Real Encounters

*Behind a Middle School*

So, I live directly across the street from a middle school, where kids of ages in the ballpark of 11-14 go. Behind the school, there was a forested area with a bunch of paths- people even made makeshift swings and playgrounds back there out of logs and ropes. I'd always cross the street to go play there when I was young. It was really an ideal place for a 10 year old such as myself to go explore.

My brother and I went across the street to go play on a Saturday, at around 5 PM. I'd just gotten a compass for my birthday, so we were playing around pretending we were pioneers. We went off the beaten trail a bit and pushed on into the more densely vegetated areas of the woods.

Finally, we came across a clearing with some unmistakable human traces. Four lawn chairs were in a circle around a fire pit, facing each other. There was a shopping cart filled with hay- it secreted a foul odor that smelled like piss. There were several garbage cans laying around filled up with ripped up Cosmopolitan magazines. There was also a collection of tiny animal skulls.

My brother wanted to stick around and was fascinated by, as we called it, "The Hobo Den". I was jarred to my core. Maybe it was the smell of pee or maybe it was the fact that the sun was starting to set, but I felt extremely uneasy. I felt like something was tugging on my insides and I knew we needed to leave. I remember thinking that "If I was my dog, the hair on my back would be standing up right now."

I grabbed my brother and told him that we had to go or else mom would get mad at us for coming home late. Under that threat, he agreed to book it with me back home. We didn't mention the Hobo Den to anybody but our other brother- he was sick at the time and we'd report back to him after going out exploring with hand-drawn maps and (exaggerated) stories of what we saw.

So the next morning, my dad took my dog out for a walk behind the school. He made it about 50 feet into the trail before my dog froze. The hair on her back rose and she gave, according to my dad, "the most vicious growl I've ever heard." Emerging from the woods, about 100 ft in front of them, was an extremely obese man wearing absolutely nothing but a pair of rain boots. He had a Cosmopolitan magazine in one hand and his dick in the other. Yes, he was doing the five knuckle shuffle behind a middle school.

My dad did a 180 and called the police the second he emerged from the woods. The police arrested the guy and told my dad that he'd escaped from a mental institution about a month prior.

My brother and I never really told my parents about the Hobo Den, but we were pretty shaken.