Witness to a potential crime?
So - this story might not sound super creepy compared to some of the other ones on here, but to me this was probably the scariest moment of my life and I still think about it all the time.
I live in the southern part of my State, and have a summer cabin up in the northern part - which is predominately forests and mountains and is extremely rural.
One night several years ago I was heading north to the cabin after work on a Friday. It was about a 4 hour drive and I wanted to get there Friday night so I could spend all day Saturday up there and Sunday as well and come home late Sunday for work again on Monday. I had gotten delayed at work and then after a series of events that \*of course had to happen when I was trying to get somewhere\* , I finally got going around 7PM. It was probably \~ 10PM / 10:30PM when I was driving down this super remote stretch of road in the mountains that had street lights every half mile or so, and as I came around the bend I saw a guy sitting underneath one of the lights looking down at the ground.
Now, we were miles, and I mean MILES away from anything. We were in a forest on a mountain and so why this guy was here - I had no idea. The only thing I could think is that he had been out walking and it had gotten too dark for him to continue \[I don't know why that was my immediate thought but it was\]. Since I'm a bigger guy and don't usually worry about many things, I got concerned for him and pulled over to ask if he needed help or wanted a ride somewhere.
It still creeps me out, because I can see it perfectly, but when he lifted his face he was wearing a mask - like one of the medical ones people wore during the COVID-era, and he wasn't just crying, but he was BAWLING his eyes out. I immediately got even more concerned. Then it dawned on me he was wearing a mask in the middle of absolute nowhere. So I rolled my window down and asked him if he was okay, needed help - all the questions etc. He just looked at me, and didn't say anything. Then he started screaming. And I don't mean like screaming, I mean like - shrieking to the point that he was going to rupture his vocal cords.
I work in medicine and so I'm super familiar with mental illness, people having psychological fractures etc, so my immediate thought was this kid is having some sort of break, he's obviously not okay, he needs help etc. So I park my car and start talking to him, letting him know it's okay, he's going to be okay, I just want to talk and hear what he has to say etc. Of course, my adrenaline at this point is flowing, but my medical training started going into overdrive and my primary concern was his wellbeing. He was clearly not in a good mental place, and he was on a mountain, in virtually pitch black conditions \[with the exceptions of sparse street lamps every so far apart\], so naturally I was concerned something bad was going to happen to him.
Of course there is no cell-phone service in this area, so calling someone was not something I could do. Anyway - I get out of the car, and am standing by it, just trying to talk to him. Finally he stops screaming, but he's not talking, just looking at me, staring at me. So I tell him, I'm happy to leave if he wants me to, but I'm also happy to sit and talk to him. He doesn't say anything, so I took that to mean he could use the company.
That was when I heard rustling from behind him, and that was when two other guys, similar in age and stature and build, came out from the woods behind him...also wearing COVID masks. That was when I immediately started freaking out. I was like - why the f\* are there three dudes, out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, miles away from anything, wearing masks. \[At this point in time COVID had come to a conclusion and masks were no longer being commonly worn anyway\].
Despite the super weird situation, the state I live in has almost no violent crime and it's just not something anyone who lives here ever thinks of, ESPECIALLY in the rural areas. So despite being freaked out, I didn't immediately drive away at that point. Instead, I decided to try and engage with the other guys. I asked them what was going on, and if their friend was alright since he was clearly an emotional dumpster fire. One of the guys just looked away but the other one said that yeah, everything was fine and that I should just leave.
I don't know why I didn't, but, of course, I didn't \[I would not survive long in a horror movie\]. I was super curious at this point as to what was going on, so I tried asking several more questions. I could tell the guy who had talked to me was getting frustrated, but I didn't really pay much attention, because I was still primarily concerned about their friend. That was when he pulled a gun out on me and told me to "get the fk out of here and mind my own fkn business".
Growing up in a rural state where guns are super common, I wasn't immediately terrified. I was standing there, I was near my car, and my car was still running, although in park, and then I saw the guy look like he was going to take off his mask. That was when it immediately clicked in my head. Right now I couldn't see their faces. I had a gun pointed at me. I was ABOUT to see one of their faces. Sh\*t just got really real real fast \[it should've gotten real much earlier - but of course...it didn't\]. So in a split second I was in my car fkn flooring it.
For days after that I was scouring the newspaper and local newspapers to see if any crimes had been reported in the area. I couldn't find anything in any reports or anything in the newspaper - nothing online, so eventually I kind of just let it settled into the back of my mind. To this day, I still wonder what it was that I stumbled across, and thank God my brain finally snapped into shape before I got shot.