Many years ago when I was in college my roommate and I were back in the mountains doing some Saturday morning trout fishing. We were down this long dirt road about seven miles off the main highway back in the woods working this little creek that had small but numerous brown and rainbow trout in it. We were having real good success and caught several big enough to keep and cook over a nice fire later that night. We were camping out in the area also just having fun and being college kids drinking some beer, chilling out and enjoying nature.

Later that night around midnight the two of us were joined by a couple of friends that had to work that day so the party got going pretty good as they came in with a re-supply of cold beer and some liquor also. As we were hanging out and having fun this tall skinny man about 6’5 and 170 pounds walked up to our remote campsite and began talking to us. He told us he lived in the area, but we were down there about every weekend and knew of no houses, cabins or homes within 10 miles of this remote out post we stayed at.

He told us he was doing some camping and that his car had broken down up the road a ways about a mile and he was just walking and hoping he would find someone in the area to get help. This is back when there were no cell phones and all you could do for help was use a telephone or drive for help. This triggered one of my friends to tell us that he did not see any cars as he drove into the site and the story was not adding up. We were very uncomfortable with the situation but felt protected because we had numbers with five of us versus one of him. I also had my 22 rifle and my roommate had his old single shot 12 gauge shotgun incase we encountered some type of wildlife we needed to protect ourselves from.

He told my roommate he needed a ride and his place was about another mile down the road or so back in the woods. We knew this was not true because the road ended a few hundred feet from where we were and it became a national forest trail leading to a series of waterfalls we would go dive and swim in. We tried to blow him off and get him to leave the area by pretending we were packing up to leave early the next day but he just hung around. He was wearing a long black coat with ragged jeans and cowboy hat. He was not clean shaven and smelled of liquor. That night I had a dream that someone got killed in the woods and saw people chasing me.

At the time I did not know my dreams were due to a gift I had and that it was a warning about what was going to happen. Spirit was telling me in a protective way to get away from him. One of my buddies tried to go to the car and the guy started acting paranoid asking what he was doing and where he was going. Being a young cocky guy my buddy told him to back off and that it was none his business what he was doing. That is when the guy opened his coat up like an old cowboy revealing his gun to another person. This guy showed us a long bladed knife and he made a comment that he had cut many “young punks” in his life and for all of us to shut up. We started to panic a little bit and realized this guy was not right in the head.

He went into the woods to pee so we came up with a plan to lure him into the truck and put him in the back of it for the ride. I would follow in my truck where my 22 rifle and the shotgun were at in case he tried to hurt someone. So we drank some more beer with him to let him see we were all cool. All the while we knew something was not right about this tall, lanky, creepy guy with a long knife. The next morning he asked us for a ride once again so we hatched out plan. Three of us would take him down the road towards the falls and the others would go for help in the nearest town.

He agreed to the ride and when he climbed in the back of the truck he pulled his blade out and out it on his lap. My roommates drove and rode in the front of the truck. I followed along behind him now with access to the guns we may need if he was to try something with us. We drove down to the end of the road and he jumped out of the truck and said my place is just down the road here a ways. We knew that was a lie and at this point figured out he had bad plans for us all. So my roommate jumped back in the truck and took off down the road with the guy running and hollering at them to stop and slung the knife at the truck striking the windshield.

I backed up and turned around and he ran towards my truck grabbing the passenger door and trying to open it. I floored it and that sent him flying onto the ground rolling down in the ditch a few feet away. My roommate had turned around and came flying up the road to get out of there also and drove by as he got to his feet. We left everything at the campsite and drove out of the woods to a small town seven miles away and called the sheriff. The sheriff deputy met us about hallway back into the woods to get a description and take a report.

None of us were in trouble as we were deemed to be defending ourselves during this process. He told us that the local park ranger had told him about a vagrant camp off in the woods somewhere they had to run people out of on a routine basis. So we drove back down, grabbed our gear and got back to school and decided until things cleared up not to go back down there. Two weeks later on the local news we say that man on television. He had been charged with attempted murder of two young college students using a knife. He was also known as an escaped fugitive that had been on the run for five years evading police by living back in the woods in a camp.

The guy was a convicted murderer that had escaped jail twice and was wanted for connection to several murders or attempted murders in various areas of the southern states. He was eventually caught and sent back to jail where he later died a few years later from a violent knife attack fight in prison. We escaped with our lives that day and had it not been for us just having a feeling that this guy was rotten to the core we probably would be dead now. All at the hands of the tall knife wielding murderer of that old mountain road.

I no know what my gift is and am figuring out how to interpret my dreams, visions and use my intuition better. Thankfully we survived this harrowing experience and I lived to tell another true story of the power of spirit and its battle of good versus evil. This man had an evil heart and wanted to take us with him and kill us. This story could end up a book or movie one day soon.