I, 16(F) am a fairly active teen. I go to the gym 4 days a week and go on 6-10 miles jogs 2 days a week. Around 6 months ago I had plans with friends after school and because of that I had to push my scheduled 5pm gym/walk back a couple of hours.
By the time I got home and into some workout attire it was around 8:30pm and still was motivated to get in a workout. It was a Friday which is a jog/run day so I began walking to my designated trail. It takes me around 10-15 minutes to get to the trail and by the time I got on the trail it was getting relatively dark.
In retrospect I should’ve went back home because it was also fairly cold (40-50°) and dark however in my mind this meant that I would not run into anyone on my run. Halfway through my run my cellphone runs out of battery and most of my run is not covered with street lights due to my city being pretty poor. However I only had around 2-3 miles left and decided to just push through.
As I get towards the end of my run I see someone sitting up against the tree illuminated by one of the only street lights. I had to run by this person in order to finish my run so I kept running. As I run by him his head follows me and after a couple of seconds I turn my head to see the man starting to stand and walk onto the trail.
I thought this was odd but I brushed it off until I sat down on a bench to adjust my ponytail and in the distance I see a man running towards where I am sitting. I get up and get back to running with maybe a mile and half left before I get home. Seconds later I hear footsteps begin to quicken and get louder. As I turn around I see this musty man with a shaggy white beard with a red beanie covered in a mix of dirt and what looks like dried blood smeared all over his face and clothes, or whatever was left of his clothes. I began to push to run quicker and the man begins screaming and chasing me.
At this point I am seconds away from getting to the turn into my neighborhood but instead of turning on the street I decided to keep running because I didn’t want the man to follow me home seeing as I would be home alone because my mom works nights and my sister was at her friends house. I pushed my body so hard and was purely running on adrenaline. After a couple of minutes I slow and don’t hear any footsteps and begin to start walking into town so that I could at least be in lights and around people.
As i’m beginning to get off the trail a man grabs my shoulder and digs his teeth into my back. I scream a blood curdling scream that could be heard from fucking Antarctica. I turn around to try and push the man off of me he pushes me onto the cemented ground and I blacked out.
Next thing I remember is waking up in a dirty ran down shed with the only light coming from the moon light from the ceiling. Then I hear the door begin to creek and act as if i’m still unconscious. The man is grunting and mumbling to himself while moving something across the ground. I knew that whatever that was wasn’t probably a good thing and knew that if I was going to have any chance of getting home to see my mom or my sister ever again i had to get out.
I slowly stand up while the man’s back is facing me and grab a wooden plank off a shelf and knock him over the head and push past him and out the door. I had no idea where I was all I could see was woods. As i’m running I’m holding my upper back as it is bleeding bad. I hear the man angrily screaming in the distance and i continue running.
I finally make it out of the woods and realized I am still on the trail however now 4-5 miles away from home. I run with whatever little energy I have in me and finally make in on my street and get in home where I use my home phone to call 911 and report everything. Shortly after and ambulance as well as 3 police officers arrive where I am carried away in an ambulance and asked multiple questions by an officer.
I had suffered from severe skin breaking on my upper back and they suspect that the man was a man that was known by police as the “midnight cannibal”. I’ve never been back on that trail