The Stranger

Location: Lake City, Tennessee

Classification: Witness Account / Unidentified Stranger

Status: Unresolved

Evidence Summary

When his daughter was a toddler, he made a trip to Kentucky and back.

He was exhausted.

To stay awake, he took caffeine pills.

A lot of them.

And washed them down with six Mountain Dews.

Somewhere around Lake City on the way home, something went wrong.

His heart was racing.

He couldn't breathe.

He was convinced he was dying.

He pulled off the road.

His daughter stayed in the car while he got out and wandered around nearby, panicking and trying to figure out what to do.

That's when the van pulled up.

The driver had long, greasy hair. The stranger looked rough enough that under different circumstances he probably wouldn't have wanted him stopping.

The stranger asked what was wrong.

He told him he was freaking out.

That he thought he was dying.

The stranger listened.

Then got back into his van and drove away.

He managed to call his ex-wife.

She and his father were already on their way to find them, but he was disoriented and couldn't explain exactly where he was.

While searching, they stopped at a gas station.

A man approached his ex-wife.

Long, greasy hair.

He asked her one question.

"Are you her?"

She said yes.

Then he told her:

"They are okay.

But he is in trouble."

They found them.

He ended up in the hospital.

He'd overdosed on caffeine.

He came very close to dying.

His daughter was okay.

So was he, eventually.

But there's one part of that night he's never been able to explain.

He never told the stranger his daughter's name.

He never told the stranger his ex-wife's name.

He never even told the stranger his own.

He didn't know what she looked like.

He didn't know where she would stop.

But somehow, in another place along that road, he walked directly up to her and asked:

"Are you her?"

He doesn't know who the stranger was.

He doesn't know how he found her.

He doesn't know how he knew who she was looking for.

He only knows that the stranger stopped when he needed someone to stop.

And somehow, he found the people who needed to find him.

He never saw the stranger again.

—Names redacted