Followed Home By A Water Demon at Bear Lake Utah

INTRO:

Have you ever had the feeling like you’re being watched? The wives’ tale explanation is that it’s a primal instinctive feeling that is beyond rational sense. If you feel you’re being watched, it’s likely that you are. However, a doctor in the late 1800s named Edward B. Titchener decided that he’d run a series of experiments to see if this can be quantified. It gets a little complicated when you introduce ideas of consciousness through introspection and other attributes of parapsychology. The long and short of the experiment was that it had no success. The subjects couldn’t tell in a controlled experiment whether they were and were not being watched without their knowledge.

The idea seemed to really stick with people over the next 100+ years who were just so sure that maybe there are different methods of testing this instinct. In 1913 a study resulted in a 50.2% accuracy by John E. Coover. Then in 1983, a closed-circuit television method had a higher confirmation of 74% success rate. This however was highly criticized by the scientific community as having what they call a “result bias”. So from just flat out receiving a negative or at the best inconclusive result, it doesn’t seem very promising, does it?

FAQs are frequently asked questions concerning the event. Although it is said that Movies on Main is free, it is advised to bring some cash for the freshly popped popcorn that is sold at the concession stand. It is suggested that guests pack a lawn chair, some cash for the concession stand, and a blanket or jacket in case the evening weather lowers. A weekly fresh popcorn offer from a concession booth is confirmed by the FAQ. Contact details for Ace Hardware & Sports and the Michigan Baseball Foundation are included for any additional questions or help. Aiming to promote a sense of community and summertime amusement, Movies on Main presents movies beneath the stars in downtown Midland, celebrating the joy of cinema.

It’s a little discouraging to know that when science took a stab at this wonderment of human phenomenon that everyone has experienced at least once in our lives… they almost found nothing? And yet after all this time, we experience it so widely as humans, that scientists in parapsychology are just so sure there’s some mental explanation to be laid out and explored.

As I’ve said in a previous episode to quote Arthur B Clark. “Magic is just science that we don’t understand yet.”

So who knows if one day we’ll have a bridged connection to what this feeling of being watched is, and more importantly… when to trust it. 

I’m Tasha Wheelhouse, and this is Copper Shock.

The below story was submitted and adapted for storytelling from Lucas in Cedar City Utah.

BODY:

I’ve been to Bear Lake a lot of times with my family. We have a massive cabin that we use for family reunions about once a year.  This was a familiar and wonderful place to me. What happened in 2014 soured a lot of my experience, and I don’t like going there as much as I used too, even if I’m ok now. I’ll let you guys know upfront, this story gets a little on the religious side. Some people don’t like their supernatural stories mixing with faith. But that’s what some of this is. 

It was the first week of September. All of my friends and I would head off to separate colleges around the state when the weekend was over. Since it was the fall, my parents didn’t mind as much if my friends and I took over the cabin for a weekend trip. The only catch being we had to do general cleaning before we left. 

Bear Lake is beautiful. Even though we didn’t have a speed boat with us, we could still splash around on the beach, have bonfires at night, and generally hang out with one another. On our last night there, I was on the top deck that overlooks the water. The cabin is settled in between a lot of other houses around us, but we’ve got the best view for sure. Bear Lake is a massive stretch of water, that sits inside a bowl of green rolling hills. The hills are pocked all over with big cabins just like my family cabin.

It was night time and pretty late. I don’t remember the exact time, but Cambri (A girl I had a crush on at the time) had just come out to sit next to me and look over the moonlit waterfront. I started to talk to her more and realized, this may be one of the last times I’d actually get to tell her how I felt. I do dumb stuff around cute girls. Especially when its someone like Cambri was around. She was a sincere soul. Kind to everyone she interacted with. She also had a hint of vanity about herself that mostly shone through as confidence. I told her how sad I felt that she was going to go to UVU, and I’d still be down at SUU staying with my parents in Cedar City. I tried to kiss her, and she leaned back. A VERY BAD SIGN. I felt my cheeks flush hot with embarrassment as she tried to keep talking on in conversation about how we’re friends and college is a new horizon to explore, and that I’ll meet someone great. I nodded a lot. Mostly to show that I was somewhat engaged in conversation to be polite, but I just wanted to crawl into a hole and pull it in after me. Cambri went back inside when someone called her name. Frankly, I don’t even remember who, but I wanted to just keep sitting outside, I wanted to be alone. I have no idea how long I did stay out there listening to the crickets and looking over the way that water shuffled over itself in the moonlight. In the distance, I didn’t see any cabin windows lit up at all. All these cabins were empty with the season being over or people went to bed hours ago. I looked back at the water.

To my astonishment, I saw someone rising from the shoreline. I remember feeling really confused at first. Who would go for a late-night dip? There’s a curfew at Bear Lake to deter would-be partiers. I wondered why they were alone and waited to see which nearby house they would walk too. I couldn’t see much about them other than their outline, and that it was definitely a dripping wet person of some kind kicking up sloshing water with each step they took up onto the beach. 

But then they stopped. I didn’t understand then in that first encounter, this person was stopping to look at me. I decided enough time had passed with most of my friends asleep that I could finally come back inside. I wasn’t afraid then. But I would be over the next few weeks.

The next morning we packed up everything and did a top-down cleaning of the house. Each bathroom scrubbed (Even if we didn’t use all of them), all three floors to be vacuumed for each room. Everything. Cambri made a not so subtle point to ride in the opposite car of me. I didn’t care at that point, I didn’t really want to see her either. I sat in the front passenger seat waiting for everyone else to get in so we could leave. I looked into the side-view mirror and far away beyond the hill was a dark person staring at me. I don’t mean dark and in “dark-skinned” or anything. I literally just mean that light hardly reflected off of him, and he was dripping wet. I opened my car door and faced where the reflection was coming from. No one was there. Really I only saw the guy for the 2-Missippi count in the mirror before I stood up. I shook it off.

But this is where more of it picks up. I started ‘seeing stuff’ like that day a lot more. I’d hear the splashing of water in rooms where that sound made no sense, it’d only last for about a half-second, but I know I heard it. I’d smell this terrible algae smell when lying in bed some nights. Then there was that night. I had this compelling feeling to just LOOK outside. My feet felt numb as I swung them over the side of my bed to stand up. My arms felt heavy as I reached for the blinds to tip open a single blade with my fingers. It was facing me from about 3 blocks away. The dripping man stood against a hillside facing my window. Facing me. 

I crumpled to the floor to get out of sight… He was getting closer. I started to cry, I’m not ashamed to say that. I was terrified and knew I was not going to get any sleep tonight. I laid in my bed browsing YouTube when I decided to just start searching “demon stories” to see what would come up if anyone else has seen anything like this. I think I dug through about 13 videos, some started cycling through the same stories even. I decided to post a comment in the last one I saw. I didn’t want to talk to anyone in my life about the wet humanoid thing that followed me home. In my comment, I said “Someone please help me. I went out to a Lake and now there’s something following me. It’s followed me all the way home, and each time I see it, it keeps getting closer. It’s dark, and it makes me feel despair when I look at it. What do I do?” I hit “comment” and it published it live. I waited all night, but no one responded. Not even someone interested in trolling me.

It wasn’t until a few days later that I got a notification from YouTube saying someone had commented on my comment. I opened up the email to read the message. The tone read like someone in earnest, it said :

“Hi there, I’m a 17-year-old from Tennessee. I don’t know how religious you are, but based on what you’ve described It sounds like it giving off the impression of stalking you the way a predator would. I’m about to say something that sounds like a sappy, bible throwing, grandma-thing … but I mean it with the most honest sincerity for your sake. The next time you see it, you need to say straight at it “In the name of God, I command you leave me alone.” It’s not so much the word “god” that will help you, people use it every day. But the feeling of ‘god’ you have within you. It’s how much you believe what you’re saying to that unknown demon that will affect it. I’m not saying drop everything and go be a monk, but when you say it you cannot have any fear in your heart. You’re invoking an ancient being that is so commonly known today and looked over. A being who is taught all over the world to be compassionate and show light. This will combat the darkness you’re encountering.”

I had to read the message twice. I’m not religious, my family isn’t and it’s been a bit of a painstaking thing in my life as Cedar City is 90% Mormon. Nonetheless, the YouTube message lingered in the back of my mind. I mused over that phrase in my head, but I never said it out loud. When I did say it, I wanted it to mean something. I just didn’t know what yet.

Overall it made a sort of pragmatic sense. If you’re encountering a superstitious being, invoking the right opposite superstitious being would work. The problem was, I was having a hard time believing any of this was real to me.  I know what I’ve seen, smelt, heard, and felt with the hairs that stood at the back of my neck. I began to practice the phrase in my head so that the next time the water demon got even closer to me, I’d be ready. I hadn’t bothered to research other options, and what would I have to lose in trying?

I kept an eye out, but things quieted down over a space of two weeks I forgot about it. I was just starting to get comfortable again. That is until I went to a park on the SUU campus to do homework for the afternoon. I had laid out a blanket and began packing up my homework before my walk home past the Engelstad Shakespeare Theater. It’s one of the few replicas in the world of the original theater that Shakespeare plays did in the 1500s. I hitched my backpack high on my shoulder and crossed the streets and enter my neighborhood. It was relatively dark when I was close to reaching home.

But then I smelled it. Water algae. It unmistakably hit my nose. Something nearby. I felt the color drain from my face, and sweat began to break out under my armpits. I’d stopped practicing the phrase by now, and the fear coming over me made my mind spin trying to remember desperately what it was I was supposed to say. I turned and felt a scream get stuck in my throat not quite making it out. The creature stood only about two houses down from me. Dark, leaving a trail of water with each step, he was actually close enough that I saw more details about him now more than ever before. 

He was grotesque, gills flexed about his face down his neck and shoulders. The surfaces of his naked body would even pulse between invisible and solid. The eyes were sunken in and disturbingly concave inward in shape. The eyes themselves were black pupils with red/blue bloodshot veins about where the whites of the eye should have been. It gurgled in pleasure looking me over and bared its teeth. The teeth were blunted-looking grey stones gapped between each other. It would have been comical if it weren’t for the flood of impending doom hitting my stomach. 

It took a step near me in a jagged fashion, having trouble holding up its body frame like a human. Stupidly I thought to myself. “You’re a fish out of water.”

What was the sentence I was supposed to say? I started to breathe heavier and feel an anxiety attack coming on. The creature jittered and fell to its hands and knees crawling toward me. It’s skin still cycling sections of see-through and solid.

I felt my throat swell up as I heaved breaths in and out through my mouth. Suddenly my brain fired off. Absolute clarity hit me, I faced the dripping thing and said with a confidence I haven’t felt in my life since.

“In the name of God, I command you to leave me alone,” I said the whole sentence calmly, and with an assuredness. The next moments of doom were somehow inconsequential as though time didn’t matter as I said those words. That everything would work out fine, or somehow already had. I believed what I was saying and that the authority I invoked would come to my soul’s defense. I felt this in the core of myself, and a warm feeling spread out from it.

In a blink the dripping demon man was gone, even the wet splotches on the sidewalk were dry like it had never been there.  I felt gratitude swell inside my chest. It was gone. The looming hum of the tension of being watched I’d felt since coming back from the lake was no longer eating at me.

I got out my phone and sat down on the sidewalk. I pulled up the same YouTube video and I commented back:

“Thank you whoever you are. Everything is going to be alright now.”

I put my phone in my pocket, stood up, and continued the walk home with a smile and feeling of being safe. I still avoid going back to Bear Lake, and my family doesn’t understand why. But I’m ok with that for now, and I may tell them in the future in my own time.

OUTRO:

We are so excited to see so much of our Copper Shock community reaching out to participate! Messages from all over to tell us what interesting or strange things that have happened to them. In fact, the next few week’s episodes will be an interpretation of bizarre nightmares that have been experienced by Copper Shock listeners. Next week’s episode is a personal dream of mine.

I dreamt about studying abroad in Japan. The school I was sent too was housed in a building that used to be a hotel that suffered a violent tragedy. This painful tragedy echoes through time, and I would soon find out how thin the veil is between the spirit world and ours.

Please reach out to us on the Copper Shocks Facebook page. I love it when you say hello. If you liked this episode please don’t be shy about sharing it with your social media, liking our Facebook page, or giving us a review on your podcast app. Every little bit helps to grow our community for Copper Shock.

Until next week, and we’ll see you real soon.

It demonstrates that Disney uses a wide range of potent software tools to create lifelike animation in their films. Pixologic ZBrush is utilized for character sculpting and fine details, whereas Autodesk Maya is often used for modeling, rigging, and animation. The program of choice for producing visual effects like lightning, fire, and water is called Houdini. Presto, a proprietary program developed by Pixar, is used for scene layout and character animation. Their rendering program, Disney's Hyperion, creates crisp, detailed scenes. The website also lists other Disney-developed tools, such as the Meander Animation Tool, Swoop for elements animation, Quicksilver and Beast for realistic hair, Tonic for hair grooming, iGroom and XGen for fur grooming, and Matterhorn for snow simulation.