CreepCast - Stairs In The Woods | CreepCast

Episode Date: December 14, 2025

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Welcome back to Kareepkast. Today we are, we're going down memory lane a bit, aren't we, Isaiah? We are going to actually read, I'm a search and rescue officer for the US Force service. I have some stories to tell, a.k.a. Stairs of the Woods, which was the first episode we ever did when we were trying to figure out what in the hell the show even was. Oh,

baby, oh, baby. I'm excited. I am pumped. I'm so ready for it. This is a good first episode to start with. I'm glad you suggested this. Yeah, yeah. I remember, which is so funny, I was going to say this before the podcast, but I remember when we first started this, we started looking at this, and you're like,

should we just, I don't know, should we just read it? And I was looking through, I'm like, God, I mean, it's so long. Who the fuck was to sit here and have us read this entire thing. And now we have a 12-hour story. And now we have a 12-hour episode up. So, yeah, I think we missed the mark just a little on that. But we never actually sat down and read this. And this is such a popular story.

And I know people have been recommending that we actually read it again. And I think we need to do it justice for actually doing it because now I know Isaiah knows the author of this very well. Yes. And we, I think it would be good if we actually just read it. We did an actual episode. Because I think that's our most,

no, no, no, I think left, right games are most, it's one of our most viewed episodes, and it's not even the format. It's not even in the format of how we do the show.

It's top five and it's me and you being like, yeah, it's kind of a cool story. You know, there's some parts I like. It's so, it's so silly looking back at it now, and it's so funny because our commenters were really

letting us, down very softly, they were like, yeah, so, um, don't do that. You should just read the story. There's a lot of comments where people are like, this is cool at all, but, uh, I haven't read it. So I don't know what you're talking about. And in hindsight, which in hindsight, yeah, good point. The story is the, the, the episode is very much like, you guys, it's kind of crazy in this part, this thing happens. And I think that it's actually pretty cool. And it's you being like, yeah, I do think it is cool, actually. It's like such a weird, like there's, I don't know.

At the time, it just seemed weird because I were like, no one's going to watch this if we just read a story. Well, I feel, I think before. And here we are. It was before it was like,

I don't have the, I mean, the plan I think was just to talk about the stories. Whatever. I don't think that we ever, when we were coming into this, I don't think it was ever us being like, oh,

we're going to read the stories and kind of joke. Like we didn't know what that format was yet. Because I think we were like, well, we don't want to just like read the story because then it feels weird to, you know, interject and talk because no other channel really does that usually it's just like they're narration channels and you're there for the story and then we just start reading stories and just like

I don't give a fuck we're just going to we're just going to riff and chat between it which is you know what ended up being coming the the podcast so it's insane too like we're two years in now and now we're coming back and we're touching base which I think we were going to do this the first year, but then I think with the first tour we did and other stuff, I think it just didn't line up and now we decided. We ended up doing Ted the caver for the one year. That's what it was. Because that's the actual. That's the actual.

That's technically the proto creepcast episode because it was on your channel before we did this. And then we wanted to do this for the two year, but then we had the Halloween tour. So have we missed the two year? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're definitely, we're celebrating the two-year anniversary today. This is our celebration. It's around.

It was in November. It's around the same time. Listen. It's close enough. Yeah, things happen. We're celebrating it now. That's all you need to know. And if anything, it's probably close to the holiday season for everybody when this is coming

out. So happy holidays to everybody. And this is our little gift to you. Before we get into it as well, just want to discuss Zoe 101. Just kidding. We're not going into that. But I will say, what the hell was that school that they stayed at? Is it a dormitory?

Was it a penitentiary? I don't know. Just want to give a quick thank you to all the audio listeners right now who are listening on audio platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcast and giving us a nice rating there. I appreciate you. And to our beautiful patrons. Hello.

Daddy sees you. Hello, Hello, children. I'm going to be back soon with the milk. You know, is that good? Did you like that? No, I didn't like that, but that's good, I guess. Okay.

And, I mean, without further ado, I'm ready to jump writing. So there actually is further ado because you didn't let me shout out the author at all. There's further ado. While you shout out the author, can I? If you don't want me to. When you shout out the author, can I be in the background very quietly singing a song? Very quietly. I'll be very quiet.

Okay. So the author of this story. So the author of this story. goes on Reddit as search and rescue Woods. Of course, we'll have the account linked in the description. This story was written over 10 years ago and it is one of

if not maybe the most influential story to come out of no sleep. Maybe not. It's top five easily. Stairs in the woods have become a staple of like online internet culture not only in like the creepy pasta scary story space but

just online horror in general. One of my first videos on Windegoon was me going over the story. So obviously it has a soft spot of my heart. Since then, I've reached out to the author of the story. Them and I have become friends. And then come to find out, the author of this story has a captioning company called Fowellweather Studios, who does the captioning for The Amazing Digital Circus.

And they also do the captioning for my second channel, Winda Gang. So them and I work together on a regular basis. They're really cool. So it's really cool to not only originally know them from this story. That was so inspirational. One of the things that helped me get into the space I am making these videos for you all, but to also know them as a person and to work with them is great. So, of course, we're going to be a little biased as we tell this story,

but for good reason. I think it deserves it. So we'll have the Foul Weather Studios, if he wants interested in the captioning work, as well as the Reddit account linked in the description. Be sure to show them some love. All right. Well, it's awesome. Well, let's get into it.

I'm a search and rescue officer for the U.S. Forest Service. I have some stories to tell. AKA stairs of the woods. I'm ready for it, man. I remember this was the, this was a fun one too when we were starting to do it. It has that very, uh, I hate to say it because it's such a fucking, I guess just like not liminal space but just that kind of uncanny thing things that shouldn't be there i know that you associated that with like growing up in the in uh the appalachia area where it's like old houses

in the middle of the woods that are broken down it just feels uncanny nature growing through it and all of a sudden there's like a staircase in the woods from something long ago just kind of cool yeah you come across these old like uh riddance of stuff which we'll get more to detail of it later but there's been a lot of cases where i've been in the woods and found like old hunting stands or old like you find a random concrete pad in the middle of nowhere that probably a shed was on at some point but now it's just grown up in the woods stuff like that dead bodies that homeless guy that's why that's why i think the story resonated with so many people because they're okay actually you know what we're doing the thing again where we describe something

without the audience being privy to it's why we just read the story i was just saying you you also found that dead body in the woods and you also had that homeless guy with the beans you're you are rewriting history and there I did not find a dead body I went looking for a dead body in the woods you found that dead body in the woods and your dad said to not tell anybody and there was also the homeless guy in that house

or whatever and your dad said not to tell anybody about that too right I've been no I've been looking I've went looking for dead bodies in the woods multiple times actually why why multiple times because what did you miss

one was the story I talked about in the first episode or whatever, where it was a couple that went missing that we knew. Right. And the other was for Hurricane Helene when there was like body recovery in the mountains after the flood and all that. I really like how you said Helene Hurricane Helene. Yes.

Very sassy. And also the second time was for Hurricane Helene. Yes. Yes. Because you're coming up me with a sad. But I never found. The homeless man, the homeless man was my dad's friend. And I did that because of Hurricane Helene. I found.

on that one I found bodies but it was because a cemetery had been dug up and there were bodies from that out but they were all bodies people were aware were dead so that wasn't like a casualty recovery thing that was just like

they're over there what are you what are you is a zombie invasion those are bodies that people knew were dead yeah well I hope yeah because because a cemetery a cemetery got like ripped out of the ground oh because of Hurricane Helene Hurricane Helene

You're such a jerk Well, me and daddy went to the cemetery to find some dead bodies. Of course, that was brought on by Hurricane Helene. I'm not defending you for this one. When you get the comments, the tweets and stuff, I'm not, I'm not saying anything. Come on, man. We're buddies, we're having fun. We're searching rescue officers.

next time i'm going to tweet and be like no he did get banned because of the thing he said about it's on that is what you know i just got to say i had an emotional reaction to losing a game of badge of gathering and i will not apologize i refuse just the same just just the same way all of twitter immediately made it into a conspiracy about twitch and that's why you got banned i know i don't know why that can you tell them uh what happened your mom my mom was kind of contacted by TMZ, for whatever reason, because I'm sure it was some fishing website where they thought my mom's number was my number or something. But my mom was like, you know, my mom was like, I just got to text for someone they taught at TV. And I was like, I don't, I was like, do not respond to that.

And she just text back. Oops. So. Good job. Hunter's mom. But TMZ wanted to see why you were banned from Twitch. toning it got. Next time I'm going to be like yes, it was because

of what you think it was over. And also he made fun of flood victims. You should throw that in there as well. Hurricane Helene. Okay. We're just going to read the story. You said it's so sassy. There was definitely, there was definitely, I was like, I motherfucker flicked his wrist what he said. I'm like, he had some sass with it.

Little whip. Okay. Wipping the nay nay a bit. Hurricane I'm a searching rescue officer for the you. Okay. Okay. Are we into this? No. Yes. Yes, we are. The story. Yes, we are. Okay. I'm a search and rescue officer for the U.S. Forest Service. I have some stories to tell. Part one. I wasn't sure where else to post these stories, so I figured I'd share them here. I've been a search and rescue officer for a few years now, and along the way, I've seen some things that I think you guys will be interested in.

I have a pretty good track record for finding missing people. Most of the time, they just wander off the path or slip down a small cliff, and they can't find their way back. The majority of them have heard the old, stay where you are, thing, and they don't wander far. But I've had two cases where that didn't happen. Both bother me a lot, and I use them as motivation to search even harder on the missing persons cases I get called on. The first was a little boy who was out Barry picking with his parents. He and his sister were together, and both of them went missing around the same time. Their parents lost sight of them for a few seconds, and in that time, both the kids apparently wandered off. When their parents couldn't find them, they called us, and we came out

to search the area. We found the daughter pretty quickly, and when we asked where her brother was, she told us that he'd been taken away by Bear Man. She said he gave her berries and told her to stay quiet, and that he wanted to play with her brother for a while. Oh, God. The last... Oh, God. I forgot. about this. Jesus Christ. The bear man. Oh my God.

Is that subconsciously was the bear trap thing because our trauma our traumatized our traumatized nature from the bear man? The game was rigged from the start.

The last she saw of her brother, he was riding on the shoulders of the bear man seemed to calm. Of course, our first thought was abduction, but we never found a trace of another human being in that area.

The little girl was also insistent that he wasn't a normal man, that he was tall and covered in hair, like a bear, and that he had a weird face. We searched that area for weeks. It was one of the longest calls I've ever been on, but we never found a single trace of that kid. The other was a young woman who was out hiking with her mom and grandpa. According to the mother, her daughter had climbed up a tree to get a better view of the forest, and she'd never come back down. They waited at the base of the tree for hours all in her name before they called for help again we searched everywhere and we never found a trace of her i have no idea where she could possibly have gone because neither her mother or

grandpa saw her come down i like um i love how each of these little segments feel like their own campfire story you know yeah without but i don't know like it it sucks you in to the point where the idea of it is very creepy but I'm also just like huh huh like if a guy was telling me about this he's like yeah I don't know like a guy got abducted by a circus freak or something like that we never saw him and a girl climbed up a tree and she never came back down that was those are kind of weird I'd be like hold up what I was like you don't have you don't you don't can you rewind on that last one a little bit I was like what do you mean also how do the parents how do they come to terms of that where they just like all right no she's not

coming down let's go but the concepts the concepts are really cool though you know yeah like I think I mean like the girl climbing up the tree which you just have to assume is like a never ending thing or like even like she went too high up and now it's like I don't know entered a different dimension or something or something grabbed her up there yeah something like that something like that is uh fucking fucking haunting but then also just the um which you know the creepy pasta thing it's hard not to just imagine a fucking hairy pedophile in the woods that just abducted a boy but it could also just be literally like a Sasquatch kind of monster or like even just some kind of creature like living

in the woods just took the kid you know you were my own now or something I don't know both of them are very fun and you're like but can I what what happened hey what happened but you're right that does it gives that campfire feel where it's like you know well what happened next and then your dad who's like definitely not creative will say like no one knows or whatever like that kind of thing you're like whoa he's like yeah don't ask

questions well it's also from the perspective of a search and rescue officer who just like they don't know anything about the lead up they just know the cases they just know what a little girl said or they just saw someone walk up into a tree so it's like they're so

the person narrating on limited information so your kind of kind of your mind of your mind kind of makes inferences off of what little we get yeah a few times I've been out of my own searching with a canine they've tried to lead me straight up cliffs not hills not even rock faces straight sheer cliffs with no possible handholds it's always baffling and in those cases we usually find the person on the other side of the cliff or miles away from where the canine has led us I'm sure there's an explanation, but it's sort of strange. One particularly sad case involved the recovery of a body. A nine-year-old girl fell down an embankment and got impaled on a dead tree at the base.

It was a complete freak accident, but I'll never forget the sound her mother made when we told her what had happened. She saw the body bag being loaded into the ambulance, and she let out the most haunting, heartbroken whale I ever heard. It was like her whole life was crashing down around her, the part of her died with her daughter I heard from another search and rescue officer that she killed herself a few weeks after it happened she couldn't live with the loss of her daughter I also like details like that

that are like tragic but not explicitly supernatural yeah well just it can be just how how even just accidents happen on nature and how fucking haunting that can be which is true but I do think it's important for the story so far because it definitely leans into where like there's probably going to be some things that are just of nature like things just happen yeah you know not all of it has to be

supernatural yeah i was teamed up with another search and rescue officer because we'd received reports of bears in the area we were looking for a guy who hadn't come home from a climbing trip when he was supposed to and we ended up having to do some serious climbing to get to where we'd figured he'd be we found him trapped in a small crevice with a broken leg it was not pleasant he'd been there for almost two days, and his leg was very obviously infected. We were able to get him into a chopper, and I heard from one of the EMTs that the guy was absolutely inconsolable. He kept talking about how he'd been doing fine, and when he got to the top, a man had been

there. He said the guy had no climbing equipment, and he was wearing a park in ski pants. He walked up to the guy. When the guy turned around, he said he had no face. It was just blank. he freaked out and ended up trying to get off the mountain too fast which is why he'd fallen he said he could hear the guy all nine climbing down the mountain and letting out these horrible muffled screams that story bothered the hell out of me but i wasn't there to hear it i want to

say i love that being the next story after the girl falling falling because you're because you are like oh man it probably wasn't accident but now it sets a little layer of doubt in your head yeah you know like that's like well maybe there's something up that maybe there's faceless people up on the mount whatever that is also a fun thing to an out of season basically skier that's up on the mountain where it's like okay well this guy has definitely just been up here or got like lost like who knows what happened to even that guy you know transformed who knows how long ago it's like it's like a ghost almost yeah exactly yeah one of the scariest things have ever had happened to me involved the search for a young woman who'd gotten separated from her hiking group.

We were out until late at night because the dogs had picked up her sin. When we found her, she was curled up under a large, rotted log. She was missing her shoes and pack, and she was clearly in shock. She didn't have any injuries. We were able to get her to walk with us back to base ops. Along the way, she kept looking behind us and asking us why that big man with black eyes was following us. We couldn't see anyone, so we just wrote it off as some weird symptom of shock. But the closer we got to base, the more agitated this woman got.

She kept asking me to tell him to stop making faces at her. At one point, she stopped and turned around and started yelling into the forest, saying that she wanted him to leave her alone. She wasn't going with him, she said, and she wouldn't give us to him. We finally got her to keep moving, but we started hearing these weird noises coming from all around us. It was almost like coughing, but more rhythmic and deeper. It was almost insect-like. I don't really know how else to describe it.

When we were within side of base ops, the woman turns to me, and her eyes are about as wide as I can imagine a human could open them. She touches my shoulder and says, He says to tell you to speed up. He doesn't like looking at the scar on your neck. I have a very small scar on the base of my neck, but it's mostly hidden under my collar, and I have no idea. idea how this woman saw it right after she says it i heard that weird coughing right in my ear and just

about jumped out of my skin i hustled her to ops trying not to show how freaked out i was but i have to say i was really happy when we left the area that night um yeah the the bug man the insect man is following us through the woods and then calls out the ear this is the last one i'll tell and it's probably the weirdest story I have. Now, I don't know if this is true in every search and rescue unit, but in mine, sort of an unspoken, regular thing we run into. You can try asking about it with other search and rescue officers, but even if they know what you're talking about, they probably won't say anything about it. Here we go. This is it, the Hall of Famer, the big hitter. We've been told not to talk about it by our superiors, and at this point, we've all gotten so used to it that it doesn't

even seem weird anymore. On just about every case where we're really far into the wilderness, I'm talking 30 or 40 miles, at some point we'll find a staircase in the middle of the woods. It's almost like if you took the stairs in your house, cut them out, and put them in the forest. I asked about it the first time I saw some, and the other officer just told me not to worry about it, that it was normal. Everyone I asked said the same thing. I wanted to go check them out

but I was told very emphatically that I should never go anywhere near them I just sort of ignore them now when I run into them because it happened so frequently I have a lot more stories and I suppose if anyone's interested I'll tell some of them tomorrow. If anyone has any theories about the stairs or if you've seen

them too let me know in the part one which worth to mention as well one this is 10 years old 2015 which would you say that was the pinnacle because what creepy posse started getting written like around like 2010 maybe 2011 whatever but it really 12 I would say around the time of like it was after slender man

slender man slender man was I think the kickoff in my mind and then kind of creepy posse culture spiraled so 2015 2015 was when they were people were like oh we can write on these and try yeah they don't have to be scary faces yeah I think think it's interesting just seeing a post like this because this seems like such a I mean I don't know I wasn't there but in my mind it seems like such a new take of like little digestible moments right because it almost feels like yeah it feels like the book when we were younger the uh score stare scary stories to tell in the dark very bite-sized small things where it's very much just like I heard about this thing happening kind of like what you were

saying like a like a it's just a ghost story a campfire story and it's very it's just giving you the scary moment but you know none of the character stuff with it but it's just the thing of like I heard about this thing happening and it was really scary and then like another scary moment and then we move on to the next one I love these kind of like little digestible appetizer sized horror because also I mean even like now the guy like the woman the woman who was shocked hiding under a rotted log and then now all of a sudden the bug man is like following her and you just get that one quote of just her saying like you know she say he says they walk faster and then he gives it and then they she even says the uh scar on the back of his neck which it's like who how would she have seen that in the dark whatever just really fun we start off with you know things of very brief and quick but it seems like as we kept going down they got a little darker and a little more detailed which i don't know if you noticed that too but i thought that was a lot of fun yeah i think i understand why this post blew up so much

because you just read through a bunch of stories it has 32,000 up votes, my word. Is that the most on no sleep? No, I think the sex worker one is. Oh, hold on. Top of all time. Yeah, you're right.

It's got to be, yes, it's like number seven, six or seven, yeah, of all time. It has all these fun ideas that leaves you just again like a campfire story it's like oh what could the bear man be but with the insect man be are these the same things described by two different people what does an insect cough sound like why was why did he tell her to hurry up and obviously the stairs in the woods i think the stairs in the woods is so effective because like i said growing up where i did it's not uncommon walking through the woods to see abandoned structures right um so you come across these things and there's normally an explanation like the big biggest one, I remember, is old chimneys and fireplaces. Right. You'd be walking through the woods and you come across a, like a stone structure.

Yeah, because the entire house was wood except for the stones of the chimney or fireplace. So everything else rotted away or was carried off except for the stones. So you see stuff like that and there's like an explanation. But sometimes you would see something kind of weird. Like I've talked about on the show, I think, when I was a kid at a park and saw a door in the middle of the woods with like an old brass handle. and it was just the door standing up. Like it's a piece of the frame

and it kind of leaned on a tree but from a distance looked like a floating door. So it's like that's a bit more weird. You know, why did that get out there? What's the story with that? So I feel like a staircase in the woods hits that right spot of it's clearly weird and wrong, but it's just familiar enough

that I can convince myself I've seen it before. Well, it's entering the uncanny valley, which is why I think people find it so fascinating too, is that everyone has experienced, I mean, stairs and to have it be in a place that it's leading to nothing. Get your mind racing that at the top of stairs, there should always be, I mean, something, right? What are you walking towards? So having it be on the middle of nowhere, especially 30, he did, like, that's another great little detail to 30 to 40 miles. There's no way they're putting a house in the middle. I mean, like, there just doesn't make any sense, right? No, not a two

story one at least. Yeah. So having it be that deep into the woods. And then also the way that he describes it too of take the stairs that in your house to where even at points at least whenever I read it there I even just pictured like more modern like a modern staircase and you're like what you know not even like a really old Victorian kind of you know 1800s kind of house or whatever I'm talking like if it was something that was like you know millennial core fucking gray stairs with the black bars or whatever like that kind of thing we're like what the fuck like it looks too new which I think makes it even creepier feeling like it it's not of the time like it doesn't make any sense that something that new would be out there which is why it's just you can run with it which is

really cool yeah but yeah part two part two hi this video sponsored by our partners at factor after all the turkin stuffing eating well during the holidays can feel impossible that's why i use factors chef-prepped dietitian approved meals to help me keep my eating habits Have you seen my body? It's working wonders. Factor powers your day, sun up to sundown with nutritious breakfast and on the go lunches. And premium dinners. In just two minutes you can heat, eat, and enjoy.

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So I logged back on tonight. I was blown away by the staggering amount of interest that seems to have generated. First off, I'll address a few things that you guys have brought up. There's been an overwhelming amount of people mentioning the similarity between some of my stories

and those of David Politis. I assure you I'm not trying to rip him off in any way. Got nothing but respect for the guy. He's actually what inspired me to write this because I can verify a lot of the things he talks about. We do have a lot of these strange missing persons cases and most of the time they aren't involved. Either that or we find them in places, they have no business being. I personally haven't been on many calls like that, but I'll share a few that I've seen.

A story my friend told me that relates to this. I wonder if that was thrown in as a legal disclaimer. I can't remember how litigious David Politis was 10 years ago, but I know he's pretty bad now about stuff. I know the, I just look at it up. So people who don't know him, David, David Plytus isn't a, this is what Wikipedia says, is an American former police officer who is now an investigator and writer, uh, known for his books, the missing 411, which is basically just like missing reports, I believe, uh, well, so missing 411 is the term that gets used now because of David Plytas's books to describe people that go

missing in national parks. Right. Because he also has, he also has a book called tribal bigfoot. So it does seem like a lot of this is, uh, missing 401 Canada. It looks like it's all, yeah, just like in the woods. Yeah, you're right. So, yeah, 411 is in like a police report, like the number for like info or data or whatever. So missing means like people that vanish without a trace, which I've covered a bunch of the missing 411 stories on the channel like Dennis Martin or cases like that of that was in the Smokies. Do the, if it's a missing person's case, is it, are these more of like a true crime thing? or, correct me if I'm wrong, I apologize, but is it, do they lean into that paranormal kind of thing?

Because it seems like he's like, so, the idea of missing 411 typically is there's so little information or like it's an unexplainable case. It could be true crime. It could be supernatural. And a lot of, especially David's stuff, kind of plays in the middle. Like, oh, who knows what it could be? Like the Dennis Martin case, and I did a video on was a little boy who was at a camping

trip with his dad, his parents. in the smoky mountains and he walked behind a bush to jump out and scare his dad. And his dad walked over to the bush and he was gone. Jesus. They, they had, they had, uh, I think it was the green braes were training nearby around Gatlinburg. Uh, and they had them come in and search the woods for a month and they never found him. My God.

How the fuck could you sleep at night? I mean, like you see him go behind the bush never. I mean, like with things like that too. man god i mean like immediately my mind was like god was like a wild cat got him or like i mean like who fucking knows like that's insane completely silent off the that's what that's how most of the one stuff is it's like off the face of the earth just there one second gone the next um but yeah so that's where a lot of the stuff is uh where i say about the litigious is uh i don't know about now but for a while, David Politis was real

a lawyery about people using the term missing 4-1-1. And I know some YouTubers like had stuff get struck and things like that. But these are real, but his are real cases though, correct? Yeah. Well, I mean, like I would, like when I cover missing 401 stuff, they're real cases, you know?

Right. Their actual disappearances and stuff like that. But I can see, but I guess what I'm saying is wording. He's like, no, that's my wording. That's my term. I see which I mean like I could see people though seeing that kind of book or that kind of phenomenon and then of course using that as inspiration to be like oh but you know like almost using that as inspiration for storytelling or something like this story exactly like this search and rescue yeah but I'm mostly saying that to say I wonder if search and rescue officer like the author was like this is not stealing David's work or if it was in earnest just like yeah like David's work. I mean, I did do good work. The YouTube stuff just annoys me, but...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I feel yeah. There's a lot of feedback about the stairs, so I'll touch on that briefly here, and I'll also include a story. They come in a variety of shape, sizes, styles, and conditions. Some are pretty dilapidated,

just ruins, but others are brand new. I saw one set that looked like they came from a lighthouse. They were metal and spiral, most old-fashioned. The stairs don't go up infinitely or farther than I can see, but some sets are taller than others. Like I said before,

just imagine the stairs in your house as if someone cut and pasted them in the middle of nowhere. I don't have any pictures. It's never really occurred to me to try again after the first time. I don't really feel like risking my job over it. I'll try again in the future,

but I can't really promise anything. A few people express confusion about the guy who ran into the man with no face. Just to clarify, when the climber ascended and reached the top of this peak, he saw another man in a park in ski pants. This was the man with no face. Sorry about the confusing wording of that story.

Try to avoid that in the future. I'd feel like that was pretty clear, but all right. Yeah, I guess, well, Redditors, am I right? Yeah, I can't really dress along. I'm going to have to not give this one an up, dude. I didn't understand that. Which one was wearing the ski jacket? Story ruined.

You know what, banned. As far as missing persons go, I'd say about half the calls I get are related to that. The others are rescue calls, people who fall down cliffs and hurt themselves, get injured by fire. We wouldn't believe how often this happens, mostly drunk kids, get bitten or stung by animals or insects. We're a tight team, and we have veterans who are excellent at finding signs of lost people. That's what makes these cases where we never find any trace of them so frustrating. One in particular was upsetting for all of us, because we did find a trace of them, but it just led to more questions than answers. An older man had been hiking alone on a well-established trail, but his wife called to say that he hadn't come home when he should have.

Apparently he had a history of seizures, and she was worried that he hadn't taken his medication and had suffered one out on the trail. Before you ask, I have no idea why he thought it was okay to go out alone or why she didn't go with him. I don't ask about that kind of thing because past a certain point doesn't really matter. Someone is missing and it's my job to find them. We went out in a standard search formation and it wasn't long before one of our vets found signs that the guy had gone off the trail. We grouped up and followed him, spreading out in a fan to make sure we were covering as much ground as possible. Suddenly, a call comes over the radio telling us all to head back to the vet's location and we come right away because this usually means the missing person is injured

and we need a full team to help get them out safely. We meet back up and the vet is just standing at the base of a tree with his hands on the sides of his head. I asked my buddy what's going on. It points up into the branches of this tree. I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing. But there's a walking stick dangling from a branch at least 30 feet off the ground.

The little strep thing on the handle has been looped around the branch. And it's just hanging there. There's no way the guy could have tossed it up that far, and we don't have any other signs that he's still in the area. We call up into the tree, but it's obvious no one's in it. We're all just sort of left scratching our heads. We keep searching for the guy, but we never find him. We even bring our canines out, but they lose a scent long before this tree.

Eventually, search is called off because there are other calls we have to attend to. Past a certain point, there's not much we can do. The guy's wife called us every day for months, asking if we found her husband. It was heartbreaking to hear her get more and more hopeless each time. I'm not sure why this call in particular was so upsetting, but I think it was just the sheer improbability of it. That and the questions that were raised, how the hell this guy's cane ended up there?

Someone kill him and toss that up some weird trophy? It did our best to find him. It was almost like a taunt. We still talk about that one from time to time. man imagine like again the campfire thing it's like okay did he go up a staircase and get up there yeah yeah kill him and drag him up there or the staircase is kind of an interesting theory actually walking out randomly that he walked to the top of a staircase yeah yeah got snagged by something and then yeah exactly yeah there's a lot there's so many like but again

it leaves enough room where all we see is the aftermath so it's like what well there's always like extremely like sad and bitter taste in your mouth because these do a good job also by like showing the victim's family like just that little thing of like she called every day just heartbreaking you know brutal yeah or alternatively did the bear man show up and hurl this dude into the sky yeah the bug the bug man and the bear man just fucking suplexed him to the moon Missing kids are the most heartbreaking. It doesn't matter what circumstances they go missing under. It's never easy.

And we always, always dread the ones we find deceased. It's not common, but it does happen. David Politas talks a lot about kids search and rescue teams found in places they shouldn't be or couldn't be. I can honestly say I've heard about this kind of thing happening more than I've seen it, but I'll share one of the ones that I think about a lot that I witness personally. Mother and her three kids were out for a picnic in an area of the park that has a small lake. One is six, one is five, and the other is about three. She's watching them all really closely, and according to her, she never lets them out of her side at any time.

She never saw anyone else in that area either, which is important. She packs their stuff up, and they start to head back to the parking area. now this lake is only about two miles into the woods and it's on a very clearly established trail it's almost impossible to get lost getting from the parking area to it unless you're deliberately going off the path like an imbecile her kids are walking in front of her when she hears what sounds like someone coming up the path behind her god she turns around and in the four or so second she's not looking her five-year-old son vanishes she figures he stepped off the trail to pee or something, and she asked her other two where he went. They both tell her that a big man

with the scary face came out of the woods next to them, took the kid's hand, and led him into the trees. The two remaining kids don't seem upset. In fact, she says later that it seems like they've been drugged. They're sort of spacy and fuzzy. So, of course, she freaks out, starts looking frantically in the area for her kid. She's screaming his name, and she says at one point, she thinks she heard him answer her. Now, obviously, she can't go blindly running into the woods. She's got the other two kids, so she calls the police and they send us out immediately. We respond and we start the search for him. Over the course of this search, which spans miles, we never find a single trace of the kid. Canines can't pick up any scent. We don't find any

clothing or broken bushes or literally anything that would signify a child being there. Of course, there's suspicion about the mother for a while, but it's pretty clear that that she's completely destroyed by the whole thing. We looked for this kid for weeks, with a lot of volunteer help. But eventually, search Peters out, and we have to move on. The volunteers keep searching, though. And one day, we get a call on the radio letting us know that a body's been found and needs to be recovered.

They tell us the location, and none of us can believe it. We figure it has to be a different kid. But we go out there, about 15 miles from the site where he vanished, and sure enough, we find the body of the kid we've been looking for. I've been trying to figure out how this kid got where he did ever since we found him, and I've never come up with an answer. Volunteer just happened to be in the area because he figured he might as well look in places

no one else would think to, on the off chance, the body had been dumped. He comes to the base of a tall, rocky slope, and halfway up, see something. Looks through his binoculars, and sure enough, it's the body of a little boy. stuffed in a little opening in the rock. He recognizes the color of the kid's shirt, so he knows right away that it's the missing boy. That's when he calls it in, and we're dispatched. It took us almost an hour to get his body down,

and none of us could believe what we were seeing. Not only was the kid 15 miles from where he'd started, there was no possible way he could have gotten up there on his own. This slope is treacherous, and it's hard even for us with our climbing gear. A five-year-old boy had no way of getting up there. Of that, I'm certain. Not only that, but the kid doesn't have a scratch on him.

His shoes are gone, but his feet aren't damaged or dirty. So it wasn't as if an animal dragged him up there. From what we can tell, he hasn't been dead that long. He'd been out there over a month by that point, and it looked like he'd only been dead for, at most, a day or two. The whole thing was unbelievably strange. It was one of the most disconcerting calls. I've ever been on.

We found out later that the coroner determined the kid had died from exposure. He'd frozen to death, probably late at night, two days before we found him. There were no suspects,

no answers. Today, it's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. Jesus, so he was stuffed inside? Do you think he was just trapped? It couldn't get out of the... No, because they mentioned that it's a place of a rock face

where a kid couldn't have gone. So it's like the fuzzy man, the man with the scary face or whatever. Or not the fuzzy man. The fuzzy man shows up later. the man with the scary face like leads him by the hand and then maybe the kid dies in the woods

so he just shoves his body into a rock crevice like halfway up a mountside Jesus God to find that too would be fucking disgusting good Lord it's weird though it's like these things where I can't tell if they're leading them to the stairs

or if it's like because it doesn't seem like they're being murdered are just one of the many things that happens out here I just yeah I mean, you're probably right. I just don't, it's in a weird way, it feels like in this unnatural world, all these things are connected in some, I don't know. It's just odd. Yep.

I also, it reminds me, a lot of these deistels remind me of real cases. There was one case, I think this was, it was somewhere in like the P&W, I think Montana, where this, I think he was four. He was with his family. And he was found. He was out camping. then he disappears and they have a big hunt for him for two days and they find him i maybe getting two of them combined in my head they find him in the middle of like a pond on a tree uh and he's alive he's still alive and they ask him what happened and he's like the cat a big cat or a kitty or

something like that um was with him and then he was just up in that tree and he couldn't give any more explanation. But he had gotten, I think, 12 miles over the course of a day or so. And there was an episode of Survivor Man where he tried to recreate the path in the same time frame. And he couldn't do it. Well, that's what I was saying. It's like I had a four year old.

I feel like people might be like 15 miles isn't that far. 12 miles isn't that far. That's right. It's a sheer rock face. Exactly. It's not like it's a straight path. It's up major. I mean, like you'd have to walk.

It would be insane. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, four-year-old now. So the only theory people make is like maybe a cougar carried him all the way and left him on top of a tree for some reason. Just stay here. You'll be fine.

Yeah. So, you know, weird stuff happens out there. I've heard, dude. So I was camping not long ago. And we were out in the middle of the woods. And I wasn't tent camping. I was just on a bivvy and a tarp. I was curled up in my sleeping bag.

This is around, I think, three in the morning, middle of nowhere, underneath the trees, super dark. And I'm going to sleep. And right before I fell asleep, I heard so distinctly a car unlocking. Ugh. Like someone hit a key fob, a little click, click, you know? Yeah.

And dude, I shot up and was spinning around. 20 miles from any roadway, right? Yeah. And bro, it messed with me. I was like, what would make that noise? Can you imagine a mountain lion stealing your whip? Just runs me over with my four runner. It drives it all the way out in the woods.

Who is that? Whatever. Then they has his head out the window. I think he does a fucking donut and he flips you off with his paw and he drives off. I'd honestly be like, that's pretty sick. Man, that's a cool cat. That's a cool mount line. That's the coolest thing that ever happened to me.

Yeah. Mountline stills my car. That was a cool thing that's ever happened to me. Yeah, exactly. You die frozen out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Like, you know what? Almost worth it.

Almost worth it. I want to take a moment to thank today's sponsor, Turtle Beach. Things don't always age well, like my chair that died, but some things like Turtle Beach age great. When I was 12 years old, playing on an Xbox 360, Turtle Beach was the brand to get. And I'm happy to tell you that in 2025, they're still the brand that continues to deliver high quality sound and comfortable functionality. And since they sent me a pair of their Stealth 700s, I haven't taken them off. These are, without exaggeration, the best headphones I've ever owned. For one, I always had wired headphones because I didn't like dealing with battery life.

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That's because if you head to the link in the description at Turtlebeach.com and use the discount code Creepcast, you will be able to get 10% off your entire order. That is right, 10% off. It can be the Stealth 700s or anything else you want for them. Again, just had to Turtlebeach.com and use the code Creepcast. And then after you order, they'll ask who sent you. So if you could say us, it would really mean a lot. So get in on it while you can. Thank you to Turtle Beach for sponsoring the show. Their link will be in the description. We are now back to the episode. One of my first jobs as a trainee was a search op for a four-year-old kid that had gone separated from his mom. This is one of those cases where we knew we were going to find him because the dogs

were on a strong scent trail and we saw clear signs that he was in the area. We ended up finding him in a berry patch about half a mile from where he'd last been seen. Kid wasn't even aware that that he'd wandered that far. One of the vets brought him back, which I was glad for because I'm really not good with kids, and I find it hard to talk to them and keep them company. As my trainer and I are headed back, she decides to take me on a detour

to show me one of the hotspaws where we tend to find missing people. It's a natural dip in the land near a popular trail, and people usually move downhill because it's easier. We hike out there. It's a few miles away, and we get there in about an hour or so. As we're walking around the air,

area and she's pointing out places she's found people in the past. I see something in the distance. Now, this area we're in is about eight miles from the main parking area, though there's back roads you can take to get closer if you don't want to hike that far. But we're on state protected land, which means there can't be any kind of commercial or residential development out here. Most you'll ever see as a fire tower, makeshift shelter that homeless people think they can get away with building. But I can see from here that whatever this thing is has straight edges. If there's one thing you learn quickly, it's that nature rarely makes straight lines. I pointed out, but she doesn't say anything. She just hangs back and lets me wander over and

check it out. I get within about 20 feet of it, and all the hair on the back of my neck stands up. It's a staircase in the middle of the woods. In the proper context, it would literally be the most benign thing ever. It's just a normal staircase, with beige carpet and about 10 steps tall. But instead of being in a house where it obviously should be, it's out here in the middle of the woods. The sides aren't carpeted, obviously, and I can see the wood it's made of. It's almost like a video game glitch, where the house has failed to load completely on the stairs are the only thing visible. I stand there. It's like my brain is working overtime and try to make sense of what I'm seen. My trainer comes and stands next to me, and she just stands there casually, looking at it

as if it's the least interesting thing in the world. I ask her what the thing is doing here, and she just chuckles. Get used to it, Ricky. You're going to see a lot of them. I start to move closer, but she grabs my arm, hard. I wouldn't do that. Her voice is casual, but her grip is tight, and I just stand there looking at her. You're going to see them all the time, but don't go near them. don't touch them don't go up to them just ignore them i start to ask her about it but something in the way she's looking at me tells me that it's best if i don't we'd end up moving on and the subject doesn't come up again for the rest of my training she was right though i'd say about every fifth call i go on i end up running across a set of stairs sometimes they're relatively close to the path

maybe within two or three miles sometimes they're 20 30 miles out literally in the middle of nowhere, and I only find them during the broadcast searches or training weekends. They're usually in good condition, but sometimes it looks like they've been out there for miles.

All different kinds, all different sizes. The biggest I ever saw look like they came out of a turn-of-the-century mansion and were at least 10 feet wide with steps leading up at least 15 or 20 feet.

I've tried talking about it with people, but they just give me the same response my trainer did. It's normal. don't worry about it they're not a big deal but don't go close to them or up to them what trainees ask me about it now i give them the same response i don't really know what else to tell them i'm really hoping someday i get a better answer but it hasn't happened yet i feel like by not telling you what would happen if you go up it it would make me go up it

yeah well you'd go up and immediately get like particle eviscerated or just so because also it seems like i'm guessing if i had to guess it seems like each staircase leads to a a different area or something or it attracts something different you know what I mean like I doubt all the staircases lead to the same place to me the staircase which the story never gives you a clear answer right but to me the staircase almost feels like a lure you know yeah it's like it's just like a little hook dangling there to be like oh come on just walk yeah yeah because it's like there's some entity that wants people to cross over to join it or whatever and you need to go up so it's almost like humans go up on these.

Let me ask you this. This is what the image will be to be placed out in the woods. Let me ask you this. If you were a paranormal entity in the woods, what would be your lure? Am I like what would get me personally? Or if I was the entity, what would I try to get people with? Yeah, yeah. The latter.

Um, mine. Can I at least say mine? Go ahead. Hot dog stand. Yeah. I was going to say women. I guess that only gets half the population. If it has to be one blanket.

What do you mean that only gets half the population? You can still, you can be a woman on the middle of woods and anybody is going to be like, are you okay? I'm over here. Now I'm talking about it. It needs to be like a,

like a random object. Like, can you imagine walking through the, what you're walking through the deep, deep wood. When I said there's a fucking, when I say women by the way, I mean,

I mean explicitly like a goss, baddie type. I'm saying a very specific kind of lore. I know what you mean. I know what's going on your mind. I'm not just saying like the voice of a woman. I'm talking like, yeah,

I'm talking like the big milky boobies. Well, okay. All right. I didn't say that. I'm talking like, I get it. When the coyote's like, oh,

God, humina, humina is like the eyes popping out of that. That's what I was referring to. Hitting the table. Ah, ha, ha, hop, yeah. Yeah.

So if it had to be an item, if it had to be an item. an item you said hot dog stand right yeah i think a hot dog stand's pretty good that would get me in the middle of the woods i mean can you imagine that you're walking through the woods and on a sudden you're like a glizzy stand and also it has all the feiksen's right on it it has all the stuff of like it has relish it has ketchup muster everything you could want right and it smells delightful that's how i would do it yeah well if so if i if i'm a smart entity that knows that would look out of place and suspicious, I would do one of those, like,

the little boxes they set up on trails where you can like, it's like emergency supplies with like food and stuff like that, like beef jerky. See, if I were, you know what's kind of interesting. Like, it's not necessarily as uncanny as a stair as in the woods. But what if you were, let me, what if I evolved yours a little bit? What if it was one of those boxes in neighborhoods

and hipster neighborhoods where people leave books? Yeah. It's one of those. Like a book trade thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. one of those. What is this? That kind of thing. You're the book you're the book banded it. Let's

okay let's phrase it a bit differently because it seems that the point of the stairs is you have to walk through them like you have to go through the portal. So what would you set up to make people walk through an area? I would have okay so you have to because in my mind

if you take a book. They have to cross a threshold. So you're saying this has to be an actual threshold you have to cross. Mine would be a slip and slide. an enticing slip inside and let me tell you it has all the water features and everything too can you imagine trying to not be like I don't know one's out here I can just go on this really quick I'm not going to ask where the water's coming from or why it's in pristine condition I would say it's impossible if no one else is around you're like I'm not going to look stupid it's impossible

like a fully operational slip and slide a tight rope a tight rope between two trees, like, you know, like one of those things we try to bounce on it. Whoa! It even has the mat underneath it. Yeah, I think those are two go. I think I've given two. You know, it's weird. Thinking about this now, like, what would you have to make people walk through?

A random staircase is probably the best lure because that I feel like I have a natural inclination to walk up it, you know? If it was, what if it was a tightrope where you could, you could, you could. see the other end of the like you couldn't see what it was tied to i think i absolutely would not get on that i think i was walking through the woods i'm not touching it no way what about the slip inside what about the slip inside where you didn't see the end of it no i'm not i'm not getting on a slip and slide in the middle of the woods i can't see the end of it right i'm talking the the water fountain the water fountains that were going on it do you want to hike the rest of the way

back soaked. I don't think I really mind. I think I'm probably got kind of dirty. Have you ever hikes with wet socks? Do you know how much that sucks? Obviously you don't fucking wear your socks and shoes. You take it off. You just go on. You're like, ah, wee, on your knees. And you get back, you put on your dry socks and you put on your shoes. That was

that's what any normal person would do. I feel like the stairs are the easiest because people just like will walk up the staircase. I am not trying to de-throne the stairs. You asked me what the portal would be. Okay. You have, okay, I did that. the threshold, but you're the one that originally asked.

I said a woman and then I said a a big titted, thick-thied woman with fishnets. No, you are adding adjectives. I did not put on this young lady. I'm deciphering. This young woman. Okay, we don't emphasize that we don't need to emphasize the age. You were like, but hey, listen, it's not just a voice, fellas.

You did say that. No, no, no, no, no. That's because I said that only attracts half and you're like, no, it doesn't if a woman's calling out in the woods. And I clarified, I'm, I'm not talking about a woman calling out the woods. I'm talking about you make eye contact and you do the whole coyote like, oh, no. And you like run for a second like Scooby-Doo in place and then take off like, and there's a little cloud of smoke.

That's what I'm talking about. Not like a help, help me, help. Because if I'm in the woods and I just hear that, I am not. You're not going to help. Okay. All right. Realistically. Yeah.

Realistically. Yeah. I am going to help. But we're not talking about a realistic scenario. We are talking about a realistic. set up. Yeah. But we're talking about a

yes. If I'm in the woods and I hear someone yelling help and I go look and it's just a voice that's kind of spatially calling out

from somewhere, no. I would go look to make sure it's not someone that needs help. I feel like you would look for someone to make sure it's not that needs help.

But if it's a, if I get to a patch and I'm like the noise is coming from right here, but there's no one here. I'm leaving. Well, sure. But I'm saying that you would,

you would, it would, because in my mind, at first it's kind of far away and then the closer you get the ladder it gets to where it keeps luring you in of like I'm close I'm very close but by the time that you but by time that I figure you you know that it's not real I feel like if the thing has gone you is what I would assume right probably you're much like the time I realized I would probably be got right whereas I can tell you if there's any levels of uncaniness I agree I mean I'd be like I'm getting the fuck out here

exactly exactly or if I kept getting deep burning yeah if you see a woman yeah if you see a woman But you got, you got, you got to get all the way up to it before you realize this is my point. Easy. All right. See. See exactly. No, no, no. No, no.

No. No. A hundred percent. You said there. You're like, if I see a woman, I got to get all the way up to it. Hurricane. No, no, no, no, no, no, not like that. No.

Yeah. Hurricane. Oh, gosh. I didn't like that connection. And I tell you what. And what's even more point in is also if you see a slip and slide that you'd be like, okay, well, obviously I'm doing this. But then there's no way to get off of it. See, that's the slip and slide effect, too, is that you're like,

whee, and you're like, okay, this is kind of going on too long. And now you're a slip, slip inside for, exactly, too slippery. Can't move. No way of stopping. Go down a large, the slip and slide in the woods sounds like a very like penny wise it scenario. It does. It's too childish, but I will say it would be effective for me, at least.

I'm a very dumb man. I'm curious, I feel like a lot, I legitimately actually believe that a lot of people would fall for the slip inside. It would be too enticing. It would be uncanny, but I think that it's so. Like it's so almost like embedded with our youth that I feel like there would be like I don't think that you would look at it with hostility for some reason to me the stairs in the woods. I'm like that's just creepy because it feels like something has been destroyed. It's like a loss of life around this. A full blown slip and slide with the arches of like the fountains going on it. I think that you would you would bypass your normal intuition. And I think that you would you would participate. I think you would I can apply

I can apply the exact same reason into a woman okay all right Lord you know Hurricane Helene we get it I understand I don't like the way you keep saying that Hurricane

to this scenario and obviously everything I'm saying is in respect to my wife but I'm saying that's the easiest way to get a guy to walk into the woods with absolutely no like credit or thought to what's happening you could have said that last thing

with more of a fucking lie I'm saying it was all respect to my wife. Of course, of course, my wife, yeah. I wouldn't fall for it now because I'm a married man. The largest wink ever. Definitely with respect to my wife. My wife. I'm just saying.

Hurricane Helene. I'm saying that I of course wouldn't fall for it because I'm a married man. But if I was to trap a man, that would be the way I trap it as the entity. I think that we can at least. agree that there would be a lot of easy ways to actually lure humans in the woods. Honestly, dude, put a weird, put a funny looking stick out there. Yeah. Or like, what's that?

I'm like, what's that? I got to go get that. That or if you did a thing, like we just, like if you had like a, like a giant, like a big pumpkin out there, right? There's a big pumpkin. I would 100% go to a big pumpkin, but it's formed in a way that looks like it has a giant ass where it's kind of funny. You're like, doesn't look like a big butt.

Yeah. It looks like a big but hole. You like look up in it. Look at the butt. I think people, that would lure people in too. Yeah, and then boom, it's too late now. You're in the pocket dimension. Good luck, idiot.

That was a good way to burn up 10 minutes. Oops, sorry. This is another one that was less spooky and more sad. A young man went missing late in winter, when realistically, no one should be going that far out onto the trails. We close a lot of them, but some remain open year-round. unless there's a shitload of snow. We did an op for him, but we had about six feet of snow on the ground.

Damn. It was an unusually heavy snow year. We knew it wasn't likely that we'd find him until spring when the thaw came. Sure enough, when the first big thaw came, a hiker reported a body a little ways off the main trail. We found him at the base of a tree and a pile of melted snow. I knew right away what had happened, and it scared the living shit out of me. Most of you who ski or snowboard or spend any amount of time on a mountain will probably have guessed too.

When snow falls, it doesn't collect as thick in the areas beneath the branches. It happens most with fir trees because they have a sort of closed umbrella shape. So what you end up with is the space around the base of the tree that's filled with a mixture of loose, powdery snow, air, and branches. They're called tree wells, and they're not immediately obvious if you don't know what you're looking for. We put up signs in the welcome center, big ones, letting people know how dangerous they are. But every year, but every year that we get an unusual amount of snow, at least one person doesn't read them or doesn't take the warning seriously, and we find out about it in the spring. My best guess is that this young man was hiking and got tired, or maybe a cramp from walking

in the deep snow. He went to go sit at the base of the tree, not knowing that there was a tree well and fell in. He got stuck with his feet up, and the surrounding snow caved in around him. Unable to free himself, he suffocated. It's called snow immersion suffocation, and it doesn't usually happen except in really deep snow. But if you get stuck in a weird position, like this guy did, even six feet of snow can be lethal. What scared me the most was imagining how he must have struggled. Upside down in the freezing cold.

He didn't die quickly. Snow would have formed a dense, heavy pile on him. top of him and it would have been literally impossible to get out as it got harder to breathe he would have known what was happening i can't even imagine what he was thinking in his last moments good fucking lord yep yeah that would be uh you know what i'll say it not good thank you for clarifying that you're welcome you're welcome i try someone had to A lot of my less outdoorsy friends want to know if I've ever seen the goat man while I've been out on calls. Unfortunately, or I guess fortunately, I've never had anything quite like that happen.

I guess the closest was the whole black eyed man thing, but I didn't see anything. However, there was one call where I had something kind of similar happened, but I'm not sure I'm willing to chalk it up to the goat man. We got a report that an older woman had faded along one of our trails and needed assistance getting back down to the the main area. We hike up to where she's at and her husband's just beside himself. He runs, well, I guess more jogs to us and tells us that he was a little ways off the trail looking at something when his wife started screaming behind him. Runs back to her and she's passed out on the trail. We get her on a backboard and as we're getting her down to the welcome center, she comes to and starts screaming again. I calm her down and ask her what happened. I can't

remember verbatim what she said, but essentially what happened was this. She'd been waiting for her husband when he started hearing this really strange sound. She said it sounded sort of like a cat, but it was off somehow, but she couldn't quite figure out why. She went a little ahead to try and hear it better, but it sounded like it was coming closer. She said the closer it got, the more uneasy she was, until she finally figured out what was wrong. I do remember this next part because it was so weird that I don't think I could have forgotten it if I tried. It wasn't a cat. It was a man.

Saying the word, meow, over and over. Just meow, meow, meow, meow. But it wasn't a man. It couldn't have been. Because I've never heard a man make his voice buzz like that. I thought my hearing aid was going out, but it wasn't. I adjusted and still, and it still sounded all buzzing. It was awful.

He was coming closer, but I couldn't see him. And the closer he got, the more scared I was, and the last thing I remember was a shape coming out of the trees, and I guess that's when I fainted. Now, obviously, I'm a little perplexed as to why a guy would be out in the woods chanting meow meow at people. So once we get down the mountain, I tell my superior that I'm going to go search the area to see if I can find anything. Gives me to go ahead, and I grab her radio and hike back to where she fainted.

see anyone, so I keep going about a mile more. And when I head back, I go off the trail to see if I could figure out where she saw him coming from. It's almost sunset by this point. I don't have any desire to be out at night alone. So I just sort of write it off and make a middle note to check it out again tomorrow. As I'm headed back, I start to hear something in the distance. I stop and I call for anyone in the immediate area to identify themselves. Sounded and come close. closer or get louder, but it sounded exactly like a man saying, yow, yow, in this really odd monotone. As comical as it makes it sound, it was almost like that guy on South Park with the Electrolarynx

Ned. I go off the trail in the direction I think it's coming from, but I never seem to get closer. It's almost like it's coming from all directions. Eventually, it just sort of fades out. ended up going back to the welcome center i didn't get any further reports like that and even though i went back to the area i never heard that exact sound again i suppose it could have been some stupid kid out there messing with people but even i have to admit it was weird a group of men with like a sexual fetish of being a cat or something is horrifying out there of then

If then being like just meow, that within itself, that within itself is just fucking horrifying. Let alone it being like a paranormal thing or something weird like that. Just men with like a fetish out in the woods fucking with people. Terrifying.

Absolutely terrifying. I think this is probably the thing I remember most from this story besides the stairs. I think all the time about hearing an animal noise and then realizing it's someone making an animal noise. It's like a man.

I always imagine that when I like reading this I just kept imagine like a very bad like an orange morph suit or something like a skin tight morph suit like just a shitty outfit the guy has. Yeah. He's like crawling around on all fours.

Some big sexual deviant. I like how you don't even put any goat man or supernatural spin on it. It's just a pervert. Well I mean like but seriously how fucking horrifying is that? Fuck that would be terrifying this far out. Like imagine a guy like yeah like why are you out here randomly out there because then you have to imagine he walked in there

normally at some point stopped sick on far on enough here so he could like i don't know role play his like weird fetish thing packed up his his clothes into a bag whatever put him behind a tree and now he's just like walk around the woods and now when he sees people walk by he's like able to fuck with him now nope I'm good new thank you I feel like you'd be a good search and rescue officer that might be one of the nicest things you've ever said thank you let you want to do a role play all right all right so you're coming up to me you're search and rescue officer i'm an i'm an old woman and i and my leg is broken okay so first off ah oh oh oh hold still ma'am Hold still, hold on.

Don't touch me. Am I by myself here? Don't touch me. Am I by myself here? Do not touch me. Am I, okay. It hurts. I need to put a split on this.

I need to put a splint on this. Otherwise, it's going to get worse. The man, he's going to come back. He's going to kill us. Please, we quick. Ma'am, I need you to calm down. Who's going to kill us? Who?

Hello. Did you hear him? What? Did someone say, Hello and a vaguely South American slash Spanish accent. What? He's back. He's back. He's back. Okay. Well, ma'am, I've got I've got a splint on now. I need you to just. I think

I hear that too, ma'am. I am over here. You're over here. Whoever is there, identify yourself. Oh, God. He's back. I have brought me food. The food? You've brought food. Do you see him? What?

but I think I'm looking to that direction I don't what what what is he I'm having trouble seeing describe what you're seeing so I can tell you if it's him or not okay well I'm I'm currently a role place where are you at I'm right in front of you I have brought me I have brought the food okay well since I'm currently in a role play scenario I don't actually see anything but clearly the person who has a leading objective they're getting to with this voice an accent, can give me some clues as to what I'm looking at. I have brought the food. I'm going to pass out.

Just tell me what he looks like so I can verify if it's him. Okay. He looks like a DoorDash guy. Is this, are you Rebecca? Ma'am, is your name Rebecca? My name's, my name's Sarah. I'm looking for Rebecca. I have the food.

I think, I think you've got. What does he look like? What does he look like? How tall is he? He's probably 5'10. Tanskin, dark hair. Oh, no. Oh, God.

What shirt does he have on? Does he have a shirt? He's horizontal red and white striped. I've tried to drop the bag. I'm going to need to take a picture. I don't think that. I think you've got the wrong address. I'm pretty sure you're at the wrong address.

You know, it's funny because when I entered this scenario is over me, a search and rescue officer. All right. Sir, have a good day. I have to get out of here. I have to do it. Is he gone? Yeah, he's gone.

He's walking away. You hear the, you hear the bushes move. What's that? What's that noise? There's bushes over there. My guide in this. There's bushes moving.

I don't see anyone. on yet. We're going to have to wait for an indicator so I can have something to work of us to see what that noise might be. You better go look at what that is to help us. Ma'am, you're still bleeding. I put the splint on. I haven't put it. I don't feel good.

Like, I'm a search rescue officer here. Here's a tourniquet. I'm putting a tourniquet on you. It's going to hurt a lot. Boom, there it is. We now. We should go worry about the bush. We should go out of here.

We should leave. I should not go. randomly walk to a bush while an old lady has a leg broke in the middle of the trail we should leave i got look at the bush i'm up i'm walking i'm over at the bush i'm standing at the bush get out of here who are you bush identify yourself get out of here who is it i'm i'm trying i've been trying to get out of here since we showed up i don't know why there's a door dash driver in the middle of a hiking trail you don't want to help her get out here. Why don't I want to

help her? How is he saying? Go tell her what I just said. Just got to get out of here. What is? What is he saying? Okay. I'm going to, okay, ma'am, let's go back to camp. Come on. I'm going to lift you up. You're on my shoulder and we're walking

back to camp. Ow! What? My leg hurts. I'm walking. Ow! okay all right I don't know how long this scenario's going on for are we to the camp yeah

we didn't really participate that hard you're not giving me anything you're just like wrestling bushes you have to go you have to be more it doesn't matter we'll end it I was going to have the guy be naked and he's going to say he she's wearing my clothes

and then she was going to be wearing his clothes I walked over and she actually was she was Rebecca wow it was gonna I had a whole thing that was waking up I never saw that one coming you weren't I walked up to the bushes I spoke you could have been like there's a naked man or I'm naked or something you just like don't trust you're looking I'm looking in the bush what's going on because you could have been like what sir get out of the bush and I was going to say I can't I'm naked why are you playing so coy with me why do that that's that's the that's the game you have to

it's you have to unveil more I can't just give you you everything. That's the thing. I'm sorry to roll play the way you wanted me to. Hell. You never, you never do. Especially in the bedroom. See how he's blushing chat. We both know that's a lie

considering the horrific text messages you send me unprompted. Can't you see I'm reaching out? I'm trying to get affection from you. Can't you see I'm desperately reaching out for love? This does this does kind of feel like a cat. that like walks up to you just starts like pawing at your pants like I'm making bread on your pants that kind of sounds like I came on your pants that's not what I'm saying I mean the thing

making biscuits what is the fuck it's okay making biscuits is the term for I just made bread on your pants don't give them that they're they're too feral as is you remember all the all those like old TikTok or not TikTok like the old TikTok like the old Vine accounts or Tumblr accounts I would just be like YouTube guys like Markiplier Jack Septicay or like Dan and Phil and stuff and be edits about how they're secretly

in a relationship. I feel like those girls found us because I see those all the time. There was people that said Markiplier and Jack Septicay were having sex with each other. No, they would just make edits where it looked like the two of them

like would kiss or stuff like that like they wanted them to. What I'm saying is those people found us. So you don't need to give them that much room. Well, I can tell you right now, Markiplier and Jack Sub-Card, those are better-looking guys than us.

Us, I would agree with that. Us, us, we don't make love. We make slop, is what we make. Okay, okay. Is it, as if we were, is if we did the edits, it would be a mud pit of despair. Okay, all right, all right, all right, all right.

We're search and rescue officer. Okay, end of that segment. Mud pet crap What? So this kind It's a little dirty So this kind of turned

It's a massive wall of text And for that I apologize I wanted to get to the stories My friend told me And he does have some good ones So I'll post those tomorrow evening I also have a few more Of my own I think you guys will like

I'm sorry to keep you all in suspense again Hopefully the stories here Make up for it And help you get through the next 24 hours until I can post again. Edit. Since it seems like all of you would like to hear more, tomorrow I'll write up as many stories as I can

and do a massive post. I'll include my friend's stories and I'll see if I can get a hold of a few more people who might have interesting things to talk about. I just wasn't sure how people felt about big, huge walls of text, but if you're all okay with it, I'll post lots of stories. End of part two. Part three, baby.

Maybe we can get into some more roleplay, too. Hello. Part three. I am here for Bay DoorDash Order. Part three. Well, once again, you guys have blown me away with your staggering amount of responses to my stories. What? What?

Just blow it. That's why I said. You're like, well, once again, you guys have blown me away with your staggering amount of response. It's just funny. I thought that was silly. Well, I can see you being good at DoorDash, too. Isaiah okay well I'm not going to answer because that will open up a door for you to want to roll play it so if you if you were dropping off a door dash here we go if you're dropping

off a chick for a right drop it down take a picture of it and a person answered to you and they're wearing a kimono if it was extremely obese I mean huge basically if I was sitting there and I was all bald hairless and I was wearing a kimono a sheer kimono that had like it was like jade green and i had a long brown foo man chew uh at the door and i was just like thank you so much would you would you engage in conversation with that person or would you just leave it and be like okay have a good one i would do what i would do for every client have a good one all right first off don't refer to your your door dash recipients as clients because that's not that's not appropriate that's that that's that seems

like, you know, it's not that business cat. It's not that business form. What do you want me to call him? The hogs I feed slop? Well, yes. If it's a large obese man in a kimona with a brown food man chew, yes, you can call him a hog. Here's your fried chicken sandwich pig

is what you should say. Oh my God. What if he had a katana? What if he was holding a katana? Would you Hey man, you want to play for you'll play ghost to answer. He goes to answer the door dash driver with a weapon. Well, he's he opens the front door because you just left it there and he has a katana he's like hey man you'll come inside play star fox uh no i've got other orders sorry

sorry he grips it with both hands puts it puts it in like a combat position i can tell no sorry sir i've got other orders i can tell the guy that is currently setting up this uh this scenario really wants me to come inside to play star fox for some that he has set up uh but i have a job to do which just read a scary story. So have a good one. Take care. All right.

No problem, man. Have a good day. God bless. There you go. There you go. I'd imagine he'd, he struck a pose like crouching tiger,

hidden dragon with the sword. He had like the two fingers up and he was holding the sword like this, whatever. Yeah, that'd be sick. I said, come in to play Star Fox. I mean,

I'd probably fucking go into play Star Fox. I'd be kind of scared. I can't. I can't do it anymore. I'm sorry. It's too many random tangents. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Maybe one day I'll be brave enough. You want to come in here and get into a little trouble? I wouldn't have to you. Uh-oh. Now, thank you, sir. I still have orders. All right. And just know my door's always open.

There's no way I can respond to each of you individually, so I'm just going to address some common things again, and then move on to the stories. I'm going to write as many as I can think of, in addition to my friend's stories, and I will probably not update again until I get a chance to answer some questions that I myself have for my superiors. All right, so common questions I find you all had. I'm not comfortable talking about where exactly I work, unfortunately. In all reality, some of the things I've mentioned here could get me in a lot of trouble. or fired, so it's best if I just don't discuss them too much. I will say that I'm in the U.S. and in the area that is compromised of a great deal of wilderness.

We're talking hundreds of miles of thick forest, with a mountain range and a few lakes. There's still a great amount of interest in the stairs, and luckily for you guys, my friend is a story that I think you all will be interested in. I'll go into them more at the end of this update. As for whether or not I have ever thought of asking my superiors about them, I have, but But again, I don't want to risk my job. However, one of my former superiors no longer works as a search and rescue officer, and it's possible that he may be willing to talk to me about it.

I'll be speaking to him later in the week, and I'll let you all know what comes to that. As far as advice on becoming a search and rescue officer goes, I think the best advice I can give is to contact your local Forest Service office and see if they offer in training courses, or what the qualifications are. I've been doing this for years, and I started out as a volunteer, helping on search and rescue operations. It's great job, despite the occasional tragic situations, and I wouldn't want to do anything else.

All right, so let's move on to the stories. The first happened on a case that I went on right after I got out of training, and was still pretty new to everything. Before I took this job, I was a volunteer, so I had a basic idea of what to expect. But on those calls, you're mostly dealing with finding lost people after vets have found signs of them. As a search and rescue officer, you go out. out for all kinds of cases, from animal bites to heart attacks. This case got called in early in

the morning, from young couple who were up on one of the trails that goes by the lake. The husband was completely hysterical, and we couldn't really figure out what was going on. We could hear the woman screaming in the background, and he was begging for us to come up there right away. When we get there, we see him holding his wife. She's got something in her arms. She's screaming these awful, almost animal-like screams and he's sobbing he sees us and he screams at us to help them please get an ambulance up here now obviously we can't just drive an ambulance

up the walking path so we ask him if his wife needs help or if she can walk on her own he's still hysterical but he manages to tell us that it's not his wife that needs help I go over can you hear the dog barking? Yeah I scared the shit out of me actually like that one I was like oh my god kind of got me I was like into the story

so there's people at the house working on it right now and Benny hates company so I lock him in the bedroom and turn on bird like bird feeder cameras because he just watches the birds and like he just stays locked in stairs out but when the birds get into fights he gets really fired up

oh shit really like if the bird yeah if the birds start like squawking at each other he gets in on it he jumps up and starts barking so that's what that was I go over while one of the vets tries to calm him down, and I asked the wife what's going on. She's rocking, holding something, just shrieking over and over. I crouch down and see that whatever she's holding is covering her with blood. It's when I noticed a sling on her front, and my heart sinks.

I ask her to tell me what's going on, and I sort of pry her arms gently open so I can see what she's holding. It's her baby, obviously dead. His head has caved in on one side, and he's covered in scratches. Now, I've seen dead bodies before, but something about this whole situation hits me hard. I have to take a second to compose myself, and I get up and go get one of the other vets who's standing by.

I tell him that it's a dead kid, and he sort of passed my shoulder and tells me he'll deal with it. It took us over an hour to get this woman to let us see her kid. Every time we try to take it from her, she flips out and tells us we can't have him that it'll be okay if we just leave her alone, let her help him. Eventually,

one of the vets managed to calm her down, and she gives us the body. Took it back to the med area, but when the EMTs showed up, they told us that there was never any hope of saving the kid. He died instantly from the trauma to his head. I was good buddies with one of the nurses who met them at the hospital,

and she told me later what had happened. The other couple had been walking with the baby in the sling. They stopped because the kid was fussing. Dad takes the kid and is holding him, looking out over the little gully by the path. The mom comes to stand next to him. she ends up stepping on a loose patch of soil, and she trips. She falls into the dad, who drops the kid,

who ends up falling about 20 feet down this little galley onto the rocks at the bottom. Dad climbed down and recovered the kid, but he'd fallen right on his head, and was dead by the time he got there. The baby was only about 15 months old. Total freak accident, a series of events that coalesced into the worst possible outcome. Probably one of the more awful calls I've been on. I haven't seen a lot of animal bites of my time as a search and rescue officer, mostly because there aren't that many animals that come around the area.

While there are bears in the area, they tend to stay pretty far away from people, and sightings are highly unusual. Most of the animals you'll see are small ones, like coyotes, raccoons, or skunks. What we do see frequently, though, are moose. And let me tell you, moose are nasty guys. I'll chase after anything for any reason. God help you if you get in between a female and its baby. One of the more amusing calls was the guy who'd gotten chased down

by an absolutely massive male moose and was stuck up a tree. Took us almost an hour to get him down. And when he was finally on solid ground again, he looks at me and says, God damn. Them fuckers is big up close. I guess that's not really a scary story, but we still laugh about that one.

God dang. Honestly don't know if. Yeah. Honestly, don't know if I'd forgotten this story, but it is, by far, scariest thing that's happened to me. I guess maybe I've tried so long to forget about it that I just didn't come to mind right away. As someone who spends literally all of their time in the woods, you don't ever want to let

yourself get scared of being alone or out of the middle of nowhere. That's why, when you have experiences like this, didn't just forget about them and move on. This is, to date, the only thing that's ever made me really seriously consider if this job is the right one for me. I don't really like talking about it much, but I'll do the best I can to remember it at all. As I recall, this took place right at the end of spring. It was a typical lost child call.

A four-year-old girl had wandered away from her parents' campside and had been missing for about two hours. Her parents were completely despondent and told us what most parents do. My kid would never wander away. She's so good about staying close. She's never done anything like this before. We assured the parents that will do everything we can. and defined her, and we spread out in a standard search formation. I was partnered with one of my good buddies, and we were sort of casually holding conversations

while we hiked. I know it sounds callous, but you do sort of become desensitized when you've done this long enough. It becomes the norm, and I think to a certain extent you have to learn to desensitize yourself in order to work this job. We searched for a good two hours, going well beyond where we think she'd be, and we come out at a small valley when something makes us both stop in unison. We freeze and look at each other. There's almost a sensation like a plain depressurizing.

My ears pop and I have this odd sensation of having dropped about 10 feet. Start to ask my buddy if he felt that. Before I can, we hear the loudest sound I've ever heard in my life. It's almost like a freight train passing directly by us, but it's coming from every direction at once, including above and below us. He screams something to me, but I can't hear him over this deafening roar. Understandably freaked out, we look all around us, trying to find the source of the sound, but neither of us sees anything.

Of course, my first thought is a landslide, but we're not near any cliffs. And even if we were, it would have hit us by now. The sound goes on and on, and we're trying to yell to each other, but even standing close together, we can't hear anything but this sound. Then, as suddenly as it starts, it stops, like someone threw a switch and cut it off. We stand there for a second, perfectly still, and slowly the normal sounds of the woods come back. He asked me, what just happened? I kind of shrug, and we stand there looking at each other for a minute.

I get on the radio and ask if anyone else just heard the end of the world, but no one else hears it, even though we're all within shouting distance of each other. my buddy and I just sort of shrug it off and keep going It's great It happens, you know Things like that About an hour later We all check up on the radios

And no one's found the little girl Most of the time We won't search when it gets dark But because we don't have any kind of lead on her Few of us decide to keep going Including me and my buddy We keep close together And we're calling out for every couple of minutes

At this point I'm hoping beyond hope that we find her, because while I may not like kids, any of them being out all alone in the dark is awful. The woods could be intimidating to kids in the daylight. At night, well, it's a whole different beast. But we're not seeing any signs of her, and we're getting any responses. And around midnight, we decided to turn around and head back to the rendezvous point. We're about halfway back when my buddy stops, shines his light to the right of us, into a really thick deadfall, or a group of dead trees. I ask him if he's hurt. a response, he just tells me to be quiet a second and listen. I do, and in the distance,

I can hear what sounds like a kid crying. Nope. We both called the girl's name and listen for any kind of response, but it's just this really faint crying. We head in the direction of this deadfall and go around it, calling her name over and over. As we get closer to the crime, I start getting this weird feeling in my cut, and I tell my buddy that something isn't right. He tells me he feels the same way, but we can't figure out what it is. We stop where we are and call the girl's name again. At the same time, we both figure it out. The crying is on a loop.

It's the same little hitching sob, then whaled and quiet hiccup, repeated over and over. It's exactly the same every time, and without saying another word, we both take off running. It's the only time I've ever lost my composure like that. but something about it was so incredibly wrong, and neither of us wanted to stay out there anymore. When we got back to the rendezvous, we asked if anyone else had heard anything strange, but no one else knew what we were talking about.

I know it sounds sort of anticlimactic, but that call messed me up for a long time. As for the little girl, we never found a trace of her. You keep an eye out for her, and all the other people who we've never found, but frankly, I doubt we'll ever find it. anything. That one,

uh, I like that one a lot. The idea of figuring out the crimes on a loop is terrifying. Yeah, I don't like that. I don't think I like that one. Man, that's so effective though,

isn't it? Like realizing that the girl you're going for it's like the same, like the same little tones over and over. Fuck that. It's almost like the, the noise they heard, the loud noise was maybe this girl being taken or crossed. over, like that's the sound of like a dimensional

rift or something. And now whatever entity's out here is wearing her face. You know, it's like using her voice as a lure to get more people to come out. But it's bad at it. It's bad at it. Like the stairs in the woods, the mimicry is not perfect. There's like an offness to it.

I love the idea of, love the idea of hearing animal noises and realizing they're human or hearing human noises and realizing they're automated. That's creepy. Of the missing person's calls I've gone out on, only a handful of ever resulted in a complete disappearance, meaning no trace of the person and no body ever found. But sometimes, finding a body just leads to more questions than answers.

Here's some of the bodies we found that have become infamous in our team. A teenage boy whose remains were recovered almost a year after he vanished. We found the top of his skull, two finger bones, and his camera almost 40 miles from where he was last seen. The camera, sadly, was destroyed. The pelvis of an older man who had vanished a month earlier. That was all we found. The lower jaw and right foot of a two-year-old boy on the highest peak of a ridge in the southern part of the park. The body of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome, almost 20 miles from where she'd banished.

She died of exposure three weeks after going missing, and all of her clothes were intact except for her shoes and jacket. There were berries and cooked to meat in her stomach when they did the autopsy. corner said it appeared as if someone had been taking care of her there were no suspects ever identified now that's messed up that's very very fucked something out there's been feeding her up until her death like the boy that was shoved into the rock

it's very odd it's like sometimes it feels like things are like taking care of them like it's not super malicious but yeah I don't know that's fucking creepy the frozen body of a one year old baby about a week after vanishing in the hollow trunk of a tree 10 miles from the area he was last scene. There was fresh milk found in his stomach, but his tongue

was gone. Oh my God. See stuff like that, right? Okay. Where it's like they were being taken care of, but there's also like a mutilation associated with it. Yeah. A single vertebra and right kneecap of a three-year-old girl. Founded the snow almost 20 miles from the

campground her family had been at the previous summer. Now, on to a couple of the stories my friend told me. I mentioned that you were all interested in the stairs and you're in luck. He's had a closer encounter with him. Though he doesn't have any explanation for them, he doesn't have a bit more experience with him than I do.

My buddy's been a search and rescue officer for about seven years. He started when he was a junior in college, and he had a very similar experience when he first encountered the stairs. His trainer told him almost the same thing mine did, which was to never go near, touch, or send them. For the first year, he did just that. But apparently his curiosity got the better of him. And on one call, he broke away from the line and went to go check.

set of them out. He said they were about 10 miles from the path where a teenage girl had vanished, and the dogs were following ascent. He was on his own, lagging behind the main group when he saw a set of stairs off to his left. They looked like they were from a new house because the carpeting was pristine and white. He said that as he got closer, he didn't feel any different or hear any weird noises. He was expecting something to happen, like bleeding from his ears or collapsing, but he got right up next to them and didn't feel anything. The only thing, he said, that was odd, was that there was absolutely no debris on the steps. No dirt, leaves, dust, anything. And there didn't appear to be any signs of animal or insect activity in the immediate area,

which she found strange. It was less like things were avoiding them and more like they just happened to be in a relatively barren part of the forest. He touched the stairs and didn't feel anything except that sort of sticking feeling you get from new carpet. Making sure his radio was on, he slowly climbed the stairs. He said it was terrifying because the way they'd been stigmatized, he wasn't really sure what was going to happen to him. He joked that half of him expected to be teleported to some other dimension, and the other half was watching for a UFO to come swooping down, but he got to the top with a little event. He stood there looking around, but he said the longer he stood at the top step, the more

he felt like he was doing something very, very wrong. He described it as the feeling you'd get if you were in the part of a government building that you have no business being in, as if someone was going to come and arrest you or shoot you in the back of the head at any second. Try to brush it off, but the feeling got stronger, stronger, and that's when he realized that he couldn't hear anything anymore. The sounds of the forest were gone, and he couldn't hear his own breathing.

It was like some kind of weird, awful to-nightus, but more oppressive. He climbed back down and rejoined the search, didn't mention what he'd done. But, he said, the weirdest part came after. His trainer was waiting back at the welcome center after the search ended for the day, and he cornered my buddy before he could leave. He said his trainer had this look of intensity,

And he asked what was wrong. You went up them, didn't you? My buddy said it wasn't phrased as a question. He asked how his trainer knew. The trainer just shook his head. Because we didn't find her. The dogs lost her sin. My buddy asked what that had to do with anything.

The trainer asked how long he'd been on the stairs and my buddy said no more than a minute. The trainer gave him this really awful, almost dead-eyed look and told him that if he ever went up another set of stairs again, he'd be fired immediately. trainer walked away and I guess he's never answered any of the questions my buddy had asked about it since now that's cool

I like I like the idea that if someone goes up the staircase someone goes missing it would just make sense at this point too right either the person on the staircase or someone in the woods I like that I like the idea that's like a trade

odd odd odd I mean no likey my buddy has been involved in a lot of missing person's cases where there's never been a trace at the vent I mentioned David Politis. My buddy said he can confirm that those stories are, for the most part, accurate. He said that most of the time. The person isn't found right away. They're either never found. They're found weeks, months, or years later, places they can't possibly have gone to.

One story told me really stood out that involved a five-year-old boy with a severe mental disability. The little boy vanished from a picnic area in the late fall. In addition to the mental disability, he was also physically handicapped. His parents explained over and over that he simply could not have vanished. It was impossible. Someone had to have taken him. My buddy said they searched for this kid for weeks, going miles out of the accepted range, but it was like he'd never been there.

The dogs couldn't pick up a sit anywhere, not even in the picnic area where he'd apparently vanished from. Suspicion fell on the parents, but it was pretty clear that they were devastated, and hadn't done anything sinister to their kid. search was concluded about a month later and my buddy said everyone had pretty much forgotten it by later in the winter he was out on a training off in the snow on one of the higher peaks when he came across something in the snow he said he saw it from far away at first

when he got closer he realized it was a shirt frozen and sticking part of the way out of the powder he recognized it as belonging to the kid because it had a distinctive pattern about 20 yards away found the kid's body laying partially buried in the snow my buddy said there was no way the kid had been dead for more than a few days

even though he'd been missing for almost three months kid was curled around something when my buddy brushed off the snow to see what it was he said he almost couldn't believe what he was seen it was a big chunk of ice that had been carved crudely to look like a sort of person A kid was holding it so tight

that it had frostbent his chest and hands which my buddy could tell even with the decay that had taken place He radioed the rest of the crew And they took the body off the mountain Now he recapped all of this for me And to put it simply There was no way this kid could have both survived For almost three months on his own

Or have gotten to this peak There was no physical way this child Could have walked almost 50 miles And ended up on the top of the day damn mountain top it off there was nothing in the kid's stomach or colon nothing not even water it was like my buddy said the kid had been taken off the face of the earth put in suspended animation and dropped on this mountain months later only to die of exposure he's never really gotten over that one yeah i would argue that that's a hard one to get over this kind of thing some would never get over

Is there, does it seem like there's a correlation with like mentally, uh, mentally ill people basically? Because like this person who had a mental disability, there was another one that had a mental disability. Have you noticed that? Um, yes. It seems like there's a string of people that just,

like mentally disabled people seem to be targeted. Mentally disabled in children, I think it's the idea that maybe if not being preyed upon easier, they're more trusting to like go away with figures. There's like a scary-faced man and stuff like that. Almost like praying on innocence or something like that, probably. Yeah, like the innocence of it is what leads them. Also, the, what was that thing about the, oh, the ice person?

It's similar to the no-faced person on top of the mountain, that there's stuff that like there's these featureless figures that look like people but aren't up there. There's some connections you can draw. I like how there's enough. Hence, you can draw connections between things, but there's never like, oh, this is how it works or this is what it does. Well, yeah, because if you gave that much, too, then not only would it loses mystique, but then also, like, wouldn't be a, you would, there would be a mystery element anymore. Like, the more that we know about it, the less the story has that exciting thrill to it, you know? It's got to, it's got to keep that campfire edge.

Mm-hmm. I agree. The last story I'll share from him was one that took place relatively recently, only a few months ago. They were out doing a recon for Mount Lions because there had been several reports of sightings in the last couple of days. One of our jobs is to scout out the areas where these animals are seen

to ensure that if they are in the area, you can warm people and close off those trails. He was out on his own in a very heavily forested part of the park toward dusk when he heard what sounded like a woman screaming in the distance. Now, as most of you know, when a Mount Lion screams, it sounds almost exactly like a woman being brutally murdered.

It's unsettling, but far from abnormal. My buddy radioed back and let ops know he'd heard one and that he was going to keep going to see if he could figure out where its territory started. He heard the Mount Lions scream a couple more times, always from the same spot, and determined the approximate area of the Mount Lions territory. He was about to head back when he heard another scream, this time, within only a few yards of him.

Of course, he freaks out and starts heading back at a much faster, your pace, because his last thing he wants is to run into a damn outline and get mall to death. As he got back on the path and started heading back, the screaming followed him, and he broke into a jog. When he was about a mile from ops, the screaming stopped, and he turned around to see if it was following him. It was almost night by this point, but he said in the distance, just before the path rounded a corner, he could see what looked like a male figure. He called out to them, warning them that the paths were closed and that he needed to come back to the welcome center. Faker just stood there.

My buddy started to walk over when he was about 10 yards away. Faker took, as he described, an impossibly long step toward him and let out the same scream my buddy had been hearing. My buddy didn't even say anything. He just turned and sprinted back to ops, never looking behind him. By the time he got back, the screaming had moved back into the woods. You didn't mention it to anyone else. You just said that there's a mountain line in the area that they would need to close those paths

until the animal could be located and moved. Dude, no. The idea of an impossibly long step is so haunting. I don't know. I don't know why, but it's... Because in your head, you're trying to picture what that looks like, and it's like, what do you mean an impossibly long step? Like, it's floating as it's stepping almost.

that's great man the author knows how to i'm not just glazing them because they're a friend but man to put that level of detail like all the all these little things that like make the scares play out so well like the crying was on a loop it was a person saying a meow an impossibly long step like these little accents that goes so far the uh the girl on loop though is by far the scariest little girl crying yeah that one yeah that one's pretty good yeah that one's like you're you're looking for and you're like oh she's right right around here, but then you realize it's

a thing that's choosing her voice. Yeah, that's solid. The impossibly long step though, that's fine. I love a nice uncanny step. You're like, what? Yeah. Yeah. Also feels like he can get to you so much quicker. You're like, nope, nope, no, just start running. No, no, no, no, no. I'm good.

Yeah, he's walking, but it's faster than your sprint. We're going to end this story here since it's turned into a huge wall of text. I'm going to be heading out on a yearly training off tomorrow morning. So I'll be gone until early next week. I'll be meeting with a lot of former trainers and buddies who work in other areas of the park, and I'll be asking around about any stories they'd like to share. I'm so glad you guys

have been interested in my stories. Once I'm back from this op, I'll continue to share them. And that is the end of part three. Part four. Hey guys, I'm back for my training op, and I have a lot of really interesting stories to share with you. We've got enough that I'm going to break them up into two parts, this being the first. I love to put them all in one entry, but I just haven't had a chance to write them all down yet. Didn't have anything too crazy happened while I was out there, but we did have one incident with a rookie that I found relevant. Since I'm sure you guys have been waiting for these, I'll just get right into the stories. I'll sign each batch of stories to the person who told them to me.

KD. KD. is a vet who's been a search rescue officer for about 15 years. She specializes in high elevation mountain rescues and is widely considered one of the best in her field. She was one of the more enthusiastic storytellers, and since we were together a fair amount during exercises, she ended up telling me about four that really stuck with me. The first she told me in response to my asking about her most traumatic calls. She shook her head and told me that really bad calls happened more frequently on the mountain, since the potential for nasty accidents is higher. About five years ago, one of the parks she worked at had a string of disappearances. It was a bad year, she said.

one of the worst on record as far as weather went. They were getting about a foot of new snow every couple of days, and there were a few avalanches that killed some climbers. They warned people about staying on the mapped areas, but of course there was always those who don't listen. In one particularly nasty case, an entire family got wiped out because their father decided he knew better than the officials, and he took them out into an area that wasn't safe.

They were snow-shoeing, and as best KD could figure, they walked onto a shelf of snow that looked solid, but actually wasn't. It gave way, and this family went ass over tea kettle almost 300 feet down a slope. They landed on the rocks at the bottom, and the parents died instantly. One of the kids did as well, but the other two survived. One had a broken leg and fractured ribs. The other was almost unharmed, save for some bruising and a sprained ankle. The uninjured child left his sibling behind and set out to help him.

Katie said the kid didn't make it more than a half mile before a storm overtook him. Kid stopped to try and get warm or maybe just to rest and ended up freezing to death. Good God. They ended up finding the family with the help of some witnesses who saw them heading out into the wilderness and she was the one to find the kid who'd frozen to death looking for help. She said it had started to snow, just enough to obscure long distance vision, but not enough to make searching impossible. She saw a figure sitting in the snow up ahead.

and she got to it as quickly as possible. She described in detail, as she got closer, she realized first that it was a child, second that they were deceased, the third, that they had frozen in one of the most pitiful positions she's ever found a corpse in.

The kid was sitting upright, with his knees tucked up against his chest. His arms were curled around them, and his head was tucked up into his coat. As she moved the coat to look at his face, she saw that he died crying. His face was twisted and the tears were frozen on his cheeks. She said it was painfully obvious that the kid was terrified when he succumbed to hypothermia.

As a mother, it broke her heart. She told me repeatedly that she hopes the father is burning in hell as we speak. The other traumatic stories she told me that stood out, in my mind, was one that happened when she was a rookie. Her team got a report of an experienced climber who hadn't come home the previous day. His wife was convinced that something bad had happened because he never failed to come at home on time. They went out looking for him and had to climb what sounded like

some very technically challenging parts of the mountain. They got to a relatively flat area and Katie started seeing blood in the snow. She followed the trail and as she went she started seeing little bits of tissue. She wasn't sure exactly what body part had come from but the further she followed it or there was. She followed this blood and tissue trail

to a sheltered area under a cliff face, and she finds the climber. She said there was so much blood, more than she'd ever seen before. He was lying face down, one arm stretched in front of him, as if he died crawling. She looks closer and sees that he's been partially disembowled, which is where the tissue had come from. The guy has an ice pick tucked into a hip holster, and it's covered in blood. Of course, they'll never be sure exactly what happened, but she said as best she can figure, this is what went down.

Guy had been attempting to climb up to the next area and had been using his ice axe to ascend. He probably hit a loose patch and had fallen. On the way down, or possibly when he landed, he got impaled by the axe and it disemboweled him. He drug himself along, tearing pieces of himself out as he went and died under the cliff face. She isn't terribly bothered by Gore, but I guess a few of the guys who came to help her remember, the body threw up when they turned him over a good portion of his intestine spilled out Jesus

I like all the real stories mixed in with the supernatural ones you know it almost feels too like the real stories are the ones that I'm more effective like the more I'm like I'm like I'm hitting heavier with the real ones I think just because it does have such a I don't know like it's less fantastical and you're like oh man

that's horrible that you know but it feels fake because it's a bug man or whatever the fuck it is but other things like, oh my God, putting yourself in that position is fucking horrifying. That could just happen to someone, a lot of the things. I mentioned to her that I was interested in hearing about any experiences she had with people completely disappearing. Her eyes light up and she leans in close to me.

Want to hear a real doozy? She tells me about how, when she first started, there was a case that got a lot of attention in the media. A family had been out berry picking in an area of the forest very close to the entrance of the park. They had two little boys, both under the age of. five and at some point during the day, one of them vanishes. There's an absolutely massive search and they find absolutely nothing. It's another of those cases where it's like the kid was never there in the first place. The dogs just sit down and don't pick up on anything. No trace

that the kid is found. Search goes on for about two months, but is eventually called off. Fast forward to six months later. Family comes back to place flowers at a memorial that have been set up for the kid. They bring their other sons. While they're placing the flowers, a loose sight of the kid for about three seconds, and in that span of time, he vanishes in the thin air. Now, obviously, parents are beyond devastated. It's awful on us for loose one child, but to lose two is beyond imagining. Search is huge, one of the largest in state history.

About 300 volunteers coming every inch of the park looking for the kid. Again, there's no trace of him. Search goes on for about a week, with people looking at the kid. miles from the part of the park he banished from. And then, almost two weeks later, the volunteer almost 15 miles from the designated search area radios in that he's found the kid. They assume that the kid was dead,

but the volunteer says he's not only alive, he's in good shape. KD and her team go out to recover the kid, and when they get there, she can't believe that this is the kid that's been missing. His clothes are clean, no dirt on him anywhere, and he doesn't appear traumatized. volunteer says he found the kid sitting on a log playing with a little twig bundle that's bound together with some old rope katy asked him where he's been who he was with out here for those two weeks

and the kid tells her that he's been with the fuzzy man now katy firmly believes in bigfoot so she gets all excited and asks what he means by fuzzy was he hairy the kid says no he wasn't erie he was a fuzzy man and he describes a man that's blurring Like, when you close your eyes, but not all the way closed. He says the man, oh, so good. Oh, man, the fuzzy man, and he's like a blur. Oh, that's great. He says the man came out of the trees and took the kid with him deep into the woods.

The kid says he slept in a hollow tree and the fuzzy man gave him berries to eat. Katie asked if the man was mean. He scared the kid, and the kid says, No, he wasn't scary, but I didn't like how he didn't have eyes. oh yeah that's normal that happens out here katy katy's just like mm-hmm stands up and just starts crying because of the room i'm your bag goes to the room just starts crying uh yeah what's would you mind excuse me real quick just have to go to the little explorer's room Katie says they got the kid back to headquarters and a cop takes him into town to talk to him more

about what happened she's friends with the cop that talked to him and she said the kid described being kept in this tree by the fuzzy man and given berries whenever he was hungry he was allowed to wander around a very specific clearing but when he tried to go further the fuzzy man would get mad and yell real loud even though he didn't have a mouth when the kid got scared at night the fuzzy man made it go brighter gave him the twig bundle he said the fuzzy man was going to keep him but he had to let him go because the kid wasn't the right kind okay you're not the right kind of kid. No, thanks.

He either can't or won't elaborate more on that. Cops are just sort of less scratch in their heads. Search for his brother is renewed with no results. He has no idea where his brother might be, and they never find him. Well, you know, it's that kind of thing happens sometimes, I guess.

I love the idea of like the fuzzy man, how it's a creature with like no eyes, no mouth. And the kid just describes as like a blur, like fuzzy. That's so uncanny. Like when it's dark, he would make it grow, go brighter, whatever that means.

So good. It's very, uh, I like the, the very childlike name that does feel like it would be like, oh, it's like, yeah, like a Sasquatch kind of thing or an animal, but no, it's literally a child just describing like, basically an aber, like an aberration, right? Some kind of like, yeah, just like almost weird noise that's like populating in the, in the actual physical space.

Very odd. It also makes you think, like, what is, um, is this connected to some of the other stuff we've seen? Like, is this connected to the, the bug man? Is this connected to the scary-faced man or the bear man mentioned earlier? Are these all one of the same? Are these different entities? Again, it gives you enough to ask questions, but not answers.

The last story that Katie told me was of something that happened to her when she got separated from her training group when she was a rookie. they were learning the basics of high elevation belaine on a well mapped side of the mountain and she had to use the bathroom she went off about 50 yards from the group during a meal break and did her business i'll tell the rest exactly as she told it to me so i go to take a piss but once i'm done i start going back to the group but i've only gone to about five feet when i realized i have no idea where i am and this wasn't a oh i got turned round lost i mean i had literally no fucking clue where i was if you asked me I don't even think I'd been able to tell what state we were in. It was sort of how I imagined people with amnesia feel, you know? You're completely lost and you have no idea what to do. So I stood there for a while. Just trying to figure out where the fuck I was and what I was supposed to do.

But the longer I stand there, the more confused and turn around I get. So I started walking. As I recall, I just picked up a random direction and went for it. And as I'm walking, just getting worse and worse, it to the point where I have no concept of why I'm on the mountain. in the first place. I'm just trudging through the snow and then I start hearing this, and then I start hearing this voice.

It's kind of inside my head, almost. Like if a frog could talk all low and croaky, and it's telling me over and over, it's okay, it's okay. You just need to find something to eat, find something to eat, and you'll be okay. Just keep walking and find something to eat. Eat, eat.

So I start looking around for anything I can eat, and I swear to God I've never felt. felt that hungry my whole life. It was bottomless. I think I'd eaten just about anything you put in front of me right then. I had no concept of time. So I had no idea how long I've been out when I hear an actual voice coming towards me. I go forward and see one of the other search and rescue officers. And he looks fucking terrified. He's running towards me asking if I'm okay and what the hell I'm doing out here. And the scary thing was, as he's running toward me. I kind of see myself reaching to my belt for my hunting knife. I'm not really

even thinking about what I'm doing. But what I'm thinking is that I have to eat. If I don't eat, I'll never be okay again. So I just have to eat. He sees me doing that and he backs off right away. He yells at me to put my knife away and he's not going to hurt me. And that kind of snaps me back all of a sudden I know exactly where I am and I put the knife away I run to him and ask how long I've been gone thinking he'd tell me I've been gone for half an hour or so but he tells me I've been gone for two fucking days I've gone over two peaks ended up almost on the other side of the mountain and if I'd keep going I would have ended up wandering into about 300 miles of wilderness they never found me he can't

believe I'm not dead and of course I don't know what the fuck to think To me, no time is past at all. I don't say anything. I just go back with them to the rendezvous point and I'm taken to the HQ to be airlifted to the hospital. When I get there, they do all kinds of tests and try to figure out what happened. As best they can guess, I had some kind of weird fugue state, which is kind of like amnesia or a weird seizure that knocked my brain out of whack, but the truth is that we don't really know.

It's never happened again, but I'll tell you. since then, I never go out there alone. People rag on me for making them come with me when I have to go leave the group, but I just tell them that listening to me piss in the snow is better than losing me for two fucking days on a freezing mountain. Do you think that was the fuzzy man

too? Could be. That almost sounded like a windigo in nature. Like the whole, uh, you have to eat something. You have like the, the hunger that consumes you. She just cannibalizes her buddy in the middle of the woods. I think could be the idea though of having to find something to eat

it's one of those things of like giving like putting somebody into a state of like they have no idea what's going on amnesia basically and being like you have to find something to eat so now they just keep wandering deeper and deeper into the forest like I wonder if they were never like they'll never find something but then coming across just the person you know like if it would have found any kind of animal they probably would have just ate it raw alive or whatever Kind of interesting. Compel, like the hunger, like some supernatural sense overwhelms them.

EW. The next person I talk to is EW, a former trainer who now works as an EMT. He still comes to ops like this to help out, but doesn't work full-time for us anymore. He specialized in finding lost kids. He seemed to have a six cents when it came to knowing where they'd gone. He's a legend among the more senior vets, but he gets embarrassed if you compliment him on his work. He sat down with me at dinner one evening, and, ended up swapping stories.

Most of them were just casual, but when we got on the subject of our weirder calls, I mentioned that I'd had a buddy who'd gone up a set of stairs. Got kind of quiet and asked me if I heard of a little boy who disappeared from this park a few years back. I hadn't, so he tells me this story. They were out looking for this 11-year-old boy, Joey, who'd gone missing near a river. Of course, the first thought was that he'd fallen in and drowned. But when they brought dogs out, they led search and rescue officers away from the river. river and up into a very densely forested area.

When we do searches for people, we search in a grid pattern, and we search every box of the grid incredibly thoroughly. What EW's team noticed right away was that a very strange pattern was emerging. Dogs and alternating boxes were picking up Joey's scent, but losing it when they overlapped with another box. If you think of it like a checkerboard, Joey scent was being picked up in random black squares, but never in red. This, of course, didn't make any sense, because how could the kid bounce from area to area without leaving a sin in each place he passed?

E.W. and his partner pass into a new box of the grid, and E.W. notices a set of stairs about 50 yards away. He tells his partner that they need to go check near it, but his partner flat out refuses. He tells E.W. that he's made at a point never to go near any stairs he sees, and that while it may be routine, He's not to pretend that it's normal. He tells EW that he'll wait in sight while EW checks. EW says he was irritated, but he felt for the guy and didn't push him on the subject. I walked over to the stairs. They were small, kind of like stairs into a basement.

I don't really feel strongly one way or the other about them. The stairs, I mean, so I wasn't scared or anything. I guess I'm like everyone else, I just prefer not to think about them too much. Anyway, I went over and I could see that there was something lying on the bottom step. Sort of curled up. My heart sinks because, of course, you always hope for the best, and we were confident that we'd find this kid alive because he'd only been missing for a few hours, but I knew right away that it was him, and that he was dead.

He was curled up in a little ball on the step, holding his stomach. It looked like he'd been horrible pain when he died. I didn't see any blood except someone on his lips and chin. I radioed in that I found him, and we got his body back. back to command. My poor family, they were devastated. Parents could understand how he'd be dead, because he don't have been gone for such a short amount of time.

On top of that, we didn't have any obvious cause of death, which just made it worse. I figured he'd probably eaten something poisonous since he was holding his stomach when I found him, but I didn't want to guess. It's hard enough to hear that your kid is dead, let alone have some stupid search and rescue officer guy guessing about what happened. They took him away and I went home and tried not to think about it. I hate finding dead kids, man. I love this job, but it's just one of those reasons I left.

I've got two daughters, and the thought of losing them that way, just... It joked up a little here. I'm not great with emotional stuff like that, and it's always sort of awkward to see a grown man cry, so I didn't really know what to do. Pulled himself together eventually, though, and kept going. We'd always hear back from the corners about cause of death. It's not really our job to know, I guess. And sometimes if they think it's foul play, they won't tell us because of legal.

old bullshit, but I've got a friend who works for the sheriff's department, and he usually has passed along any interesting info if I ask in this case, though, I actually got a call from him about a week later. He asked if I remember the kid, and of course I do. He says some seriously weird shit is going on. He tells me, the W man, you're going to think I'm crazy, but the coroner has no idea what happened to this kid. He's never even seen anything like it.

My friend goes on to tell me that when the coroner opened the kid up, he couldn't even believe what he was seeing. The kid's organs were like Swiss cheese. Quarter-sized holes were punched clean through just about every single organ that kid had, aside from his heart and lungs. But his colon, his stomach, his kidneys, and even one of his testicles were full of these clean holes. My friend said the coroner described it as someone had taken a hole punch and punched holes out of everything. They were so neat. But the kid didn't have a scratch on him. No entry or exit wounds. The closest anyone there had ever seen like it was a guy who filled himself up with a buckshot

a year or so back when he was cleaning his rifle. So no one had a clue what it could have possibly have caused this. My friend asked me if I'd ever heard of anything like it or if he'd had any similar cases in the past but I'd never heard of something like that. I told him I wasn't going to be any help to him as far as I know. The coroner determined the cause of death as something like massive eternal bleeding. But no one knows what really happened. I've never been able to forget that kid.

I have nightmares about it sometimes I don't let my kids into the woods alone and when we go together I never let them out of my sight I used to love it out here with that case and a couple others just sort of ruined it for me dinner was over so we started to clean up and go back to our cabins

before we went our separate ways put it stand on my shoulder and looked at me really close tells me that there's bad things out here things that don't care if we have families or lives or we can think and feel. He tells me to be careful, and he walks away. And he gets a chance to talk with him again, but that story stuck with me.

I like, so it's similar to the grid pattern. It's as if the kid got dimensionally torn apart, right? Yeah. Like he occupies one space, but then everything kind of shifts over at 50% margins. Like everything kind of gets split in half and draws away from itself, including his internal organs.

It's a really cool. It's really sick setup. I just had to have finding just fucking extremely. It's almost alien. You know, like it's like almost like some kind of weird experiment was happening on them. And it's like there's no entry or exit. It's just,

it's so, I don't know. It's almost surgical, I guess is why I keep harping on that. It's like it's an injury pattern you would never see. Also, I have to mention it because I'm that guy. You wouldn't have buckshot out of a rifle.

It would be a shotgun. so explain that search and rescue woods there you go i'm very smart and it's important i point that out it's it matters i promise by pure coincidence i got to talk to another vet pb who's been in search and rescue field for years we were partnered on a grid sweep during a training exercise and we were chatting casually about how we liked the job what kind of things we'd seen and like At one point, we passed an old set of stairs, though these were probably from an old fire lookout, given the area that we were in, sort of casually mentioned that I was curious about the stairs and that I wished I knew more about them. He got kind of quiet and looked like he wanted to tell me something.

I wasn't sure if he should. Finally, he told me to turn my radio off. Obviously, this is something we are never, ever supposed to do, but I did. He did the same. About seven years ago, he tells me, he was out on a call with a rookie. They were in the area of the park that had a lot of strange reports and events. Disappearances, stories about lights in the forest, odd noise, things like that. The rookie was totally spooked.

Kept going on and on about things out in the woods. According to P.B. The guy wouldn't stop talking about the goat man. Just on and on. Goatman this and go man that. Finally, I told him that there was plenty else to be afraid of out there. And that was very real. And that he better get over this thing with the goat man.

The rookie wanted to know what kinds of things. I was talking about. And I just told him to shut up and walk. Recrusted a little ridge and there was a staircase about 10 yards ahead. The rookie stops dead in his tracks and just stands there looking at them. I tell him, see? That's something you should be afraid of. And the rookie, the rookie asked me what the hell these things are doing here.

For some reason, I just open up and tell him the truth. Or what I've been told is the truth. I could have gotten in a lot of trouble for doing what I did. I could get in a lot of trouble for repeating it to you, but you're a nice kid. I want you to stop looking into this. Quit while you're ahead. So I'll tell you what I know under the condition that you never breathe a word to the suits. I told him I wouldn't say a word.

He double checks that our radios were off. When I first started out, we were a little less tight-lipped about them and other things that happened on here. We warned people before they were even hired that there was weird shit going on. I guess the Forest Service was tired of having such a massive turnover rate and they wanted people to know what they were getting into. So, they started having people sign these agreements and they wouldn't go to the media about what they were going to see. The FS didn't want to scare people away. So the last thing they needed were spooked rookies running off to the media with stories

of ghost and haunted stairs, but eventually they found out that the agreements weren't necessary. People not only didn't want to talk about what they saw, they wouldn't. A few times, media tried to talk to people when the kids or hikers would disappear and no one would say a word. I can't really explain it. I guess we just don't really want to admit anything it's wrong. It's our job to be on the woods every single day. We don't need to be spooked. The best way to avoid that is pretend like everything's okay. So I'll tell you everything I can think of. And after that, I'm done talking about it for good. And I expect you not to bring it up around me ever. The stairs have been out here as long as the parks have existed. We have records going back

decades describing them sometimes people go up them and nothing happens other times look i really don't like talking about this but sometimes really bad shit happens i saw one guy get his hand sliced clean off when he got to the top of the step he reached out to touch like a tree branch and then it happened so fast one second it was there and the next it was gone completely clean wound we didn't find his hand the guy almost died another time a woman touched one of the stairs and a and a blood vessel and her brain exploded, literally exploded like a water balloon. She sort of stumbled down and came over to me and all she got out was, I think something's wrong with me.

She dropped like a sack of flour, dead before she hit the ground. I'll never get the way the blood leaked into her eyes. Before she died, I watched it turn red. What should happen? And there wasn't a single thing I could do to help. We warn people not to go anywhere near them, but there's always at least one idiot who does. And even if nothing happens to them, something bad always happens. Kids go missing as we're on the trail, so it dies the next day, cut in half in a completely

safe part of the park. And I don't know why. But something bad always happens. I don't know exactly why they're out here, but it doesn't matter. They're here. And if we're smart, we tell our new officers exactly what they'd be capable of, capable of. We're both quiet for a little while.

I was afraid to talk because I wasn't sure if he was done. It looked like he wanted to say something else. Finally, he spoke up again. Have you ever noticed how you can't find the same ones twice? I nodded, expecting him to continue, but he just stayed quiet, walking alongside me. And eventually he started a story about the biggest deer he'd ever seen in the park. Didn't bring up the subject again, and I didn't press him for any more stories. He dropped out on the op on the next day.

Apparently, he left before the sun came up, said he was sick. None of us heard from him since he left. I'm going to stop here for the time being. I'll try and post the next part in the coming days, but with that being the end of summer, things are pretty busy here. Thanks for the continued interest, guys. You've really awakened this curiosity of me

that I didn't know I had. End of part four. So part five. Gosh, it's so good. Part five, I'm noticing, has the first not safe for work tag. So that's fun. Yay!

Yeah, we love them. Yay! Wee! Wee! Um, so I love, I love the stairs noise. I love the details about like you go up them, something weird happens. I like, you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of, oh, what were they called?

The things around the flesh interface. Oh, God damn. What are those? The zones. Yeah, yeah. The little zones. The little, yeah, the, I think there were zones. Incident zones.

Yeah. These incident zones appear that if something steps into them, like their flesh disappears or like the part of them that touches it, uh, evaping. and in there it was because they go to feed the the interface but here it's almost like they're just being taken over into a different dimension for some reason that's what that's like you walk to the top of the stairs and pieces all of you are pieces of you just disappear don't like that's also similar it's also similar to the flesh interface in that you can just die from coming into contact with it because in there it talks about

kids getting in mother horse eyes kids get tips of their fingers taken off and then they die from it months later like they've been poisoned because they came to contact with it it's kind of similar to the girl's brain just getting a massive angerism out in the woods yeah the guy he just hand clean slice clean off is crazy too yeah just reaches out and then boop hang on it's also kind of interesting too that it makes it seem like every time something bad's happened someone has walked on the stairs even if it's like not them you know well that's why they lost that kid that and that veteran came up and said, you went up to them, didn't you?

Just know that anytime you go up the stairs, something bad happens. That's pretty cool. Part five, you ready? Yes, sir. I apologize for the short update, guys. Things have gotten a little crazy around here, and I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update going forward.

I really appreciate all the support you guys have given me. Well, I only have a couple of stories to share with you. I'll be interested to see what you all think. A firefighter who was helping us at the training op told me about a colleague gone on, supposedly to help rescue a kid. kid from an absolutely massive tree. He said they didn't give him details, but they needed him to come out and help because they lacked the proper equipment.

He'd been called out specifically because this thing was so huge that search and rescue officers didn't feel safe trying to climb it. He'd been a tree trimmer before joining the VFD, so it was easy enough for him to grab his old equipment and come help out. He was led out about two miles, and the team stopped at one of the biggest trees in the area and pointed up. he laughed and asked the op how can the kid have gotten up there made some jokes about the old cat in a tree thing the captain just shook his head told him to get up there and get the kid down he said he knew something was up but he didn't push it he said that as he climbed the tree he started wondering if they were playing a prank on him There was no way this kid should have been able to climb this fucking thing.

It was massive at the base, but about halfway up it started tapering. It almost had to turn back a few times because I really didn't think it was going to hold me. But he said he kept going. And when he was just about at the top, he saw a flash of blue in the branches. I saw the kid's shirt sort of caught in a branch. I called out to him and I told him to come near me if he could. But he didn't say anything. I kept moving, calling the kid's name and telling him not to be scared that I was

that I was there to help him. By the time I got to him, I knew he wasn't going to answer me. I found him, or what was left of him, cradled in the fork of a branch. The fact that he was up there was sheer luck. If he'd fall in any other way, he would have come crashing down. It wouldn't have mattered, though, because this kid was dead long before he ended up in that tree. I don't know who put him up there, or how, or why, but it was fucking sick. Kids' intestines had popped out of his mouth and were hanging in the branches. It was like, some sick fucking Christmas tree. The way they were draped all over everything.

I got a better look and saw that he even popped out of his ass. His guts were hanging out of the bottom of his pants. His eyes were gone. I assume shoved out from whatever force caused him to fucking pop like a stress ball. You ever seen a body that's been floating in water for a long time? Other tongues kind of swell up and stick out. It's like that. I remember because there were flies crawling all over it.

I think I must have gone into shock because, man. I just pushed the kid down with a stick and broke it off a branch. Just kind of poked him until he fell. I don't know why I did that. I almost lost my job because of that. But I made the thought of hauling that kid down over my shoulder the whole way, gathering his guts up and coaling them around me like rope so they couldn't get snagged. I couldn't do it.

I've seen a lot of dead kids. More than I'd ever admit. I've seen kids who had hidden the full bathtub during a house fire, bullied them alive. turn him into a literal soup I don't know what did this but the thought of touching that kid's body made me feel like I was going to lose my mind

I heard him hit the ground and I figured everyone would freak out but they knew he was dead when they sit me up there they didn't say anything but they didn't shout or freak out or anything I got to the bottom and started to get up in the cat in his face asking him who he thought he was sending me up there

when they knew damn well the kid was dead but he just told me it was none of my concern and thank me for getting the evidence down. I remember he said that. I remember it specifically because it was so weird to hear it phrased that way. The evidence. Like he wasn't even a fucking person. Like he'd never had a little kid who got lost and had something fucking unspeakable happen to him.

Captain the crew led me back out of the woods, but he and two other stayed behind. And I thought that was weird. Why wouldn't they have just helped that kid out? I tried to ask him, but the guys leading me out just told me they couldn't discuss the in open case. I asked him what he thought had happened to the kid and he got really pensive and thought about it for a bit.

I would have said a crush injury based on how his guts came out like that, but with those injuries, you see massive contusions under the skin, obvious trauma. This wasn't like that. It was almost like the kid got caught in a big vacuum and had his guts sucked down.

But even then, there was no trauma, not at all. It bothers me, man. It bothers the hell out of me. That's also another The author keeps doing this, search and rescue keeps doing this cool thing

where they put these improbable scenarios in the middle of the woods and the setting makes it so uncanny like the recording of the crying and stuff like that. Yeah, the looping crying. But here it's like, for this kid to have died that way,

he would have had to have been in like a space vacuum. Well, it's like the Swiss cheese holes, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's like, what on earth? Like, how did that get here? You know? Yeah.

Like I said, it seems like some kind of sick it seems like some kind of weird experiment or something some kind of like unnatural experiment of some kind or something's maybe even could have been a thing where people

which this is me just you know whatever when people go up the stairs maybe that's just a thing of like he was like fucking thrown out everything his organs were sucked out of him another time is maybe the kid went up the stairs and literally just like there was just tons of holes

inside of his body, like it just like a giant like fucking thorn bush or something, stuck him, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's so many different, again, there's so many different options of how things could have happened, but there's so, it's the unexplainableness, the oddness of it.

It's so peculiar, it's off-putting, you know? Mm-hmm. One of the vets that the training operates no sleep, and he recognized my stories. He knows me pretty well, and we saw up stories before. He asked if he could share something he's noticed about the stairs and some thoughts he's had.

I'm really glad you decided to share these. I think it's important that people be aware of what's out there. I expect this is the Forest Service is doing such a good job at covering it all up. I asked him what he meant. What do you mean? What do I mean? The lack of any kind of media attention? No coverage of missing kids or bodies found miles from where they get lost in the first place. David Pilates hit this right on the head.

The Forest Service is doing everything they can to keep people coming here. Even if it isn't safe. I mean, to be fair, it's not like these things happen every day, but the numbers add up. And it's worth looking into, especially the stairs. I was surprised you didn't mention the flipped ones. I didn't know what he was talking about. I couldn't remember him ever talked about something like that. Seems somewhat incredulous.

Dude, I can't believe you've been on this this long without seeing them. No one told you about them? I shrugged and asked him to elaborate. Well, there's the normal stairs, the ones that pop up when more out of ways. I know you know about them, but sometimes I run across ones that are flipped upside down. I guess it would be like if you had a doll house and the stairs were a separate piece. Now take that, flip it upside down so the top is stuck in the dirt, and put it out in the woods. They're like that.

I don't see them often, but they're odd, but they're odd to say the least. Makes you think of footage taken after a tornado when the houses are all blown apart and random things are left standing like chimneys and garden walls. Those ones freak me out more than the normal ones. I can't rent this off as easily. I don't scare very easily, like most of us who work out here. But the idea stuck with me and it bothers me. Going to try and find out more about them. He also mentioned how many people were bothered by the guy with no face.

He got really excited and told me he'd seen something similar. I was out on a training exercise a few years ago. I was camped out in my tent and I heard someone walking around outside of a camp. told not to wander far, which you know. So I wondered if maybe it was a rookie who'd gotten up to pee and couldn't find his way back. Remember that guy in our group a few years back who almost fell off the damn mountain? Well, I'm paranoid about that happening again. So I got up to see what was going on and went to the edge of camp and I called to whoever

it was and told them the camp was this way. But they kept going back out into the woods. So I went after them. I knew what, I know it was stupid, but I was half asleep and I just really didn't. want to deal with some idiot getting hurt i followed this thing on a dead straight course for about a mile but then it stopped on the edge of a little river i could see the outline of it because the water was reflecting the moon and it looked just like an ordinary guy get a pack on and it looked like he was facing me i asked if he was okay if he needed help and he cocked his head like he didn't understand me

always have my pocket knife on me it's got a little thumb light attached to it so i turned that on lit up his chest, so I wouldn't blind him. He was breathing slow and deep, so I wondered if he was sleepwalking. I went closer and asked him again if he was okay. I moved the light up, and something just didn't seem right. So I stopped. He kept breathing in real slow, deep breaths. I sort of figured out gradually that that's what was bothering me. It was like he was pretending to breathe, but not actually doing it. His breaths were too even and deep. And all of his movements were exaggerated, like his shoulders were going up and his chest moving. I told him to identify himself, and he made his muffled noise.

I moved the light up, and I shit you not. This guy had no face, just smooth skin. I freaked out and I sort of fumbled my light, but I saw him move toward me, but he didn't actually move. I just don't know how to explain it. But one second, he was at the edge of the river, or the next, he was five feet from me. I never looked away or blinked it was like he moved so fast my brain couldn't keep up I tripped and fell on my ass and I could see his and I could see this line open up on his throat it stretched up to his ears and his head tilted back and he smiled at me with his throat

there wasn't any blood just this gaping dark hole and I swear he smiled at me with his gash in his throat I got up and I ran as fast as I could back to camp I couldn't hear him following me but I felt like he was always right behind me even though when i looked back i couldn't see him i calmed down when i got back to camp and the fire was still going and i guess that pack mentality of being with other people made me stop and breathe a little i waited by the fire to see if he'd follow me there i didn't hear anything else for a few hours so i'm back to bed i know it sounds weird but the whole thing was so surreal that it was almost like i immediately wrote it off as my imagination i will say the The scariest, the scariest record of that is, uh, I love the breathing thing.

Like he's breathing in his shoulders. So good. Yeah. Creepy. Like he's like he's trying to look like he's breathing. Man, that's so good. It's similar to the stairs and similar to like the cry loop. It's like something that isn't human trying to come off as human.

And it's like, oh, well, this is what people look like, but they have the face wrong. It's like, oh, well, this is what people breathe like, but it's too exact. And of course, it's like, oh, well, I want to come off as friendly. So I'm going to smile. But it doesn't know where the smile goes. So it puts a gash in the throat. That's so, it's so creepy. It's like something wants us to cross over to the other side.

So again, similar to stairs. It's like, oh, people walk up these. So I'll put this out here. The no face thing. I mean, we see that a lot like no fate. Like that, I just, it's just that little thing. Like almost like, you know, I mean, the smile it is what it is. I'm not super stoked on that, but I will say

just that breathing thing of like this uncanny breath is just I love that. A lot of fun. Also that's the same guy that definitely takes giant strides. Yeah, well, it gets too close. It's like they're trying to walk, but they don't know what walking is. So it's like a different

it's like they're doing the same thing in the wrong steps almost. They're trying to get the aspects of it down, but they're bad at it. Man, it's so good. The mimicry is so good. We were telling ghost stories one night before bed just to scare each and poke fun at whoever got creeped out. Most of the time it's the rookies,

but one woman told a story that actually managed to get under my skin a little bit. And I know the same was true for others. She said it was true. But then again, every ghost story told around a campfire is true. Somehow, though, I don't think she was making it up. It had that ring of truth that only really traumatizing events have. She said that when she was a kid, she and her friend used to go out in the woods behind her house a lot.

She lived in Northern Maine, and there's a lot of dense, unpottings, populated national forest. She said the woods up there aren't like they are here. They're so thick in places that the trees block out the sun almost completely. She and her friend grew up there, so they weren't scared of being out there alone, but they did always maintain a sense of caution in certain areas. She said it was never really talked about, but they always knew not to go more than a mile or two beyond their homes. The adults never said why. There's an unspoken rule that no one ventured out

that far. She and her friend made up stories about bears as big as houses lived out there and used to scare each other by hiding and making growling noises while the others searched for them. I love that. She said one summer, there's a series of awful storms that blew down a lot of trees, set one part of the forest a few miles behind her house on fire. Fire crews got it under control. She said some of them came back not quite the same. It was like they'd been to war. You could tell who'd really gotten scared because they had the same look on their faces. I think it's called shell shock. My friend and I said they were like walking dead people.

They didn't smile or say anything if they went up to them. And most of them left town as soon as everything was over. Asked my parents about it, but they said they didn't know what I was talking about. Once everyone was told the woods were safe again, my friend and I decided to try and hike out to where the fire had been. We didn't tell our parents where we were going. going. It was pretty exciting to think that we were disobeying them like that. We hiked about two miles or so, and we started seeing burnt trees and stuff.

I remember my friend got really upset because we found the skeleton of a deer, curled up under a tree, and I practically had to drag her away. She wanted to bury it, but I didn't want her touching it because its antlers were weird. I can't remember why. Just remember thinking there was something wrong with them, and I didn't want either of us going near it. that's so cool how do you think they're how do you think they were how do you think what a cool little detail what a cool rate of detail um maybe like too many points or like they were growing weird or backwards i like to think that they were uh i like to think that they were like you know because

they're usually jolted out like branches it'd be kind of it'd be kind of sick if they're all curled like very like all swirly like too smooth and swirly you know yeah they're all too like uh to the line don't move the way deer antlers normally move yeah something like that man that's such a sick little similar to the breathing stuff like that just like the antlers on the body were weird like I love those little details are so I like how nonchalantly it said or like it's just so candid like it's just like oh I didn't want to touch it because the weird the horns are kind of weird but it isn't but it isn't like giving you this big grandiose explanation it's just more of an afterthought but that's the thing that just fucking hit you the hardest you're like what

go back what can we go back yeah can we get some clarification on the uh she's like no no no no i don't think you will the farther we went the more burned everything got eventually there were no standing trees and it was like being on another planet almost nothing green just brown and black everywhere we were standing there looking at it all we both heard someone shouting in the distance I panicked because I thought it was my dad and that he was going to tell me I was grounded My friend broke off and went to hide behind a rock

Because she said she didn't want to be caught out here Her parents had forbidden her to come out in the woods at all And she lied and told them we were going to a movie I followed her and we kept listening I could hear this voice getting closer And I realized they were calling for help I thought maybe it was some hiker who got lost And needed directions back to 10

that used to happen all the time, so I was used to helping people out. I heard him following my voice, so I kept calling out until I saw him running in the distance. He got closer, and I could see that his face was all red. I told my friend to give me her pack because she had a first aid kit. She made this noise, like she was grossed out, and she asked if I saw his face. I told her to shut up, and I jogged up to meet him. I stopped about halfway, and when he stopped in front of me, I could see that his nose and lips and part of his forehead were all gone.

It was like they'd been sliced clean off. He was bleeding bad, and I saw the knees of his pants were red too. I took a step back, but I was too scared to move much, and he grabbed my shoulders. Felt like I got a shock, and he jerked back. He started babbling, and I couldn't tell what he was saying, except that he was asking how long he'd been gone. he asked me where his unit was but i just shook my head he looked me over and he saw my walkman and he screamed he just kept babbling and touching his face and i realized he wasn't wearing the right clothing some kind of weird gray cloth jacket and almost formal pants on and the jacket has these weird buttons and red borders on it i kept shaking my head and told him i couldn't understand what he was saying i wanted to open the first aid kit when he just screamed again and said that the only thing i could really understand

Don't touch me You may make you back there After that he ran off And I could hear him screaming the whole time When I could hear When I couldn't hear him anymore I turned around and my friend was crying Just turned around and started walking back towards them

She asked me over and over what happened And who that was But I didn't say anything When we got home I told her I didn't want to play in the woods with her anymore We're still friends But we don't talk about that guy Not ever

I'll update you guys as soon as I'm able appreciate the continued support the last story being like a Confederate soldier that definitely like either walked up the woods or something like walked up the stairs a long time ago yeah it's pretty fun too it seems like you can also see where the injury was because it's his lips, nose, forehead and knees

so it's like he was stepping and then like the frontal plane made contact yeah exactly yeah the the the idea too because this idea is that like has he just been trapped in a void for over

100 years or something could be a void could also because they talk about time moves there's been several instances where time gets weird like the girl who thinks she's gone an hour she's gone two days the little kids

who are that one boy that says was gone a month and when they find him he's like the same condition same clothes not dirty or anything So maybe you just skip Or maybe for this Confederate guy Maybe he did go to some weird pocket dimension for a while

And then wind up in Maine in like the 90s You know That's so cool The visual being in a burnt forest And it's foggy And then through the fog Comes running a man with a red face He's bleeding everywhere

In a Confederate uniform That's so terrifying Yeah You'd be even more terrifying too I don't know why If it's a guy in a reenactment They're like oh my God You're from hundreds of years ago

he's like, no, no, I swear to God, I'm not. It's like, weird thing. My name's Jason. I work at Big Lots. Yeah. I work at Enron. How's the company doing? Do I still have my job?

They're like, oh. Well, as long as I can go to my office at the World Trade Center, I'll be okay. Yeah, exactly. 56th floor, beautiful views. Well, I sure hope building. it. It's like his nose and forehead's going off. He's like, what do you mean? They're like, you're in better shape. Trust me. Well, that should be fine. As long as my secondary office at building seven next to the World Trade Center is okay. I don't think anything bad would happen to

it. Since if anything were to happen to the towers, it has its own structural support system. And there would never be a reason it would fall. Meaning, thankfully, all of the CIA and FBI's budget documents can be kept in one place safe from attack. If I have my and I gotta say luckily I still have an end at the Pentagon so it'll be okay. As long as they don't

hit the east wing of the Pentagon which of course as mentioned holds records of all of the stairs in the woods were just trying to kill specifically this guy that's like the it's like that that's the yeah we don't need to

the stairs the stairs in the woods were built by like George Bush to like cover up. Yeah, it's not 11. Yeah.

Exactly. It's covering all kinds of stairs. George's like, that's why. That's why Dick, that's why Dick, that's why Dick Cheney shot that guy in the woods. Yeah,

exactly. Hey, did you see that staircase? Co. Cool. That's, that. That was a staircase.

That was an accident. Let's go back. I thought the deer was looking at my stairs. Turns out it was a man. in a camo jacket. Oops. That was an accident. Oops.

Oopsie, daisy. Dick, I just don't know about these stairs, Dick. I don't know. But if it gets us to the island quicker, then maybe it's all connected. The stairs were to kill. The Confederate soldier was the guy

Dick Cheney shot in the woods. Where am I? Just a random guy in the woods. Sorry, you startled me. You saw me for 200 people. Is that the vice president? Is that the vice president? Yeah.

Yeah, good story. Good part five. Yeah, good, good, good bit. Part six also has a not safe for work tag was just the guy. It was the boy. Yeah, the boy with the guts. Deembaugh, disembaired, whatever. Which I will say it is nice to have a not safe for work tag that is not safe for work in a not child sexual abuse sense.

That does feel good to have. It feels refreshing. We don't see that a lot. It feels refreshing. No, we do not. We do not. But don't worry because part six also has one. So we'll see.

Well, we'll see if it changes. But normally our stories, they use every letter. of that abbreviation they really leave nothing to the imagination it is capital all the way through yeah painful that painful all the way through all right i will say too we've been recording for three hours this this record this recording has felt like like brisk like i feel like this has been a lot of fun i think having all these things be micro micro doses is like it keeps reengaging you in a fun way so i don't know a lot a lot of gives it rolling well I agree.

Which later on, he's definitely adding more information as the parts are progressing, but still. It still feels like these campfire stories, which I think that's like, that's the essence of what makes this such a memorable experience. Yeah. Yeah. It's been way too long since I've posted an update, and I'm sorry about that. There's also been some confusion about the new formatting requirements on the board, which I've cleared up. So these next few stories are going to be posted a little differently. I'm in chronological order

and I'll do my best to tie them into each other as much as I can so it doesn't skip around too much. When I started out as a rookie, no one told me about the job in terms of weird things that could happen. I'm assuming this was largely to prevent me from freaking out and abandoning the park. But a few months into my service

when I was still a rookie, a friend and I were drunk at a party and he opened up a bit. You can get a little crazy out there, I guess. I think the worst of the ones where people die when they just shouldn't, you know? Or when we find them dead like 10 minutes after someone says that they saw them last. They were fine when I passed them on the switchback.

I swear that sort of shit. Like, take this guy I found one spring out on a really popular trail. Someone comes into the VC freaking out about some guy who's lying in the middle of the path in this giant pool of blood. So we run out there. And we find this guy dead as doornail, which absolutely, which he absolutely should be because the back of his head is like mashed potatoes the skull is decimated brains are leaking out like custard filling and the guy's old so you figure yeah he probably fell in his head old people fall all the time it's no big deal except that this area where he fell doesn't have any

big rocks there's not even stumps or big branches and on top of that there's no blood trail so he clearly died where he dropped now that's when you turned to murder but were people just out of lot out of sight with the guy if someone came up behind him and murdered him there's no way someone would have had someone would have heard and again even if someone had there'd be a blood trail splatter all over place but ever on the scene said it looked exactly like he'd fallen and smash his head on a rock so what the fuck did he hit his head on and then there was this later I found in a different park about five years ago. Back when I was upstate,

we found her in the middle of a stand or like big juniper's curled around the trunk like she was hugging it, and we picked her up to move her, and a fucking waterfall comes out of her mouth, splashing all over my shoes. Her clothes were all dry, and her hair is dry, but the amount of water in her lungs and stomach

was phenomenal. Unreal, man. Coroner's report? Says the cause of death was drowning. her lungs were completely full of water this even though we're in the middle of the high desert and there isn't a body of water for miles no puddles no nothing

no signs of no signs of anyone else being out there I mean yeah it's possible they were murdered but why would you go out of the way and do it like that why not just stab them and be done with it I don't know it just sits where with me that woman we found in the desert full of water a little weird that one is pretty that one that one's that one's uh pretty sweet uh

the idea of like a woman being found completely dry corner on the tree and you move her and then she just like gushes out water pretty fucked up she's not even our hair's not like she's completely dry it's so i think the implication is that this stuff under like the the stairs stuff the dimensional transporting stuff isn't just on the stairs it can be other places too I think. I see. So it's like she drowned,

but in the water, her body drifted into this rift that teleported it here. Which is, like, in hindsight, very similar to the flesh interface concept. I,

there's something I was going to say about the, oh yeah, it's further as to like the un, without every other death, something about it's just a little bit off. It also reminds me of a lot of weird,

like sort of missing 4-1-1 cases I read about every now and then where there's a really strange detail like that. Like there's this one where a little boy went missing and the only trace they found of him was one of his socks on top of a mountain like 30 miles away. And it's like, okay, how? Like what happened there, you know? It reminds me of that.

Just one detail is unexplainable and it makes the whole thing strange. Right. Now, of course, that freaks me out a little. We were wasted and I guess I sort of wrote it off as a fluke. also assumed there was exaggeration there since you know we were wasted I don't like talking about this next case very much it was an awful one that I've done my best to forget about but of course it's easier said than done this happened about six months after the conversation with my

friend at the bar and up until that point I hadn't had a lot of really weird shit go down a few things here and there of course the stairs but it's amazingly easy to get used to stuff like that when it's treated as if it's normal this case was a little different. A guy with Down syndrome in his 20s went missing after his family lost side of him on a major path. This was odd in and of itself because this guy never really left his mom's side. She was absolutely convinced he'd been kidnapped and unfortunately, a ranger who isn't with the park anymore, insinuated that no one was going to kidnap someone. Well, with that kind of disability. Not very, that would be you as a park ranger. Just evil.

Not evil. Just I am who I am. you can't blame a dog for being a dog can't blame a lamb exactly you see now you're learning exactly you can't hold it it's in one's nature to be terrible i am who i am do not try to change me not very tactful to say the least wasted a lot of time trying to calm her down enough to get information about him and then we put out an official missing person's call because of the urgency of the situation, him being mostly unable to function alone, we had local police come in and help us.

We didn't find him the first night, which was heartbreaking. None of us wanted to think about him being out alone out there. We assumed he just kept wandering and was staying ahead of us. We brought out Hellies the next day, and they spotted him in a little canyon. I helped bring him back up, but he was in bad shape. I think we all knew he wasn't going to make it. He'd fallen and broken his spine. Jesus.

Couldn't feel his lower half. He'd also broken both his legs, one of the femur, and he lost a lot of blood. He was confused and scared while he was alone, so he probably exacerbated the injuries by dragging himself a little ways. I know it sounds awful, but while I was riding in the copter with him, asked him why he'd wandered off. Just wanted something to tell his mother. Well, I don't know it wasn't her fault, because he was fading fast and I didn't think she'd get to ask him herself. He was crying, and he said something about him. how the little sad boy had wanted him to come play.

He said the little boy wanted to trade so he could go home. And he closed his eyes and when we woke up again, he was in the canyon. I'm not sure that's exactly what he said, but to what I thought the gist of it was. He kept crying, asking where his mommy was, and I held his hand and tried my best to keep him calm. It was cold out there. He kept saying that. He was cold out there. My legs was frozen.

It was cold out there. It's cold in me. He was getting even weaker, so he eventually stopped talking. He closed his eyes for a while. Then, we were about five minutes from the hospital. He looked right at me, with these big tears running down his face, and he said, Mama won't see me no more. Love Mama.

Wish she was here. He closed his eyes, and he just, never woke up it was horrible i like talking about it the case was one of the first ones that really rattled me badly man the little boy wanted to trade so it's like the fuzzy man again like the thing where it's like i keep the kids but you're not right but that kid wasn't right so he got to go so maybe kids can trade with other people but they have to choose to well almost i'm like wondering if the kid was stuck in this place right if he's stuck in like this kind of zone and he's like basically trading spots like i wonder if him dying there like i don't

know there's just something there like i'm wondering what he would be trading that isn't just his life or his place in the zone you know yeah yeah interesting man that's uh gosh these stories are so good okay because of how badly it affected me I reached out to a senior ranger and who ended up helping me through it. Stein went on and we got to know each other better. He ended up sharing one of his own stories with me. It was disturbing, but it helped to know that I wasn't the only one affected by things going on out here. I think this must have happened before, I think this must have happened before, uh, my,

I think this must have happened before you got here because I think it's happened while you were, because I think if it happened while you were, oh my fucking God. God my fucking brain fucking idiot brain Jesus Christ what the fuck did I do that was I dropped as a kid my fucking God

I think this must have happened before you got here because I think if it had happened while you were here you'd have remembered it I know it didn't end up for the officer says all that to her when he was a fucking should

I know it I know it didn't end up in the news for some reason but I think most people who've been here log enough know about it. The park sold off a portion of land to a logging company and it was a

real controversial thing. But it wasn't that large or old of a plot. It was right after the recession. So we needed the cash bad. Anyway, they were filling this plot of land and we got a call that we need to get our supervisors out right away.

I don't know why, but they ended up sending me and a few other guys along with the heads. I guess for power in numbers to see what was up. We got there and these guys are crowded around a tree that they've just cut down. They're all pissed off and freaking out

and the foreman comes over and says he wants to know what we were up to. What the hell you all think this is? Some kind of sick joke? You've got a lot of you got a lot of fucking nerve pulling this shit. We bought this landfired square. Well,

we don't know what the hell he was talking about. So it brings us over to this felled tree and points at it and tells us that when they cut it down it was just like this and they'll be damned if they put it they put it there inside of the tree was all rotted out and hollow in one spot and when they cut it down it exposed that chamber and inside it is a hand like a perfectly severed hand oh that's fun and it looks like it's actually fused inside of the tree well now we think they're pulling a joke so we tell them that we don't like being fucked with and we started to leave and they've and they tell us that they've actually called

the cops and that they'll go right to the media if we don't stick around well that gets the heads attention so they stick around and talk to the police about it everyone is denying that they put the hand of the tree and besides how would anyone have done that it's clearly it's clearly a real hand but it's not mummified or skeletal it's brand new probably not even a day old and it's definitely fused with the wood you can see it's coming right out of it the loggers is they insist that they didn't put it there. Somehow, this fresh human hand ended up fused inside of this living tree

and the cops have them cut up that section of tree into a movable chunk. Then they take the hand away and the area's closed off. There's a pretty big investigation, but I know they didn't find any answers. Now it's become this legend. As far as I know,

we haven't sold any more property for logging. Interesting. I like the idea of like when something that goes missing in the woods it shows up somewhere else in the woods it's interesting too that it doesn't just show up it like materializes with something else like it like it becomes a part of yeah exactly yeah i think i think that's a cool feature yeah yeah as you all know i went to a training seminar recently and heard some amazing and horrible things there one of the guys i talked to while i was there told me a

story when we were all around the campfire one night we're both pretty drunk we'll see a pattern here we were swapping stories you told me this one oh damn it my fucking brain I'm telling you man I'm like so I'm like every time I see every time I see just read no I do no

okay I don't know I every time I see the quotation though I'm like I feel like a like a kid who is like on a baseball team who's like not going to do well at at bat up to the play exactly so I'm just like kind of like barely sluggishly walking up to plate

oh boy here we go again just no one I'm going to disappoint all the team mates. All right. It's okay, buddy. So this is a slow, like, there's one paragraph. This is a slow pitch. Me and another guy were out on field search

because some campers reported screaming noises at night. So we head out there to look for whatever fucking mountain lion as was wandered into the area. And I'm pissed. We've had three of them show up in the camping areas that year alone. And I'm getting tired of hell of constantly having to deal with them. Plus, I just don't like them anyway. They're paying the ass.

and they're loud and they scare the shit fucking cats pieces of shit all right this guy's right malley I'm growing about it this is you talking about this is the easiest read I've ever had I'm grown about it maybe maybe more of a t-ball than a pitch

really yeah it really is I'm grown about it to the guy I'm with and he thinks it's a real fucking riot so we're seeing all these broken branches and what looks like dens and we're pretty sure we know where this thing is I call in they tell me to call and confirm if possible which you know just means they want you to step in a big pile of shit and use that as

proof i'm not seeing any though so i basically just tell them to shove it i'm done we know the damn things out here somewhere even if i'm not stepping in its shit or inside its mouth or whatever the guy i'm with wanders off to take a piss or whatever and i stay behind watching this little burrow under a tree to see if maybe a fox or something's lived under it because i love foxes man but cute as hell anyway i'm watching this tree and i start hearing branches crackling and it It's coming from the direction my partner went opposite of. Now, I've got my pistol, but you and I both know it's not going to do shit against a cat. I cock it and holler at my partner to get his dumb ass back.

But he's too far and he can't hear me. I stand up and get my sights out where the thing is approaching, and I shit you not, man. I just about peed myself. This guy is coming towards me, and he's backflipping through the fucking woods. Like, instead of walking, he's doing these crazy fucking backflips, and I swear to God he cleared. He cleared every fucking log and bush in his path. It was like he knew right where he was going.

I yelled at the guy to stop right where he is. Then I'm pulling my gun right at him. But he keeps coming. And I just kind of lost it. I shot at the ground in front of him and it was dumb fucking thing to do. But man, I didn't want this guy anywhere near me. When I fired, he was about 50 yards for me. And as soon as the gun goes off, he whirls around and goes back, back flipping back into the woods.

And my partner hears my gun go off and runs back and asks what's up. And I tell them that there's some fucking weirdo out here hopped up on God knows what and we need to get the hell out of Dodge I let the cops know what happened and they didn't get any she get any trouble for firing but man I don't know what that motherfucker was on but I've never seen anything like that before shit was absolutely butt-fuck crazy I want to say to if there was a gun can you imagine a man continuously back flipping through a force be the scariest I would have shot have shot him. That is the scariest thing

that we have, we've talked about in this podcast so far. I just imagine hearing or just like getting closer. And you just see a guy. Also, can you imagine barely seeing his face

because you just make high contact on them every once in a while because he keeps back flipping. And it's upside down. Yeah, exactly. I would have shot him. He's upside down.

So he's upside down, but the face is right side up. Like when you look at him, his eyes are where his chin should be. Yeah. Mouth is on his forehead. Man, that's such a creepy visual. And you know he's going fast, too. You know, this dude's like flipping, like a gymnast.

Just shun, shun, shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo, gosh, shoo, gosh, shoo. It's fine. It's like, it's so scary, it's funny. Like, thinking about that happening to you in the middle. the night. Well, also, who is even going to believe, like, you saying that to somebody, who the, who the fuck is going to believe that? The other guy just wouldn't stop back flipping.

I'd be like, uh-huh. Wouldn't everybody, I would never believe that. Of course not. Because he said a guy's back flipping through the woods in the middle of the night coming right at you. But it goes back to the whole thing about the uncanniness of these humanoids that they're trying to mimic human motion and mobility, but it all comes off. I think we can agree that there's stuff going on out here in the woods.

While I'm not going to spout off about what it could be or offer any theories, I want people to take away from all this is that it is so damn important to be safe when you're out there. A lot of you think you're invincible. The fact is that you can die out there or be hurt or go missing. It's easier than you'd ever imagine. I apologize for this relatively short update, guys. I'll do my absolute best to continue this series as soon as possible. thanks for all your continuing support

means the world to me. End of part six. Part seven! Can you imagine that motherfucker back flipping at you and then the guy who's like uncannionally like making those long strides towards you as well? I'd be like, what the fuck is going on?

Just start shooting stuff, man. I would pull the gun on myself. I wouldn't care. I'd be like, man. I'm not taking prisoners. Something's getting shot here. I'm telling you right now it's going to be me. I'm like, nah, I'm good.

No satisfaction for these guys. Sorry. Bye-bye. Part seven. One of the topics I get asked about a lot here and in real life involving things like the rake, the windigo, oh, oh, is it? Oh, me, Wittigo, the Wendigo, and other related legends. I can't honestly say that I know a lot about any of them, but based on some light reading

I did, I can't say that I've heard stories that seem to be loosely related to them. You've heard the old adage that legends like that come from somewhere, and I'm sure that's true. But as you all know, I try to take things with a grain of salt. You have to out here. Sort of like working in a hospital, I'd imagine. You could spend all day thinking about how many people have died there and how they're probably ghosts, or whatever you want to call them, all over the place. But it doesn't do you any good.

It just makes it harder to do your job. I think a lot of us feel that way, and that's why we try to just go back to our work like everything's fine. When you get paranoid, there's not really any going back, and a lot of cadets quit because of it. My park especially seems to be a high turnover rate because the cadets graduate and get so freaked out about everything, and they can't seem to let it go. You have to learn to internalize things and shut off. I've talked to KD a bit about her experience because I wanted to know what she thought about the wind ago. She didn't really have anything in particular to say about it.

Aside from that, she didn't want to think about it. that much, but she told me a friend of hers had had something similar happened. I contacted this person, H, over Skype, and they agreed to talk to me a bit. They're aware of my work here. They're fine with me

posting the story exactly as they wrote it. Now batting, number 10, is what it feels like I. I grew up in Central Now, this one, this one, I'm just I'm trying to find the end of the quotation Mark. It's a big one.

I, this one might be closer to a curve ball. This is a screwball coming at 93 miles an hour over your top left shoulder. I have to, I have to persevere and I have to make this to mid right. This has to crazy bitch. I'm going to say

that this is a, I apologize for anyone listening. This is going to probably be a long strand of hiccups and pauses. Try to decipher it the best you can. I sincerely apologize. Okay. I grew up in Central Oregon, and there's a reservation called Warm Springs about two or so hours from where I lived. I only mention that because a lot of people in that, in that, in a lot, I only mention that because a lot of people in my area have friends there.

And a lot of the land in that area belongs to that tribe. When I was a kid, we used to go camping up there. Not on the res, of course, but in that area. And I met a lot of kids who grew up there. I got to know one kid really well. His name was Nolan. and we ended up hanging out a lot when our families were in the area. Our folks got to know each other, so we'd all be in touch and camp out around the same time.

We camp out for about two weeks, so we were out for a long time. I asked him if he camped in an RV. Yeah, my dad had one, so I guess I wasn't really camping, but we take our tents and stuff and set them up out away from camp most nights, and I didn't like sleeping in there because I like being outside. We talked for a bit about camping. So anyway, sorry. One year, Nolan and I were out there.

I think we must have been like 12 or so. We wanted to go out and camp near the river because we wanted to try night fishing. I think we must have been out about a third of a mile from a main camp, far enough away from where we couldn't hear or see anyone else. I remember that. We were messing around most of the day, and I don't really remember much about it. But we ended up building a fire at some point, and I was really impressed because he had this flint or something that he used to start it. I'd never seen anyone do that before, so I thought it was.

pretty cool. I got him to teach me how to do it and we lit some stuff on fire, which looking back was really stupid because it was in the middle of fucking summer. And if I remember right, the fire warning was either a yellow or orange, but thankfully we didn't start anything major. And when it got dark, we sat around and talked about whatever it is 12 year olds talk about. I don't remember. What I do remember is that at some point he looked over my shoulder at the river and asked me if I could see something. The way our camp was set up, we were about 10 feet from the river and we were at the widest point so it's probably about 20 feet to the other bank it gets hot up theirs in the summer but that's but that water's still cold which is important

but look over my shoulder and i could see something wading into the river on the other side from where we were it looked like a deer but we couldn't really tell because of the fire i got up to look closer i saw a pair of antlers so i figured it was it was a buck but i thought it was weird it was wading into the water and it definitely is and it was definitely heading for us and asked Nolan what he thought it we should do he's looking at the fire he's looking at the fire with this weird expression as he tells me to sit down and shut up so i do so because i'd never seen him act like that way before he's whispered me to ignore it just to keep talking like we were but i couldn't think of anything to say he was saying something

about an episode of some show but i could hear the deer coming through the water so i wasn't really paying any attention and they kept trying to see it over his shoulder But every time I did, he sort of hit me with his arm and make sure to look at him. I wasn't really scared. I remember I was just sort of confused. But then I hear the deer coming out the water. And I could kind of make out what it looked like. I realized it wasn't a deer because whatever it was, was walking on two legs.

I started to get up. I was super freaked out, but Nolan just yanked me back down and talked louder about this television show. I could tell he was just as scared as I was. was probably even more he leaned in and poked the fire with a stick and whispered that whatever I do I can't speak to it I could see it come closer and it stood right behind no one's back was about ready to pee my pants I think I'd probably have to run if it if it'd been alone but I didn't want to leave Nolan so I kept sitting really still and sneaking glances at it it wasn't that tall but the way

that it carried itself was wrong like its center of bounds was screwed up I can't really describe it. But it was kind of like it kept shifting too far forward. It just stood there behind Nolan for a long time. And eventually Nolan ran out of things to say and we just kind of sat there for a second. The fire was making noise. But I thought I could hear this thing talking in a really low voice. We could hear what it was saying.

And I leaned forward a tiny bit and I actually did pee my pants when I leaned forward too. I couldn't see its face. But I saw its eyes. They were cloudy and milky If you want to know what it looked like Find that scene from the Lord of the Rings Where Frodo falls in that lake And all the dead people are floating towards them

That's what it looked like So I know So all I saw Were these two white eyes floating above Nolan's head And the really vague shape of it Antlers coming out of its head I don't know what my face looked like But at exactly that same time

Nolan I fucking booked it out of there and we ran nonstop until we got back to the main camp my pants were soaked with piss so i took them off as we were running and threw them in the bushes we both stopped once we were in front of dad's RV and we couldn't see anything chasing us so we stood there and caught our breath and i asked him and i asked him what the things what that thing was but he said he didn't know he said his grandpa had only warned him that if anything ever came up to him when he was out in the desert he was never ever supposed to to talk to it or listen to anything it had to say. I wanted to know if he heard anything, if he heard it talking to. And he said that the only thing he'd be able to understand was, help you. I think we ended up sleeping in the RV with my parents. And the next night, we went back out and didn't see anything. It does remind me in a lot of ways of the Windigo legend.

There's a phrase you describe it that I think fits perfectly, which is that the Windigo is the spirit of the lonely places. you know that sometimes when I'm out in the wilds where I know there's no one around me for miles and miles I get this weird kind of craving that I really can't explain I don't know what it I don't know if it happens to anyone else but it's the desire to consume it's not like a crave anything it's not like I crave anything in particular

but more of this weird distracting hunger that comes from every part of my gut also I was so right I was so right I was so right with the hunger saying earlier, man. God, your voice scared the shit of me. It was lost in the sauce there. I also wanted to find out more about these faceless man. If I was able and I found new similar things, I surround my circles of friends and one of them said

he was out doing repairs at a park in his area and he saw something kind of like that. We were having dinner in town, five of us included myself. This guy, he was re, he was repainting in an information booth and heard a man ask it for directions to the nearest camp site. He didn't turn around because he was up on a ladder, but he informed the man that there weren't any campsites nearby, but that if he needed, but that if he headed down the road about four miles, he'd find one at another park. He asked if he could be of any

other help, but the man said no and thanked him. My friend said he kept painting, but he was listening and never heard the man leave. The second he came up and talked to me, my hair on my neck stood up. But I wasn't sure why. I just had this really uneasiness. easy feeling about the whole thing. I wanted to finish paint and get out of there. I figured maybe part of it was that I couldn't turn around to look at him, but something just felled off. There's also this weird smell floating around even before the guy talked to me, kind of like

old period blood. I looked around to see what was causing it, but didn't find anything. So I waited for the guy to walk away. But I didn't hear him leave, which made me think he was just standing there and watch me. So I asked again if I could do anything for him and he didn't answer. I knew he was there though because I hadn't heard him leave. So I did this awkward turn the ladder to look down and see what he's doing. I have to admit it could have just been my brain fucking up but I swear to you Russ for a split second when I turned around that fucker didn't have a face. Like he had no face

it was almost concave and totally smooth and I just about had a fucking hard attack because I couldn't even wrap up my brain I couldn't even wrap my brain around what I was seeing I think I started to say something but there was this kind of pop inside my head and suddenly he was just normal looking guy I must have been looking

I must have looked fucking weird because he asked me if I was okay and I was just like oh yeah I'm fine I'm fine he asked about the campside again I point I pointed to where he was supposed to go and he's like, I'm not from around here. Can you help me get there? Now this is when I was, now this is when I knew there was something really up because,

and there's no way this guy got out here and didn't know where he was. And for that matter, there's no car around. So how did he get here in the first place? I said, I was sorry, but that I couldn't take him anywhere in the company vehicle. And he, and he's like, you know, please, I really don't know where I am. Could you come with me and help me get there? So now I'm seriously weirded out. and I started wondering if there was some kind of ambush or whatever

and I told him I could call him a taxi to come out and take him where he wants to go and I pull out my phone he just goes oh no and walks away real quickly but he doesn't walk out of the park he just walks back into the fucking trees and I got right in my fucking truck and I start to get out of there fuck the pain or whatever

I looked at my mirror and see where he was and I was leaving he was standing right at the tree line again and I don't know how he got there so fast but this time I know that fucker didn't have a face he was just watching me leave right before I turned the corner

he took a big step back into the trees and kind of dissolved I guess maybe it was just dark so he blended in but it felt more like he just melted away interestingly right if this guy finished his story someone else piped up with another one

with a slightly different twist you know actually I had something sort of weird like that happened a while back I was out doing some trail scouting and I was out in the middle of nowhere figuring out where we were going to have this trail run though I hadn't seen anyone else for probably a good two hours so I wasn't really paying attention to where I was gone

I was just looking at the ground for the most part then out of nowhere I crested this hill this little hill and almost ran into this guy he was older probably in his 60s and I started to apologize to him for running into him and then I noticed his face I probably looked like a complete douchebag because I stopped and just stared at him

and it took me a second to figure out what was wrong but this guy's face was huge I know that sounds weird but that's the only way to describe it his head wasn't big or anything it was normal but the amount of space in his face was just way too much

like if you text someone's face enlarged it all about about two times and he doesn't say nothing he just kind of looks at me and I backed up and wasn't stuttered and saying I was sorry, and I went around him and fucking got out there and did what I needed to do. The whole time I kept looking behind me because I was so freaked out that you pop up behind or something. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I swear to you, it was one of the creepiest things I'd ever seen. I switched the topic to the stairs a little later, and there was a definite shift in enthusiasm.

No one spoke up at first. There was real stigma around discussing them, even when we were away from work. but I broke the eyes with a story of my own and the guy who told me who told the story about the faceless man told this one albeit very quietly a couple years ago I was camping with my girlfriend

when we were about two miles from the road at this side of know we went to bed that night but we couldn't sleep because someone interjected a funny comment we dangerously closed to getting off on another subject but I'll get back on track

yeah funny you fucker no it was because we kept hearing that grinding noise My brother used to grind his teeth in his sleep And it kind of reminds me of that My girlfriend was freaking out But I just kept telling her to ignore it I've heard it before

You just have to ignore it It goes away eventually You just you guys know what I mean We all knew what he meant So eventually I got her back to sleep I woke up probably two hours later Because something just it's just off

I rolled over and she wasn't there And I kind of freaked out because he thought for a second and then he took a very long drink anyway i ran out the tent calling her name but i didn't have to go far she was standing at the edge of the camp looking at something in the trees and i could see that she was really pale the fire was low but bright enough to see her anyway so i ran up to see what was going on and she was dead asleep but her eyes were open she had this real spaced out look you know so i put my arm around her to lead her back but she wouldn't move. She just said really quietly

something like, I have to go now Hetty. I have to go. It's here. And I was like, you're just sleepwalk and come back to bed. But she wouldn't budge. She just kept staying there and saying that she had to go. I looked where she was looking and

there was a fucking staircase right about 15 yards away. Gray on concrete. She had started to walk toward it, but I yanked her back and that woke her up. She looked at me like I was out of my fucking mind. And she asked what the fuck she was doing out of the tent.

And I didn't tell her anything. I just told her she was sleepwalking. Grinding was gone. So she went back to the tent with me and fell asleep again. I don't know. I don't like thinking about it, you know? We all knew. You guys remember the kids with,

I can't remember what it was. Some kind of brain fuck up, not downs, but something like that. Someone else brought up. Well, I got to read the report he gave when they found him a week after he went missing and it was fucked up beyond belief. I mean, you have to take it with a grain of salt because who knows what kind of kid actually thinks this is real, but some of this stuff, I... I don't think he could have made it up. Like what? First of all, he talked about the stairs.

He said he'd been watching his dad build a fire and the stairs came up to him. And he had to go up them or something bad would happen. the cops couldn't really understand what he was talking about after that because he just kept saying that like the campfire it over and over you know and he kept mentioning sounds but he couldn't say what sounds just that it was loud and he covered his ears and he couldn't hear them but the thing I remember most is that they asked him where exactly he'd gone and he just said that he was right there he kept pointing at himself and they said that they thought that they meant that he thought

he'd never left. He said he wasn't scared because the stairs were there, and they said that they talked to him, but not like people talk. Like, I said it was really convoluted and hard to understand, and I have a feeling that cops didn't take most of it down. They ended up just saying that the kid had some kind of annesia or fugue, and they didn't think foul play was involved. It doesn't really explain why he came back a week later perfectly fine without a speck

of dirten on them and well fed, but hey, what the cops says goes. Still a lot of questions I want to answer. I'll continue to ask around and find out whatever I can. The next update should be soon. Thanks for being so patient. You can also find me on Tumblr at search and rescue

was.tumbler.com. End of part seven. Congratulations. You did a really good job. Yay! Good on that. I remember that. whole part, but I forgot it was a part of this series. Oh, interesting. So you remember that like as a story,

but you forgot that it's a part of this? I, I remembered so distinctly the one about like the Windigo or the Skin Walker coming up to them by the campfire and then looking forward and not addressing it. I remember the guy asking for a ride and then walking into the woods. I remember all that, but I totally forgot as part of the series.

I like the idea of these guys sharing stories for like the first time. And like they're, you could tell that they're all very like nervous to do so. Yeah, but they've got a lot on their chest. Yeah. Man, yeah,

I really like the, I like the faceless guy walking into the woods. I like how he says the, the stairs came up to him like the campfire, almost implying that like as the fire grows, like this, he watched the stairs materialize out of the ground.

Like he watched an appearance of them happen. Again, there's just so many cool ideas and presentations. And again, there's stuff you can connect, like the girl's seeing the staircase, and like going into a fugue state with the one, search and rescue officer who seemed to be in a fugue state, and then there's the mental

illness thing propping up again, like maybe they're too trusting, like the innocence that's being preyed upon and stuff like that. There's a bunch of cool places you can draw lines between stuff. Yeah. Well, final part? Final part? Let's do it. Part eight. This will be my final update for now. Things have deteriorated here to a degree that I didn't foresee. I didn't know how much writing about the things that are happening out here would affect every single part of my life. And maybe that was stupid to me. Maybe I should have considered it more seriously, but honestly, I just thought I was writing about things that a few people would want to hear. I didn't think it would get this much attention. People ask me about the stairs now. It doesn't happen

every day, but when it does happen, I never really know what to say. My bosses know someone's talking about them. And I'm sure that if they know, the higher-ups know. And I can tell you that they aren't happy about it. I've been formally told that I am not to speak a word about them to anyone anymore, which is part of the reason this has to be my final update. I can't risk my job for this, as much as it's been wonderful to get a lot of these things off my mind. I still do love my work, and I need to be out here. If anything, my being aware of what's really going on is enough reason to stick it out. I may not be able to tell people that they're out there, but if I see them, I can wreck traffic away somewhere safer.

Because of the amount of attention the stories have gotten, I've heard a lot of stories being swapped back and forth. I've heard so many I can't even remember most of them. Ones I do remember are the ones that I wish I could forget. One story that's made the rounds here was about a young woman who disappeared upstate. Initially, everyone assumed she was a runaway. She didn't come from a great home life, and so it really wasn't any kind of surprise that she chose to cut and run. But people started coming forward saying that they'd seen her around the park shortly before. before she vanished, so some of the rangers in the area were sent out to make sure she

hadn't hung herself or something on any of the back trails. It took them a while, but they did find her, well, not all of her, just half of her tongue and a quarter of her lower jaw. Very clean cuts from what I heard. They've never found the rest of her. So many stories about children, so many of them going missing and turning up in caves, wedged in between impossible tight spaces, so many of them found on mountain peaks. are at the bottom of sheer gullies.

Missing shoes, missing socks are found with both in perfect condition despite them being miles and miles away from where they vanished. So many stories of black-eyed people, wandering around the woods and calling out in the night, mimicking the sound of running water

or bobcat screaming. Whoa, running water's crazy. That's insane. It just sounds like a scream, man. One man in particular goes to every new station he thinks will listen to him and tells the same story. He was deer hunting.

camped out in a very remote area and woke up because something was scraping against his tent. He thought it was a raccoon or a fox until the thing pressed its face against the door of the tent, at which point he could very clearly make out a human nose and mouth. He kicked at it, leaped back and was gone by the time he opened the tent flap, gun it aside. He fired two warning shots,

and when the sounds had faded, he heard a snap behind him. A man was standing at the edge of the campsite. This man was not wearing any clothes. but he also didn't possess any kind of human flesh as this hunter described it the man was made of some kind of amalgamation of raw meat and hair sick as if someone had scooped up roadkill and molded it into the vague shape of a man that's similar to the ice remember the guy that was made out of ice that was like a person it's like using stuff face was lumpy and only a rough approximation of a human face the thing opened its lopsided mouth and from it came the sound of the gun the hunter had fired That's awesome. It did this twice before mimicking the sound of the tent zipper and fleeing into the night. Whatever, that would fuck me up. I'd be like, cool, I'm leaving.

It opens its mouth mate. The meat pile makes two gunshot noises and then your tent and then runs off into the darkness. Opens his mouth and just makes a warning shot. It's terrifying. A young couple out for a hike in the rocky areas of my park reported to me yesterday that they had seen something strange out on a pink I'm very familiar with. They were taking turns looking through a pair of binoculars when the man noticed a hiker climbing up a very steep part of the cliff face. He watched the man scale the slope and it didn't occur to him until the incident was over that this person

had no climbing gear. When the climber reached the top of the peak, which is about five miles away, they turned and faced the young man. He said whoever, or whatever this person was, was looking right at them. The climber waved in an exaggerated manner before snapping in half at the waist, sideways, and leaping off the peak. The young man didn't see where the climber landed. I sent them on their way with assurances I'd check it out. I lied. I won't be turning in a report because there are 10 others exactly like it.

The climber is well known in that area. I don't question it anymore. Is that not so sick? I love that. Is that not so cool? The idea of like the, like maybe a guy died. He like fell over the mountain and died there. So now it just looks like him.

Climps of the time. top waves jumps off. Climps to the top waves jumps off. That's so good. There's so many things I won't be able to understand about my job. It would take me years to relate all of the things I've heard in the last few months. When I feel like my job isn't in jeopardy, I'll come back. Maybe in a different format, but I will come back. Thank you all for sticking by my side and enjoying the things I've talked about. If you go out into the woods, I encourage you to be safe. Bring water, food, survival equipment let people know where you're going and when you'll be back don't go on uncharted paths unless you know exactly what you're doing and above all don't touch them don't look at them

don't go up them and that is the end that's the end of stairs in the woods they have two notes at the end about again the tumbler search and rescue woods and then they also said i realize i probably should have mentioned this at the beginning the series is being paused but the story's going to live on A book is in the works. The first draft is coming along very nicely. Keep a lookout, no sleep. And then I spoke to the author, who's my friend, as mentioned earlier, and they said they're still working on it. And there should be an announcement soon.

So the also, Isaiah also got a story that I don't think it's, I don't think it's linked exactly stairs in the woods. I don't think they ever posted it. Okay. But the guy did, the author did direct us to another story about like Boy Scouts that we're going to be reading on our Patreon. but we'll just leave it there just because it's not pertaining exactly to the story but that'll be an extra episode

that we'll have up on the Patreon if you'd like to do it. You know what's crazy though is it's insane that we did have a great first episode we just didn't read it correctly. You know what I mean? I think like being able to actually sit down

and read it again, how fun. Because I know we reread it before and then when you're talking about something in hindsight, it's never as good as just like reading it and then being immersed into it because there's so many you know we've seen a lot of stories like this too now with like

creepy out in the woods things when to go skin walker type stuff but still i just i love this little digestible format of like getting a little spook and then going into the next thing and having like all these different fun flavors that you get to choose from which is really nice don't get me wrong i love long continuous stories that have a great payoff or you know when they do have a great payoff. But it is nice just having something like this. It's, it's this was a really fun read through and I'm glad we read it.

Yep. Yeah. I think some of the details in this story are so good. Like the mimicry stuff and like the monster. And obviously the stairs is like I said earlier, a main stay of online internet horror from the story that did such a good job with it. It's an incredible story

that deserves its flowers and I'm glad it gets them. I really can't wait for a book or something to come out. They had posted after this on the same account, a couple of two updates that if I recall, right, we're supposed to be parts of the book or like early chapters of the book, kind of like

little sneak peeks. So we'll leave those for you on their account. Again, user search and rescue woods, be linked in the description. If you want to read those for yourself, but like as they said, more is on the way. And we're going to read a little bonus over on the Patreon too. So there's certainly more of this. The

author deserves a ton of love. They're, again, not only a good friend, but a great riders, as you've heard. So yeah. Be sure to support him because this is great. This is an OG in the internet horror realm for good reason. And also an OG for us

because it was the first creep cast episode. Yeah, I mean, it's hard not to almost get fucking emotional talking about it. But I mean, like two years of doing this guy is such a huge fucking blessing. We had an amazing live charity show. I mean, like,

what this fandom has become, what this podcast has become is insane. Like I never expected something like this to occur, you know, with just a buddy that was just kind of an offhanded idea that I had one day. So it's cool to, um, just kind of see how far it's come. And it's just, I don't know. It's awesome. You know, I know that like, not every story we read is a fucking banger, but I can always say like you guys supporting the authors and supporting this podcast, making memes, making art, writing your own stories now, very inspiring. And it's just fucking cool

to see. We really do have like an amazing fandom. So I appreciate you. Yeah. You guys are fantastic. You have been a blessing every step of the way to allow this podcast to be so successful, to enjoy it as much as we have. See just love and support. I never take it for granted. So thank you guys for how good you've been to me. Happy two years, guys. Stay creep. Happy two years. And we will see you in the next one. Bye bye. See you in the next one. I have to give an insult to Hunter. Right now, man, we just had a sappy moment. It's hard to be mean. I can do it.

I can push through. If I bet he get lured away by metal music and something gross, like a giant zip popping, something like that. Yeah. A metal zit. That's what would get him. Yeah. Yeah. Happy two years, guys.

1. I don't know. So, you know, I don't know I'm going to be I'm going to I'm going to

I'm going to I'm going I'm I'm I'm going I'm I'm you know

I'm That one was my favorite. That one was my favorite.