CreepCast - The Stairs In The Woods | Creep Cast

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

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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. Like, it's, it's foundational to, ton of internet horror and also like it's just a cool story to analyze right like the because it's

known for one specific thing but the story does a lot more than just that one specific thing as well yeah which here we can get into it but Wendy why don't you go ahead and tell the audience what we're even starting with here by starting with do you mean the story or like this podcast either or I'm just excited all around I'm pumped everybody I'm amped up welcome to Creepcast. I'm so excited for it. Me and my man here, can I call you by your like real human name or meat canyon? Yeah. Okay, cool.

You can call me by real name, Nathaniel. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hunter here, Hunter and I have been talking about this podcast for like over a year now. And it's been like in the back of my head constantly. Like as soon as I get settled, we got to do this. And now I'm settled. And now we're doing this.

And I'm so, oh, I'm so ready. I am too. I am too. It's given me a nice, a nice way to just, it's an excuse just to consume stuff that's like, it's almost like listening to nice albums or something, right? Yeah. Like consuming these horror stories, it's always like, oh yeah, I heard that one's good, but you never really take time to do it.

So this is just like my little excuse to always have time. Now I get to make time to do it. And that's, and that to me is exciting. And today, you know, this is a story that I've heard of, but I'd never, like, dived into. and I was really happy that I did very, very excited about today's first, first subject of our first episode.

The first episode of Creepcast. Ah, I'm so ready. It's so weird that it's tangible now, that it was something like we've talked about forever, but now it's here, it's real, you can touch it. It feels good. I'm so excited. Settle in, people.

Because today we're talking about an extremely scary, like, not even old, but in terms of internet, I would say it's, it has some age on it now, almost a decade old now. In terms of Internet, that's prehistoric in a way. It's actually over a decade. It's 2010, so it's been 13 years.

Oh, my sighting here says 2015. I'm way off. The first part came out in 2010. The series, I think it went into 2050. I see, I see, okay. Which, for people wondering, what are we talking about today? What are we diving into? We're talking about the search and rescue series.

Yes, from R slash no sleep, a classic, classic thing. A classic. That has spawned a lot of like modern internet horror, but some people don't even realize. Like, sure, they're probably familiar with the story, but they don't realize it created a ton of stuff that's really popular now. Yeah, and I think that you can, you can tell in how not only is it presented, but also it's like, it's almost like a, I don't want to say juvenile, but it's written in a way that, feels like a Reddit post almost or it feels like very personal which I think translates really well into like a lot of the narratives that happen with like even video formats of like found footage stuff or like even some like Mandela catalog type stuff too like it has like that

personality those little characteristics that I love and it's fun seeing it here before really this thing was like conceptualized before other things sure you had your you know some found footage stuff or some other kind of like at like little little aspects of horror but this seeing it in text form like this and seeing the response even in the post is really fun. It's just a, it was such an enjoyable find. So, it's cool.

And it's, it's a series of stories broken up into seven parts. Seven delicious parts or eight parts. It's eight parts, counting the, finale. And then, uh, there's been some other stuff that the creator has done later on as like some final updates in the past few years. We'll get into all that when we get to it. But yeah,

The main bulk of the story is eight parts. Which, I guess, do you want to give a rundown of, like, what is the general synopsis of the story? Absolutely. So, the original post was made to R. Slash, No Sleep, simply titled, I'm a search and rescue officer for the U.S. Forest Service. I have some stories to tell. And from there, it is exactly what the title describes. It is someone who has worked in national parks describing some of the weird things that they've come across in those parks. As the series goes on, the person who is.

documenting these stories, begins to speak to other park service rangers about stories that they've had, and then that kind of compounds into a greater conspiracy happening at this park, and the story, like, naturally unfolds from that starting point. But basically, the eight parts of the series are a recounting of strange things that go bump in the night in the United States National Parks, which is a great format for, like, a horror story to this degree because not only is there are already so many like supernatural stories or conspiratorial stories around the National Park Service, but it's these, you know, for the most part, undocumented gaps of forest in the United States that we're supposed to like have a good

handle on know what goes on out there. But there's still so many, like in the real world, there's so many stories of people going missing, um, unexplainable disappearances and deaths and what have you. And the story, I'm a search and rescue officer, really capitalizes on a lot of that fear people seem to have around national parks and the Park Service as a whole. To me, this is the number one manifesto of why you should never work in the U.S. Forest Service. It's out read to me. Because as we'll see in this document, too, it's like, not only is it coming from her perspective, but it's also coming from her like second storytelling of her being like, you know, oh, I asked like a colleague of mine.

about stuff they've seen or like her like basically recounting of other people who also work in the forest service which also makes this kind of I wouldn't say even being working in a US forest service is it a mundane job but when I first saw it I was like yeah you think of like the stereotypical like almost like park ranger or something like that yeah right but it takes on like weird almost like government kind of conspiracy stuff or like things that are that are hidden and there's a lot of like little fun entries that are that I think are just really fun that into it being such a just kind of like a real person reciting real events which is fun which is just stuff of her like seeing crazy monsters and being like I probably shouldn't talk about this or I'd lose my job and it's like

fuck the job just like run away run away go to safety you know what I mean there is a degree it reaches midway through where you're like bro just just quit what are you doing here get the hell out of here which which we were talking about

this earlier and it was funny because I was like I was kind of telling you about some of the parts that I thought were like really amusing and stuff and then you were right you're like yeah it starts off really plausible and it gets like just nose dives in the SEP but the same time that's fun I really enjoyed that oh yeah it's it's fun because like the the way the story starts is you're in this position of like oh this could really happen there's a bunch of people I know who like just heard the part one and thanks that the stairs in the woods are like a real story like this started like as a completely nonfiction thing um and that's kind of the tone it maintains in the beginning of like this could really happen and then once you're lured into that

setting then it becomes there's something going on here stuff keeps happening that's more frequent now and like i said like i made the joke to you it kind of gets an sCP foundation territory there but it really does almost hit the degree of like we're part of agents who are met to keep secret there's things that are covering yeah and it makes me really really excited to where the series might go in the future, but we'll talk about that stuff when we get to the end of this. Yeah, I was going to say, if anything, let's start diving into the actual first part here, which like we said, which like we said, they're like almost, it's like a collection of just like memories, but it's just like tiny, extremely condensed short stories of just retelling events, which starts off with the berry picking children, which is a interesting one to start with. but then what I like to which also before we get into this too is that there's some in the beginning at least where she'll tell us some like very creepy weird stuff and then she'll kind of mix it in with some stuff like the guy who is hiding up in a tree because of a moose and it's just like little funny moments where it's like ha ha yeah we always talk about that because that's a funny time which the blending of like horror and like kind of comical like weird experiences you would have at your job give this a lot more authenticity which I think I'll adds to what you were saying about like the staircase thing about people thinking that it's real the staircases are actually out there and i think that these little human moments really tie in all of these these things in just these little text blurbs yeah and also like i don't know if i can't remember if this is said in the story or i've been in contact with the author for those watching and she's very cool she's very nice but i can't remember if it was in conversation with her or an interview i saw of her or if it's said in the story but they're

character of this story is a man named Russell. He is the search and rescue officer that the fictional character the story's focused around. So typically if we say she were referring to the author, if we say he will refer into the character. Because the author didn't suffer as it as Russell did. But Russell was having a hard go of it in the story. Yes. Very hard go of it. And there for a bit to, after like researching about the author as well, I almost just put her as

the archetype in the story as well. Like, I almost, not to say that I didn't, not to say that Russell doesn't come up, but I started just reading myself almost as if it's her personal entries. Yeah. Or something. I just, I got that level of immersion from it. So, yeah, so if I slip up, that's the reason why. Absolutely.

And also, so we can go ahead and start in the beginning of it. So, yeah, as you mentioned, it begins with the Barry Picking story, right? Again, this is just from the premise of a search and rescue officer describing some of the cases he's been on. and it starts with these two kids who are out berry picking and then one of them or both of them go missing they find one of the kids who says that their sibling was taken away by the quote

bear man already coming out of the gate swinging like first story that's how you know you're getting into some fun cryptot territory where it's quote animal and it followed with man it could be any kind of animal giraffe man and you're like oh fuck

Like immediately. It's very nice. And yeah, it is the sister who's found quickly. And yeah, I love that. That she's just, the rescues find her. And she's just, yeah, he was taken by the bear man. So creepy. Which she describes it as being a tall, hairy type man with a weird face resembling a bear.

Which, in my mind, I love these kind of things when it's a child saying it. Because to me, I almost read that as like, because also to also clarify too, she or the the the author or the Russell never tells you which forest it is he's just like I'm going to lose my job you know I don't want to say where it's at so to me I thought Appalachian Mountains and I just assumed like inbred hills have eyes

kind of you know wrong turn hillbilly when I read the description or whenever she says the description of tall hairy and weird face this is horrifying and to especially call like an inbred redneck guy a bear man to me was frightening, which I'm sure it's an actual bear man, but for when I was reading it, I was like, oh, God, crazy

Southern. Like, I was reading this, and the whole way through, I was thinking like Appalachia up until she described a moose, and I was like, oh. Sure. Okay. All right, fair. But yeah, I had the same thought, like, Bear Man, that's clearly West Virginia. No question. Yeah.

Like, kind of like, West Virginia, and it's kind of cool. I think this is the one, too, where there's a couple search and rescue type beats in these stories, but they talk about, like, the grid system. of like going out and trying to find people and you like really like the the search and rescue people it isn't like they're like oh okay well he's gone it's like no she or the author really goes into describing like how extensive the search is it puts a lot of like humanity into the character and then only to the find no traces of the boy at all and it's still just gone no trace of them or an abduction no struggle it's just like simply disappeared which is an extremely haunting way to start it but it also in a weird way too, these blurbs, which I don't know if the author meant to do this, but a lot of these blurbs tie in with like the way that they present information. You're like, oh shit, I wonder if, you know, did the kid go up the stairs later on? Like how do they leave? You know, these tie in are

really fun. But, you know, starting off with Bear Man, it's pretty solid. What's also like cool about it, how you mentioned stuff ties in. There's stuff that you don't realize ties in until later on in it um like for example in this next section and still the part one right after uh the author's done describing how the bear man like that whole story uh it then moves in and starts talking about how sometimes they'll be out on search expeditions and the canines will try to get them to go up a straight up cliff like they'll be walking and it's like the dog doesn't process or the scent their following doesn't register with the cliff face in front of them is related to the greater stuff going on your drip fed information in a way that you don't really realize you are until the

story starts to come together and that's a really cool move from an author to pull off yeah or even just setting up the idea of like introducing uh how they do search patterns because i know with the canines the canines leading to cliffs kind of section of this first part as uh whenever the the dogs are leading them to these like insanely steep and sheer cliffs. The entire thing that baffles the person is that it just defies every aspect of logic of like how somebody could have gotten there or how, you know, this person, like how these bodies are so, like the missing persons are found in just completely different locations, like miles and miles and miles away, which leads into some just like fun thought experimenting of like, you know, what exactly is going on and how these stories kind of tie into each other. I think it does a really good job about leading the reader into coming up with their own kind of conclusions or theories or something, which I think especially for like SEP or like these horror, like letting our reader's imagination run wild and also try to come up with conclusions that are fun and not annoying is the most satisfying thing. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you ever are in a situation where you're reading something, you're like, oh God, that's stupid. You know that you're in the wrong. But whenever you're like being like, oh shit, I think.

but this is like, I don't know, weird dimensional traveling things or something without getting into like layers of like Sasquatch teleportation. You know that you're, you know you're doing something pretty fun. Squatch teleportation. Yeah. The, uh, there's a, I mean, the other one that comes to mind just in terms of part one is also the section with the young woman in the tree where it's, uh, the young, like a young woman climbs a tree to get a better view while hiking with her, uh, with, with, I think, mother and grandpa. And she, like, never comes down from the tree, which is... That's a kind of terrifying one, too, because it's like... Exactly.

Because they mention that they lose sight of her as she goes up into the branches. So they're like, oh, she's still up there. They just never see her again. Just never see her again. It doesn't come down. Yeah. The whole time, too, I was just thinking, like, oh, something's going to happen and she's going to, like, plummet down and they're going to see her die.

But that's, like, nowhere near as horrifying as climbing up an extremely tall tree to get a better view and just simply never coming down. And I know that whenever I was watching this, too, I don't know why, but like, when I was reading this, I just started getting imagery in my head of like, just like a really thick fogged forest kind of thing. Like, I don't know if, I don't know if your mind's eye kind of started like picturing the forest too,

but just thinking about this like almost hauntingly like decepted labyrinth of a forest was, uh, just kind of kept what. like kept flooding my mind and just the idea of climbing up because then I started you start like picturing yourself climbing up it and to me when I was reading it I almost thought like that you you never see the top of the tree either so she's just like continuously climbing and climbing and climbing being like where the where the fuck is the story the story like later touches on like dimensional shifts like what you're talking about and it's it's more of you know what we were

saying that you're given stuff that later turns out to be part of the bigger picture so yeah Maybe this woman just kept climbing forever, right? There's no clue. There's a couple other stuff in part one I think's worth pointing out. One thing I really like that the story does is it doesn't just hang on the supernatural elements. A lot of the time, Russell will give us stories about unrelated to supernatural events. Like in part one, he mentions the story of there was one time that a nine-year-old girl fell down an embankment and died. And he talks about how awful that was going and retreat.

even her body. That's not supernatural. It's just a tragedy that took place. So stuff coming in like that really helps to keep the story feeling valid as it continues in kind of the more subtle parts of it. Very macab. Very like, it kind of, it made me think of like other almost like Japanese folk tales or something like that, especially with the following of that, you know, the, the accident of the girl, it leads her mother to commit suicide after that incident. And it's just like horribly bleak and tragic but that within itself is just like its own horror of like you're right it isn't leaning on the supernatural but in a way it does feel like some kind of like I don't know just the dark the dark force of uh circumstances or like like what's the word

I'm looking for like accidents just like the dark force of like what like a tragic slip can cause and stuff and the kind of like horrors of that so and I I do think that also grounds it a bit more in reality too because i i can only imagine how many people which coincidentally after reading this too i have a friend who works in the like kind of a forestry or as a forester in uh up in the pacific northwest and they say that they find it's it's insane what people find you like a lot of dead bodies from just like random hikers and stuff because especially like if somebody's going missing they usually don't send cops out into the woods They just wouldn't know how to, you know, travel.

They have to send foresters, state park officials, all that stuff. But, I mean, the amount of stuff that you find out there, including that or, like, just crazy shit, like, bags of, like, piss and feces, which it's like, dude, you're out in the forest. You could just piss and shit on the ground if you want to do. But they're in bags. And, like, weird sex cults and all kinds of weird stuff happens out in this forest. And I think that, like, just little instances like this ground it a bit more in reality to where if you ever did look that up, you're like, oh, God. This, like, this kind of stuff does happen. which I think just gives it a sense of authenticity that's fun.

And then you lead yourself into stuff like, you know, the faceless man. Yeah. And you're like, okay, well, I hope that's not fucking real, my lord. Which a climber during a solo trip encounters a man with no face wearing a parka and ski pants on a mountain, which I don't know why. But I kind of giggled whenever I heard about the park and the ski pants to me. I don't know why. It's just a big fluffy. It's like a Michelin man outfit.

You know what I mean? But he's disturbed by the encounter and he rushes down the mountain, resulting in a fall in a broken leg. While trapped, he hears the faceless man, muffled screams throughout the night. The climber eventually is rescued, but is deeply traumatized by the experience, which I always love a lot of these stories end with, like, people that have escaped the forest. And it gives the forest, like, almost like a, it's like its own entity. You know what I mean? So many people are like, they escape and they'll probably never return kind of thing. very opposite of Ted the caver

you know these people are probably a little smarter than Ted is what I would say yeah it's like something else about the way the faceless man's described to it's like he he's climbing up a cliff and then he comes across someone with no face

obviously terrifying right tries to get down the cliff falls breaks his leg can't go any further and then all night he hears the quote muffled screams it's like this thing has a face behind its skin and you can hear it trying to scream through it

and it kept trying to climb down to get to him like bro yeah climbing down that is that it's such a true statement though like skin stretched over someone's face it almost makes him like it's like he's screaming in the night but it's like it took on like a perception of like

is he like suffocating is he just like in this forever hell torture you know and then but then the maliciousness of him trying to always find him. Find the man with a broken leg. So freaky. So freaky. Which, well, then, I guess, let me see. We have a couple more from part one.

Of course, it ends with a staircase one, but I want to save that one for last. Which is there, there's another search for a young woman who's separated from her hiking group, and she's found under a log in a state of shock. She repeatedly mentions being followed by a big man with black eyes. As rescuers near their base, she becomes increasingly agitated.

claiming the man is making faces and wants to take her and the rescuers. The woman also references a scar on a rescuer's neck that she shouldn't have known about. So weird, like, almost like just a weird paranormal, almost like telepathic thing, almost like fortune, or not fortune, but like mind reader or something. Yeah. A lot of weird mental stuff there. It's like the creature she's imagining was just like, oh, well, this woman's clearly insane. until she says the thing says she the monster says he doesn't like the scar on the back of your neck

which was a covered up scar that the woman couldn't have seen so it gives like validity to this the scariest part and this is something else I really like about like all eight parts of the story the scariest part about this insert to me is when Randall is described or Russell not Randall yeah Russell that's what I said when Russell is describing the noise that he's here because he doesn't see anything while this woman's talking about. He just hears something. And the way it's worded is he says, 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. Like, what? I love that. An insect coughing noise that was rhythmic and deeper? Yeah, an insect coughing.

Which I wonder, I wonder if the parallel there was supposed to be with the black eyes to make you think that maybe it was like kind of an insect kind of monster. Oh, I didn't even put that together. Yeah, black eyes. Almost like a giant grasshopper kind of thing. Oh, bro. Because it's funny that you, it's funny you said it too, because when I read that too, I was like, oh, fuck.

Because I was perceiving it as like, oh, okay, we're getting into like alien territory, almost is what I was thinking. Yeah. Big black eyes, sure, you know, all the tropes are there for that. but whenever I heard the rhythmic coughing which while I was reading it I don't know if you did too but whenever I read this kind of stuff you almost try to like mimic

the kind of cough to kind of like what it would sound like yeah yeah and I was doing it until I heard insect and I was like what the fuck and I like kept and I'm like oh well no wonder I can't think of what it is because like an insect coughing oh no so I sat there and I kept doing like these weird like grass

like trying to do like a grasshopper cop or something I couldn't I couldn't think of what it would sound like And I was going to ask you what you thought of that one. What an insect cough would sound like? I would think, well, if you did it on the podcast, I guess I will too. It's probably like a, I can't do it correctly.

Hold on, dude. It sounds like, burr, I guess, I don't know. To me in my head, it sounds kind of like, to me in my head, it sounds like a, to me in my head, it sounds like a, cicada almost like oh yeah just like the little like guttural noises they make yeah but there's like a million of them yeah yeah so it's like this is the cicada man who's out here in the woods like following honestly a cicada man sounds that's that's more haunting than the bear man i got i got i got it's like that thing i would not want to see a cicada man over the bear man no no not the yeah i wouldn't like that i wouldn't i wouldn't like that you know what i'm talking about right in the movie man and

black yeah yeah okay okay yes yes yeah that that's what's following the brand out there that's what i mean yeah i would like that still uh last but certainly not least to to end the part one is the staircase in the wilderness which is this i think this is pretty much as we as we've said before this is like the quintessential reason that i think these stories are so popular is the staircase in the wilderness kind of um i think that's kind of what grabbed people which for good reason i think that there's, it's like a perfect sandbox situation of you present an idea and you're able to like easily add on to it as are other people, which makes it super fun just to kind of like see that community grow. But essentially the SAR officers frequently encounter unexplained

staircases in remote forest areas. These staircases resemble typical house stairs but are found isolated in the wilderness. Officers are advised not to investigate or approach them or or approach these staircases, which this section was relatively small. Um, it was like they had just kind of seen some, or Russell had just kind of seen some staircases, but I, you can, the tone of it completely shifts when his superiors are like, yeah, don't even go near him. Don't even like look at them. Just like, if you see one, just don't even go near it at all, which I really, really enjoy because it's, it's, it sets up perfectly the idea of like, well, you're definitely going to have to explore it at one time. Yeah. You know what I mean?

It's just planting that seed. It's the childish nature of a character being told, well, don't go do that. And you're like, what the fuck, dude? That's a nice staircase. It plays so well. I think one of the reasons it got so popular is like a lot of the horror mentioned in part one is, I mean, there's some subtle stuff, you know, but most of it's more over, right?

It's like there's a faceless man on top of the mountain or there's like the cicada man or whatever, like in the trees, like scary stuff, but, you know, it's horror. but when I first read that like little paragraph about oh every now of then when you're 34 40 miles away from civilization you'll find a staircase in the middle of the woods it immediately gave me a chill because it's like I think a lot of people can almost remember what she's talking about here like oh dude yeah I remember being the kid and like running around the woods of Appalachia I remember coming across a door one time there's just a door out in the middle of the woods like no explanation just standing there oh yeah like it's it speaks to a memory a dream you've had almost because outwardly there's nothing explicitly violent about it it's just staircase middle of the woods and that combined with the fact that you will run if you're in the woods long enough you will run into staircases because there was either you know old trailers that were parks there that they left the stairs behind when they pulled the trailers out maybe there was an old like fire watch tower

that they tore down, but part of the stairs are still there. It's like there's parts of it that are so familiar to people, even though it's such an alien setting. And I think that's the reason the stairs in the woods is what so many people took away from this part. Oh, yeah. I mean, like, just kind of what you're saying about finding the door in the woods, to me, it's like, even on like a cattle farm. Like, we used to live on this like 700 acre cattle farm. My mom rented a house behind this guy, like the farmer's house or the cattle farm. house and even back there some of his family used to like live back way back in the pastures and

stuff so now there's just all of these like dilapidated homes even just like old homes that just you know people just don't live in anymore but they're broken down there's holes in them and stuff and as even as a kid to me my whole thing was every time it was there it you were saying that like these violent outcomes I was just thought about like why did they leave you know who broke in here and did this like you kind of think about the worst you don't see i don't think anybody ever thinks naturally of like oh people just don't live here anymore to me it always it sets in motion like you know what happened here and even going inside and seeing stuff and like seeing remnants of someone's past life is just something that is so uneasy but that immediately led me to

believe because when i saw that when i heard the staircase is the first time which i my perception changed as the as these entries went on but the first time i kind of pictured what you were saying where yeah it's it's a staircase but there's like maybe be other remnants of the house around them is how I first perceived it which it's like it is just a standing staircase but maybe there's like a door laying down by it maybe maybe like bits of rubble or something but still that would be odd that the staircase was there but that's because of just these core memories that's where my mind went yeah but obviously as the stories go on it becomes a lot I mean like I think that picture becomes a lot more clear one common thing too

and one of the reasons the stairs is a bit more like a bit more ominous than other stuff like run from in Appalachia like East Tennessee Kentucky area you'll be back in the mountains sometimes and you'll just come across old chimneys because what would happen is yeah these old houses built in the 1800s the chimney would be made out of like stone stone and like hard materials but the rest of the house was like wood so as the house deteriorates everything else is destroyed but the chimney still standing so when you see a chimney out in the woods like it's sure it could be creepy it could be

kind of weird but your brain can also be like, okay, I get why it makes sense that the chimney is what remained intact because like, you know, you'll come across like cemeteries out in the woods. It makes sense why the headstones are still there, their stone. Right. But a staircase is just strange enough like, all right, Frontiersmen did not have

multi-storied houses. If for whatever reason there was a two-story house out here, that staircase would not be in pristine condition, it would not still be standing. It has just enough gaps in reasoning to make it so strange. It works from a horror perspective really well. Exactly. It's just the unsettling nature of whenever you actually think about it and it doesn't make

sense. That's whenever I think it really sets in. Because like you said, it's like, yeah, it's mundane. It's just a staircase. But when you actually start to like give it a little more thought, it's almost like whenever you walk away, you're like, huh, you kind of shrug your shoulders. And then when you walk away, you're like, wait, what the fuck? And then you turn around.

That's what kind of horror this is to me of like, wait, what? And then you kind of turn around and that's when you witness it. but that that kind of encapsulates the first part missing story or missing people stories we do get some kind of like weird monster stuff some very like you know standard not standard but you know people like general accidents happening but uh everything i think is explored a little more in part two which between these what was the release schedule like did you look into that at all because i had august to december so the first episode the first one came out March of 2010.

The second part came out on, I think I'm reading R-slash-no-sleeves. I'm on Reddit right. I don't know to operate Reddit. I see where it says created March of 2010. I think that's the sub-reddit. That is my bad. So, that's what I get.

All right. First one, you were probably right in the beginning when you were like, oh, it's nearly 10 years old. I could have swore it was 2015 Yeah it's 2015 I'm just stupid Alright alright I was like Holy shit did I totally fuck that up

There's some There's some like People who really love this story Freaking out right now at me Okay Yeah they're like no Yeah Okay so

For what I read it was August It was from August 2015 And then the last part was December 2015 But I didn't know And it's eight parts I just didn't know if it was like frequently like however many couple like because essentially what is that that's four months so

maybe two entries per month now that i know what i'm doing now that i know what i'm doing the first three the first three parts came out in a span of three days august 25th august 27th of 20 man people were eating good right there they were good yeah and then part four was september of 2015 so like a week it later. Yeah. So yeah, I guess the first few parts are very frequently.

As we get to them, I'll check the times now that I know where to look. Man, someone is yelling at me in the comments about it. It wasn't... It's our first episode.

Come on. It's not 13 years old. First about... First piece of information Windagoon states objectively wrong. Incorrect.

So far off the mark. Drop the ball, dude. Drop the damn ball. Setting a precedent early on. Perfect. It's fun, though, because I like, because I think the response to this too was pretty, I think people, like, were falling in love with it pretty quick from, if, if memory serves correctly. So to have the person kind of also respond, because in the second part, the author of these also respond to, what, is it David Paul Leeds? Is that how you pronounce it?

David Politis. Politis. Yeah. Oh, God, Paul leads. Jesus. David Politis's work, and there's similarities there. and kind of just immediately responding to some of the comments which once again I kind of like how quick the author did that because once again it does feel it feels like social media

which that's what I think is fun it's like utilizing the internet and the social media to also like be transparent with your audience and then provide more stories is just really fun I like that because I think some people could be like you know I'm going to just upload and not interact like I'm just going to you know It's the art of it

But I think that the art of the storytelling here Is the interaction with people And that trying to build that authenticity With them again So I just enjoyed that I enjoyed that they They didn't just stick to this thing They were interactive with the comments

And to be on the side around that time When these were When these were being uploaded Must have been so fun Oh absolutely man And David Politas Who Russell talks about In the author

what Russell talks about in the beginning, is the guy who coined the whole missing 411 thing, which are you familiar with that at all? I, just briefly from researching this, but I honestly, I haven't really gotten too much into it. So missing 411 is a bit of my, I wouldn't say my forte, but I am, I do dabble. One of my only in-person videos I've ever done where actually went on location for a video was about a missing 411 case. So missing 401 is the term started again by David Pilitis. It basically is referring to people that go missing in the wilderness or more specifically national parks without much of an explanation.

411 is just the police code for information. So the phrase missing 411 just means missing information. Yeah, that's cool. What Russell's doing here at the beginning is explaining that David Politis has already talked about a lot of the stuff Russell is going to get into, kind of these inexplicable disappearances that happen in national parks. With David Politis's work, too, does it tend to be, because I know that it was missing stories from basically wilderness or like forest, but I didn't know, does it go into like cryptid

stuff too, or is it just like, so David Polidus is just, yeah, missing 401 is real missing person cases. Okay, so this is just like based in actual reality and shit. David Politis was basically a journalist who was looking into otherwise unreported disappearing cases that happen to national parks. I mean, like people can check out his work for himself. I don't mean to put words in his mouth. But part of what Politis was doing was kind of uncovering that the parks weren't

advertising a lot of the dangers that exist in them. And most of his stories revolve around like completely. inexplicable disappearances. Like the one that I made a video about in person was about this boy named Dennis Martin who was just near his parents like a few feet away and then they turned their back for a second and he's gone.

And they had like hundreds and hundreds of search crew covered the area for weeks and weeks and they never found anything. Like stories like that. How haunting, dude. Yeah. He was right there. Yeah, five years old.

Looking up some of these though too for my boy David Polite is here. He is a big foot guy. He is a huge big foot guy. He's a big big foot guy. So I just want to put that out there. I want to clarify. I want to clarify.

Not that he never brings up cryptids, but the disappearances he covers are real disappearances. Okay. All right. Not to say he doesn't introduce some of the comments section is going to be like, oh, that big foot son of a bitch. Yeah,

I know who David Politis is. Yeah, whatever. So I just want to put that out there. Okay. So yes, they are missing real person, but you know,

he likes to dabble. Why not, I like to dribble the ball. That's what I'm doing, Who does it? I dabbled. Who doesn't? The turning around, which also, as I get older, which maybe some of, like, younger people

who might be listening to this to, one of you're a little older and the perception of losing a child becomes more and more real, that, like, haunting. Just absolutely haunting, especially to just to turn around and someone's gone. Inexplicable. Like, I don't even know how you would wrap your mind around that. Just even the logistics of that. What does that look like? You know, it's insane.

Like, I've heard some personal accounts, and it's like, it's hard to like you said wrap your brain around like a person's there you're perceiving them and then they don't exist seconds later it's it's weird it's so strange you said you said that you've had you've talked with people about it like oh no like i've listened to interviews like oh okay stuff like that with individuals no i thankfully i don't know anyone that's happened to personally um yeah i was going to be like how do how could you have possibly never told me this that someone is oh yeah i forgot to mention i was a part of a big missing part of I was a part of an alien abduction case back then.

I did go looking for a dead body one time. Dude, what kid? How old were you? Were you nine? Nine or ten? I was, no, no, no, not like that. Like, it was a... Well, stand by me action?

No, it was an actual police investigation for a someone who was believed to be murdered. And when I was like, I probably shouldn't talk about this, but it's too late now. when I was like 10 or 11 my dad's like it'll be good for you come on you should come on this search through the woods and I remember being like 10 years old

and I was like what do I need to be on the lookout for my dad was like oh you'll probably smell him first you'll know when you see it you'll know when you see it son how fucked up would that be though if young Windigoo was walking through the deal and he's like daddy why is this woman

with a red dress why is she face down and her limbs are are all weird. He found it! I feel like that would fundamentally corrupt you as a person. What's funny is too,

I didn't think anything when I was a kid. I'm like, he, I'm going to go look for someone who died. It was a family friend of ours, which is why we were out there.

I can't wait to... Oh, the missing person was a friend of yours? Yeah, family friend. I didn't know it personally. It was like my dad's friends kid. I mean, like...

And they found them. They found them not alive. So that was nice. Not far from where we were searching, actually. That is nice. That's nice that they found them dead. So there was a chance that young Windegoon would have been like, oh, you look at that. Oh, this is nice.

I feel like the entire time you were looking through, I feel like, to me, I don't know why I just, I picture you as the pouty kid. Who's like just wanting to be home playing like Dragon Ball Z, Budokai, Ting, Kaiichi 3. At one point I was thinking about going home to play video games. I just wanted to go home and play this game What's also like To give you more of a visual I was a child

And there was like a lot of brush In the woods So I had a golf club And I was swinging it Got down like the tree branches You just end up Malling a dead body With a golf club

This isn't tall brush This is a This is a dead body Dad Can I go home now I'm just The most arrogant, stupid kid

going through the woods swinging the golf club like I wish I was playing Star Wars right now. Yeah, family's crying. People are just like, do you see anything and stuff? You're just like, God. Supposed to be playing Revenge of the Sith on

PS2 right now. God, this sucks. Bro, that's not far off. No, of course it's not. The thing about it, too, is everybody goes through that, dude. Everybody does. When you're a kid, you go through that. Even like, you can't process, like, even like a funeral or something when you're younger.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, like not caring about the gravity of what's happening. So it's just like, yeah, children have no business. Just got to leave them at home, lock him in a room, they'll be fine. Yeah, they'll be, they'll be fine. I wonder what would have happened to me if I found the body. Like, I wonder if that would have changed the course of anything I'm doing. I don't know, because it's very interesting. interesting you say that because to me

because you didn't see it I feel like now that I psychologically think that you has started these in-depth horror research videos because you're trying to find that connection that you missed a long time ago. I feel like you might be a car salesman.

Wait a minute. Wait, hold on. Explain both of those things you just said. Are you saying that I'm making YouTube videos because I'm chasing the high I never caught of finding a dead body Absolutely. And what do you mean by car salesman? I think that you would have gotten your fix.

Like you would have been like, you would have seen some things. So I think it would have corrupted you in some weird way to where your life would have taken a more normal approach to maybe, yeah, you would be like enterprise cars, renting cars. And that would be like a copy. Hold on, hold on. You're talking about like the high glories of being a car salesman. What do you mean? I think it's a pretty good gig. It's a market that's never going to die.

I just think that it's a more traditional. It's a more traditional take. Versus now I feel like you're desperately trying to cling on to wanting to find a dead body. Which, God forbid you find one. Because I think if you did find one, once again, I think that you would take on a very normal job, I feel like. You're saying if I didn't, if I did find the dead body, I would be a car salesman right now. Yes. Okay, I see.

Yeah. Because you would have got your fix. And that would have been water cooler talk forever. You can talk about that forever. I would have been just like a guy. You're saying that. me being a couple hundred feet over in the search party is the difference between Wendigoon and an accountant. Yes. Literally, yes. Like, I would have found it and just been like,

and I'm done now. I'm good. Exactly. If your golf club would have smacked into the side of a dead body, you would be at H&R block right now. That would be water cooler talk that you could use forever forever but now now you're chasing the high and now the problem is now too you know too much so god forbid you find what you're looking for i don't know what it is but god forbid is what i say you see you're evaluating my my entire channel the career even those podcasts is all just a symptom of me not getting my birth right of finding a body to once to me it feels like divine intervention it feels like it feels like you weren't supposed to find it because you This was your quest.

This was your goal. You know? To have the thirst, the want, to find that. Can we go back to the search of rescue officer? I'm too introspective right now. It's fine. It's fine. Which I want to say part two, it gets interesting.

I'm just going to dive right back into this because we went into the David thing. We found out that you are definitely searching for a dead body. It doesn't matter. And the second part of this is that. We get to see the stairs again. It's another entry of the stairs, except this time it's different shapes, sizes, you know, conditions, more broken down, different kinds of things. Because before it was just a standard house stair case. But now in this one, there's like other dilapidated ones, other brand new, brand new looking stairs, and even some like resembling lighthouses, which is kind of interesting.

But the storyteller or Russell avoids photographing or interacting with the stairs to not risk their job, which as, we said earlier. I was just like, I would take a picture. I'd take a few pictures or two, if I'm being honest. Yeah, of the stairs you're saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. Assuming it doesn't like, who's going to believe you? Yeah. Who's going to believe you? Imagine going up to somebody at like a bar or like a red robin. You've had a long day working for the forest, right? Got to go to a red rob and get a nice gourmet burger. And you try telling somebody that you found a lighthouse staircase in the middle of woods and you don't snap a pick how that's how is that possible yeah yeah especially in the modern age because the person writing this story is like it's not like these are found you know notes from the 80s like this is someone actively upload into the internet so they have access to a camera yeah exactly which which again once it makes me want to say that like it was probably so much funner to be in a horror vacuum in like the 80s when it's just like technology wasn't there yet

because now a smartphone ruins everything it really does it ruins just about everything you have to like work around it and it's so boring but at the same time too you have to have a you have to have a stakes in your story or in your story you have to have circumstances to your stakes

i.e. well I can't take a photo because I'll lose my job but at the end of they whenever you're finding goat people dying children I feel like the losing of my job wouldn't be that much of a factor

I feel like I would snap the pick dude it would probably be on Snapchat or something if it's 2015 it'd be on Vine I would take there would be a

fucking vine of a staircase in the by the end of the story it's like I don't want to lose my job anyway so we lost

12 more hikers to the flesh I really don't want to lose my job but there are 75 missing people in the woods we have no idea

either but we did just see a toothless goat running around uh yelling like a baby or whatever which we'll get to that we'll get to that soon too yeah yeah let's continue into it so you talk about the stairs clarify it stairs in the woods all very familiar at this point yeah there's a couple clarifications they clarified the faceless man too yep yep they did clarify the climber and counting a man with no face on a peak wearing park and ski match just kinds of does like a little you know just clarifies that guy and then they go into the story of the missing older man if you want to talk about that one yes yeah so they mentioned that there was an old man who uh goes missing out on a trail uh the wife call says that he's a very experienced hiker uh but recently he has been

taking seizure medication hasn't come home in a while so he's missing the time he's supposed to take his prescription she's getting worried about him so the team goes out to look for him and they can't find him anywhere until one of the search crew tells everyone to come over and about 30 feet up in the trees just hanging on a tree limb is his walking stick

just hanging in a limb not too high for him to have thrown it up there the tree itself was too wide and too dramatic of an angle for him to have climbed up there but for whatever reason there is his walking cane up in the tree and they never find another clue of him

I love that. Yeah. Just a little touch. And what I like about that, too, is that it's once again calling back to the part one of the girl who climbed up the tree to never be seen again. So now it's just, now we're getting multiple cases. And it becomes something that you can't avoid. And it also makes you think, you know, you're talking about not taking pictures of these staircases. I mean, I'm like, we have these goddamn death trees all around us, dude.

I'm freaking out. All right? You're telling we can't take pictures of staircases and there are staircases in the woods, but God forbid you climb a tree. I mean, like, my lord. So I, I don't know. But I do love these little tie-ins. And a lot of these stories, too, it's, I wouldn't see that it's all the same. But, I mean, it is all, like, it is missing persons, you know.

So a lot of the stories are going to be, and they never found them again. Which, whenever reciting it back and, like, whenever it's like just little blurbs of us talking, it might sound kind of samsy. But in the actual thick of it, whenever you're, like, read it. this like from beginning to end it all just feels like a conceptualized like like rolodex of thoughts and like memories of this person so take that as you will I guess I didn't know I didn't know I didn't know if people are going to be like oh god all of these are just them ending in you know and they were never found again but that is kind of essentially what this is is a park ranger talking about missing cases and I mean it's also like I said indicative of a lot of real

like missing 401 cases. Not the supernatural elements, but the idea of just like, yeah, they were never found again. Nothing came of it. Yeah. And I mean,

but sometimes they do, like this next one I love too is the one about the missing five-year-old boy who, uh, he disappears during a family picnic. And his siblings mention a, quote,

big man with scary face leading him into the woods, which is very fun. And they find the boy's body 15 miles away in a place inaccessible to a child with no signs of injury or struggle, which is, it's like bordering on almost like, I don't know, like slender man levels of territories here. You know what I mean?

Like children going into the woods trying to find his mansion kind of thing. Yep. To be 15 miles away. And just the, Russell's description of just like, it makes no sense how this could have happened is the most haunting. Well, I guess being 15 miles away in life. wild about it too is this is actually based off an actual missing 411 case that myself and

Aidan Mattis covered in one of my videos but there was a case of a boy I think he was he was three or four who just disappeared from his family and they found him in a tree in the middle of a swamp like it was like 12 or 15 miles away a few days later um or no it's like 48 hours it was like super low amount of time and Survivor Man tried to recreate the trip in the amount of time he couldn't it was like a very weird case

yeah weird stuff like that happens not the details about the man with a scary face and whatnot sure again this is kind of baked into a sort of terrifying reality how do they what does the conclusion look like then too you know what I mean like when when people are reporting on that is it just like it's

an accident or like what did they come like how did they if I recall this story correctly. This is the child that actually survived. I've covered so many missing 4-1. I forget the exact details. If I remember right, that child lived. And he was like three or four. When asked to recount it, the only thing he mentioned was that it was like he saw a cat or something like that. So there'll be some people think maybe a mount lion carried him that far and then didn't eat him for some reason, carried him up a tree

which would be weird but there's like if I recall correctly that kid lived and then told rescuers that he saw a cat and there was no other

explanation he could give he was too young to understand what happened to him stupid fucking kids dude I wish the kid had that's all you saw it was like a cat it's like God

there's a lot there's a lot of those were like they find them dead days later in like impossible locations. There's like one story, again, not to get sidetracked from this, but I remember one case where like this dude who was like this expert hiker went missing and then his body got found at the bottom of a ravine after all the snow melted.

But there was this stage where like they found his backpack with like snacks laid out and like a red bull opened up 20 miles in the other direction from between where he went missing and where his body was found. Like the guy got lost, had a meal. left all his stuff behind just walked into the woods and died like it's weird it's it's weird too because i wonder how much of like whenever people are studying this do they think like oh like i wonder how much of that they look into like i mean i don't like suicidal tendencies or something right like yeah you know is the person going was he had struggling in his own life because

that is almost what i think when i see that kind of stuff is they just like abandoned the stuff like it's like almost like a wake-up realization moment or something and they left because any other event makes it feel so inexplicable. Sometimes I do think that is the case. This specific one, if again, assuming I'm not getting the details mixed up, he was hiking the crazies which is in like the Rocky Mountains. He was hiking

the crazies with a couple of friends. He went back to get oh I remember what it was. They had these waypoys set up on the mountain and the mule that was carrying his gear bucked knocked it over the mountain. So he goes back to a waypoint to resupply

and they never see him again. And then that's when they find him like, you know, when the spring comes. But it was just like he was out with his guys, like, hold on, I'm going to head back and grab something and then just off the face of the earth. Just tragically, yeah. It makes you ask a lot of questions, which is, again, one of the reasons that I find the story so compelling, because I find myself asking questions similar to what the well, yeah, especially the more that you actually research the realities of these situations,

the more creepy it becomes, and also the funner, I think, even the more eccentric stuff. like in this one which you know in part two we get a lot of stuff once again like there's the the guy who died in a tree well and it's just kind of another accident but one of just the horrors of like natural disasters and like human mis human error i guess and then we get more staircase stuff and people being like for the love of god do not take a picture of those don't even go near them keep reciting that but then my favorite part of part two definitely is the meowing man love yeah that's so creepy Maybe, oh, it's so terrifying.

Might be the highlight of the whole thing for me, if I'm being completely honest. Yeah. Yeah. Would you like to explain it? Yeah, which is an older woman faints after hearing a man making a meow sound in a strange buzzy tone in the woods. The narrator investigates, but only hears the sound without finding its source. So essentially, a woman is, I mean, like, she sees the man, if I remember correctly. She even sees him, and it's just a man out in the woods meowing.

like essentially it's it's it's it's it's it's trying to find this meowing man and not being able to see him but the person's like i saw this guy he was standing out in the middle of essentially nowhere meowing at me which to me that was the most invasive one that this this was the one that was because it touches on several things where it felt ethereal but it also felt like the idea of just a man standing in the woods meowing at me is horrifying it's horrifying it's so simple and so effective I mean even just like putting yourself in a situation of camping and like you're in your tent right and like maybe it's like a light mist tapping on your tent and you just hear

it sounds funny but at the end of the day I mean I would shit myself I would probably cry I would probably I would legitimately cry especially the idea of like it's on different levels because one it could be an insane person which is horrifying or

another horrifying thing is the reality that someone is fucking with you and they're like they're trying to like they're trying to like mess with your mind they're trying to like scare you and I hate that as well because it's like a weird game of chess

and it's ugh god meowing man I like it too because like initially the person hears it and thinks it's a it is an actual cat

and then they listen closer and they're like oh that's someone trying to sound like a cat, which, oh, my gosh, that's horrifying. Especially them, like, the woman saying, like, oh, that's when I realize that, no, this is a guy doing a cat impression. Yeah. Which is funny.

It's funny to think about, like, coming across that realization, you're like, oh, God, is that a house cat out here? Meow. And you're like, okay, that's definitely, that's definitely a guy doing it. Yeah. Which also makes it sound like, it's like, at. first it was kind of compelling and then over time he like kind of stopped trying to make it so cat-like it's like meow you know at first and at the end he's just like meow

doing a fucking like markiplier meow yeah he's doing the markiplier in the woods doing that what if it was just a guy on his iPhone he was lost and he was watching market supplier videos to make himself feel you never know you never know uh moving into part three we get this is whenever they talk about Russell's kind of talking about starts it off by confidentiality can't talk about where the work location is

for security job security reasons he can't lose this job dude can't lose it clearly the most important thing happening this job pays $1.7 million a year it has to bro it has to which sadly

I think I looked it up and it was like it was something like it's a very like there's so many jobs that probably make you get similar pay which i know it's probably too like well you get a work outside and stuff but i'm like bro with what you've seen it's just not there's just not worth it's not worth it's not worth it at all i don't care if they're paid dental i'm not having none of it absolutely not but in part three two this is where russell talks to one of his former superiors about the stairs right this is when we get the staircase but this is when he's talking to like a past co-worker or like

manager or whatever however the system for foresters work but they they like indulge more information into him right oh yeah that i know what you're talking about in the beginning he says however on one of my one of my former superiors no longer works as a sarah officer and i'm going to talk to him about it so i'll talk to him later this week so it's basically saying that there will be more stairs stories coming later in the series oh i see i see i see that's kind of a fun way too to like you can tell that that's definitely the author is just like let me think you know just give me a second

so it's one to be like well I'm going to speak with the other officers so just get me I'll let you know how that conversation goes especially because this is the first time there's a gap between part three and part four so it's like yeah yeah sure we'll talk about those which in this one too there's a lot of like child stuff

like there's a couple different child ones which there's the there's the incidents with the young couple and their baby where you come across or they come across and it's like the baby died from like a fall which is just kind of a freak accident tragedy but then there's the personal

experience that Russell has where it's they say it's their scariest incident in their career involving a lost child and it's bizarre because it was like a deafening sound and looped recording of a child crying it was like the same yeah oh that's so weird that's so weird yeah because he describes it as like he's out there with

another search and rescue officer and they hear what sounds like a train like right next to them so their immediate thought is oh it's an avalanche or something right? Yeah. So they start to freak out and they're in each other's ears screaming but neither

one can hear the other and then the sound just stops and nothing's happened. Like you're just you're in the woods you hear the rapture and then nothing nothing changed. That was a definitive moment where this is like my walk way situation you know what I mean and we're done that's like that's like that's like a personal

because the thing about that that's that's like Russell's personal story that's not hearsay that's not them talking to a suspect or like you know somebody involved in a story that's Russell's own experience to where it's like after everything you've heard and that happens to you how do you stay how do you stay that would be insane and it's weird because They mix in some stuff where it's like, yeah, and then one of the entries two in part three is, so you have the deafening crying baby thing. They can't hear. It's like basically Jacob's Ladder. It kind of reminded me of like...

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty similar. Yeah, yeah. It's like a weird Jacob's Ladder experience, which if you guys haven't seen that movie, it's a Tim, I almost said Robinson. That's the guy from, I think you should leave. What's the actor's name? It's something Robinson, right? Is it, is it? I think it's Tim Robbins, Tim Robbins.

Tim and Rob, whatever. It's the guy from Shawshank Redemption. It doesn't matter. But the, you should watch the movie. But then they have those, like, horrifying things. They have all this child death. And then all of a sudden they throw in, like, yeah, a guy was afraid of a moose. I just thought it was cute.

Yeah, that is a funny part. I remember reading that and being like, I hate that you did this. Because at the same time, too, it also, to me, what was fun about this narratively was that you're introducing a thing of, like, maybe the author is, or maybe, like, Russell still isn't taking this seriously. Like, they could, Russell understands the consequences and the weight of what's going on, but I don't

think, because he's only had one thing happen to him, I think that he still hasn't really grasped how crazy this is. You know? Yeah. Well, I mean, like, in that same story to further push what you were saying about the loud noise, that's the one

where they hear the cry. So like, he's out there with this boy, that happens and then they're searching into the night because it's a young kid who went missing and they hear what sounds like a little girl crying and they're getting closer to it and then they eventually realize it is not the sound of a girl naturally crying it is a loop like it's being played on the recording of a kid crying it's like the same sniffle yell breath yeah it's in a circle like something mimicking a few seconds of a kid crying and then they run out there so the train noise and the looped recording of a crying happened at the same time and you're like all right

I'll clock in tomorrow I'll see you then yeah exactly damn man well are we still going to long john solvers after that I just like to think that Russell goes to nothing but like extremely popular like commercial all right so we went to red robin last week but I guess I'll meet you at uh long john silvers tonight so I'll see you though on our clock in early tomorrow man he has never been inside of a fine dining establishment no oh absolutely Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Which in this story still, we get, we get other, we get one more staircase one.

But it's them actually this time, they break protocol and actually go and investigate the staircase. Yeah, this is a friend of Russell's who's doing this. Yeah. Yes. Or, yeah, sorry, this is them telling them what it was going on. Right. And he basically talks about like how, like, eerie it was, how silent it was. but then also like the overwhelming sense of like as they say like wrongdoing like they felt like they were doing something wrong or being watched potentially like it's kind of like when you do something you're like this feels bad like i have a bad feeling um but this is like also you begin to discover the potential links between his actions and the failure to find a missing person if that makes sense like yeah yeah he's so like the the buddy describes he goes to the stairs and he walks up him which you're not supposed to do

I really like this moment when he's standing at the top of the stairs he realizes all the noises have disappeared like the sound of the birds sound of the leaves stuff like that just quit and it's completely silent so he starts to make noises to himself and he can't hear

like he can't hear anything up there so he freaks out runs down the stairs leaves and then when they get back to because the reason he was out there in the first place is they were looking for a missing kid they get back to the ranger station and one of the older rangers starts yelling at him

and says you went up them, didn't you? And Russell's friends, like, what are you talking about? And the older guy says, I know you went up them because we didn't find the kid. They're nowhere to be found. You went up them, didn't you? And that adds an interesting layer to it, right? Like there's, even if it doesn't happen to you,

consequences will happen somewhere if you go with the stairs. Yeah, almost like a weird butterfly effect. Yeah. weird kind of thing of like it's repercussions of doing something and also the text that they use or like the verb like the way that it's written too is that it's not inquisitively of like question mark you went up them didn't did you go up them it's them just point blank being like you went up the stairs yeah you went up them didn't you you did it so and i think that like it also goes to show that like this isn't the first time that someone's done that like they have records of it but no one is just talking about it it's so weird that the hierarchy of people aren't just like yeah if you go up them X will happen. They're just like not giving any information, which to me starts to lead into like weird conspiracy stuff of like, who

is at the top of this that doesn't want anybody to talk about any of these things, especially if you work for the place. It's that damn pay, dude. They cover dental, man. What more do you want? I'm telling you, yeah. We do dental and eyes, right? Oh, man. Where do I sign up? Oh, my God.

Sign me up. Oh, my God. there is this part this part later in the story where one of the older guys is describing it and says yeah the part service used to make you like sign an NDA around it

but then they realize they don't have to because no one wants to talk about what's happening anyway which leads into like gosh what is what do some of these people know about

that they're not willing to talk about yeah very love craftian with that line especially like very like just the horrors of what you find like of the unimaginable or the unseen which is really fun

it's like which also what a flex we don't need india's because people don't even want to talk about what they see you don't want talk about the giant stair things i was like really even just the legality of that you don't want one person to sign that are you serious but the rest of the stories in this are it's the disabled boy who goes missing and they find his body kind of in a different location too yeah yeah they find him wrapped around uh an ice figure of a man like he's he's dead in the for one he's been missing three months but he looks like he's been dead for three days in the snow yeah

And then he's holding like a little ice sculpture of what looks like a person. That's just like, yep, that's it. That's how they found him. The ice sculpture I thought was interesting. And it's just the just, it's like the funny thing, and I know I keep saying this, it's just the idea that you hear these stories and you've had things that happened to you as well. You're just like, yeah, and they found the disabled boy. And yep, he had an ice sculpture.

So that was kind of a weird one. What's another? Let me look at my role of that. It's like how, you have so many stories run for your life, for the love of God. And the last one was the screaming figure, the encounter with the screaming figure guy, describes a colleague encounter, a colleague's encounter with a screaming figure in the woods, initially thought to be a mountain lion. The figure takes an impossibly long step towards the colleague who then flees,

which I love that visual. Impossibly long step. It made me think of like a senior palo cartoon or something. Yeah, like somebody standing. and it's like a cartoonishly like leg extending it just it gave me like uh especially when senior palo when he did the uh medella catalog cartoon it gave me that kind of vibe for but also for people who haven't like grown up near like rural or like farming land um a mountain lion sounds like a like a crying woman and then vice versa with like coyotes and foxes sound like

crying children so it's uh it it to me this brought me back to a place when i grew up more on more on that cattle farm property and it just it actually scared the shit out of me because that crying sound is so indistinguishable like when you hear it you're like oh my god they're really out tonight but the idea that this that the figure who's making this like mountain lion coo like you know feral cat crying sound takes that impossibly long step it's just really fun it also like it also plays into the idea of like how delirious are these people like is the is the force doing something to them it kind of that's what kind of made me think too like is the forest that's a good point i hadn't thought about before yeah is the forest once again as i remember i brought this up a little earlier was like is the force an entity that is playing games with its victims which i thought was kind of cool just like a really weird way of like almost giving them like hallucinations and doing this stuff, which the reason I thought that too was that if the forest is like its own entity and doing this thing, that would explain people being like, how did they travel so far? And it's probably like the people didn't think that they were traveling as far as they really were. And it's leading them in straight lines just like miles and miles and perception of time gets changed. But it's just like all because they're like almost hypnotized or they're like controlled by something that the forest is putting out into the air or something. Who like who knows? I haven't thought about that, but maybe everything they're seeing isn't literal.

Maybe part of it is the implication the woods is putting on them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, everything that we've heard so far is all either hearsay and also even... Look at you looking at this for different directions, different assumptions, ideas. Wow. Look at that. I found out, not only did I find out your backstory, but I'm finding out the backstory of all these people as well.

I am, I'm like, it's like L.A. Noir, especially you. You know I would have loved if we were in person Is I would have loved to see that You know L.A. Noir, the game Yeah, I'm familiar, yeah. If I would have given you that question about the dead body to see your face To see like how it would have been the reaction

You know how you can tell if somebody's lying In that game Where like their face gets all scrunched up Or weird and it's like, yeah, definitely I would have loved to see Well, don't worry Do you do your videos because you're trying to see a dead body And you're like, no

No Of course not. Shut up. Stop asking about it. So one's going to make a rock star 3D model of your body and do that animation. It's going to be so good. Maybe you should check with off. Yeah, yeah.

Everything that we've seen so far, though, has been hearsay. And even Russell's experience was so, like, abstract. Like, it's so, like, it's so, like, ethereal in nature, even. Just like the train sound, they hear these things, but they can't hear each other. To me, it seems like something is fucking with people's perception. like it's fucking with the reality not saying that it's like maybe interdimensional travel but to me it feels like

something is happening to the individual like the landscape isn't changing but the individual is under some kind of hypnosis is how I see it that's an interesting point into part four which is all of I'm pretty sure this one's all of Katie's story or these are just different people stories Katie's accounts yeah yeah so

he mentions that he went to a training weekend where there's a bunch of like other expert you know search and rescue people stuff like that and they each have their own weird stories of stuff's happened. Which, this is a real, uh, this is a real, sea shanty kind of roundtable of horrible things to talk. What we're doing right now.

Exactly. It feels like, it feels like all of the stories, it's just like, yep, this happened. And they kind of like take a swig from their, you know, like the, the boat is just rocking and they're just like, remember that, that climber's gruesome death? You remember that one? It's like, oh, yeah. It just feels like, it feels like, it feels like a story circle. I don't want to be a part of it at all.

But, I mean, KD stories are all like the trash. tragic, like the family accident on the mountain, which is the, that's the snow. Yeah, a family snowshoeing goes off mapped, causing a fatal accident. They fall 300 feet down a slope, resulting in the immediate death of the parents and one child. You know, real lighthearted, fun stuff. Surviving children endure horrific ordeals. One freezes of death, seeking help. The other found injured.

So only one person survives there. Horribly tragic. Horrible. Horrible. Yeah, and again, it's nothing explicitly supernatural. It's just a horrifying. story of what could happen. It's just once again giving reality, giving

real stories put in and then it just blindsied you. That becomes the fun thing is when you read something that's so mundane or normal you almost expect you start, at least for me when I was reading which is this interesting, I know if it happened to you, is that even whenever they do these things where it's just like

oh yeah, it was a tragic accident, almost every time I'm like hmm, I don't know. What caused them to go over? You know, I start to conspiracy I start to conspiracyize with myself of like with all this bits of information it almost feels like there could be no human error. Like it feels like there is something controlling every

aspect of people's actions. Because we know so much, right, about like what's going on in the woods that we know that there's some malicious force happening. So yeah, any of these otherwise inconspicuous stories could be something more. I think my favorite one of Katie's stories was the climber who disembowled

like the disembowed climber but he was disembowed by his own an axe and the team discovers the mutilated body under a cliff intestines all spilled out. The horrific scene deeply disturbs even an experienced SAR officer, which I was like, really? This is the thing

that, you know, this person with their intestines spilled out, it's like you've seen all these other things and it's like, well, I got to see his gutty works. It's freaked me out. Even if you're like on the job, you see a guy gourd to death. How many dead bodies have I seen?

Just because hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Yes, the people on this job have seen some stuff, more so than, like, is expected for a normal workforce. If you saw someone gourd to death, like, intestines ripped out by a pickax on top of a mountain, you might be like, hmm, that's kind of upsetting. I'm saying that it is upsetting. I'm just saying that they put a real emphasis on, like, he's like, oh, this one really got to me. And I'm like, out of all the things I've heard, I've seen people take a cartoonish. long steps. Oh, oh, you're saying our character.

You're saying Russell shouldn't have any. Okay, all right. I'm saying that every officer or S-A-R, like, S-A-R officer in this story. So K-D here should not be affected. Because they've seen. You're talking about our S-C-P Foundation. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes.

The reader obviously can, but I'm just saying when they take moments to be like, K-A-D's like, yeah, this one really messed me up. I'm like, oh, really, this is the one that got you. Yeah, because she immediately follows it up with, like, talking to the devil. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Even the one, what's the next one? The young boy, yeah, with the fuzzy man, whatever.

Yeah, okay, all right, right, point made, point, man, you win, you win. Yeah, so it's just weird. It's like, oh, that was, you know, that one got to me. It's like, Katie, shut the fuck up. Shut up. I've been in hell listening to these stories, and now you're like, well, seriously, the pickax that one

got to me if I'm being honest that's okay all right you win you end that one yeah the next

one they talk that gady talks about the fuzzy man that boy goes missing uh

they find the boy months later still alive right is that what it or no no they find uh the same boy

reappears in good condition but his brother disappears in mere seconds is the is the is the let me look at

so I get this right I think this is the one where one kid went missing, then the parents go back to like honor the site their child went missing. And then that kid also goes missing. Yes, it's this one. Yeah. Yeah, because they're out

bury picking. And the whole thing was that the kid goes missing, but the kid that was missing before comes back and he's in perfect condition, but the kid that they came there with is now lost. Or he disappears. And the boy who comes back recounts the fuzzy man which is a blurry eyeless figure in the woods

who cared for him and said he wasn't the right kid Yeah which is terrified It implies that this fuzzy man that kept this kid alive for a while Even remarks that whenever it got dark out That the fuzzy man made it brighter Whatever that means So like this fuzzy man I think he also mentions that he doesn't have eyes

At one point Yeah he says blurry and eyeless I figure in the woods And imagine this man Which the kid, once again, he's not freaking out. He's just like, he told me I wasn't the right kind. Which he doesn't say kid. He says the right kind.

What does that mean? Yeah, that's right. That's right. But it implies that. What does the fuzzy man sound like? Well, what's really creepy about it is they're like, Katie's like, oh, by fuzzy, do you mean hairless? Do you mean like Bigfoot?

And he's like, no, he kind of looked like when you blur your eyes and everything looks fuzzy. He looked like that. Yeah. without us weird yeah almost like formless like he it's like a not like a not like uh what is it like completely formed like basically like static or something like yeah he's like made of static or something made of the essence of blurry whatever that means yeah and so he he go that kid comes back but then his brother disappears implying that his brother was the right kind because

they never see that kid again uh yeah that's the that's the that's the that's the that's the assumption but you never know i mean that kid could come back as well i feel like uh i'm not gonna lie if i was if i was that kid i'd be fucked that would fuck me up that this weird static man didn't think i was the right kind that that would be your problem with it that would well as a kid i would be getting rejected by the static man getting rejected by the eyeless man who can't see me mind you he's just this is just him just kind of like he pokes my fat stomach and he's like, you are not the right kind. And now my skinny-ass cute brother gets missed.

And I'm like, okay, dude, fuck that guy. You know? Like, that just, I was like, yeah, that's bullshit. That would fuck me up if I was a kid. Body dysmorphia, dude. For real. And then the last one with KD's two, KD's story, basically it's just like she gets lost.

Or KD gets lost and, which is weird because, obviously, an expert of the woods and it's like a lost where it's like oh i don't know where i'm at i think that it the way that they describe it is more like i had no idea where i was at like on earth kind of thing it's like totally disoriented like what i don't even know where i'm at in the world kind of thing like it doesn't even feel familiar whatsoever but they katie hears a croaky internal voice urging her to eat leading to near self harm with a hunting knife so basically like almost cannibalizing herself and she's days later, having traveled dangerously far with no memory of elapsed time, which basically

she had, I think it's two days, two or three days, right? She thinks it's been like an hour, and then the guy who finds her, it's been two days. And also, when she sees him, she's so hungry, she pulls a knife on him. It's like she has this cannibalism set into herself. Yeah. She didn't know either. She was like, I don't know what came over me, but it was just like her, it was like her gut instinct just to be like, I'm going to cut this dude up and eat them.

Which who hasn't been there, dude? Just keep going to. Who is? I can't deal with you right now. We cut to EW's story, which is a mysterious death of a boy near the stairs, which I think this is our first time ever hearing about a dead body near the stairs. This is the first time the stairs directly cause a death. I mean, it's implied with a guy who walked up him, but this is the first time there's like a body there, yeah.

Sure. Which is an 11-year-boy named Joey vanishes near a river leading to a puzzling search. The star finds his body by a set of stairs in a remote area, curled up and dead. Post-mortem examination reveals inexplicable hole punch-like holes in his organs with no external wounds, which I love how they describe that. They say his organs are like Swiss cheese.

So gross. So gross and so good. I love that. I mean, like, what's interesting about that whole story is they describe a kid goes missing, and they do a search for him. And as they're doing the search operation, they like the dogs will pick up a scent and then lose it then pick it up then lose it and when they look at the map to see how what order they're doing it it's in a checkerboard segment as it describes so if you imagine a checkerboard with like the red and black spaces in the red spaces the dog smell when they pass into the black spaces they lose the scent and they get into red and they pick it up again like it further leads into the idea that there's some kind of dimensional rift happening in this one. it's very cool it's a very cool idea and then when they find the kid himself dead at the bottom of the stairs

his holes i mean his organs are almost full of these checkerboarded holes it looks like a hole punch something stabbed him across his organs it's like but no punctures through the skin though mind you yeah yeah yeah his skin externally totally fine but inside his organs have been shredded it's like he got pulled through some kind of dimensional rift it's very creepy with all these conspiracy things too i'm surprised that in this level of the story so far far because even the mortician sees it right and the mortician's just like yeah i've never seen anything like this before my life right yeah yeah i'm surprised there isn't more things about people like teams taking the body like almost like because it like like like we said before it feels like there's

people that are trying to stop this information so i'm surprised so far in the story here there isn't something where it's just like oh we have to have call this these people to pick it up or something like almost somebody interfering with that information to the outside world which maybe it's supposed to be alluded that you know the mortician maybe cuts into it but maybe like no one else really sees it but i don't know something especially with that that distinguished of an injury because so far you know people are like missing or it's accidents but this is like just on a whole different level i mean this is like our first extremely paranormal kind of like surreal kill that's confirmed by someone else outside of the forest which is kind of interesting

then last but not least we have PB PB warnings you know more this is another staircase one PB shares disturbing incidents related to the mysterious stairs in the woods describes a man's hand being sliced off in a woman's brain vessel bursting upon

interacting with the stairs talks about the unpredictable but invariable tragic consequences of engaging with these stairs and emphasizes the impossibility of finding the same stair twice and the eerie phenomena phenomena surrounding them so we do get into back we're getting into like back rooms kind of like parallel you know uh you like you're saying dimension parallel dimension type stuff you never see the same stairs twice right it mentions that

you walk up them and your hand can just disappear maybe your brain explodes they're clearly not like not only are the stairs not supposed to be there visually in the sense of the reality that they're currently in. They shouldn't be there. They cause glitches almost when they come into contact. Which I'm telling you, man, once again, when I was reading this, I was thinking, I think that the stairs are just like

it feels like it is what the forest is like presenting to you as something like it's masking it as something. You know what I mean? Like almost like it's resembling a staircase that maybe you've seen before in your life or something. It's like taking into your memories and it's like a staircase that maybe you've seen before.

But it's disguising some of their contraption that you're walking on or like entering or something along those lines i just i think that i think that there's something more to play than just like having it be interdimensional travel or something i feel like it's uh it's like masking math it's like some kind of masking situation in reality or whatever i don't know interesting yeah interesting interesting and then part five we're getting we're closing in dude we're closed we're over halfway we're moving we're We're chugging along. We're getting through it. We're chugging along, which is the firefighter's horrific discovery in a tree, which a firefighter previously experienced in tree trimming, is called for rescue operation to retrieve a child from a massive tree.

Upon retrieving the child, he discovers a macabre scene. The child's body is entangled in the branches, intestines gruesomely hanging from his mouth in the other end, draped over the branches like twisted decorations. The child's eyes are missing, indicating a violent end, and his swollen tongue is infested with flies. shocked and unable to physically handle the body the firefighter dislodges it from the tree with a stick disturbed by the thought of carrying it down. This is definitely the most brutal body horror

of the entire thing. It's like the most violent description in the whole series. It's like a very true detect. They described as like if a vacuum was like if the kid got sucked into a vacuum and everything got ripped out of him at once and that's just like draped across the top of the trees. Like there's again no explanation

no stuff given it. It's left up to the reader's imagination, what could have caused this scene? The infested with flies part is pretty, pretty fucking disgusting. Like, that's pretty horrid. I think that, like, what's interesting about this one is that they've included so many, like, accidents that when I read it at first, the infested fly thing is probably a bit hard to sell, but it almost reads like a murder in a way, like, a really fucked up murder. It's how I kind of read it at first, which is just like a violent circumstance in the

these woods, but I don't know. Did you read this one as paranormal? Did you read this one more as like, like some kind of grinsly? Because of everything that's happened so far, I read it as paranormal. I understand why you could just read it as like a sick, messed up serial killer kind of thing. But given, given the past of everything that's happened, I did in fact, I did in fact, it's paranormal. I mean, it could be even be something too where it's like, it could even be something where someone is, you know, some kind of, one of these monsters did it as well. Once again, though, I read it in a way where it's like a murderer affected by whatever he was affected with in this forest or like led to do this kind of thing in a craze or something

and we just haven't found that body yet. But it's hard to say too because like I said, at this point in the story too, I'm still hoping that they introduce some more real elements because we are getting more fantastical. We're introducing a lot of new things. So it'd be kind of cool to have still bits of realism this far in to really make sure that. the story is grounded that the things that we're doing now aren't going so over the top because you know as you're writing these things continuously you have to evolve and you have to showcase bigger and crazier things as you crescendo to your finale but i think that you do need to still ground yourself in the reality that this is a job that someone would show up to and that

there are still real things that can happen so i think maybe it's even me just like almost i mean this is fucked up to say but wanting it to be a murder to just be like it's a horrible reality of something that could happen in the real world just taking the setting in the forest but the next one is the veteran's observation of the stairs and the faceless man encounter we get two we get a nice combination here dude

yeah so a veteran a veteran discusses encountering stairs in the wilderness including a particularly unsettling type that appear upside down like a surreal remnant of a tornado's aftermath this one's double weird because like you can almost quantify a staircase left behind. You cannot quantify an upside down staircase in the middle of the ones. And he mentions that they're like more rare than the than the regular

staircases. But if the normal ones cause the damage that we've heard so far, what would an upside down one do? It's a, yeah, I don't know. It's a terrifying idea. It makes me think that like even if you, if it's that surreal and that like manipulated in our own reality, it makes me think that even if you like look at it that you would be affected or something you know what i mean like it feels like yeah like its reach or its effect is has to be greater somehow because its presentation is so absurd and so distorted i yeah i really like that yeah there's another one where uh the veteran recounts a personal encounter with a figure lacking a face the entity moves with unnatural speed and silence approaching him by a river this is similar

to the other the tales that we've heard so far in the story of like these people appearing without a face. And I think that what was interesting about this one too is that the entity displays a ghastly feature where its throat opens up like a mouth smiling grotesquely and it speaks in a disturbing and unnatural manner. Which I like to tie in with this one

because it kind of gave, because you know before we said like it's like a muffled scream and it was basically like skin draped over a face. I'm wondering now whenever we got to this part where I was like, oh, I wonder if this is the same thing. and the scream was coming from its throat. And if it just sounded, you know, unnatural just because it was must, maybe like a, what is it, what is it called whenever, like, somebody's the smoking thing

and you put the hole in their neck? What the fuck is that called? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Trachyotomy? Yeah, it's from the, the ectomy or whatever, but I forget what the name of the actual. I want to say it's a trachectomy and how it was positive. Yeah, that's the procedure. Is that also what the holes called afterwards?

Yeah, I, I mean. I know what you're talking about the voice box thing. But it's, it's that voice box. saying, so I'm wondering, because he says it's in an unnatural manner, so I'm wondering if it's the same thing, or is it like a series of things? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, whenever I read it, I think that it's, uh, I think it's probably the same entity is, is what I, is what I'm thinking, the same kind of faceless ghoul, yeah, walking around, but, you know, and part five ends with the woman's childhood encounter with the

mutilated man. And that one's a cool story. That one's a cool story. I do, I do like this one too. I also like that it's, uh, it's like a childhood memory. I don't know why. It's just creepy. It's always something about introducing, like, your child, like the recollections of when you're a kid, if it translates to reality. Because usually that stuff is always distorted. But if it's something as traumatic as this, you almost want to believe that it's true. Yeah. Which the woman shares a childhood memory of exploring a recently burnt forest with her friend.

That's a fun. That's a fun friend activity. Just a great time. Yeah. You know that beautiful forest? Yeah, it's burnt. Let's go look at it. Where they encounter a man with.

parts of his face horrifically removed the man bleeding profusely and dressed in strangely outdated clothing is disoriented and terrified warning against being touched lest he be taken back to an unknown frightful place the incident leaves a lasting scar on the woman and her friend leading them to forever avoid the woods and never speak of the encounter again which also the guy whenever he says don't touch me or i'll be like you know it'll happen to me again he like runs off just sprints He just gets the hell out of there. Which, once again, I'm telling you, man, I feel like, I just feel like this forest is doing something. I feel like it's like with outdated clothes, which is it, which I think the author is trying to basically say that like time, I mean, time travel, right?

Yeah, she describes it as a great, they're wearing a gray coat that has. red trimming on it, which is I think that was some initially I thought Confederate because a gray coat, but that doesn't make sense because they describe the story as taking place in Maine. So,

maybe, I mean, also the forest displaces stuff, so it could have been a Confederate. It could have been like a revolutionary war garb or something like that. Basically a soldier from some previous American war who she mentions it that there is blood

on his kneecaps on his forehead and on his nose like they're cut off implying that either he was walking and like something cut off the front of his face and his knees or maybe he fell down and like his knees and face got like cut by something what my theory with that is maybe back in like because he says that or she says the character the character I believe here's a woman recounting the story when she was a child that this soldier ran up to her

and started shaking her and asked where his company is, like what's happening. And when she pulled out her phone or some mechanical device, he started freaking out and ran away. So I think what happened is this soldier was in like, you know, Civil War, Revolutionary War, something like that. And he came across a staircase in the woods. He walks to the top of the stairs.

And similar to how it was described earlier, your hand can just get cut, clean off if you reach too far out of the stairs. He was standing near the stairs. was standing near the top and then this imaginary like the blade effectively of it it's like i imagine it almost as like a piano wire shooting up from the stairs itself yeah they sliced it sliced it sliced his nose sliced his forehead sliced his knees and all of a sudden he was in the modern age and then he runs he finds this girl freaks out because of technology runs off

and who knows what happens to him i think it was a time transportation because of his own encounter with the stairs what led you to believe so do you do you think that it's just the army just because of his get-up? Yeah, yeah. She describes it as, hold on, I can find that. Because, well, you're right, it's like a gray outfit with the red trim. But to me, whenever I read that, I almost read that as like an older, uh, sorry uniform. Oh, you might be, you might be right about that, actually.

I think, I thought that it might have been like, I think, because I was right there with you, too, though. I do think that he traveled up a staircase, got sliced and he went way too far instead of just his arm and stuff his whole body got transported out into a different time and now it's this guy who is like who knows i mean it could just been i remember why i think it was a military because he kept asking about his unit well even when i read you even when i read unit it still made me think of like a like the sar like his that's true that's his his not i mean not platoon it's like his unit you know his unit number in the search of rescue yeah that's very true he had a yeah here's the phrasing he had some kind of weird gray cloth jacket

and almost formal pants on. And the jacket had these weird buttons and red borders on it. Yeah, I want, I mean, it's very ambiguous. I mean, I think that, like, it could, it could very well be something as old as, like, 1800s or even 1700s or something like that. Yeah. To me, whenever I read it, yeah, I just, I just imagine, like, a way or, like, 60s, like 60s, SAR. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Deal or something like that. You know what I mean? Just kind of, like, an older material, but it's still formal in that way. But yeah, I just thought it was like, oh, this is a dude from a different time. Yeah, and I was definitely a man out of time either way. Yeah, and I was trying to read back through, but there was no other stories because I was hoping that when I was like going back through that it would be like, oh, this is about like an older SAR person talks about like one of their colleagues going missing. And I'm like, oh, that would have been a tie in. But who knows?

I mean, it's just some guy out of time showing up traumatizing these people. and then now they never have never stepped anywhere near the woods again at all, which is smart. I say, finally, thank God. Someone has one crazy thing happen, and they're like, that's enough, I'm good. But they haven't been tempted by the pay yet, the pay or the benefits. They haven't been tempted by the massive pay that the park service is putting out. The massive, massive pay. You'll figure it out one day, is what you says.

That leads us into part six, six of eight. We're rounding the final turn here, which is the part six is the rookie conversation revealing disturbing SAR incidences, because, you know, what we've had so far isn't disturbing enough, but a friend shares an unsettling search and rescue case, including rapid, unexplainable deaths and bizarre circumstances, describes finding a man with a fatally crushed skull in an area devoid of rocks or hard objects, and recalls discovering a woman in a desert. who died of drowning with her lungs full of water and no nearby water resources. Really, by this point, I think in part six, it's really ramping up the dimensional travel stuff. A lot of people that shouldn't be this area, are in this area, i.e., you know, like head crushed by presumably rocks, no rocks or any hard, like basically like in a pasture of grass. And then even a person drowning in a desert and their body is full of water. So once again, we're just getting more teleportation stuff.

We get the tragic case of a young man with Down syndrome, goes missing under mysterious circumstances as well, found severely injured in the canyon, mentions a little sad boy wanting to play and trade, quote unquote, trade, and dies after sharing haunted last words about being cold and longing for his mother. Just horribly, horribly tragic, which I wonder too, coincidentally, I wonder if just from generally, really reading this there's there's there's more than one i think there's like maybe four or five maybe even six people with like mental mental illness of some kind being affected and being perpetrated there i know there's been some movies that that has been like in stephen king's dream catcher the person who can like interdimensionally talk to people is a down syndrome child and i don't know if they're trying to link that as well that like because of this uh mental illness that they're able to communicate or do something with these people.

I don't know if there's some kind of narrative there, but just food for thought. Another one is a senior rangers disturbing story of a severed hand, a portion of the... I like how I come back and you're talking about Down syndrome. Well, it happens a lot. It happens a lot. Sure. Whatever you say. Did you?

The place will be here in shortly. Don't worry. I was actually just talking about the entire movie synopsis of radio. I hope that was fine. Okay. I'm figured. Did you hear what I had to say, though, about the Down syndrome, this entire Reddit thread, I think there's five or six different cases of maybe four or five mentally ill children or people.

Having some, there is a through line of... There is, and I was trying to compare it to... Did you ever watch the, or read, or watch Stephen King's Dream Catcher? Yes, yeah. So in that movie, the whole correlation with that is, that because of his mental illness he's able to talk with this like out like otherworldly monster that's been plaguing these people's dreams so i didn't know if this was trying to do something similar where it's like because of their circumstance and they don't have similar

you know like because of their abnormalities with their you know uh mental illnesses are they connected in some different way do they get some kind of different perception of this thing? Are they able to communicate with whatever they're doing more? I mean, with this one, it's tragic about the little boy wanting to play and trade. It's more peaceful, which we'd have to go back through and check again, but I don't think any of the other ones are also super deranged. If anything, I think that they're all somewhat kind of like peaceful by nature, I guess. But of course, he dies with his haunting last words, longing for his mom. It's a very, very, sad very sad one but i i just thought that was an interest like thinking about it now this

far in the story it's just it's just a lot of different coincidences there i don't know if it's and there was that part if i recall right you may have just talked about this while i was replacing the battery but wasn't there a section where it kind of implies that he kind of gave his life for someone else i believe so yeah yeah there's something about um urgency he was unable to function alone. It's when the search and rescue officer is talking to him. He says, hold up where it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was crying and he said something about 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 then he closed his eyes and he woke up again. He was in the canyon. So it's like this man like went with this child. and it also implies there's some entity

in the forest collecting children collecting people for whatever reason because there was also the story earlier with the two brothers that disappeared

and one wasn't yeah the right kind and the other one was different and here we have a story of a little boy taking this man away and wanting to trade so he can go home

so for whatever reason something in the woods is kind of collecting people yeah so one of the entities which is interesting because there's several I wonder how much of these which I guess

whenever we're done talking about because we're almost done talking about all the parts we can talk about i have a couple through lines that i want to talk about but just to wrap up part six there's also the encounter with the back flipping man which i just i thought this one was kind of funny that one's pretty good while searching for the mountain lion an officer encounters a man performing unnatural backflips through the forest the man approaches rapidly ignoring warnings and warning shots then flees after the shot is fired the bizarre behavior and agility of the man leave the officers deeply unsettled which i agree

can you imagine seeing a guy doing profusely fast back flips through the forest and he only runs away until you fire a pistol he's like oh shit he like runs off i thought that was really funny i like that one a lot it's pretty good did you uh did you do the part about the severed hand in the tree yeah okay cool all right mm-hmm it's interesting too where it's described as like growing out of the middle of a tree it's there's something about this park where it feels like they are collecting flesh almost right collecting data in a sense for these faceless people that walk around.

It's like they're trying to kind of almost copy-paste human features into different parts of the park to either put on these faceless figures or whatnot. And they keep getting stuff wrong, a hand popping out of a tree. It describes later that one of the park rangers encountered someone whose face looked too big for their head. It's like they're learning what people are like. That also lines up with a lot of the noises they make, the crying on loop, stuff like that. It's like skin walkers almost trying to.

you learn how to be human or the entity of the park itself trying to learn to be human but they keep making mistakes trying to mimic things that they hear in responses of like an entity that is learning a new species almost trying to capture the there's also similar to that in that same story where the girl is talking about going to the burnout forest and encountering the old you know soldier search and rescue worker whatever she mentions that they saw the skeleton of a deer but they didn't go near it because the deer's antlers didn't look right. I don't know if that's implying that this deer was some kind of supernatural entity or if it was again another example of the woods creating something abnormal on accident. Yeah, I always wondered. I wish that we got

more description of what the antlers, what the antlers looked like. Like almost like if, I don't know. Like I almost think that it's like instead of like regular antler bones, like is it like is it pieces of human skin like another pieces of the deer's bone structure that manifested into the antlers like almost thought it like when i initially thought of it too it was like you know almost thinking of like maybe like someone's rib cage replaced on top of like the deer's head or something like the way the curvature of that just something odd you know like or it's like well that looks right but it's not so it's uncanny and it has that you know people but obviously people wouldn't also just be like, oh, it's a

rib cage or who knows what it is. You know, it's just something a little more interesting. I wish we had a little more visual information there. Even if it wasn't like fully descriptive, but just enough to kind of like titillate the senses, I think. Going into

part seven, we have some more cryptids here and the rake and the windigo, which is fun. Which is the, yeah. That's right of my L. He ha.

The narrator touches on frequently asked topics about cryptids such as the rake and a creature described in the folklore as a humanoid figure with grotesque features and the windigo, a mythical creature in Native American folklore, often associated with cannibalism, insatiable greed, and cultural taboos. So once again, the Russell here kind of talking about, you know, talking directly to the audience, just kind of describing some of the stuff. And admits to limited knowledge but acknowledges stories that seem loosely related to these legends. emphasizes the need for practical approach in the wilderness to maintain a sense of normalcy and avoids of coming to fear and paranoia. So basically them being like, well, I'm not going to read in all the stuff and just assume that these things that I'm seeing are associated with these legends, etc. But can admit to like, yeah, I mean, some of it might be similar, but I'm not going to like dive into it. Which I don't know. Do you agree with that sentiment?

Do you agree that like, like by not researching yourself into that? that that brings normality to your job if you see all that crazy stuff? So hold up, phrase that question again. Do I think it brings normality to see that weird stuff? Is that what you're saying? Russell is saying that I'm not going to investigate into these cryptids that you guys are saying

that I'm not, that Russell's not knowledgeable of. And he's not going to research it because he wants to keep a sense of normality and not cause paranoia and fear. hear yeah yeah i think that is true to agree they even discuss that at the point when they're i think it was the old service ranger talking about like all the stuff that can go wrong with the stairs in the woods he kind of alludes to the idea that maybe people won't talk about it because once they acknowledge it they have to deal with the fact that it's real so in a sense maybe it's the

same way with like these windigo creatures and things like that maybe it's just something that you don't want to look at directly almost like a weird kind of like parallels too with like uh just for viewers to maybe comprehend a bit better too like kind of like demons in movies or something like that or like demons it's like acknowledging it gives it more power

in the physical world or something along those lines I think that like by acknowledging it and by like giving more of your attention to it it feeds off that paranoia or feeds off your attention and it kind of like is like

reeling you in in some kind of way so yeah yeah but the KD comes back for this one and talks about it's their windagu entity that they came across. Actually, in this thing, too, we actually get a, we get our first, I don't, I think this might be our first time that they ever talk about at actual location,

which KD shares a story from her friend H about a camping trip near the Warm Springs Reservation and Central Oregon. I think that's the first time we ever get like an actual. It, like, we get hints about stuff about like, oh, well, it's in an area with a lot of mountains and terrain, there's moose

there, so we know it's kind of like P&W region, but here it's actually described. earlier there was the friend's story in Maine that was said but that's not described to be this area Katie's friend's story is kind of with the idea that it's related to this area and it's in Oregon so it kind of confirms suspicions of this being somewhere

in the Rockies or like Yellowstoneish area and I mean this one is just them encountering a creature resembling a deer but walking on two legs with cloudy milky eye similar to Windigo's description but they ignore the creature and avoid interacting with it adhering to to his grandfather's warnings

about mysterious entities in the wilderness. So basically, this one felt like it was just like them seeing a windigo kind of entry, but them not really paying much attention to it and just hoping that it wouldn't fuck with them per their, you know,

grandfather being like, you don't want to mess with a deer that stands on two legs it'll fuck you up for real. Just don't even look at it. It's pretty good roll of thumb. That sounds really scary, Grandpa.

I don't care. It is scary as shit, just, I don't know, Twitter with your thumbs. Okay, thanks, great. That turns out he was right. Yeah, he was right, because they ignore it and it doesn't happen. He was right. It would be very hard not to be like, hey, you know? Like, that's what, what are you doing?

She describes it, and the kid who's like facing away from it, it's standing right behind him whispering to him. Oh, yeah. And the kid's like, so if you see that, you see that, cool new Edededonetti episode? That was pretty cool. So it's so funny because you're like shaking in fear. The thing's like,

whispering behind you. And it's like, so then Ed slaps his belly and he says pink belly. And then there was this other part where he says butter toast. It was the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life.

I imagine that's how your childhood went though. Literally. I remember the episode of Ed, that he scared me when Ed eats his mattress. I remember, I remember, I remember, I remember, I do remember that, I do remember that. I was revolted. It revolted me as a child. Do you remember that episode where, uh, I forget what the context was, but, um, Ed's parents takes away his stairs.

I, do you remember that? Yeah, because he lives in the basement, right? Yeah, he lives in a basement. So he's like, oh, I'm grounded. So my parents took the stairs. that's some liminal horror that's where the stairs especially because you never see the parents in that show

I know that there's so many fun experiences of like who the fuck took the stairs at his parents are just an entity that eats stairs yeah yeah we're getting okay we're getting to side trains we're almost done I don't thank you guys we're so close we're so close

we're having a lot of fun with this but just to rattle these last ones off we get another encounter with the faceless man which is like a friend of Russell while we're painting an information booth is approached by a man asking for directions initially perceives the man as normal but upon looking directly at him

sees that the man has a smooth, faceless surface creating a moment of intense fear and confusion the man disappears into the woods after the encounter leaving the appear that's a bit of an understatement which I was leaving an eerie impression which it's like I mean I really imagine that for a second

excuse me do you know where the local red robin is uh yeah man he's like has the face he's like he like just dead sprints into the woods how would you even process that a smooth a smooth faceless surface the way it describes pretty good too because they're like on top of a staircase painting yeah and then it's like they look over their shoulder they're faceless they blink and he has a face all the sudden and it's like huh was that my bad but then the guy's acting so weird that you're like uh maybe that wasn't my bad Like, it is a very well-played moment of tension. It's a well-played moment of tension,

and I think that, like, it escalates it perfectly by exactly. You're asking yourself, is this situation weird until the guy literally disappears into the woods? That's what you're like, no, I had every right to be weirded out by that. Okay, that makes sense. Imagine you're talking to a guy, and he's like, hey, could you give me a ride down the street? And you're like, no. And he's like, okay, and just walks off into the, like, into the tree line.

I'd be like, that man's on his own journey. man's taking shortcuts left and right He's going to a place I cannot follow The Trail Scout meeting with a disproportionately faced man Which is another individual recounts meeting an older man While scouting trails whose facial features were unnaturally large Compared to his head creating disturbed and surreal visual Which you've talked, we were talking about that earlier

But yeah that one's fun I like how simple this one is because it's just the idea Like, picturing my head, it was very comical, but that made it more scary to me is how funny his face would have been. Hello. Like, it's so... Scouting for these trails and just wanted to say hello.

It's just a giant man with like spaghetti strand hair. Could I offer you a peppermint? It honestly would look like one of your cartoons. It was. His face is too big for his head. Like one of your... What if you're purposely scary cartoons? It would be one of the ones, too.

Too much gum and his smile, extremely tiny teeth. yeah oh yeah yeah definitely like it's interesting too how it's described with like the way it's phrased too like his face was just too big for his head

not that his head was big his face was too big for it and you're thinking to yourself like what would that look like you know like the eyes the mouth it creates a very uncanny picture in your head I like it very well

it's very subtle I mean obviously the face isn't subtle but it's not like his face exploded it became a monster or something It's just like... It's not like some kind of jump scare. It's just the uncanny nature of the situation even. I mean, like, I imagine the disproportionate of his face, it isn't so cartoonish.

It's probably just awkward enough, you know? Yeah, and also, he goes back to that thing I talked about earlier, the idea that these monsters, these faceless creatures, wherever there, are trying to learn humans. Yeah. They're trying to learn what they look like, how they act. it all it actually since they're going from faceless to like just too big of a face it almost implies they're getting better at it which is scary yeah it's it's learning it's learning and it's adapting it's just the it's the simplicity it's like if each one of these people are asking for a ride to red robin you know that it hasn't learned that core aspect of like normal human conversation but visually it's getting better and that's what's crazy too is that then you're going to start seeing like normal people that are just acting slightly off and that's going to be way, way harder to comprehend, you know, or to even delineate between an actual person. So even if they don't get it perfectly right, like, an 80% perfect, like, replica is going to

feel like, yeah, this is just a fucking weirder that I've met a hundred times before at Walmart or something. Which the last two little parts of seven are the girl's sleepwalking to the stairs mysteriously. she kind of talks about, you know, speaks cryptically about needing to leave and mentions, quote, unquote, it being there. It doesn't really describe what it is. It's just it is there before waking up with no memory of the event. And then the last one is the child with a cognitive condition talks of communicating, or communicating stairs, which is a child with a cognitive condition disappears and is later found describing an encounter with mysterious stairs that communicated with him.

The child account suggests a supernatural aspect to the stairs And he felt he had never left his original spot And mentions the stairs wanting him to stay Which once again cognitive thing Now having another kind of interaction Or I would say almost peaceful interaction with this thing And now the stairs this time are Instead of wanting to trade

They're like I want you to stay I really wonder what that what that correlation is With like the weird So that one That encounter specifically is interesting because it's a young boy and he says that the stairs came up to him

so for one does that mean he walked away and he just thought that he was kind of floating or did the stairs physically like float through the woods

to get to you know I don't like to say float I like to think it's like dragging it on the ground like it's bulldozing through the woods wouldn't that be so much creepier though

it's like the breaking of branches and leaves it's like the sponge bob pop with the rock Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, just a nice Victorian staircase. Beautiful, unbelievable.

Pioneers used to ride these babies for miles. Patent it. Yeah, it's a fun little thing, but the idea of like the desperation of the staircase wanting him to stay. You said Victorian, I'm imagining like a marble staircase 20 feet high. It's playing like the British royal theme as it's going through the woods. Just taking out tricks. As it goes

It's breaking it And it's like Please stay And the point Describes it as calmly Like it's like now I'm not going to Please

Stay with me Like nice music It's just like toppling over These 400 year old trees No I don't I'm not going to I'm leaving Just like a snooty ass kid

And then To try to maintain what little bit of power we have left he says because it's about to devolve I can feel it he says that he kept saying that the stairs were like the campfire over and over maybe he's referring to the way

the fire started slow and got bigger like the stairs kind of manifested in front of him like they appeared maybe he means like with the fire came I don't know but that's a very that's a very haunting idea and then he says that he heard a sound so loud that he had to cover his ears, which reminds me of the story that Russell told earlier about the train noise that he heard.

Once again, it's just, unless you read it, obviously it doesn't, but the way that, like, when you read this, the way that these things kind of circle back and tie in are really fun. And it's not so much that we're getting more information, but it's just different experiences. And you get little hints of like just how other people, experience these things, which I find really rewarding. It's just, it's a subtle thing, but it's nice.

It's cool to not just, this crazy thing happened, and we never hear about it again. It's like, no, people have had experiences similar to other people. Like, it's not just a one-off crazy thing. It's like these things are existing in this forest. So, but this leads us to the final part, part eight, which is, it starts on. Yeah, let's go. Which Russell or the narrator acknowledges the unexpected level of attention their stories have received. By this point, it's probably extremely popular on R. slash no sleep.

It mentions being questioned about the mysterious stairs in the woods. Faces reprimand from superiors and is warned against speaking further about the stairs, indicating the sensitivity and secrecy surrounding the topic. So once again, kind of like stifling like we're not going to get any more of these. This is going to be probably my last post because my job that I just cannot seem to fathom leaving is saying what which also too by this time with the amount of secrecy behind it it kind of almost seems like they can't really leave like I imagine it's probably like something where it's like how does a person quit area 51 right yeah yeah like once you've been in for that

long you're stuck mm-hmm which uh yeah I mean it's like there's no way people are just going to let you leave with that information so maybe it's something where it's like I have to stay but it starts off with disturbing tales circulating among rangers, which as many stories are being shared among rangers, some too unsettling to forget. One story involves a young woman who disappeared, with only part of her tongue and lower jaw later found, cut with precision,

which makes you think of another staircase thing, makes you think that like some kind of nonditional traveling, like you're saying, with, like, the piano wire, like, just got cut right as soon as, like, maybe a dimension shift or something like that. Kind of like Cube, the movie Cube. Makes you think of that a little bit. It is familiar to that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Encounters with more black-eyed entities, which is the story circulated of black-eyed individuals in the woods, imitating natural sounds. One specific tale from a deer hunter details a terrifying encounter with a human-like figure composed of raw meat and hair, capable of mimicking sounds, including hunters' gunshots. That's one of my favorites.

That is my favorite. one of my favorites that's my favorite visual so good so good and i love that it's mimicking sounds which like the hunter's a gunshot i love that yeah love love yeah he says he says he says he's in his tent and then he sees what looks like a human face press into the side of the tent so good jumps out and he fires two shots in the air he looks behind him and it's something made he describes it as road kill shoved in the shape of a person and it kind of has the form of a face and it looks at him and makes the noise of the two gunshots he just did and then takes off into the woods.

Bro, it's like, it's again, like the woods are collecting flesh and trying to put together people. They're collecting flesh, and I think with this one too, with the way that they talked about the hair, it almost made me think that it was like a deer, like a deer meat, like forcely formed into the shape of a human. The way that they describe the hair being in there, it made me think it's almost like an inverse deer,

except like without the antlers and stuff, It's just, like, contorted and crushed into this, like, form. Totally unnatural. And also, the reason, too, with the gunshots and the hunter, it just made me think that that's another thing with, like, the hunter and the deer, etc., except the deer becomes the predator this time around. Kind of made me think that was the vibe. But it, I would say, without a doubt, it's probably my favorite visual,

and especially the way they describe it. Just such a fun collection. And it does, like you said, it goes to show that, like, the forest itself or something in the forest, collecting people? Is it made of some of these missing people? Who knows? It's so fun. I love it.

Yeah. It's great. The last two are the unnerving sightings and phenomena, which is a couple reports seeing a climber without gear, scaling a steep cliff, and then bizarrely snapping in half and leaping off the peak. This clamor... That one's so wild. It is very, very long.

Imagine seeing that. They're looking through binoculars, and they see a climber go to the top, do a an exaggerated wave at them snap in half and jump off the cliff and then Russell's like I can't do anything about it because ten other people have seen the same thing like what? Yeah it's like the

most intense free fall documentary or whatever the fuck that movie was or free climbing documentary whatever that we see just to see that and the cartoonish wave is so good but then to have 10 other people report that it's almost

is it the same person they're seeing too Yeah, 10 other people have seen That exact person go to the top Wave at them And keep in mind, this person's watching through binoculars So they're hundreds and hundreds of yards away And he can see them This climber knows immediately where they're at

Looks at him, waves, cracks in half jumps off the cliff That's happened, several people have seen the same thing What's weird to is at the end of this They decide to not document it And to not investigate it any further Even though there's been 10 people that have seen us At this point, like at that point in the story I don't think that not only

are they not capable of it? I don't think that the individual like Russell wants to know more about it. He's just like, that's unexplainable, that's terrifying. I don't want to look any further into it. Yeah. And I wondered how much of it too is just like, even if I wrote this down, no one's going to see it. Like, I think that he knows that the higher-ups aren't letting any of the shit going out. So why, what's the point of even documenting it down? But the idea of the person also continuously climbing up, it almost reads, like a Prometheus kind of level of torture, except with him waving, it seems like it's almost jolly, which feels weird. So it almost feels like he's in this perpetual loop of getting tortured every day, like almost like Sisyphus rolling the, the ball up the hill, or Prometheus

getting his innards eaten out by vultures. It's just like this weird ritual that he does every day, maybe at the same time. Pretty fun. Yeah. I like how much weird stuff's happening in the park. I think it's all connected because the park itself is some kind of entity, but it's terrifying how diverse it can be, the horrors that it can put out. Yeah. And especially with them not documenting this down, it leads really well into the final passage, which Russell expresses their inability to comprehend fully the mysteries associated with their job, plans to seize updates for the time being due to job jeopardy, but expresses a desire to return in a different format when possible. And it ends with advice for safe wilderness exploration and cryptic warning,

about the stairs to avoid interacting with them in any manner. And that's the last entry we get. The last words of it are so good because he says, like in the last lines, 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, 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. I love that.

It's great. It's fantastic. it just like it's it's a it's a perfect little pinpoint for the end of every kind of horror that we've seen you know what I mean yeah it's just it touches on everything without having to say it and it's it's brilliant and with that I mean you know that's this is the search and rescue what a story did it we covered we covered it I'm a search and rescue officer it's a great great story great story I love I love so much too how like sure it's not a it's not a standard like linear narrative In the sense of all these events happening in the same person in order, it is kind of a narrator's like, oh, this happened to this person, this happened to this person. But they're each so well done. They tie together with like the lore. They interconnect to each other so well. It's a classic for a reason, for sure. Yeah.

It perfectly encapsulates someone's start, like the starting of, like, encampulates the job that someone has, right? It seems like the perfect amount of weird scenarios. with enough cryptic messaging to see, like, I can't really talk about it any further. But it's just so fun. And I love when people can play with social media in this regard. It's the same reason why I love Ted the Caver so much in, like, his weird blog post entry for people to read that feels like something that can exist. It's from the perspective of somebody who is trying to be like, this is a real super, you know, like this is a real thing that happened. And I think the author, which I think we should definitely give a shout out to Carrie Hammons, just killed it.

It's such an amazing, amazing story, especially, I see a lot of people in comment sections because, you know, even people have, like, read this whole thing on YouTube, which if you're looking for even like a nice morning drive kind of thing, you can listen to people read it on YouTube and stuff. It's like a two and a half hour long, usually two and a half hour long audio listen, but I see a lot of people cite the 20, like 2015, like these kind of times on Reddit for. sleep like for scary stories is like a golden era of like really really fun stuff so i'm excited to dive more into like other stuff from the 2015 2016 era because i hear that's like where a lot of this beautiful beautiful work really originated from and where a lot of people were especially on r slash no sleep we're going ham so yeah yeah no like carrie did a fantastic job and i've also been in contact with carrie since we started playing out this episode she is a lovely lovely person to talk to, very kind.

She is a fan of both of our channels, which is very sweet. Hi, Carrie. I appreciate it. Did a fantastic job here. We love your stuff. So I talked to Carrie a bit about like the plans for the series and whatnot. And what had happened is after the first eight parts came out, the plan was to

make it into a book. Like this was basically her test drive of sorts for the series. Oh really? Yeah, so the idea was this was eventually going to be like a novel of sorts, porting all this together. and then over the course of making that novel she was reached out to um now this isn't coming from carry this is coming from like research i've done around it uh she was reached out to by uh the tv

show channel zero because they wanted to adapt it into one of their episodes which channel zero has a habit of doing that they did that with candle cove um different internet horror stories making it into it so they were going to use the stairs they're going to use the whole story of i'm a search rescue officer for uh a season called Butchers Creek, I believe was the name of it, or Butchers something like that? I'm pretty sure it's Butchers Creek. Anyway, so they get the rights from her to do that season. And then Carrie didn't say any of this.

Carrie said that everyone she worked with was very nice. She said nothing negative. I am saying this as my own opinion from looking at the story of I'm a search and rescue officer and then looking at what Channel Zero did with the show. They did not do a good job adapting it. my own opinion. They pretty much just took the element of the stairs in the woods.

They kind of left the rest of the lore behind. But in the process for that, she basically had to give them rights to the story for a while. So it seems that she was unable to continue her book for a bit and kind of stepped back from the story. So for a while,

for a few years there, the story was kind of in limbo. Like we have the test version for it on no sleep. She started to put a novel together and then the channel zero thing slowed that down. but I'm very happy to announce this

after talking to Carrie she is actively working to continue the story to add more entries to it to expand on the lore and she knows the whole story she wants to tell from start to end and Carrie has been so so gracious enough to allow me to see some of her work in progress

stuff for what this is going to turn into and I have to say it's really really cool she builds out on a lot of the lore involving the staircases She builds out on a lot of the lore involving what's secretly happening in the park. It is very awesome. So I encourage everyone.

We'll put a link to it in the description. Hell yes. If you go to Reddit at her name, it's user forward slash search and rescue woods. It is the same name she used to tell this story. So if you just look up the original story itself on Reddit, you'll find it up on the screen too. Yeah, we'll put it up on the screen as well.

She is using that account to post updates regarding the story and whatnot. So the story has been picked back up, and she is planning to move forward with it in the future. So go follow there to get announcements. I'm so excited to see where this is going. And from what I have seen, it's really cool. Y'all are going to like it. I love that.

Almost a decade later and still coming back, I can't wait to even read into it myself. It's also just a good warning sign, too, for Hollywood shit, where it's like, if we have any readers who are writing their own stuff, be very wary of how you give your rights away to these people making stuff because they will literally I mean like especially with the channel zero thing

they'll use one aspect remove all of the subtlety and like things that made something great just for the aesthetics and just for like I mean essentially the clout of what you're what you made so just be very weary of that because they will literally

you think they will pray on anybody dude you got to watch out so just keep that warning but I will say Kerry that's fucking amazing I'm so stoked to see oh I'm so excited for where it's going going from here. And all the stuff I said about like Channel Zero is not that Carrie hasn't said any of that to me. She's only described good things about it. I am just I am subscribing the bad part of it. Because like I want to get into writing. I want to work

with more people in the industry and stuff like that. And a lot of the time, yeah, there are people out there who can be sort of scavengers, kind of predatory to authors' works and whatnot. And I'm not saying that explicitly applies here, but that's what it looks like from the outside looking at. It's about 90% of people. 90% of the industry. Yeah, yeah. That's typically how it plays to be. I'm so pumped that the series is continuing. If you actually go to the, there's now a subreddit for Stairs

in the Woods. There is a master document where she has kind of wrote some auxiliary stories to it. So different stories that take place in the same universe from people outside of Russell's perspective and stuff like that and it's very cool. She's putting together lore for an entire world here

that builds off of this. I think you all are going to love it. So check her out, follow her and be ready for whenever more of this comes out because like if you liked where it's been so far you're definitely going to like where it's going exactly and i think that it's uh one of those things too where if you if you if you i think just as a general rule of thumb too because i'm very curious i mean this is our first episode right this is the first thing we've ever covered i think that if you've if you're a big horror person and you haven't dived into actually reading horror works please start with this one

i mean like this is like a great way it can it condenses itself down into these my like micro short stories and I think it'll make you appreciate the the art form a lot that is just like short stories and like reading something reading something can be such a fun way to get yourself in the mood to like get get fucking spooked enjoy the vibes of it you know I mean it's such a great way for your own imagination to scare yourself so use this as an opportunity if you have never read something scary before use this opportunity to go and read this it's a great piece of literature it's a great story I'm I'm so stoked that we covered. We chose this. This is a great one. This is also all, this is all of Wendy's doing for having this be our first episode. So very, very stoked. And I'm so, so curious to see how people respond to this first episode.

And also what, maybe what we're doing next, who knows, which I'm not going to say here. I'm excited for the show. I'm so pumped. I think this was a great first episode. I enjoyed it. As always, my man, had a great time. And, yeah, I'm excited to see where we go from here. Like, great first story to cover.

I can't wait to see what we do in the future. this was a lot of fun. Yeah, I think based off of the comments and stuff, I think that we'll use that as maybe where we'll go with next, but I know we have a bunch of ideas brewing right now, but until next time, this has been Creepcast, episode one. Thank you guys for listening, and we will see you in the next one. Crepecast, woo!

Thank you all so much for watching. It means the world. Thank you all. Peace. Peace. Peace.