A buddy of mine grew up on a property that bordered a state park in northern Minnesota - one carved by glaciers with deep ravines and plenty of slate rock formations to climb. As kids, we would spend hours during the summer going off the beaten path to explore every nook and cranny of that dam park.

Anyway, myself and another friend were sleeping over at his parents place on a particularly rainy night. The next day the three of us (I was 10 at the time, the other two were 11) did our usual exploring of the park. Eventually, we came across a natural water slide down one of the slate rock formations courtesy of the rain the night before. We spent a good few hours sliding and swimming until it was time to head back to my buddies place for dinner. Now, our route out to the natural water slide coursed through the parks official trails and some thicket; however, the slide itself was a quarter mile from a desolate road that would eventually lead us back to his house. Since we were already late for dinner, we opted to walk back on the road since it would be quicker.

Shortly after reaching the road, an old beat up car comes flying down the road in our direction (remember, it’s desolate). It shoots past us and then suddenly slams on the breaks. The car then reverses towards us and the driver (a guy in his early 30’s I’d guess) frantically rolls down his window and tells us he needs help. As he’s reversing towards us, he shouts that his girlfriends brother went hiking in the woods in the area and hadn’t been heard from for a couple days. He asked if we would help them find him. When the car got parallel to us, the presumed girlfriend was now within view in the passenger seat. The “girlfriend” was clearly much younger than he was. She despondently looked straight ahead, made no eye contact, and her face and arms were covered in bruises. When we saw this, the 3 of us told the guy that our parents were expecting us for dinner and that we couldn’t help. As we proceeded to walk away, the guy makes a quick u-turn in the car and chased us. The three of us obviously got off the road and ran into the forest; however, he got out of his car and chased us on foot too. Luckily, his baggy pants were not suitable for the dense underbrush and we were able to get away.

When we got back to my buddies parents house, we told them what happened. His dad then called the police. They admitted that there probably wasn’t much they could do given the lack of information, but they did mention that there were no recent missing person reports in the area.

Tl/dr: I was probably nearly kidnapped.

This post was edited on 6/30/20 at 11:29 pm