he's just listening intently because he doesn't really know why he woke up, if something startled him or if there's no reason at all.
And so he's just laying there and he's listening.
And as he's listening, he hears the distinct sound of something stepping on one of the sticks in his perimeter.
And so he hears the stick break and his heart just starts racing because he knows that an animal or a person is just a few feet away from him.
And so instinctively he kind of begins to pull his arm as quietly as he can out of his sleeping bag and he reaches over and he grabs his hunting knife.
And as he grabs the handle of the knife and he brings it closer to him, he hears the sound of more footsteps.
Whatever has stepped on the stick has not slowed down at all.
They don't care about the sound they just made.
They're still moving towards his tent.
And so Matt's starting to get really freaked out, because he knows that it could be an animal.
But just a couple of days ago two people were in his campsite, stealing his food and walking all around his tent.
And so that's what's going through his head.
And so Matt's laying there preparing himself to potentially have to slash out if anybody came close to his tent.
I mean, he's in the middle of nowhere.
If a person is out here, it's not his friend.
And so he's laying there, he's kind of shaking and he's listening really intently.
And the footsteps are just getting closer and closer and closer to his tent, until they stop right next to his head.
They are literally about a foot away from him.
And so he can't see anything.
He's just listening really intently.
And then he starts to hear whispering.
But the whispering is not coming from this person right here.
The whispering is coming from everywhere in the forest.
It's coming from all different directions.
And so Matt doesn't know what to think about this.
And as he's hearing this whispering, which is getting more and more frantic, whoever is standing right outside of his tent begins circling his tent.
So now he hears footsteps just walking in a circle around his tent, while frantic whispers are coming in from all directions.
And so at this point, Matt is so terrified, he's just frozen.
He knows that he's holding that knife, but he won't be able to do anything with it.
He's just petrified.
And then as soon as this total nightmare had begun, it just stopped.
The whispering, silence.
The footsteps stopped.
And so in a way, it was kind of relieving.
But in another way.
Matt's laying there thinking I want to hear the sound of footsteps retreating into the forest leaving.
But I haven't heard that.
It went from footsteps all around the tent and whispering everywhere to silence, as if whoever is out there is still out there and they're just standing there waiting for him and because it's so dark He can't even look.
He can't look outside and see.
And so he's left just laying in his tent wondering if 1 2 3 4 5, 10 people are just waiting outside of his tent.
He's got no idea.
And so finally, the sun would come up in the morning.
And again, Matt has not heard the sound of retreating footsteps.
And so maybe they're still just standing outside.
But once the sun had totally come up and there was some light outside that he could see through his tent, Matt decided he just had to check.
And so he reached over and he quickly unzipped the flap of the tent and he looked outside.
He didn't see anyone.
He left outside with his knife, ready to confront anyone who was out there, but there was no one.
And so Matt, he's not thinking, oh, great, you know, they're gone.
He's thinking, you know, are they just like a few feet away hiding behind trees?
And so, for a few minutes, Matt just began looking all around his campsite, kind of expecting to see, you know, those people in white or other people he doesn't know, but he doesn't see anyone.
And then Matt starts thinking to himself, was this just a nightmare?
Did that not even happen?
Am I imagining this?
But when he looked down he saw clear boot prints all over his campsite, including a nice track all the way around his tent.
And so this nightmare really had played out in real life.
And so he quickly gets everything back into his pack, he throws it on his shoulder and he just starts running back towards the trail.
And when he got to the trail, he continued running north.
And as he's running along and looking over his shoulder the whole time, he's telling himself I just need to get out of Lassen National Forest.
I need to get out of the people in white's turf, get away from this place, and I'll be left alone.
And so that motivated him to spend the whole day moving as fast as he possibly could.
And by that afternoon, he had finally escaped Lassen National Forest.
He was out and he was in one of these smaller towns that kind of butted up alongside this forest.
And so that night he camped out right near this town.
He wanted to be as close to civilization as possible to ensure his safety.
And so, as he's laying in his tent that night, he began thinking about what had happened over the past couple of days.
At this point he was nearly certain that the people in white that he had seen on that boulder, they had to be behind these nighttime encounters.
They just had to be.
And so he's thinking to himself okay well, the first encounter I had with them, you know, when they stole his food.
Yeah, that's creepy, but it makes sense.
They They followed him, they went to his campsite, they stole his food.
Okay, fine.
That makes sense to him.
But the second encounter, the one that had happened the night before, that didn't make any sense.
Assuming it was again the people in white responsible.
That meant they had been following Matt the whole time and he had not seen them somehow.
Even though over the last couple of days, he had been looking over his shoulder, constantly looking for those people, but he didn't see him.
And they still managed to follow him all the way, over several days, to this other unmarked campsite hundreds of feet off the main trail.
So how did they do that?
And then two once they were at his campsite and he's laying there listening to them walking around the campsite whispering to each other.
What were they doing?
And then how did the footsteps and whispering just stop immediately, and he didn't even hear the sound of them retreating into the woods.
You know, how did they do that?
And so Matt would go over this and over this until finally he would fall asleep.
And then the next morning when he got up, it was the first thing he was thinking about.
The people in white.
What were they doing and why and where were they?
And so as Matt packed up his campsite that morning, it did cross his mind, you know, that maybe he should just stop the hike right now and call his family, have them come pick him up and get out of here.
But this hike, this huge hike he had planned was really important to him.
And he was only about 100 miles away from the finish line, which meant he had already hiked over 1600 miles.
And he just didn't want to quit.
He wanted to finish what he started.
And so he packed up his stuff, he threw it over his shoulder, and he continued on.
And so that day Matt would leave that little town and he would make his way up into another very dense forest called the Mount Shasta Forest.
Mount Shasta was a lot like the Lassen Forest, except Mount Shasta has a very disturbing backstory.
Specifically, lots and lots of people go missing inside of Mount Shasta, and often they go missing under baffling circumstances.
The most frightening of these missing persons reports are when someone comes back, the survivor of the event and they will say you know, they saw their hiking companion.
They clearly saw them.
And then they turned their back on them just for a few moments, a few minutes, whatever it was.
And when they turned back around, the person they were with was now gone.
No trace of them, nothing, they're just gone.
And despite a massive search for them, they're never found again.
There is a distressing number of missing people in Mount Shasta that sound just like that.
It's totally terrifying.
So with that in mind, Matt makes his way into the Mount Shasta forest.
And even though it totally stressed him out to once again be walking on these dirt pathways where the trees are very tight.
On either side of you they're very dense.
And as he's walking he's kind of looking in both directions, expecting to see somebody watching him.
Despite feeling that way, Matt just continued to stay focused and kept telling himself to just continue on, continue on, because you're so close to the end.
And so the first three days that he was in the Mount Shasta forest, Matt would just keep his head down, and very stoically, every day he would just hike as far as he possibly could.
In the evening he would set up his campsite either right off the trail or maybe a little ways off the trail in a clearing.
And he didn't have any run-ins with the people in white or anybody else for that matter.
He was totally left alone.
But on his fourth day in the Mount Shasta forest, all that would change.
On that fourth day, Matt found himself not inside one of those very dense forested areas, but rather in this very open trail that was up on the side of this mountain.
And because this trail was fairly high up in elevation, the tree coverage was fairly sparse.
And so there was great visibility.
He could see miles ahead of him.
And when he turned around, he could see miles behind him.
And so Matt is just walking along this trail, kind of enjoying the day.
It's beautiful outside.
And at some point he turns around and looks behind him.
Now, all day he'd been doing that and he had not seen anyone, but this time, when he turned around, he saw two little white dots miles and miles back, slowly making their way along the trail that he was on.
It was the people in white.
They were back.
At this point, Matt was at least 50 miles or more away from that first place.
He had walked past the people in white when they were sitting on that boulder.
Which meant, one, Matt was right.
These people in white really had followed him and almost certainly were responsible for the nighttime visits he was getting.
And two, for reasons unknown, they were still following him.
Matt suddenly didn't care at all about completing his big hike.
He just wanted to get the heck away from those people.
And so very quickly he pulled out his map and he looked and to his horror he realized he was in one of the most isolated portions of the entire hike.
He was at least 25 miles away from the nearest civilization, a little town called Castella, California.
And so without a better option, Matt put the map back in his pocket.
He took one last look at the people in white who were making steady gains on him.
And then Matt just turned away from them and began booking it down the trail.
And Matt would run for hours and hours and hours without stopping.
Even when he turned around and could no longer see the people in white, he just kept on running.
And then when the sun set and he could barely see the trail, he just kept on running.
It literally wasn't until it was so dark outside that he actually couldn't see the ground anymore that Matt finally, totally exhausted, came to a stop.
And then from there he turned and left the trail and walked way away from the trail, hundreds of feet deep into the forest, to get as far away from these people in white as he possibly could.
And so finally, he found this clearing very far away from the trail.
He set up his tent right in the middle of it.
And then he very diligently laid out his perimeter of sticks around his campsite, making sure there were no gaps.
And then he climbed inside of his tent, he zipped it up and then, keeping on all of his stuff in case he needed to make a run for it, he got inside of his sleeping bag and he just laid there, with no expectation that he was going to sleep.
He was terrified.
As he laid there, he thought to himself, okay, I have now run at least several miles ahead of them.
I know that was them.
I know I got some distance on them.
There's no way they saw where I turned off the trail and where I've set up this campsite.
So they can't possibly find me.
And so Matt would lay in the tent for several hours, just waiting to fall asleep.
And then finally he would start to get tired because at this point it's totally quiet outside.
He hasn't heard anything.
And so he begins to doze off to sleep.
And as he's getting more and more tired, he hears the sound of someone stepping on his perimeter of sticks.
And as soon as he hears that stick break, he hears the all too familiar whispering pick up all around the forest.
And then something new happens.
Before Matt can even do anything, his tent lights up like a Christmas tree.
Someone is shining a light on his tent.
Someone has snuck up on his campsite in the middle of nowhere, hundreds and hundreds of feet off the trail, in the middle of the night.
They've found him and they're shining a light on him.
And then the light clicks off and it's silent.
And at this point, Matt's fight or flight instinct kicks in and he rips off his sleeping bag.
He jumps outside and begins screaming nonsense and flailing around with a knife, trying to intimidate these people to get away from him.
And then after he stops for a second, he hears a stick crunch right behind him.
And he whips his head around to look at who is standing right behind him.
And as he's turning out of his peripheral vision, he sees a dark figure running towards him.
He doesn't think twice.
He just turns and begins running away from the campsite.
Now remember, it's pitch black in the forest.
There's trees everywhere.
And so Matt's smashing into trees.
Branches are hitting him.
He's falling to the ground.
But he is on a pure adrenaline high.
And he is just sprinting as fast as he possibly can away from this person who is likely still chasing him.
And after five minutes of running he stumbles and falls forward and kind of lands at the base of this fallen tree.
The tree had landed in such a way that it was kind of propped on a rock.
So there was a small gap underneath the tree.
And so Matt, thinking quickly, kind of slid himself underneath this log and positioned himself so he was looking back in the direction he was running from.
And as he laid there, he saw in the distance this light bobbing around.
These people are looking for him.
They're searching the forest for him.
And so he watched in horror, tucked away underneath this log, as whoever had the light and whoever else was with them, they moved closer and closer and closer, but they did not find him tucked underneath the log.
They just walked right on past him.
And so Matt would remain underneath this log all night until finally the sun came up.
And at that point, even though it was fairly obvious that, whoever was looking for him, they were now gone, Matt was still terrified.
And so he stayed under the log for several hours until it was about early afternoon.
And then he finally pulled himself out from under the log and he looked around.
He couldn't see anyone.
And then instead of going back to his campsite and getting his gear, he just totally abandoned it.
He was worried that these people in white or whoever it was, that they were still going to be there.
And so he just turned and continued running away from his campsite back out to the trail.
And once he got the trail, he continued running on the trail all the way to Costello, California.
And when he got there, he hitchhiked his way to the town of Mount Shasta, and there he would speak to police, as well as the forestry service, about what he had experienced.
And so they would take all of his information down and they would put him up in a motel for the night.
And then the next day Matt would get in touch with his family and they would drive from Oregon to Mount Shasta.
They would pick him up and they would take him back home.
Months later, Matt would contact the Mount Shasta Police and the Forest Service and would just follow up and say Hey, have you learned anything else about these people in white?
Have you caught them?
Has anybody else come forward?
And the police would say you know, they did have a number of people coming forward saying that things had been stolen from their campsites.
These are people that were in Mount Shasta, in Lassen Forest, and the surrounding forests.
But Matt was the only one who had reported being terrorized by this mysterious couple in white.
And so, to this day, Matt has no idea who those two people were, what they wanted with him beyond obviously, the food they took.
I mean, they continued to stalk him for nearly a hundred miles.
And...
He has no idea how they were able to keep finding his campsites that were hundreds of feet off the main trail in unmarked areas that they would somehow navigate to in total darkness without alerting Matt.
It's all a big mystery.
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