I (18F) am Native American, Hispanic, and Irish. This means because of my different cultures present in my upbringing we are very superstitious and believe in creatures such as Skin walkers, La Llorona, spirits, wisps, and the list goes on. So from a very young age my mother and grandparents instilled in me that we all needed to abide by certain rules in order to stay safe.
No whistling ever, no going out after dark, never answer when your name is called, because it might not be who it sounds like is calling you, if you see something trying to get your attention don’t let it know you can hear or see it, if you see something creepy do not speak about it( hopefully this doesn’t count because I’m typing ), don’t go into the forest alone( were from Colorado), if nature goes quiet that’s unnatural and you are unwelcome there leave and most of all never run from anything!
Many of my family members have had encounters with things they shouldn’t have and so that is why to this day I abide by those rules. However they never taught me what to do when someone else doesn’t. This is a very true encounter I had just over four months ago however it wasn’t my first and if you would like to hear about those let me know.
This happened to me my freshman year of college I got a scholarship to attend a college in New Mexico meaning on breaks I would have to find transportation to be able to visit home. so I settled on the cheapest way home a bus. I saw no point in spending around three hundred dollars one way on a plane ticket to be on a plane for less than an hour when I only had roughly two days of break. So an eight hour bus ride it was. This was in September I had just finished my fall break and was settling in for another long ride back to New Mexico, my mother purchased my ticket so I had a right side window seat and the isle seat next to me was vacant.
So I had the whole left side of my row to myself. If you don’t know how a grey hound is its basically four seats split down the middle making an isle, two seats on each side. ( if your still confused google it ,I’m not great at explaining) So I made myself comfortable stuck my head phones in. I had come back home from Uni twice before this so was no stranger to how this worked. We had six stops before mine the last one in New Mexico, so we were continuously dropping off and picking up people like a real city bus.
There was this one guy sat across from me for the first hour who every once in a while would try to pick up a conversation with me but it would eventually die down. ( He wasn’t weird or anything he was maybe twenty and smelt like a dispensary but we WERE in Colorado and he seemed really nice I am just not much of a talker, more of a silent analyzer and people watcher.)
So after our second stop he left and his seat was filled by an older man who looked to be in his late fifties early sixties, who was wearing an old beat up military jacket, that had Vietnam war patches on them and a patch across his right side with what I assumed was his last name Smith. He was scruffy and a bit dirty, with a long beard that reached to his waist, and an old worn out green beanie. I’m not a judgmental person like I said I just like to analyze people, and as I said this was the cheapest rout to travel my eight hour trip only cost around sixty bucks so it wasn’t uncommon to see homeless individuals, scraping up all there money to buy a ticket.
Anyway he was sat in the row next to me on the right, and he also had both seats to himself however instead of sitting in the window seat he sat in the isle. He didn’t bring any bags so its not like he had anything blocking that seat he just didn’t sit there. I thought this was a little weird, but I decided it was enough staring for now and turned to the window to watch the mountains pass, as the bus began to move again. After all the previous guy moved to sit in the isle seat when he had the window seat available, but that was after he decided to talk to me.
Anyway I wrote it off as people being weird because after all people do weird things all the time, and fell asleep. When I woke up a little over two hours later we had stopped at a gas station somewhere near the Colorado New Mexico border still in the mountains. The bus driver notified us we had 15 minuets to stretch grab something to eat go to the bathroom or anything else we wanted to do but he needed to pee so he was leaving. Most everyone on the bus left except for a handful of people myself and the man across from me included. I had brought a lunch so I found no reason to leave and I didn’t want anyone messing with my belongings.
I began to look around and saw the man across from me, he sat board strait and looked directly ahead, still sitting in the isle seat just like how he looked when I fell asleep almost as if he hadn’t moved at all over the last 2 hours. I then decided to get off the bus and stretch because my legs were starting to get stiff but also the man had begun to make me really uncomfortable, like a sinking rock in the pit of my stomach so I stood next to the bus driver who I guessed finished his pee break and was standing next to the bus until the break was over. fast forward around 3 more hours the sun had begun to set and it was growing dark, I had fallen asleep a few more times since the last stop but each time I looked over at the man he looked the same as before.
We stopped one last time before getting to my stop, and picked up three other people one of them being a older man looking to be the same age as the other man sitting across from me he had on a similar green camo jacket with Vietnam patches and a name patch over his right peck like the other man. He sat in the window seat in front of me and looked over and saw the other man with a similar jacket. The new man looked over at him seeming a little happy and asked him if he served like him, what his name was and watch branch he served in. The man still looking strait ahead in a voice I can only describe as raspy and animated said “ I’m James Hanson” and then continued to stair strait ahead and not answer any more questions.
The man looked at him weirded out and confused and just decided to drop it. He turned back towards the window and fell asleep. I continued to look at the man getting that gross uncomfortable feeling of dread again as I looked at his jacket patch that said Smith. The bus driver announced we were an hour away from my stop and I felt relived I couldn’t wait to get off this bus and away from this man.
The sun finally set and I felt the time nearing for me to get off, but I couldn’t see much because we were still driving through the mountains, so there were no street lights. And then I heard it. The old man sat across from me had begun whistling in his raspy voice. It was a very menacing sound not like when someone cheerfully whistles to pass time. No it was purposeful, my alarm bells began to go crazy we were driving through the dead forest in the mountains at night and he was whistling.
This guy was crazy someone had to ask him to stop. I looked over at him with chills all over my body and for the first time since he boarded the bus he turned his head towards me and began to smile wide at me. I looked away immediately with the only other thing to look at being the window and I could have sworn I saw something running along the side of the bus like a shadow fast and fluid.
Then we came off the back road and merged onto the freeway going into the city and where the street lights illuminated the road around us. The whistling stopped and the figure disappeared. I was too scared to look at the man so I looked strait ahead frozen being sure not to look out the window either, and stood like that until the bus finally came to a stop.
I gathered my things as quickly as possible and practically leapt off the bus into my roommates car. As we were pulling away from the stop I saw him walk off the bus, and just stand there no belongings just staring after me. Lets just say that was the last time I took a grey hound.