I just heard your segment about strange communications, and I need to tell you what happened to me and my best friend. This was late June of 2015. I was twenty-two, living back home in Pineville after college. Small town, you know, everyone knows everyone. That's just how it is in small towns. My friend Rachel had been my best friend since middle school. We did everything together. It started on a Tuesday night. I was in bed, almost asleep, when my phone buzzed. Text message from a number I didn't recognize. I almost ignored it, but something made me look. The message said, 'You chosen. Come lake midnight. We wait.' Just like that. Broken English, weird phrasing. I stared at it for a minute, then deleted it. Wrong number, obviously. Some prank. But then Rachel texted me about two minutes later. She said, 'Did you just get a weird text?' My stomach dropped. I called her right away.
Rachel got the exact same message. Same broken English, same weird phrasing. Different unknown number, but the same words, 'You chosen. Come lake midnight. We wait.' We stayed on the phone for probably an hour, going back and forth about what it could be. A prank, right? Had to be. But who would prank both of us at the same time? And how did they get our numbers? We talked about calling the police, but what would we even say? Someone sent us a weird text? Around eleven o'clock, we both got another message. This one said, 'No fear. We mean help. Come water edge. Bring open mind.' Rachel's said the exact same thing. Word for word. We were getting freaked out now, but there was something else too. Curiosity, I guess. Or maybe something was pulling us toward it. I know that sounds strange, but it felt like we were supposed to go. At eleven-thirty, we got a third message, 'Tonight only. Midnight. Pineville Lake. Come now or never.' That's when we made the decision. We were going. I don't know why, it was stupid, we both knew it was stupid, but we had to know what this was about.
I picked Rachel up at her place around eleven-forty. The drive to Pineville Lake is only about ten minutes from town. It's this small lake surrounded by trees, not very developed. There's a parking area and a little beach area where people swim during the day. At night, it's completely empty. Nobody goes there after dark. The whole drive, neither of us said much. I remember my hands were shaking on the wheel. Rachel kept checking her phone, but no new messages came. When we pulled into the parking area, it was pitch black except for my headlights. No other cars. No lights anywhere. I killed the engine and we just sat there for a minute in the dark. It was a warm night, humid, and you could hear crickets everywhere. The lake was perfectly still. I could just make out the water through the trees. We checked our phones. No signal out there. Never was good reception at the lake. I looked at the time, eleven fifty-eight. Two minutes to midnight. Rachel said, 'We don't have to do this.' But we both got out of the car. We walked down the path to the beach area, using my phone's flashlight to see where we were going. The sand was cool under our feet. We'd both worn sandals. And then we just stood there at the edge of the water, waiting.
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