Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 136. Reddit Scary Stories: True Camping Horror Tales (feat. ‪National Park After Dark)

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

From a recent and tragic double murder in Devil's Den State Park, to a hiker entering a time warp, to unknowingly encountering a serial killer while camping, today we're talking through all the terrifying and mysterious national park stories. Make sure to follow our guests of today's episode ‪@NationalParkAfterDarkPodcast‬ Episodes Mentioned: Unexplained Disappearances in the Alaska Triangle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR0-scmBvn0 Creepy Stories From Appalachia That Will Give You Chills https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvKXA5cjZBY Horror In The Mountains: The Khamar-Daban Mystery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14lql8Cd-L0 3 Camping Mysteries That'll Keep You Up at Night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSKLBmL3aZ0&t=2348s NPAD: Episode 4: A Serial Killer in Yosemite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Smj3fglClw Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to bonus content as well as other perks. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after-show called Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to ad-free episodes and bonus episodes when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to Heart Starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. As always, I'm your host, Kayla Moore. Today, we are going to talk about terrifying but true stories of things that people have encountered while hiking and camping. You're going to hear stories about strange clapping noises coming from nowhere in the woods, people losing time while hiking that they can't account for, horrifying encounters with strangers on secluded trails, and so much more. And there is no one better to join me today than the hosts of National Park After Dark, Danielle and Cassie.

These girls have covered hundreds of episodes showcasing the beauty, but also the horrors inside of national parks. Because even though there's more and more people entering these parks every year, more and more of them never leave. And what do we always say here at Hartzart's founding, when you enter the forest, you reenter the food chain. So welcome to Danielle and Cassie. Hello. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction. Yes, it's so good to be here. I'm so glad we're doing this one. I am terrified of the woods, but I love camping. I love national parks. But I also really love exploring all of the scary and weird and bizarre and supernatural things that go on inside of those parks. And that's really your forte. It is. Yeah, that's part of the draw, right? Like you're curious about what happens in the woods and you want to experience it for yourself. Yeah, and exactly what you just said where when you enter the woods, you enter the food chain back in. And it's so true. I mean, there are just a lot of things that can happen when you're out there. I know it feels like we're no longer apex predators when we enter the woods. I have to ask before we jump into the stories because we have a lot of really good and really scary stories picked out today that we're going to go into. What is the scariest national park? Oh, that's tough. Oh, that is tough. Scary, like which category of scary? spooky or let's do okay we'll do one spookiest and one like watch your back when you're camping in this park oh my god that is such a good question i would say watcher when i think of watch

you back i think more of wildlife and that's just because that's what i'm like most afraid of because i freak myself out with those stories the most so that's like a personal opinion even though we all know humans are far more dangerous than wildlife. But when I'm watching my back the most in parks, I think I'm in Alaska. We talk a lot about Alaska at Hartford Towning. We have a whole episode just on the really strange, mysterious disappearances that happen there because more people disappear in Alaska than any other state. It's just so remote. It's so wild. It's so beautiful. It has so much to offer. But there's a lot that happens there that kind of runs the gamut from wildlife to missing persons to true crime. It has a little a little bit of

everything. So that's my answer, I think. Alaskan national parks are in a league of their own. Yeah, I think that's a good answer, especially because if you do find yourself ever needing help, a lot of times the only way to get to you is a bush plane, which isn't very comforting when you're, if you're alone, which you probably shouldn't be in Alaska. Right. So like even little things, well, I guess breaking your ankle isn't a little thing. But even if you just, just break your ankle, you have to be airlifted out, I imagine a lot of times. Yeah. And even like a smaller injury could be detrimental when you're in a place with no access to help at all. Right. Yeah. So if you break your ankle in Great Smoky Mountains, like it's still

an inconvenience, but it's the most visited national park in the United States. Like your odds of being helped and getting to aid is a lot better than if you're in Gates of the Arctic. And you're pretty much SOL. I think it's the remoteness that always scares me about the woods. The fact that

like something could happen and you could just be there by yourself for a long time or you could see something and no one else is around to verify that thing. We hear a lot of those stories too. But that kind of brings me

to the first story that I want to dive into today. This story takes place in a park, I think a lot of people don't necessarily think of as being remote, but we're going to talk about

how, just how remote it actually is. This is something that's been in the news. I think a lot of people listening have probably heard at least something about this. But this is the double murder that just happened in Devil's Den State Park. So on July 26 of this year, 2025, the Brink family was out hiking in Devil's Den State Park. Devil's Den is this park that's nestled in the Ozarks in the northwest corner of Arkansas. It's this super picturesque place with hiking trails, beautiful views, and, it's been described as really a perfect place for a family to spend the day.

The Brinks had just moved to the area about a week prior, and they decided that they were going to take a pretty easy hike with two of their daughters. The family consisted of 43-year-old Clinton Brink. He was set to start a new job just two days later. 41-year-old Kristen Brink. She was a licensed nurse. Together the couple had three daughters, but that day only two of the daughters were with them,

a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old. The couple had made it about a half mile into the park when it seems like a stranger approached them. Now, normally when you run into a stranger on a trail, you say hi and you pass them, sometimes you may stop to chat, but these encounters are typically warm. There's this inherent camaraderie in the outdoors community,

which is why the brinks were probably completely caught off guard when this stranger pulled out a knife and started stabbing Clinton repeatedly. There wasn't much Clinton could do to protect himself, but Kristen, thinking incredibly fast with what some have described as a mother's instinct, whisked her two young children away from the scene and brought them to safety. And then she made the incredibly brave decision to go back to the scene and try to help her husband. The children watched as she fearlessly disappeared back into the woods.

Around 2.30 p.m. that day, a call came in on a police radio that there may have been an salt in Devilsden Park. Witnesses reported seeing a man with blood on his face emerging out of the trail and concerned they called it in. And it was around that time that the two young girls flagged another hiker they found on the trail and this one showed them the kindness and community that is usually felt amongst hikers. They listened as the girls described what happened to their father, how their mother ran to save him, but also they gave a description of this man. He had blonde hair. He was about 30. years old, and he wasn't anyone they had ever seen before. About an hour into the search,

officials searching the trail started hearing screaming. They followed the screams to a trail of blood that led to the scene of the crime. There were the bodies of Clinton and Kristen, and neither had survived the attack. But with the help of the two young girls, as well as other hikers in the park that day, investigators were able to start piecing together more clues. had seen the man get into a black sedan with a license plate that had been taped over. A photo taken inside of the park by what seems to be an unknowing witness shows the man earlier in the day facing away from the camera. He's wearing black pants and a black long sleeve shirt,

a baseball cap, and he's carrying two bags over his shoulders. Police were able to quickly get a composite sketch out to the surrounding community, and they were immediately flooded with tips. and within just a few days, they found their guy. A 28-year-old named Andrew James McGahn was arrested during a haircut 30 miles away from where the attacks had taken place. And probably the most terrifying detail

in this entire thing is that McGahn was an elementary school teacher. He was a fifth grade teacher at Spring Creek Elementary School in Oklahoma during the 2023-24 school year, but he left after being placed on administrative leave in the state. spring of 2023 due to concerns about classroom management, professional judgment, and student

favoritism. He was later hired by Springdale Public Schools in Arkansas for the upcoming school year, though he had not begun employment or had any contact with the students or family yet. Police believe that this attack was completely random, as if McGahn entered the park that day to hunt for victims. And he specifically chose Devils Den State Park because of its lack of cell phone service, thick vegetation and secluded areas. And one horrifying fact that some people have pointed out is that McGahn moved states quite often for teaching jobs and officials now believe that these are likely not McGahn's first victims.

Though he passed a background check to become a teacher and hasn't ever been charged with other crimes, police are now looking into unsolved murders around his other teaching jobs to see if they can find any connection. And I'll add here that this case is currently unfolding, but this is all of the information we have as of August 4th. The thing that really strikes me about that one, which we were talking, you guys brought up, is the remoteness and that like the remoteness of an area being the really scary thing and someone specifically targeting a place because of its remoteness. I don't know if you've come across that in other stories you've covered on National Park After Dark. Yeah, for sure.

we definitely have there have been a lot my first when you mentioned that my first thought is that the AT has seen some similar type of attacks unfortunately AT being Appalachian Trail yeah okay yeah for my listeners that might not be as familiar as your listeners yeah the Appalachian Trail it is really it's one of the most popular through hikes and unfortunately there's been several different instances that have happened where people have been attacked on the trail and it's been the same instance where we're seeing in this case where someone took advantage of the remoteness of the park, the thought that no one else was going to be around, that they could probably get away with it. And unfortunately, in this case, it feels like this was probably

very premeditated and that they did choose this location, which I always, always hate hearing these stories because these parks are supposed to be a safe haven for people. And to know that you're out with your family, with your children on a nature hike, exposing them to the outdoors and hiking, and to have someone take that away and ruin it in such a tragic and horrific way is just so, it's so upsetting to hear. Yeah. And my mind instantly went to an episode that I covered, I think it was in 2022. It was an earlier episode before we hit the 100 mark for sure. And it's kind of just in relation to the randomness. Obviously, there's the remote aspect, but there's just like there is what is the reason.

And sometimes it is just random. And I did an episode in Olympic National Park where a young woman, her name was Jane Konstantino. She was in her early 30s. And she was on a solo bike trip. She biked from Colorado all the way to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. She was about to get her bike into the ocean, which was her goal, and a man just randomly murdered her. Same way, stabbed her to death and left the park and people passed him.

Same thing, like noticed blood on him and he was caught rather quickly, but same thing. It's just like your brain tries to make reason of these things. And sometimes it's just people are evil and do evil things. most beautiful places. Yes, absolutely. And I think we talked a little bit, we had an episode where we talk about the Appalachian Trail and we cover this case of the two, the gay couple in the 80s who were killed by just, I forget what his name was, but this man just saw these women who were on a hike in between, I think it was their summer break. They were taking just a long hike before they went back to school. This guy found them and just started following them on the trail.

they kept running into him, and he seemed to be not really a local. It turns out he was living in a cave along the trail and just kept popping out to follow them and then open fired on them when they were in a little clearing, just setting up camp and having a really lovely afternoon. But the thing that came out about that case was how rare this is. This is not something that happens very often, which is why it is so shocking when we hear about these cases, because like we mentioned, The community is so strong.

It's full of people who are very nice to each other. Oftentimes people hike the Appalachian Trail and make tons of friends. Yeah. The whole way you're just chatting with people. People are like cooking you grilled cheese out on the side and stuff. And so when something like this happens, it's especially devastating. But in this story, too, just kind of seeing how everyone immediately came together and all of the witness statements that came out, all of the tips that flooded in,

like everyone really banded together to find this person. And they found him so fast. That's one thing that we've really found in the outdoor community, just in our own interactions, is that the outdoor community is so bonded and so strong and it's such a special place that when tragedy does hit, unfortunately like this, that people really rally around the people who are affected and try to help in any way that they can. Yeah, definitely. When you hike in areas where you don't have cell service, are there like specific precautions that you take? Yeah, certainly. We have a couple things. First of all, one of the cardinal rules of hiking, especially if you're by yourself or if you're going into an area that you know is remote and you're not going to have any cell service or things like that is in your car, you're supposed to leave your plans. Not like exactly, you know, your move for move or anything like that. But general in date, out date and what just. general trail you're going to be on. Just in case something does happen. And, you know, somebody knows a ranger notices your car there. It's nice to have something on your windshield that

kind of shows your itinerary. Also, we hike with a Garmin in reach. That is obviously something that we've never had to use and hopefully don't have to, but it's nice to have in case something does happen and we need to reach either search and rescue or we can program it to send out text to friends and family. So that's also really nice to have. So those are the top two things that come to my mind. Interesting. Yeah, I hadn't heard the leaving your plans in a car, but that's obviously such a good idea. Yeah, just leaving a little note on your windshield just inside. So if someone walks by and they notice that your car has been there for a little while and they see that you were supposed to be back the day before, but your car's still there. It'll send some red flag

warnings out and people might start looking for you. Also something that we always do whenever we go out is just to let our friends and family know. Always have someone know where you are and what your plans are because yes, it's great to have that on your windshield, especially for rangers and stuff, but say that there's limited patrol or someone just doesn't notice your car for a little while, having someone somewhere that's expecting to hear from you at a certain time is always really helpful. So if you do go out, if you are gone longer than expected, then someone can flag it pretty immediately. I'm sure there's so many cases of people going on hikes and no one knows that they're supposed to be back that night thinking maybe they're gone for the whole week. So when they don't show up in seven days, no one really is thinking much about it.

but yeah, that makes a lot of sense that you need to tell people exactly when you're supposed to be back, or at least when you're thinking of being back. Reading, playing, learning. Stellist lenses do more than just correct your child's vision. They slow down the progression of myopia. So your child can continue to discover

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in parentheses, New Mexico, and it is from Reddit user Puddles Down. I often explore remote locations and old mining areas because I'm an avid rockhound. On one trip in central New Mexico, I left my hotel at 7.30 a.m. My destination was less than 30 minutes away, 10 miles by highway, 3 miles by paved road, and then 2 miles up a relatively well-maintained dirt road, followed by a 3-quarter mile hike to the rock-hounding spot. It was supposed to be a pretty easy trip compared to the others I have done. When I got off the highway, I decided to fill up on gas for good measure.

I kept the receipt, so there's no doubt I bought gas. However, about halfway up the dirt road, four miles from the gas station, I noticed my gas gauge dropped to about a quarter of a tank. That had never happened before. When I got to the area where I needed to get out and start walking, I walked a few feet and noticed a better place to leave my car, so I went back to move it. This took less than 10 minutes. My car wouldn't start.

The battery was dead. I still had the receipt for the battery in my glove box showing I had purchased a new one a week prior. I checked it against the battery under the hood, and sure enough, the new battery was installed properly. Luckily, it was under warranty. The entire dirt road was uphill, and I noticed a truck driving up, so I decided to wait and ask for a jump. It was a man and a wife who were very kind and gave me a jump. My car started and I moved it to the new spot. The time was 8.45 when I finally started hiking. The hike itself was uneventful and took 90 minutes. When I got back to my car, it was 10.15 a.m. I was feeling pretty hungry, so I decided to order takeout from

near my hotel. I figured it would take me about 30 minutes or so to get back, and the food would be ready for pickup when I got back to town. The problem was, when I put in my online order, the confirmation said my food would be ready at 6 p.m. That didn't make any sense. So I tried calling the restaurant, but no answer. So I decided to just drive there and ask them to prepare at ASAP. First, I was going to stop at the gas station and figure out why I didn't get the gas that I paid for. I still had the receipt and my gas tank was still at a quarter of a tank. So I drove the two miles back down the dirt road. When I reached the end and pulled out onto the frontage road, my gas tank showed it was full again. When I got to the restaurant, ready to tell them that

6 p.m. didn't work for me. My order was already ready. That was a relief, but it was then picking up my order, I looked at the time and it was 605 p.m. It should have been 1045 a.m. I looked up at the sky and sure enough, the sun was getting low. I lost seven hours somehow and can't account for it. And there's an update from the original OP here. And they say, I wear an analog watch when rock hounding in case I lose signal. The time on my phone and my watch matched up until I checked my watch at the restaurant. I had to readjust that watch after I got food. I was keeping an eye on the sun to help me keep track of my direction, and it was climbing to its apex when I got back to my car after hiking,

and it was starting to heat up like normal for late morning. But soon after, I got food, dusk settled in. I wish that I could explain it. I've been doing this kind of thing for 25 years, and I've experienced heat stroke and heat exhaustion, and unfortunately delusion brought on by septic shock, but this wasn't any of those. I had plenty of water, vitamins, electrolytes, you name it,

and the time jumped when I was in an air-conditioned car in October. It was a good idea, though. And that's it. Wow. What a story. Ooh, I hear a lot of stories of people losing a lot of time in the woods. You know, where my first thought goes to, and I think Cassie knows what I'm going to say. Lost time, I think of aliens. Yeah. That does come up a lot when people are talking about lost time. Explain why that's the first place that you went, because I'm curious. Well, so in I, there's one thing about me is I am a huge extraterrestrial fan, always have been. And we don't do a ton of alien abduction stories on National Park After Dark, but we've done a handful. And each and every one of them, there is an element of lost time. Yes. That is a through line, no matter what. And in,

stories that we haven't covered that I've just heard of on my own. It's just something that you see. It's an element of every alien abduction or encounter story that you just see across time is this loss of unaccounted for time that there's no explanation. And sometimes later on, as people are like working through their experience, they'll start to put some pieces back together. But that initial, in the initial aftermath, people are just confused as to what happened because they have no recollection of it. That's like a big part of the Betty and Bernie Hill story, right? Yes. It's that they lose a lot of time. And I think it's interesting then that this story took place in New Mexico. He specifically calls out New Mexico, which to me is the most

alien abduction state of them all. Yeah. Oh, because of the Roswell situation. Yeah. You just hear a lot of like eerie stories about people seeing things. It's got this big open sky that's often clear so you can see a lot of things and people just are always talking about seeing UFOs and then of course there's the Roswell of it all but interesting that yeah maybe this was some sort of alien thing I don't it didn't sound like he saw anything else but is that kind of like do people just lose time and then they realize it's aliens or is there like an element of like but I saw this light and then all of a sudden I lost time well that's the hole in the story for me yeah that's the whole in the story for me too because it when you

you look at the Betty and Barney Hill story, they saw something and then they lost time. And same with Travis Walton. He also saw something and then lost time. And same with the Alighash 4 that we did up in Maine. In the Alagash 4, they saw something. So that is definitely, that's definitely, it's so strange too. And I love that they pointed out that they've experienced heat stroke before. They know that they were fine physically, that there's no explanation for that because that was kind of where my mind went for a second because I was like, wait, you're in the desert. It's New Mexico. Did something happen? So for them to point that out, now I'm like, wait, how? Oh, hold on. There's another element here, though, about the battery. And it might be a stretch. But sometimes with

different alien encounters and things like that, whatever technology that they utilize warps and kind of messes with hours. People's batteries drain. Electronics go haywire and go on the fritz. And so that could be something to attribute. Because it was the gas and it was the battery. Yeah. The battery died immediately, but he had just bought a new battery, which, okay, maybe that's a one-off. But the gas, like to buy gas to then lose all that gas and then for the gas to randomly reappear is very strange. Yeah. My thought with that, and this might just be, because I had a car that did this if you were on a hill. Oh, yeah, of course. The measurement would like to be on to, like, are you just, is your car just in a weird position? And then you got to the bottom and it's

flat. And now it shows the right amount of gas again. So for that part for me, I was like, well, that I can explain away. Yeah, yeah. But the rest of it is very odd. Very, very odd. I've never, every time I hear a story like this, I definitely give it some credit and thought because I've never lost time like that. No. Unless I was drunk or something, which is a whole other story. But just like out rock hounding, like just a normal day and losing a chunk of six plus hours is very strange.

I was talking to this woman once. Have you heard of Thompson Park in New York? No. Thompson Park is, people say it's the area 51 of New York. There's supposedly very weird things that happen there. But I was looking into it. And I ended up talking to this woman who told me the story that when she was 16, she and her boyfriend were out in Thompson Park.

It's just a little park in this residential neighborhood area, too. It's not this big, massive thing. There's like little hiking trails and stuff, but it's not crazy big. So she was with her boyfriend and they just were out of family party. So all of his family was there. And they take off on this little, little path just for a 20 minute walk. And she said she was gone for 20 minutes. And then they come back after this hike.

And his family is freaking out. And they're like, where the hell have you been? It's been two hours. We've been running around the park screaming your name. And we didn't know where you were. We thought you guys left. We didn't know what happened. And she was like, it was so weird because we were not that far from where they were.

So if they actually were yelling our names, they would have, we would have heard them. But one thing that she couldn't figure out. And she was like a totally normal woman, too. She was like, I can't explain this at all. And it freaks me out to this day. She's probably mid-30s. She was like, I still think about this all the time. It still freaks me out.

But the family had run through that trail and didn't see them. And she insisted that that was the only place in the park that the two of them had gone. It was just on this one little trail. So she couldn't figure out how they didn't see them while she was there. And I was like, that's so weird. Let me look into it. So I started looking into like the history of the park. And it turns out, take this for what you will, that in the 70s,

there was a witch named Gail that lived in the area. And she's on record. She gives interviews. She died in maybe 2020, but later in life, she had done interviews with local news and stuff. And so she tells this story about how in the 70s she put a curse on the park that causes people to lose time by entering different dimensions. And so she said that she would, like, slip through dimensions in the park.

And this woman that I talked to had never heard of that before. Like, she was very unaware that that was a thing. so it's not like she was pulling my leg or anything. So I let her know. I was like, maybe it was from this curse that this witch put on the park back in the 70s. But it was crazy. It's not aliens, but it is, I guess, another thing. Like maybe there was some sort of witch that cursed this area.

Who knows? But I just, that that's a time slip story that always sticks with me. That's so funny because in my head when you were telling that story, I kept thinking interdimensional. Like some type of you're in the same place, but you're in the same place, but you're in different dimensions is the only thing that I could think of that you could be standing and yelling and going through the same area, but knowing you don't see each other and you totally miss each other. So that's so interesting that someone has come forward and been like, did she ever explain why she cursed the park? It wasn't a malicious curse. She just, she just said she did. I guess

she was really feeling it in the 70s that this park needed. It's like the best prank. Yeah. Seriously. But not. No, but it's literally called the Area 51 of New York because so many people have weird experiences like that. Interesting. It has become known as this kind of alien. There's even like a big alien head on the sign because they thought it was maybe aliens. But I really think it was just this woman in the 70s who put this weird interdimensional curse on the park. We'll add it to our list of places to visit.

Get me out of this dimension. I want to go somewhere else. I know. tell me what you find if you if you go into gail's dimension that she set upon the part yeah now i'm so curious i could i could do another dimension i think for a few minutes it's not that far from you guys either because you're already kind of over on that side of the country anyways yeah we're on the east coast yeah take a day switch dimensions go take a day trip yeah day trip to another dimension yeah the conjuring last rites on september 5th

i come down here we need you all right array the conjuring last rain array rights, only in theater September 5th. Okay, I'm going to read the next one that I have for you guys. This one is called Florida Appalachicola National Forest, creepy encounter with a serial killer.

And this comes from Reddit user Dr. Jim Danger. So this story goes. When I was about 18, me and some friends took a road trip about seven hours or so down to the Appalachicola National Forest near Tallahassee, Florida. We were going to do a little camping, drink, few ice cold Natty Lights, you know, 18-year-old stuff. As such, we didn't want to be bothered by any park rangers, so we drove way deep into the woods. We got there, we set up camp, we had said Natty Lights, and me and a friend decided to go do a little exploring. So we walked about

100 yards from our site back to the main road. And we saw another path directly across from us, so we kept walking. Immediately, we started seeing signs that someone had lived there for a while. big bags of trash stuff like that it should have been this huge red flag to turn around but you know we were 18 nothing could hurt us right so we get to this campsite of an older white guy living out of his van clotheslines strung up coolers placed around it this big gorgeous dog i think maybe a golden retriever we tried to back out but he saw us so he started talking to us he seemed friendly enough he asked us where we were from, told us about some cool spots to check out in the park, and we ended up chatting for 10 minutes and then going on our way. I kept thinking to myself how odd it was that he gave

all of his directions and steps, not yards or miles. Guy always seemed to be a little off balance as well, not like he was stumbling drunk, but as if he was walking on a balance beam, kind of swaying from side to side. Oh, and he was super excited to talk about national parks and forests especially ones where we were from okay camping part over we went back to our tents fast forward two months that same friend calls me late at night and he tells me to turn on the news i oblige and i see an old dude with a van you see where this might be headed but i didn't so i get pretty annoyed at my friend for waking me up no watch he tells me and then i see the golden retriever and everything clicks. What the hell? That man's name was Gary Michael Hilton,

and he was convicted of at least four murders. He kidnapped and murdered a girl on Blood Mountain in Georgia, an older couple in North Carolina, and a girl at that campsite that we were at not long after we left. Yes, the very same places that he had been talking to us about. Obviously, we called the cops, and they put us in touch with the FBI, and we got flown down back to the area to take investigators to the campsite. We had to point out every spot we saw, anything, tell them exactly what he told us, show them all the places that he described to us, and I didn't find out until after the trial, but apparently they found what appeared to be a partially destroyed human finger bone in an area near the site.

So I had to fly down again to testify. Have you guys covered Gary Michael Hilton at all on your show? Because he's known as like the National Park serial killer. The National, yeah, Forest killer or something. Or national, yeah, National Forest. He's recommended to us all the time. We have not covered him. Let me give, I have like a little overview here for people who might not be familiar with him.

So Gary Michael Hilton is a U.S. Army veteran known as the National Forest, you were right, National Forest serial killer, and he's an American drifter convicted of murdering four people across Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida between 2007 and 2008. His victims include 24-year-old Meredith Emerson who was abducted while hiking in Georgia,

elderly couple John and Irene Bryant, who were attacked in North Carolina, and Cheryl Hodges Dunlap, a Florida nurse whose decapitated body was found in the Appalachicola National Forest. Hilton used his victim's ATM cards before killing them, and he often disposed of their bodies in remote wooded areas. He was sentenced to life in Georgia and received a death sentence in Florida for Dunlapse

murder, which I looked into this. He actually publicly confessed to that murder this year in 2025. He had never publicly confessed to it before. He was doing an interview with court TV, just a casual interview. They were asking him questions. He was like, I'm not going to tell you anything. And then all of a sudden he was like, do you want to know something? I did kill her.

Wow. And the court TV interviewer is like, oh, you've never said that before. He's like, no, I've never said that before, but I'm ready to admit it now. I did kill her. Which was crazy. I mean, he's 78 now. So maybe he's kind of having like a deathbed confessions moment. Yeah, to be that interviewer, to be like, wait a second, what are you revealing to me now?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So scary. But I know that one, I didn't know if you guys had covered him because he is such a, he's known for his like forest murders. Yeah. We get recommendations for it all the time. We have not covered him as of yet, but we are familiar with him because his story is just, of course, he's another person, how you mentioned at the beginning of this episode of someone going into remote areas and targeting people. Right, right. And also it seems like he lived in the area. The thing that really struck. me about that story is something that I think about when I go hiking too is you just never really know who you're running into. And so if you see a campsite that's kind of weird and stands out

to you and then months later you come back and you see that it's on the news is just so, so eerie to me. To know how close you were to something so horrific. Yeah. We've had a couple of people right in. So we do twice a month, we do trail tales, which is just listener stories. And we've had quite a few people write in about having, just in retrospect, obviously, you know, just like this one. But with Carrie Stainer from Yosemite and Cassie, I think, covered that episode in like, I don't know, episode four. It's like the third episode I ever did or something. Oh, I'm not familiar. Can you give me an overview also for like my listeners who might not be familiar? Yeah. So Carrie Stainer was a serial killer that was active in Yosemite National Park. And I can't,

I'd have to look back on the year. It was a while, I want to say the 70s or 80s that this was happening. But he worked as a maintenance guy at one of the hotels that was right outside of the park. And he actually, he attacked a woman and her daughter and her daughter's friend who were staying in the hotel. And he also attacked a woman who was working in the park in a remote area. And it became huge headlines because he was just praying on people that were within the park. And there are some speculation that he has more victims that were not aware of. But his whole story is really interesting because there's Carrie Stainer who ended up being caught and as a serial killer. And he was caught staying at a lodge.

Like, and he was in a someone, he was in a hot tub in a hotel with someone and they saw him on the news. like in the background and was like, hold on a second, wait a minute. I was just in a tub with that guy. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, like having a casual conversation. And the guy from the tub, oh, yeah, whoa, scary. Yeah.

Yeah. And so he ended up being caught because people recognized him from the news and stuff. But also his family story is interesting, too, because his brother, Stephen Spader was actually abducted. Stainer, sorry, was at. actually abducted as a child and he was abducted by this man and was taken for quite some time. And it was huge news for a very, very long time. That's right. Yeah. I think I had, I didn't know the specifics about the serial killer brother, but I had heard the headline of like, oh, there was

this little boy who was kidnapped and then his brother went on to become a serial killer. Yeah. In your research during that episode, did it seem like the kidnapping of, you know, a child at all affected the way that the other brother grew up to become a serial killer? Or did those feel like separate things? I don't know. It's hard to say because I think that it must have had an effect on him at some point. But I do remember specifically when I was researching it that his family was kind of shocked at the apathy he had towards his brother after he was found.

Like he's even seen on some news coverage where everyone's like smiling and crying and so happy that his brother is back and safe and you can see Carrie in the background just stone face and people said that they thought he felt a little bit of jealousy towards the attention that his brother was getting and that he didn't get it

and so there was like a weird dynamic there where he never he never seemed to care. I don't know if care is the right word but yeah maybe he was already suffering from a lack of empathy as a child It's something that a lot of serial killers suffer from. Something was off with him for sure.

Wow. That's really scary. Okay, so your listeners, in hindsight, said that they had stayed near where he was. Yeah. Or stayed in the hotel that he worked at at the time or had an interaction with him. We've had a few listeners who have met him. Whoa. And was he targeting women?

Yes. Yeah. And so I imagine a lot of your listeners are young women, too, where you're like, you're really like, oh my God, that was almost me. Yeah. Yeah, it's so easy to put yourself in those shoes when you see the type of people. People like that are attacking and then you can envision yourself as that and you're in similar situations as well. So it's very easy to put yourself there. Yeah. This is different, but I remember my mom telling me when she was, I can't remember how old she was, but she and all of her friends cut their hair short because son of Sam was operating not too far away from where they were.

It seemed like he was targeting really long-haired brunette women. And so women just started cutting their hair because you're so scared. You don't know where this person is. You don't know if they're going to target you. You don't really know how to protect yourself. A lot of times, too, you don't want to draw attention. You don't want to draw attention. We cover this on clues, the other true crime show that I do.

But a lot of times, the news will withhold a lot of information from the public, too, to not scare people. But as information that, like, young women could really use that, hey, there is a serial killer in this park, maybe be careful, but they don't want to scare people so they're not telling anyone that he's operating in Yosemite. And it just, yeah, you just really don't know how to protect yourself in that situation. Yeah, you don't want to cause mass chaos, but at the same time, people need to know how to protect themselves at the... Yeah, definitely. Td Bank knows that running a small business is a journey, from startup to growing

and managing your business. That's why they have a dedicated small business advice hub on their website to provide tips and insights on business banking to entrepreneurs. No matter the stage of business you're in, visit TD.com slash small business advice to find out more or to match with a TD small business banking account manager. All right. So the ones that I've been covering so have been a little bit more true crime focused. And the ones that you have are a little more supernatural focus. So I'm actually really excited for you to read the next story that you guys have. Yeah. So the story that I have is titled, Something Strange is happening in a remote town outside Glacier National Park. And it's by Reddit user designer dash stable 6209. And I really like this one too,

because we were just in Glacier National Park. Yeah. Just got back. Okay. So you have to verify if If you, if what happens in this story, if you could see it happening in the park. For sure, we'll see. There's a little town in remote northern Montana right on the river just outside of Glacier National Park near the Canadian border, where I've had a few experiences I still can't explain. My boyfriend and I go up there a lot in the summer. We're big into fly fishing and rafting, and it's kind of our favorite escape. It's insanely beautiful. There's a bar and music venue with a tiny mercantile at the center of town.

but no cell service, no Wi-Fi, and it takes a long time to drive down a dirt road to get there. Big mountains, a rushing river, and this feeling that you're somewhere different. We always joke that it's like a portal. The first weird thing that happened was about four years ago. We were up there with three friends staying in a private cabin that belonged to a friend of a friend. It was pretty close to a few other cabins. After grilling and hanging by the fire until around midnight, everyone but my boyfriend and I went inside. to sleep. We stayed back to grab something from the truck and ended up just sitting in the

truck bed talking and watching the stars. That's when I heard it. A single loud clap. Coming from somewhere behind us, maybe 100 yards out. A few seconds later, another clap, just one, but this time from our right. Then another from the left. They were spaced out, not fast or random, and each one clearly came from a different direction. Then another clap came from behind us again, only closer this time, maybe 75 yards away. One at a time, loud and from different angles, it felt intentional like something was circling us.

At one point, we heard another clap and dogs in the area started barking. We looked at each other but didn't say a word. We were frozen. Then we heard one more. This one was so close I felt like it was right there. Without speaking, we both jumped up and sprinted to the cabin. I've never run that fast in my life.

It wasn't just being creeped out. It was that full-body panic, the kind where your brain is just screaming to get inside. As soon as we shut the cabin door behind us, we heard one last clap. It came from the woods right outside, maybe 15 feet away. Last year, we were back in the area,

this time camping about 10 miles down the road at a lesser-known spot along the river we were floating on during that day. It was a group of us in a few tents, and there was a guy we didn't know staying in a sprinter van fairly close to us. He was friendly, and we talked to him for a while. He mentioned he used to be in the Air Force. Later that night, our group of six or so friends was split up. Some were by the fire, a few were down by the river, and someone was off behind us in the trees peeing. I looked up and saw this flashlight in the sky, kind of like a shooting star, coming from the right to the left. But then it suddenly stopped, ruined brightness, flashed, hovered

for a second, glowing bright, and then shot straight up into the sky incredibly fast before disappearing. Right away, people from all over the campsite started yelling. Did you see that? Including the guy in the Sprinter van. He came over saying he saw it too and told us it wasn't his first time. He said he's been seeing that same phenomenon twice before at the exact campsite. Considering his background in the Air Force, it definitely gave more weight to know how shocked he seemed by it. Later that night, we also saw Starlink satellites pass overhead, and those were really easy to recognize and totally different from what we had seen earlier. A month or so later, we were back in town at the bar seeing live music. We started chatting with one of the guys in the band just talking about the area in general, and the campground came up casually.

We didn't say a single word about what had happened to us there, but the musician just goes, Damn, that campground is beautiful, but every time I'm there, I see UFOs. We just stared at him. We also have a friend who works for Glacier National Park and has seen or heard about unmarked government vehicles heading into that area more than once. I'll be heading back to that campsite in July and we'll definitely report back if anything else strange happens. Oh, man. There you go. There's your aliens.

We were so close and we didn't even see them. I know exactly the town that this person. is talking about also. And I, they didn't name it. So I don't know if I should. But I mean, it's not like a government secret or anything. But yeah, I'm curious. The mercantile gave it away. Oh. Oh. Okay. Okay. We were close to it. We didn't go. We didn't go on our trip. But just based on our own experience there recently, you know, a couple weeks ago, the sky over Montana, I mean, It's a big sky country for a reason and just the amount that you can see, I don't doubt that people see strange things quite often if you're paying attention to the sky.

There's a lot to see on the ground too. I mean, it's so stunning there. But erratic behavior by a light in the sky, it's hard to go anywhere else other than UFOs in your mind. It's just so hard, like nowadays with all the different technology and like things going on with the military and it's harder and harder to be like, that's definitely otherworldly because there's some crazy stuff that we're utilizing and stuff, especially in, I don't know, when somebody from the military themselves are like, that's not us. Right, right. That's harder to be like, oh, okay. I'm all team UFO though, so I don't have to say it again.

Well, I had actually, okay, so the clapping at the beginning, I think is related to what everyone was seeing in the sky at the park. Because I had heard other stories about people who experienced UFOs or thought that they had experienced UFOs where there does seem to be sound coming from every direction all around you. I had heard at one point it sounds like kind of like monkeys chittering was one of the sounds. someone described, but the clapping coming from every direction is really scary. And also, I'm a big believer that animals know more than we do. And so the dogs freaking out too, maybe the dogs had kind of caught on to the fact that there was like something there that wasn't supposed to be there with that clapping sound. Yeah.

Confirming that something's off. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, not to take this in another direction, but when I first thought or was hearing you describe the clapping. and the different intentional, like there's some sort of intelligence behind it.

It's not random noise. Bigfoot. I was thinking of big foot, but not the clapping. I was thinking more of, because usually when people talk about Bigfoot or Sasquatch, they're talking about knocking because there's a behavior that's attributed to Bigfoot that is kind of like what our great apes and chimps do with territorial behavior as far as like taking wood and knocking it against a tree. And that's kind of like, that pops up in different Bigfoot stories as far as like maybe like

a warning or something like that. But I've never heard of clapping with Bigfoot. I don't know. Have you, Cassie? I guess it is more knocking. Yeah. Are you guys all in on Bigfoot? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Well, because you would, I mean, you would know more than me. This is your whole domain. You spend more time in the forest and you also spend more time, like, reading about the forest and talking about it. So you would know. Danielle is very much the Bigfoot. I believe that there is a version of Bigfoot that exists, but Danielle is very, she has the knowledge. It's so funny, like right out of camera site, it's behind my camera, but I have a shelf and it literally has a ghost, a big foot, and an alien.

And it's like, that's my trifecta. I love believing in things that are like the quote unquote unbelievable. Like I just think it makes life more exciting. I agree. I totally agree. Yeah. It's just like, why not expand your mind and kind of consider different possibilities? It is wild.

It's hard to believe that there's a great ape thing in the woods of the world. But why not? I think so people, it is very hard for people to believe, but I will say, like, we cover a lot of folklore at Heart Starts Prounding. We have episodes on Brazilian folklore, Appalachian folklore. And a really common theme in folklore spanning every single country, spanning every single time period is creatures in the woods that no one can explain. And the way that they're described don't make sense with any of the other wildlife that lives in the area at the time. In Brazil, they had these giant sloths that really resembled Bigfoot. And so people, People are like, is that actually big foot that they were seeing and we just didn't know? But there are really big, hairy giant creatures that have human-like descriptions, I guess, that appear all over the world in every single time period, in folklore and stories that are passed orally to each other. So when I hear that, I'm like, there is stuff deep within the woods that we just don't know

about. There's something to that. To believe that we know everything there is to know about the world and every species and every single thing that lives here and has forever is crazy. There's so much unknown about the world and to be able to hear these stories and to have like some type of belief that something is out there. It's not only interesting and I think makes life more fun, but I think realistic. Who's to say that these things don't exist? Yeah. Is there any region of the U.S. where there's the most amount of big foot sightings? Pacific Northwest. Probably, yeah, the PNW.

Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. And that was like one of the funnest parts about I've, I've lived quite a few different places over time. I like to move a lot. And I lived in Washington State for two years. And that was just so fun because everything was Bigfoot themed. I mean, they definitely lean into it hard there. But yeah, Washington, Oregon area is just. just kind of like a hub for Bigfoot. Okay, which is kind of the area, sort of of, of Glacier National Park. No, that's Montana. It's Montana, but I guess, like, in the grand scheme of the world, it's sort of the same area.

Yeah, it's like up in that corner of the U.S. Yeah. So it's a little different. No, I get that. Maybe that Bigfoot got lost and was in Montana instead of the Pacific Northwest. I mean, there's descriptions of creatures that. are kind of run in the same vein as, I think Bigfoot is kind of like this umbrella term. But if you really think about it, people who are super into this stuff, I mean, I like to think

that I'm pretty into it, but I'm by no means. I mean, there are so many other people who are way more knowledgeable. But you have like the skunk ape, you have the grass man, you have Yeti, you have Bigfoot, you have Yahweh, you have all of these different names. I kind of think of it like when you think of wildlife that we actually know, not cryptozoology, but wildlife we know for a fact exists. Like, in simple terms, bears, you know that bears exist, but there are different types of bears depending on where you are in the world. And I think it's not super far off base to kind of attribute that to Bigfoot. Yeah, that there's different, not species. Yeah, species. Yeah, get a species like with dogs right yeah it's like this is the golden retriever one this is the lab that's

so interesting but that kind of goes back to what i was talking about with just how many different cultures have independently seen things like that in the woods it makes sense that it's something it's got to be yeah oh okay so maybe that is what it was in glacier national park maybe there were two different there's a alien in and something else i don't know there There's been, I'm not sure if I'm on board with this 100% because I don't know enough. But people have been writing in to us specifically about this, too, as far as like, I don't know if it's a new theory, but a lot of people think that Bigfoot and extraterrestrials are connected. I have heard that there's some overlap with UFO sightings and Bigfoot sightings, like time-wise

and geographic-wise. So, I don't know, maybe it could be both. I had heard, too, that Bigfoot, there's maybe an interdimensional element to Bigfoot. Yeah. That's why he's hard to nail down is because he can kind of come in and out of different dimensions and pop in different places. I know there's a lot of very supernatural stuff surrounding him. So, yeah, maybe it's all tied together. Yeah.

Who's to say? Who's to say? All right. Do you want to read your next one? Yeah. So my next story is titled Scary Experience in Mount Rainier National Park. by Reddit user Recent underscore Fox underscore 2091. And I'm excited because I also lived here.

I went to a van life meetup in Enumclaw, Washington over the weekend. The city is close to Mount Rainier National Park. And because I had already made the trip, I figured I might as well camp overnight nearby the park in a dispersed camping spot in the forest. I brought some ingredients to make carneasada tacos, downloaded some movies, and was ready for a nice cozy evening in my van,

something which I do on most weekends in various campsites around the state. When I got there, I hiked around the campsite, which was very nice, save for the large amounts of trash, which was littered about, which actually made me really sad. The trail led to two fire pits, not too far from where I had parked, and it ended at a quiet riverbank. It seemed like it was a good spot that local teens might go to drink and smoke weed. There was even a log bench with the word 420 painted colorfully on its seat. I wasn't sure how recently people had been here, and there were open, half-drink cans around

the fire pits that seemed cold. I wasn't quite sure if this meant anything in the moment. I decided that it likely wasn't an active camp, and that's where I chose to set up camp. The spot wasn't terribly isolated. Every 30 minutes or so, someone would drive by to claim another campsite down the lonely fire road, some trucks, and even an RV. People like me looking to spend time out in nature and who don't want to shell out the extra cash for a campsite. After exploring the area, I went back to my van to start making dinner.

I used a satellite communicator to check in with my friends and family as I didn't have any service this deep into the forest. The sun was setting and as I sat down to eat my tacos, I left my doors open to let the airflow and the cool breeze felt amazing. But after eating and when it was quiet, I started noticing a sound in the distance. They sounded like gunshots, really almost like cannon shots. Deep, rhythmic booms echoing in the valley every few seconds. What accompanied those noises

was the noise of a chainsaw, much closer than the gunshots. Now, neither of these noises are very uncommon to hear when camping on fire roads, to be honest. It wouldn't be unheard of for someone to use a chainsaw to cut down a larger tree trunk into firewood.

Summer fire ban be damned. But then saw some campers start to leave, including an RV, which was particularly unusual. Finding a campsite for an RV can be hard, but it is especially hard to find one at night. The rule is to always find camp before the sun sets, and the sun had only just disappeared from the sky. Something spooked them,

and I wondered if it would be wise to follow their lead. However, I had unwashed dishes on the counter and was in no mood to move, and so I didn't. I did, however, triple check that all my doors and windows were locked before drifting to sleep. That night can only be described as hazy and disorienting. I have very little memory of anything that had happened, but the evidence that something had most definitely happened was very evident. I remember being awake in the pitch black of night struggling to breathe. Not choking, my lungs were filled with air, but I remember the feeling

of drowning. I remember the plating desperation for air. I remember trying to see with my sight being wholly consumed by the darkness in front of me. I have memory of trying to punch out a window to no avail. I remember making my way to the side doors of my van to open the door to breathe, and then I woke up in bed and the sun was in the sky. I would have chalked this up to a really bad dream, but all around me my van was damaged. It looked like there had been a struggle. Some of my window blinds were sliced and ruined. One of my windows had a scratch mark from the inside. Even the air vent on my ceiling was obliterated from the inside. My curtain rack was pulled down from the ceiling, which was screwed into a beam. I didn't think I was even capable of this. The van was very well

ventilated, so I am unsure as to why I would have had trouble breathing in the first place. My carbon monoxide detector was silent, and the van was very well ventilated after cooking. I have no idea what could have caused me to do this and ruin my lovely van. I saw no indication of any kind of forced entry, and all of the damage was done from the inside by me trying to get out, I guess. My knuckles were very sore, as well as my feet, as I had probably hit them hard on the various cabinets in the van on my way out. A pole I used to prop up my canopy was strangely out of place in the middle of the floor and broken at the ends. I have never had any form of night terrors or sleepwalking before this, except for one incident, also nearby

Mount Rainier National Park. A few months ago, my friends and I were driving, once again, through Enumclaw, trying to find a camping spot where we might be able to post up. It was nighttime already, and as I said before, finding camp at night can be pretty difficult. We were driving down the same road I had taken for my recent trip, and we had gotten a tip from a local about a mountain which had some good dispersed camping. We were tired and hungry and just wanted to start setting up camp. We passed a few spots, mostly mud and rock, none very much. appealing. We decided to pick the least muddy spot we could find and I helped them set up their tents. It was one of my very first trips in my van and I was excited to test it out. As we were setting up

camp, we heard the wind blowing ominously through the trees, causing them to creak loudly, threatening us with a fall. And this particular area of the mountain was on very unleveled in the most unsettling way. So we thus referred to this campsite as the ominous slant. When we slept that night, few things of note happened. My friend Melissa claims to have heard squeaking noises as if someone was wearing a latex body suit. She refers to the sound as the happy gimper. Kurt, her boyfriend, swears he heard a bear that night. However, the worst of it was when, in the middle of the night, they both heard me yell bloody murder from my van. Kurt rushed out of the tent, tripping a few times in his haste and rushed over to swing open the doors. But I was asleep. He asked what

was wrong and he thought that someone was attacking me. I had no idea what he was talking about. I have no memory at all of any nightmares preceding it or anything. I have no idea what any of this means. I've been on many trips in the van since with different people and nothing like this has ever happened anywhere else. It has only happened when I've been in Mount Rainier National Park. To be honest, thinking about the feeling of drowning in the darkness makes me very much not want to revisit the subject anytime soon. So I don't believe I'll be visiting the park any time in the near future for camping either. There is something strange going on there.

Do you agree as someone who's lived there? I don't know. I'm going to say that I have certainly felt strange vibes in different locations, but I have personally never experienced them in Mount Rainier. I've actually had kind of the opposite experience. So I don't know. I can't say that I would be on board with like that feeling of because I've been in that exact area. But at the same time, people have different experiences, you know, so who am I to say?

Well, one thing that I've noticed in some of the camping and hiking mysterious disappearances that we've covered is there's this element of people making decisions when they're hiking and camping that they wouldn't normally make. in their everyday lives. And so there, some investigators believe that there is maybe a level of hypnosis that can happen if you're by yourself in the woods. You're not around people. You don't have other people's perspectives on things. So you're trying to make decisions for yourself. Also, if you've been hiking a really long time, you could be dehydrated, you could be tired,

you could be seeing the same thing over and over again. And so there maybe is this level in the wilderness of hypnosis that occurs inside of people that causes strange things to happen to their brains, which is what I thought of when she was saying, like, I don't ever get this weird sleep paralysis thing except when I'm in this park. Like, maybe there really is something about this park that is doing that to her brain as well. There's two things that I thought of when I was reading this story, and they're kind of unrelated. The first is Cassie and I have talked about this before, but when we're camping, which we've done

a lot of many times is there's something about camping regardless of if we had a particularly strenuous day or anything like that but we just sleep and dream differently when we're camping interesting can you explain a little bit more i almost always have vivid dreams every night that i'm camping and i don't have a theme to them but i don't have a lot of vivid dreams just at home or in a hotel or anything. But whenever I'm sleeping outside on the ground, I have very, very vivid dreams. Yeah. And we do a lot of traveling and sleeping in different locations.

I mean, we've been to almost every continent. We've been on trains, boats, hotels, falucas. Like, we've been everywhere and kind of had pretty much every type of experience of like sleeping somewhere that you can. and there's just something different about when you're sleeping outdoors. It's this sort of like, I don't want to say hypnotic, but it really is different. It's a deeper, and I don't know if it's like you're returning to this connection in nature and something shifts in you.

But we know we're not alone with that. We have plenty of friends who have had either just weird experiences at night when they're asleep. I don't think anything to this degree, but definitely, like Cassie just said, like, just there's this vividness that comes with sleeping outdoors and not really sure what that stems from, but we've experienced it. And of course, there's like this element of your mind playing tricks on you of like, I heard this, I heard that. You know, and attributing it, like your mind being like, oh, that was definitely X, Y, or Z, even though it's just like a squirrel walking in the brush. You know, your mind is like on high alert. So there's that. But there's also, and this is not a story we've covered, but again, it is, I, you probably

have just knowing your catalog, but the Dietlov Pass. We haven't covered it. We cover something similar, the Kammer Dobbin incident. But yeah, Diatlov Pass is another one where I think they looked at that crime scene and felt like there was a possibility that all of those people made a decision in that moment. moment that they couldn't explain or that was different than what they would have normally done. Yeah. And it has elements of from being on the inside and trying to get out. Like there's not something coming from the outside in, which is what we see a lot with either a human attacking you or wildlife or a natural

disaster. Like there's something coming at you or into your space. But here, like something's happening inside the van and her waking up and being like, I was trying to get out for some reason. And that's, that has similar elements to, you know, that story with what happened to those people. Which makes me think that it's something internal that's happening. It's something like within your mind or physiological that's happening where you're feeling this need to get out more than an external threat influencing that behavior, which that's really. scary to me. And the fact that that does happen to people outdoors in the wilderness on long camping trips is so so spooky. Yeah. And having just such a kind of violent reaction in your

sleep where you're clawing at your whole van ripping off curtains and you have this memory when you wake up of not being able to breathe and trying to escape and then you see everything around you. It's like whatever I was feeling, I was up and about and I was like really physically trying to get out of this. I'm curious if anyone listening to this has sleep terror and if this mimics something that you've experienced because I have growing up, you know, when you're on a family vacation, you all sleep in the same hotel room. I was sibling who has, I would describe it as mild sleep terror, not that they've ever gone to get help for it. But so when we would be all sleeping in the hotel room, Leo, my sibling would wake up and start clawing at the ceiling or would look

look up as if there was someone above them and just would be clawing, clawing, clawing. And I remember this one time specifically. They're clawing. They sit up. They turn to me. I still closed dead asleep. I start shaking them awake. And I was like, what just happened?

What, like, what were you seeing that I didn't see? And to them, there were people in a grate above their face that they were trying to claw at and help and save. But it was so visual. It was so real in that moment. And their body was acting out that exact scene. But I just had never heard, except for I'm. maybe a very few cases of someone getting up because this, whoever wrote this account said that

their whole van was basically destroyed. Like they had gotten up and none of that woke them up. Like punching the windows didn't wake them up, destroying the tubes at the end of the van didn't wake them up. That is really intense to experience, I imagine. To be physically sore the next day. Yeah. Like you fought.

That's super interesting. It also begs the question, did someone get into the van? Right. Well, didn't they say the doors were locked? They did say that. But I guess you could have locked the door on the way out. Yeah, I don't know what that would have been. But that's always like a big fear of mine, too, is that I'm sleeping and I wake up and I learn that someone else has been in my space.

Yeah. Very, very spooky to me. Yeah. For all the times that Cassie and I have spent together at night, I don't think you're not a big, Cassie's the most silent, like, statuesque sleeper. I have ever met. It's actually kind of weird, like on the other end of the spectrum. I just, like, find a spot and I don't move or make a peep until the morning. I'm so jealous.

Yeah, she lays down like a vampire and just closes her eyes. She's like, I'm about to sleep. And she just, like, shuts down like a robot and then breaks up in the same way. It's wild. Then I'm like, all right, I'm up. Oh, my God. I'm so jealous. I wish I could sleep like that.

same. That's crazy. Well, I think that's, those are the stories that we have for today. I'm very curious. I always ask the audience at the end what types of stories scare them the most. Some people really freak out with the supernatural stories. Some people really freak out with the more grounded, true crimey stories. I wonder if it's going to be different because these all took place in the woods and in national parks. Because for me, national parks, the woods, big foresty areas really represent the unknown in a way that you just don't encounter in your regular everyday life. So the element of the supernatural existing within that to me is like so spooky but also cool and enticing and it makes me want to go even more, even though I do share these stories about

how scary it is. Do you guys have any, for anyone who's listening that is maybe scared to go camping because they hear all these stories, what advice do you have for them? That's a great question. If you are scared to go camping, but you want to go, I would, my advice would be to bring a friend with you, so you're not alone, and to start off easy. I mean, you can start off at a campground that has bathrooms, that has other people around, that has facilities, so you can start off kind of easy. Also, my favorite trick of camping, which I know probably is not for everybody, but is my favorite thing and has changed my life. Danielle hates it. I know what you're about to say. I don't even know if I co-timed this, but I sleep with earplugs in. I just, I always say to Danielle, I'm like, whatever's happening outside my tent is none of my business. And it's only because with earplugs,

I can still hear. Like, if there is a big noise outside, I'm still going to hear it doesn't make me so I can't hear anything. But when I sleep, I'm such a delicate sleeper where if there's if it's quiet and there's any noise around me, I wake up. And if I'm outside, I immediately freak myself out. I'm like, what is that? Who is that? And I found that it makes me sleeping at night not work well. And I'm just up all night. Even if a squirrel walks by, I'm like, a bear. And then I have to be like, okay, think about it. That was the smallest footstep. That's not a bear. And I just freak myself out. So I found that if I wear earplugs at night, it kind of drowns out those small noises and I can sleep better. That's really good advice. Yeah, unless you really want to hear anything

that's coming. Yeah, if you want to freak yourself out, which I totally understand that side of the coin too. What did she call it in the story, the happy gimper, just a man in full latex, maybe outside of their tent? I hate that so much. Like, that is so specific also. It's like an American horror story, the Evan Peters latex suit. That's the first thing that came to my mind. No, thank you. I mean, weirder things have happened out there. So that's, I'm not saying it's like completely impossible, but true.

That's what I'm talking about your mind attributing, like making connections that probably aren't realistic. Yes, totally. I don't know. My advice is to just go for it for people who aren't accustomed. to camping. And like Cassie said, you can start small. It doesn't have to be this huge expedition where you're solo through hiking in the middle of, you know, the Pacific Northwest and you've never been there or whatever. But just I think that through our experiences with camping and traveling and recreating outdoors, whether together in a small group or even

by ourselves, like alone, I think that recreating outdoors, in whatever way, whether it's hiking or camping or even taking your RV or your sprinter van, it just gives you confidence. Yes. Yeah, I agree with that. You definitely, you know, you rely on yourself. And I think a lot of times in our day-to-day life, like even if you're doing things alone, you have support, you know, whether it's the support of technology or other people or infrastructure, things like that.

And when you're camping and you're just kind of reconnecting with nature, you have to be self-reliant and you have to problem solve on your own. And it just forces you to be independent in a way you don't get to be a lot. And that boost your confidence and that will trickle out and definitely touch other parts of your life. So I don't think you have to be an avid outdoors person to get those benefits. But spending time in nature and whatever capacity you feel is best will definitely improve your life. I love that so much. I think that's so accurate. The idea of being in a situation where

you have to problem solve for yourself, I think instills a lot of confidence in people. For sure. And usually it's not because like you're hearing Bigfoot or, uh, right. Yeah. That's not the problem you have to solve. It's more like how to build a tent. Right. Yeah. How to build a tent. How to get fresh water. How to ration. How did, you know, read a map. Use a compass. Like just things like that. Yes. Yeah. Well, I love it. I hope everyone who's listening does not get too scared and still wants to go out and explore and camp and do all those things. At least my listeners. I know your listeners are like so into that and go on trips with you guys, which is very, very cool. But I think that's all I have today. Where can everyone find you if they want to listen to your show? Yeah. So if you want to check out our show, we're on all streaming platforms. You can check us out on Apple on Spotify at National Park After Dark. You can see us. We have a website. It's NPAD podcast. com that also lists all of our episodes there and has our other things. And we're also on Instagram at National Park After Dark as well if you want to follow along and see all the episodes. We like to post pictures and little short clips of the episodes on our socials as well.

Awesome. Definitely head over. Check out the show. Lots of good spooky scary hiking and outdoorsy episodes. I think you guys have over 300 episodes I was seeing. So there's no limit basically on how much you guys can listen to this show. That's all we have for this episode of Heart Starts Pounding. Thank you so much for tuning in. I will be back next week with an episode on Lost Media that you were never supposed to see. So you're definitely going to want to stick around for that. And until then, stay curious.