BY: HMONGTALES STAFF
(Northern California) I’ve heard many stories of people being lost in the woods for hours. All these stories always have something in common. The person of interest goes missing, and a party spends hours searching for them. Once found, they either don’t remember what happened, or there seems to be a significant gap in time differences. Some of these missing people even claim they were in the exact location the whole time. The same place where their party had searched multiple times. Hearing people tell these kinds of stories are spooky and almost unbelievable. I wasn’t a believer until it happened to my family.
A few years ago, my uncle from Minnesota visited us in California. Before he came, my father and uncle had spoken on the phone about going squirrel hunting. So when he arrived, we went and purchased him a non-resident hunting license and planned our trip for the next day.
It felt just like any other hunting trip. I had woken up early to prep lunch, got all the gear ready, and we headed out. We’d decided to go to a spot where my dad and I had gone multiple times. So we took highway 162 and headed up the Sierra Nevada Mountain about two hours and thirty minutes northeast of Sacramento.
When we arrived at our destination, we met up with two of my dad’s friends and exchanged plans for the day. We all agreed to return to the cars at noon to have lunch. Before splitting up, we always share with our party where we plan to hunt, if we move from that location, and where we plan to go afterward. My uncle has told us that since he’s old and doesn’t know the place well, he would be nearby and probably would walk down the mountain a little bit. Before he took off, I handed him a CB radio so we could communicate.
A few hours passed, and everyone, including my uncle, was still communicating through the CB radio. The last radio call from my uncle was that he was still at the exact location, but he might walk a bit further down the mountain.
Noontime rolled by, and everyone except my uncle returned to the cars for lunch. We radioed him, asking where he was, but he didn’t answer. We figured he must not have had a signal where it was, especially if he had traveled down the mountain. We waited till 12:30 pm, but still no sign of him, and he was still not communicating with us. At this point, we were worried but gave my uncle the benefit of the doubt. One hour rolled by, and still no sign of him. It was during this time my dad suggested we look for him.
We’ve hunted this spot multiple times, so we knew the layout well. We knew exactly where my uncle should have been, and if he had left the site, where else he could potentially be. When we got to the spot where he said he was, we saw signs that he was there. My dad and I called his name, hoping he would reply or radio us. No answer. We decided to go down the mountain to search for him.
We headed down the mountain slope and searched for him everywhere. There was no sign of him. We got worried and radioed back to the guys and asked them to help us search. For the next few hours, we searched the whole area. His name echoed throughout the forest but still no sign of him anywhere. It was now getting late, and everyone was stressed out. I could tell by the look on everyone’s faces that they suspected the worst had happened to him.
I remember we were discussing what we should do next when I spotted someone walking towards the car from the direction that my uncle had left earlier. I looked closely and saw my uncle heading toward us. I yelled out, “Uncle!” and everyone turned to look. Everyone was in disbelief that he was there. We all walked toward him and asked him what had happened. We told him everything about how we’d been searching for him for hours, and then out of the blue, he popped out of nowhere. He laughed and thought we were messing with him. We asked him to tell us what had happened to him and where he had been. He explained that he wasn’t far from his first location. About five minutes after he radioed us, he decided to move about 40 feet down from the previous site, and he’s been there ever since. This was hard to believe because my dad and I walked that area in search of him multiple times, and he was nowhere to be found. We asked him if he was there that whole time, why he didn’t hear us calling his name, and why he didn’t come to meet for lunch at noon. He looked at us, chuckled, and said, “I didn’t hear you guys calling my name, and what are you talking about? Isn’t it noon now? That’s why I came back.”
We’ve heard other stories from people saying they’ve experienced paranormal activity in that area. Since this incident, my father and I have never returned to this place. To this day, I still don’t know what caused such a shift in the time difference between him and us. Maybe he was there, and we couldn’t find him because something hid him from us.
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