Transcript of The most extreme story of revenge I've ever told

Today's story is yet another reminder that the woods, especially at night, are not a safe place. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. If that's of interest to you, please purchase a huge billboard that's located right across the street from the Like Buttons house, and every month, put on it a new spoiler for one of the Like Buttons' favorite TV shows, movies, or video games. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the afternoon of December sixth, 1997, a man named Yuri Trush, drew his rifle and crept silently through a remote forest in Eastern Russia as he and his team of three other armed men and his dog followed this trail of pink snow. All of the men and the dog were on very high alert because they knew someone or somebody thing was out in these woods watching them. After walking for a while, Yuri and his crew spotted a small cabin up ahead in this clearing.

This cabin, they knew, belonged to a guy named Vladimir Markov, who was a hunter who had gone missing recently. That was actually why Yuri and his crew were out here. They were searching for Vladimir. But as Yuri and his crew got closer to this cabin, Yuri couldn't help but feel really terrified. Yuri was a 47-year-old big-time weightlifter and military guy who was also a seasoned hunter. I mean, this is a tough, strong guy. But as he walked up on Vladimir's cabin, it was super obvious that something horrible and violent had happened here. All around the scene was pieces of broken furniture. There was a ceramic sink that was shattered outside, and the pieces were everywhere. There was a bunch of beehive boxes that had been badly damaged. There was the shed that clearly had been ripped to pieces. Also all over the area outside of this cabin was blood. This pink trail of snow, this blood trail they were following, led right up to the front door of this cabin, where there was also a big streak of blood on the front door. Now, even though Yuri was scared to go any further, he knew he was in charge, and he had to go and look inside that cabin to see if maybe Vladimir was there.

And so, Yuri walked into the bloody clearing. He made his way up to the front door of the cabin, and with his crew right behind him on the porch, he used his rifle and pushed the door inward. Now, at first, Yuri didn't see anything inside the cabin because his eyes hadn't adjusted and there were no windows, so no light was coming into the cabin. But after a second of Yuri standing in the doorway with his rifle to make sure there was no threat inside the cabin, his eyes adjusted and he realized Vladimir was not in there, and in fact, the cabin looked abandoned. So Yuri stepped inside and he looked around and immediately he noticed all the walls inside this cabin were covered in these deep gouges and scratches. Then he looked on the ground and he found more wrecked furniture and lots more blood. But in a weird way, this actually gave Yuri some hope that maybe Vladimir was alive. He might be badly hurt, but if he's not here, he must be somewhere. And so Yuri turned around and he walked out of the cabin. Right as he stepped onto the snow with his men and his dog right behind him, three things happened practically all at once.

The first thing was Yuri's dog began whining uncontrollably and running in circles. Number two, there were all these crows in the trees nearby that just all at once suddenly flew into the sky and disappeared. And the third thing was this unbelievably loud, growling sound that seemed to be coming from somewhere really far away and also somewhere really close. It was like the forest itself was growling. Five days earlier, on December first, the soon to be missing hunter, Vladimir Markov, decided to give up on another unsuccessful hunt, and he slung his rifle over his shoulders, and he lit a cigarette under his big bushy mustache, and he and his three dogs turned around and began the slow walk back to their small cabin in the middle of the woods. Vladimir was really frustrated frustrated because he had been staying in this cabin in the woods, away from his wife, away from his family, to try to hunt some game and bring some meat back. But so far, he hadn't caught anything. But as Yuri and his three dogs rounded a corner in this forest, he spotted something up ahead that was like an answer to his prayers.

He saw there was a dead boar just lying out in the middle of the forest, and it was in this big pool of blood, and there was still steam coming off of the body, which meant this was a fresh kill. Vladimir raised his rifle in case whatever had killed this animal was nearby. But when he didn't see anything, he just went with his dogs over to the carcass and he pulled out a hatchet, and he cut off two big haunches of meat from this boar. Vladimir knew it was totally in bad form to steal another potential hunter's kill, although he didn't know if a hunter had killed the spore or if another animal had killed the spore, but he still felt bad about what he was doing. However, Vladimir was desperate. He didn't have any meat meat, and here it was, so he took the opportunity. After Vladimir had wrapped up this meat and put it in his bag, he and his three dogs jogged the last few miles back to the cabin, and when they got there, it was basically pitch black outside. Now Vladimir was not scared of the forest at night, but he knew there were predators out here at night, so he needed to act quickly.

So he rushed over to his small shed that was right outside of his cabin, and he put the boar meat inside, shut the door, and locked it, and then he turned to go into his cabin to for the night. But after taking only a couple of steps towards his cabin, he realized his three dogs had not followed him. And so he turned around and he saw the three dogs were totally on edge, looking out beyond the shed where he had just put the meat. They were looking out into the dark forest. Now, remember, he's all alone in the middle of the woods here. It's nighttime. There's no visibility. Vladimir grabbed his flashlight and he shined it roughly in the direction that the dogs were looking, like they had seen something. He's shining his light, but all he sees are just dark trees and nothingness. There was nothing there. Vladimir did his best not to panic, but he couldn't help but feel like there was a predator nearby, and his dogs had picked up on it. He just wanted to get inside the cabin and shut and lock the door as quickly as possible. He began backing up towards the door of his cabin while calling his dogs towards him, and two of the dogs followed.

But a third dog just stayed where she was and continued to wine and growl and look out away from the cabin in this direction that all the dogs were looking. But eventually, this dog just took off running into the forest. Vladimir, who loved his dogs, screamed and screamed for this dog to come back, but the dog didn't. Vladimir just stood there with his two dogs in front of his cabin door, listening to the bark of this third dog getting farther and farther away into the woods. Then suddenly Vladimir heard his dog start to wimper. Then it was like the forest erupted with the loudest growel he had ever heard in his life. And then there was silence. Vladimir was horrified and just instinctively grabbed the two other dogs and stumbled into his cabin and shut and locked the door behind him. Now Vladimir adored his three dogs. Those were his closest friends in the world, and all he wanted to do was run out there and save that third dog. But just based on how loud that growl was, he knew whatever was out there would kill him. And so this was a suicide mission.

If he went out there, and so he decided he would just stay put with the two dogs, and he just hoped that his third dog somehow survived its encounter with whatever was out there.

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After sitting in his cabin for only a couple of minutes, consoling his two other dogs, Vladimir heard more activity outside of his cabin. He heard what It sounded like woods splintering and breaking. Now, there were no windows in Vladimir's cabin. However, he had drilled a couple of holes, very small holes in each of the walls of the cabin, so he could look out and use them as hunting blinds. Vladimir ran to the hole that looked out the front of his cabin towards where his shed was and where this wood-breaking sound was coming from. When he looked out through this hole, remember, it's the middle of the night, there's no lights outside, so we couldn't really see anything. But even in the darkness, when he looked roughly in the direction of the shed where the boar meat was, he could clearly see this huge shadowy creature moving around really violently, like its body was jerking in different directions. It was obvious to Vlad that whatever this creature was, it was ripping his shed to pieces, breaking all the wood apart, probably to get in and get the boar meat. That's when it dawned on Vladimir that whatever this creature was, it very likely was the creature that killed the boar that he stole, and now this creature was back to reclaim its meat.

And so as Vladimir realized that, he just hoped that whatever this creature was, once it had its boar meat back, that it would just leave and not come after him. However, after this creature had totally decimated the shed, and so by default had clearly reached the boar meat inside, the creature didn't leave. It just sat down and stared in the direction of Vladimir the cabin. For several hours Vladimir just continued to stare out this hunting blind hole at this shadow creature that was not moving. After a while Vladimir got tired. The creature wasn't moving. It's the middle of the night. He'd been really busy all day. And so at some point Vladimir and his two dogs dozed off. And when they woke up a couple hours later, when it was still dark outside Vladimir looked out the hole again and he saw the creature was actually now gone. For a second Vladimir was relieved. He's thinking, great, this thing's gone. I'm safe now. But just to make sure, he wanted to go to the other holes he had drilled in the walls of his cabin to look out in all four directions and make sure this creature really was gone.

So he stood up and he walked over to one side. He looked out that hole, and all he saw was dark forest, nothing there. He walked to the other side of the cabin to another one of these holes. He looked out it, and again, just dark forest, no creature. Then he goes to the back of his cabin and looks out that hole This time, again, he does see just dark forest. But then suddenly something slammed into the wall that he's looking through. Then just as suddenly, as this huge collision has happened, as Vladimir is still looking out the hole, this massive yellow eye suddenly lowers down and looks right back through the hole right at Vladimir. It was the shadowy creature that had broken into the shed and it had never left. And this creature, after quickly looking at Vladimir through the hole, it backed up a little bit, exposing its entire face to Vladimir. Vladimir, who's so scared, he can't move. He's just looking out the hole the whole time. He sees this enormous face with all this fur that's covered in blood. It's got these enormous teeth and its mouth is open, and it's staring right at him like it wants to jump on him and kill him.

And then this creature winds up and swipes at the hole and literally rips a bunch of wood off the side of the cabin. And reflexively Vladimir just grabs his rifle, raises faces it and fires a shot through the hole at this creature, and the creature wimpers, turns around, and runs off. Vladimir would stay up the rest of the night, anxiously looking through each of the holes around his cabin, just anticipating this horrible thing to come right back and try to attack him again. But eventually, the sun came up and the creature did not come back, and so Vladimir was thinking, Okay, now I'm safe. I can go outside and figure out what's happened here and figure out my next move. Vladimir grabbed his dogs. He went to his door. He opened it up. He stepped outside and looked around. He didn't see anything. As a precaution, he fired his rifle into the air to scare off any animals that could be nearby. When clearly the creature wasn't here, there's nothing here, he's all alone, he stepped down onto the snow and he noticed these huge prints in the snow, which had to be from this shadowy creature that had tried to attack him.

But now that it was daylight, Vladimir can look at these prints up close and he knew what creature this was. This was a Siberian tiger, and this was an enormous Siberian tiger. But that was not the most terrifying part of this discovery. Instead, it was what Vladimir saw these prints doing. These prints circled around the cabin over and over and over again, which meant the night before, after Vladimir fell asleep, this tiger had come up and basically begun stalking him and his two dogs. It must have known they were in the cabin. Then At some point, maybe the tiger saw Vladimir's eye inside of that little hole he was looking through, and the tiger tried to pounce. But Vladimir is thinking to himself, something's wrong with this Siberian tiger. While Siberian tigers are certainly dangerous to people, they are not known for actively hunting people. That's not something they do. But based on these prints, and just generally based on what Vladimir saw the night before, it seemed very likely that this Siberian Tiger was actively stalking Vladimir. But even though Vladimir was totally terrified by this point, the only thought really going through his mind at this point was going out and trying to find his missing third dog.

He knew the chances of his dog still being alive were slim, but he had to go look. However, he knew he would need backup in case he ran into this Siberian tiger. Vladimir put his two dogs on leashes, and then with them in hand, he began running towards his neighbor's house. It would take Vladimir and his dogs about one hour to run the four miles to his neighbor's cabin. When he got there, he knocked, and his neighbor, whose name was Ivan, he opened the door, and Vladimir practically ran Ivan over just trying to get inside of his cabin to safety. Then once Vladimir was inside, and Ivan had shut the door, and he's looking at Vladimir, and then Vladimir just vomited out all the stuff that had happened over the past 12 to 24 hours. At the end of telling Ivan the story, Vladimir asked him, Would you please come with me to go find my dog? Ivan, he just stared at Vladimir and eventually just said, No. Then, after a long, awkward silence, Ivan backed up from Vladimir like he didn't want to be near him. Then Ivan told Vladimir that Vladimir had been marked by the tiger, and now the only hope he had was getting as far as humanly possible away from this tiger, because that tiger is never going to stop, and it's going to eventually track you down and kill you.

Vladimir totally let down, but he couldn't force Ivan to go with him, and so he said, Okay, I understand. And then Vladimir left Ivan's cabin. He went back outside, and the instant he was back on the snow, one of his two dogs suddenly acted like they had heard something or seen something, and they took off running. Vladimir didn't have a chance to grab the dog's leash. So he's watching as, yet again, one of his dogs is disappearing into the forest. Now Vladimir did not chase after this second dog because he knew there was this Siberian tiger out there, and he couldn't risk running into it by himself. Again, it totally pained him to watch his beloved dog vanish into danger, but he really couldn't do anything about it right then. Instead, Vladimir spent the rest of this day going cabin to cabin all over this area, asking all his neighbors, please come with him to help him track down his dogs. But each of the people he spoke to just said no for the same reasons Ivan did. They said, Vlad, you I've been marked by the tiger. I'm not going out there with you.

And so finally, as darkness began to fall, Vladimir and his one remaining dog just gave up trying to get help, and they turned around and began walking back towards their cabin. It was nearly pitch black by the time Vladimir and his dog arrived at the cabin, and when they got there, even though he could barely see anything, Vladimir knew something was terribly wrong. Vladimir's outdoor sink, which sat right outside of his cabin, was broken broke into pieces like something had smashed it. Then also all of his beekeeping boxes had been broken apart, and there were obvious teeth marks all over it. Now, these two things had not happened when he had left that morning to try to go get help, which meant very likely the Siberian Tiger had come back and done this damage, and very likely was still in the area. So all Vladimir is thinking is, I have to get in my cabin as fast as possible and shut and lock that door. Vladimir grabbed last dog, and very carefully, he maneuvered his way through all the wreckage. He went up to his front door, and as he's about to open it up, he hears wimpering.

It sounds like one of his dogs who's gone missing, and the wimpering is coming from inside of his cabin. Without any hesitation, Vladimir flung the door the rest of the way open, and he looked inside, and he couldn't see anything at first. But then he noticed there was this pile of broken up furniture from the day before, and the wimpering appeared to be coming from underneath it. Vladimir He rushed over and he began moving the furniture out of the way. Sure enough, underneath it, he finds one of his missing dogs who's been very badly hurt, but who is still alive and who is Wimpering. Vladimir, he's so happy that one of his dogs is okay, and he grabs his dog. But unfortunately for Vladimir, this was a trap. Now, we don't know this for sure, but the leading theory is this Siberian Tiger actually set this trap on purpose to catch Vladimir. It's believed that this Tiger wounded the the dog, so the dog would begin to wimper, luring Vladimir out, at which point the Tiger could pounce. Four days later, that armed search party led by Yuri arrived at Vladimir's cabin. They found it destroyed with blood everywhere.

They went inside. There was nothing there. They came back outside. That's when Yuri's dog began running in circles and the crows flew into the air and they heard that deafening roar like the whole forest was roaring. Well, that was the sound of the Siberian Tiger. Luckily, though, Yuri Yuri was not just some rugged outdoorsman. He was actually a member of something called the Inspection Tiger Unit, which basically is like a SWAT team that responds to Tiger attacks. When Yuri heard this unbelievable roar, he just started walking straight towards it. But with every step Yuri and his team took into the forest, the roars coming from this tiger faded farther and farther away from them. But at the same time, Yuri began to notice on the ground little straps of clothing. And so Yuri and his team, instead of trying to follow this roar, they just began following these bits of clothing. And these straps eventually led them to a big clearing in the forest. And in this clearing were these two big red circles in the snow. And so Yuri and his men carefully approached these circles, and when they realized what was in them, they just stood there in silence.

In the center of the left circle was a heap of Vladimir's clothing, and then underneath them were just bits and pieces of Vladimir Vladimir, like he was ripped apart into different pieces and piled up in this circle. And in the other circle, the right circle, was Vladimir's head, and it had been completely skinned. After seeing this, Yuri and many other people have come to the conclusion that this Siberian Tiger attacked Vladimir just for revenge, that this Tiger felt like Vladimir was encroaching on its territory, it stole its bore kill. And then also Vladimir had shot the Tiger, wounding it, which only incited the Tiger more. And so finally, the Tiger laid a trap and caught Vladimir and ripped him to pieces and then displayed him for the search party to find. Yuri and his team would eventually find and kill this Siberian tiger. But by this point, the tiger had actually managed to kill at least one other hunter, and very much in the same way it killed Vladimir by luring this hunter into a trap and then pouncing and killing and ripping the hunter pieces and then displaying them, basically warning other hunters not to come in here.

While the death of this tiger certainly made Yuri and other people living in this area feel more safe, at the same time, Yuri has been told by other locals that unfortunately now, because of his brush with this tiger, he has been marked by the tiger, just like Vladimir. And so, according to legend, at some point, unless Yuri goes far, far away, he's going to be tracked down and killed by a tiger.

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So that's going to do it. If you've got something out of today's story, be sure to check out our podcast called The Mr. Ballin podcast, where we have hundreds more stories, a lot like this one, that are available to listen to right now. But many of them on this podcast are only available on the podcast. They are not on YouTube. Again, that podcast is called The Mr. Ballen podcast, and it's available on Amazon Music.