Just Creepy: Scary Stories - 31 Scary DEEP WOODS Horror Stories (COMPILATION) | VOL 3 | 6 Hours of Scary Stories

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

These are 31 Scary DEEP WOODS Horror Stories (COMPILATION) | VOL 3 | 6 Hours of Scary Stories Linktree: https://linktr.ee/its_just_creepy Story Credits: ►Sent in to https://www.justcreepy.net/ Music by: 'Decoherence' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM_AjpJL5I4&t=0s Business inquiries: ►[e-mail] #scarystories #horrorstories #compilation #parkrangerstories #deepwoods #nationalpark 💀As always, thanks for watching! 💀

My friends and I live where it's blisteringly hot in the summer, so we got into kayaking and paddle boarding. It's a natural remedy for the most brutal summer days. Over the years, we've come to prefer certain lakes, rivers, and even annual events. The water community itself is super cool and tight-knit. They plan all kinds of dope activities throughout the season. One pretty cool thing that they do in our neck of the woods is the night paddles, and the vibe of these events can vary. Some are planned as late-night excursions downstream, where a team travels with minimal light at a nice slow pace,

leaning on their skills and each other for support to navigate the terrain. This is considered a pretty dangerous pastime, but the folks that organize it are top-notch. Many are search and rescue operators, and they use these events for training. The other type of night paddle is more like a rave on the water. Everybody decks out their board or kayak with all kinds of lights. and glow sticks, even glow in the dark paint. They bring inflatable rings and rafts full of coolers, speakers, all the stuff you need to throw a party. The Rave Night Paddles were more my style. I made sure to attend at least one or two every year. Where we live, even at night,

temperatures can sometimes exceed 100 degrees. Well, as usual, my friends and I got invited to one of these. We all agreed to go. I got my paddle board all decked out and crafted some glowstick props for the night and prepped all my gear. However, by the time of the event, every single one of my friends had cancelled, some leading up to the day, and the rest just failed to show. They all had good reasons. I didn't take it personally, but I was still fully committed to going solo. I drove out to the parking lot, secured a space, and then offloaded all my stuff, carrying what I needed down to the shore. I wasn't drunk or high or anything. I'd only have a few beers with everybody else once out on the water, as I had to pack up my own stuff and drive

myself home. That kind of thing was fun, but wasn't a reason to be irresponsible. There were plenty of people in the parking lot, and along the shore. Down the waterway, more would be showing up every hour. You had to get there almost at sunset to get a decent parking spot. Otherwise, you'd have to drag your gear for a quarter mile just to get to the water. I loaded up my paddleboard and set sail, neon tube lights lighting my way like a flagship for a good time. Further down the river, I could hear dance music blaring, and soon I joined the crowd in a large, spacious body of water, with enough room to fit a good 75 people or more. There were only about 20 or 25 so far, but there were girls dancing on paddleboards just like mine, their

bodies lit up with every manner of glow stick. I cracked a beer and settled in with my feet in the water, cheering and whooping to the music. After an hour, the place was nearly packed, brimming with college-age coeds floating in every direction. I linked up with a few people I knew, being such a frequent participant, and soon I fell in with a crowd of folks and felt right at home. We drank a bit, played a little floating beer pong under the rave lights, and danced our asses off to the music. At one point, I got in the water a bit to cool off and enjoy the river. I made a big show of falling backward off my board as the punchline to a joke I made. When I fell into the water, I felt something weird touching my back and shoulder.

It was only there for a second, soft and kind of slick. Then it swam away. I shot out of the water like a bullet, caught off guard by whatever was underneath. There was enough light in splashing that any fish or snakes, or whatever, wouldn't be hanging around this pool. If they were, they were literally hiding near the bottom. some where. Critters have never been a problem at the night paddles I attended. It was weird and I mentioned it, but we all pretty much just brushed it off. It's a river, it could be anything,

even just some driftwood. Regardless, it creeped me out. I decided I just wanted to get out for a second. I needed to take a leak anyway. I explained to everybody that I was going to hit the shore for a minute. I grabbed my flashlight and hopped off my board, deciding to wade over. It was supposed to be quick, but I didn't take more than five or six steps before I felt it again, this time on my shin. I knew it was something near the bottom of the river. It was moving out of my way. At this point, weirded out, I brought my other shin up to bang it off, and it felt like my leg touched an arm or something similar. At this point I just thought it was a massive fish. I got scared because I didn't really know. I clicked my flashlight on and pointed it straight down. To my complete

shock and bewilderment, I saw a person looking back up at me. He was in sparse snorkeling gear, but I could make out the goggles, the mouthpiece, and he even had fins on. I literally couldn't believe what I was seeing. As I started to call my friends over, the guy disappeared deeper into the water. I called out and pointed. The others lit him up with their flashlights too. At this point, the guy knew he was caught, came up, and played it cool. Everyone knew better, though. They just started laying into him. I guess this guy had been caught a time or two at events like this. He was the equivalent of a peeping Tom, watching girls underwater, swimming around them without them even knowing, maybe even touching them. Who knows? He heard about these little get-togethers and

decided it was a perfect place to get his rocks off. The creepiest part of the whole thing, at least for me, was that he would steal people's stuff right off their paddle boards or kayaks, and then, like, hold it for ransom. It's very common for people to lose all kinds of stuff, from glasses to wallets and keys, phones, you name it, and for other people to find it later along the shore or places in the river, people have even found wedding rings years after they go missing. Because of this, little groups were created on social media

to help return the lost items after these night paddle events. A bunch of people would post their missing phones, wallets, whatever. This creep would respond because he's the one who stole it. He was the one collecting rewards from these people. I knew a few people, specifically women, who had gotten their phones back from this guy. They all claimed that they were pretty sure someone had broken into their phone. Like this guy was prying through their personal stuff, texts, pictures, everything. It's just a grim reminder that you can never be too careful.

You never know what kind of craziness people get up to, even in the middle of the night, in the middle of a river. My name is Rob. For the past few years, I've held the position of deputy team leader at the Breen Mountain Rescue Team here in Wales. The BMRT is an essential emergency service in rural Wales, staffed entirely by volunteers, and funded by donations from the National Lottery and members of the public. Our work is not just restricted to mountain or wilderness search and rescue for climbers and hill walkers. Our skills are also deployed by the Welsh police to search for vulnerable or missing persons on assignments where we can employ our specialist medical and rescue techniques. I've seen some pretty wild things during my time in the rescue team, some of which may be more distressing or disturbing than others, some more than I care to admit.

However, there's only been one incident in my entire career that myself and my colleagues have not been able to fully explain. This is the story of that incident. Mountain rescue teams can only be called on the authority of the police. A call is normally initiated by the local force in response to a 9-99 call or the report of a missing person. The team can be, and usually is, called out at any time of day or night under any conditions, even on New Year's Day and Christmas Day. The relevant police personnel will initially alert the rescue team by means of a pager or message. A little outdated, I know, but it reflects the slimmer than slim budget we're forced to work with year in, year out.

Once the volunteers receive their, I will respond message. The ball gets rolling. A team leader or deputy team leader will then discuss the details of the incident with the coordinating police officers and decide on an appropriate rendezvous point, and if any additional assets need to be deployed. These can include additional teams, tracker dogs, or even helicopter support, if the situation calls for it. So I'm sitting in the Drover's Arms pub with a few mates,

having just finished watching one of their younger brothers represent their high school in a rugby sevens match. Their team won, so spirits were high. We've just finished some dinner, and I'm about to get stuck into my first pint of the evening when my beeper goes off. I won't lie. I was a bit annoyed. I'd really been looking forward to that pint, but we're explicitly told to expect things like that. Such is the life of a mountain rescue volunteer. Anyway, I let the lads know I had to leave, put my coat on, and began the 10-minute walk up to the

small set of offices that serve as the BMRT headquarters. It's early on a Sunday night. Most calls seem to happen around holidays and weekends, and the place is empty. So I unlocked the doors, turned on all the lights, and walked down to my office to phone the police liaison officer to get all the necessary details. As I'm talking to the officer in question, my phone starts lighting up with text messages from various other team members telling me they're on their way. Everything was coming together nicely, and the situation seemed to be a usual basic search and rescue job. A couple of hikers went up into the hills on Saturday, intending to camp overnight before heading back down on Sunday afternoon. According to the person who had called it in, the hikers hadn't

returned on schedule, nor were they answering any of their phones, so they called us. Now, on more than one occasion, we've gotten calls from members of the public reporting missing people who weren't actually missing at all. Sometimes groups are slowed down by dodgy ankles or an upset tummy, or, you know, something like that. I get why someone might panic, and it's always better to be safe than sorry. That's why the BMRT exists in the first place, so it always helps when the person making the call knows a little about the missing person's group, especially if they know the intended route,

so we can retrace or follow it to the best of our ability. That'll help us potentially find them nice and quickly, too. If we can focus our search, we don't need helicopter support, which saves us a huge amount of money. I know that sounds callous, but we really do live and die on our funding, so it's essential we keep the purse strings tight. So I'm going through all the core details with the liaison officer,

determining the group's most likely whereabouts, trying to figure out where they started and where they could have gotten lost. We go through all the usual stuff, just like normal, then move on to the miscellaneous details that can often aid a search. These can include any medical conditions that might be able to be. bring the person into difficulty, age ranges, and things of that nature. You'd be amazed how tiny, seemingly insignificant details can help with the search, so it's extremely important that we compile as much information as possible as quickly as possible.

Only when I pressed the liaison officer for more information regarding the emergency call itself, did she become awfully coy. Very little in the way of detailed information could be passed along regarding the missing group. The only significant detail is that the woman who had reported them missing was absolutely distraught when she did so. The dispatcher had noted that no matter what she did or said, she could not seem to reassure the caller that their loved ones would be found. The caller seemed convinced that the group of hikers was gone and never coming back. Honestly, it's stuff like this that has kept me in the BMRT for so long. Being the hero that people so desperately need at what for

many is the lowest point of their lives thus far. Less than an hour after the initial beeper messages, myself and four additional volunteers had convened at the BMRT HQ, ready to begin our search. Our route would take us over 16 miles of hills and mountains, roughly five hours of solid walking, but it was likely we'd find the missing group of hikers in a fraction of that time. At least, that's what we told ourselves initially. We did find something relatively quickly after only 45 minutes worth of hiking up gently sloping trails, but it didn't fill us with confidence. In fact, it did the very opposite. We found a tent, an empty, abandoned tent. Being a BMRT volunteer sometimes means you're basically a detective. You can use small pieces of a puzzle to build up a larger

picture of an overall situation. What we had before us was an empty two-man tent, but we were looking for a total of four missing hikers. What was clear was that whoever had set this tent up had been able to make it down into the brete to report an emergency. Only they hadn't. They'd apparently gone back up the trail, but why would they do such a thing? This escaped us completely. This was the first really worrying sign. But what was obvious is that they had done so without even wearing their hiking boots. So they had climbed up the mountain barefoot in the middle of the night. That's definitely not good. This happened to be in the middle of March, not the coldest month of the year, but one which brings strong winds to central whales.

Wind chill can lower ambient temperatures by almost half, and tends to be the cause of most cases of hypothermia we encounter. A hiker can look outside, see a sunny day, and assume fine weather. But once they're up a mountain, the wind can drop the temperature into single digits, and turn seemingly benign. situations into a deadly one. But it wasn't just hiking boots that had been left behind either. A fair amount of cold weather clothing had been left behind in the tent, along with what appeared to be a significant amount of food and water. It was at that point that any hope of getting through this rescue without having to call in helicopter support went right out the window. Whoever was lost out here needed help, and quickly. So we called it in, and within a few minutes, a search and rescue

helicopter had taken off from Neil Hall Hospital, with the intention of flying the length of our proposed route, our eye in the sky was on its way. It was fully dark with no stars by the time we made the call, and shortly afterward, we began to see red and white flashing lights moving westward in the sky ahead of us. The helicopter's pilot and I exchanged greetings as they tuned into our radio frequency, and I kept in touch with them as best as possible as we advanced along our route. What's more, It didn't take long before the co-pilot spotted something unusual just about a mile or so ahead of us. According to the helicopter's crew, they had spotted a person running along one of the mountain trails in the opposite direction we were heading. They had tracked the individual's movement for a moment or two before losing sight of them around a set of standing stones.

There are over 30 standing stones in the Beacon National Park. Some of them are many centuries old and wreathed in myth. It isn't known exactly how many of the surviving standing stones are prehistoric. Some appear to be memorial stones, and others seem to have had more than one function, either as boundary markers, way marks on ancient trails, signposts, or even rubbing stones for livestock. But whatever their purpose was, we had our next rendezvous point, one that we would have to reach quickly if we hoped to find our missing persons in good health. It took about 45 minutes of hard hill climbing before we reached the standing stones.

They formed a high, rough circle of about five huge chunks of granite, worn and misshapen by the elements. According to the helicopter's crew, the person they had been tracking had run off the trail and into the standing stones before disappearing from view. It was more likely that the helicopter had simply let the person slip out of their searchlight and lost track of them, but why a person in parents were. would run away from the rescue chopper and not towards it was a complete and utter mystery to us. I mean yeah, stranger things have happened on previous rescue attempts,

but this little conundrum certainly left us scratching our heads as we began to search for clues as to where the person might have headed next. After a minute or two of combing the area with only our personal torches for light, one of the many team members called over to me. Behind this standing stone, set into a little, little hillock that was obscured from view, was a small opening in the earth. I say small, but it was just big enough for a fully grown adult to climb inside. And what was clear was that it was the perfect place for someone to hide in and get away from the biting wind and rain.

I stuck my torch inside the opening and peered inside, only then seeing how deep the passageway seemed to go. Wales used to be a hub for the British coal mining industry, and the country is now littered with disused mining pits and shafts, both ancient and modern. Knowing this full well, the underground passage didn't strike me as unusual at first, and I actually thought the missing hikers were lucky that they might have come across something like this, to shelter them. I called out down the opening, checking to see if anyone had slipped down the tunnel and had gotten themselves stuck while trying to take shelter or something like that. I received no reply. I then called over to one of the other team members who had happened to carry the majority of our climbing ropes.

We harnessed him up, staked climbing pegs into the earth just outside the entrance, and began to lower him into the opening to check for signs of life. We lowered him down so far into the earth that I began to worry about the prospect of getting him stuck, but thankfully we didn't have to lower him any further before he found something. He called out for us to pull him up, alerting us that he had found an item of clothing that possibly belong to one of our missing hikers. So we did just that. We pulled him back up, took the item of clothing from him, and lowered him back down to continue looking. As he did so, I took a quick look at the jumper he had brought up and was struck by something unusual about it.

It looked old, really old. Clothing exposed to the elements for long periods can end up looking pretty rough, but not that rough. It appeared as though it had been stuck down in that hole for far too long. We didn't find anything else down that hole or the rest of the mountain. We stayed up there until about three o'clock in the morning, long after our helicopter support had to withdraw due to dwindling fuel. But we didn't find a single thing, no more clothes, no more signs of life, and no more bodies. The more it became clear that we weren't going to find anything, the more I thought about how the distressed caller seemed convinced that the hikers were gone. She had no way of knowing that whatsoever, yet somehow she was right, and that really didn't sit right with me at all.

Throughout the next week, two more search parties took to the hills, in hopes of finding a trace of our missing hikers. Both came back empty-handed. I expected reports of the missing hikers to appear in local news publications, only they didn't. When I tried to find out why, I was turned away by most police sources until one slipped that a judge at the High Court of England and Wales had placed a publication ban on the incident, meaning an order prohibiting publication under Section 11 of the Contemptive Court Act in 1981, was in fact keeping all news of the incident out of newspapers. But that's not what really bothers me about this whole thing.

I mean, it's been confounding, sure. But it's another peculiar detail surrounding the case that keeps me up at night. The name stitched into the jumper we found down that hole in the earth was Robert Williams. I came to find out that this didn't match any of the names we had been given regarding the missing hikers. In fact, Robert Williams had been missing from a nearby town of Neath since March of 2002, 17 years before our missing hikers were reported. Who was it that our helicopter support had spotted before they disappeared among the standing stones? Was it one of our missing hikers?

Or was it, in fact, the long-lost Robert Williams? Regardless, I can't help but think I'll find the answer. answers to these questions at the bottom of that tunnel, hidden somewhere among those standing stones. The Pacific Northwest is a paradise for outdoor enthusiasts, and my boyfriend Eric and I are no exception. The forests are so lush and dense. It's like walking through a jungle, coupled with the breathtaking mountains and the ocean, turning it into a truly one-of-a-kind area many of us just can't get enough of. Eric and I try to get outside for a few miles at least once a week, and I swear, we never see the same thing twice. We met in college, bonding over our shared love of hiking,

backpacking, and paddleboarding. If it happened outside, we both wanted to try it. Our adventures had taken us to some of the most breathtaking spots in the region. We've always found that our time in nature just brings us closer together. Having a mutual love and admiration for the outdoors only nurtures the bond that we share, and it's been like that since day one. That being said, there are some activities we do more than others. Day hiking has kind of become our go-to hobby, thanks to its convenience and accessibility. Paddleboarding is fun, but super involved.

Camping is great, but sometimes requires a lot of time we don't always have available. The more we adventure, the more we come to love one-and-done trips that just burn up the miles as fast as possible. We started as hobbyists and slowly whipped ourselves into shape over time, to the point that we actually had muscles and pretty solid cardio.

Hiking put us in the best shape of our lives. We've explored countless trails, each one offering a unique experience and a chance to connect with the natural world. So, when we heard about a natural spring at the end of a long hike, we knew we had to check it out. There are all kinds of waterfalls, forgotten lakes, and lookout points we've hiked to, anything that we heard about. The spring itself was rumored to be a hillary.

hidden gem tucked away inside a secluded valley. The hike would take all day, but the promise of a serene view and chilly, clean water was too enticing to resist. And all day didn't necessarily mean hard, the trail itself actually had a pretty low rating in regard to difficulty. We spent the week planning our trip, pouring over maps and online guides, and preparing our gear. Finally, the weekend arrived. We set off early and eager to hit the trail. As we drove to the trailhead, the excitement was building up inside me. I love the sense of adventure that comes with exploring a new trail, and the fact that this one was a bit of a challenge in terms of length only added to the allure. Eric and I had become experienced hikers over

the years. We were confident in our ability to navigate the wilderness, especially here in our own backyard. We'd spent so much time in this area that we used to joke that it was impossible for us to get lost. Once we arrived at the trailhead, I felt this sense of relief and adrenaline at the same time. The parking lot was almost empty, a good sign that we'd have the trail to ourselves. I have a bit of a complex when it comes to our hiking. I don't like it to be a spectacle. I don't like sharing every little step of the path with people I don't know.

I know it sounds entitled, but I go the distance to just be alone, not brushing shoulders with people just trying to take photos. We got our packs together, loaded up on water and snacks, and immediately hit the trail. The first mile or so was just stunning, like walking through a jungle. The trees were tall and green, their leaves rustling in the gentle breeze. The trail itself was narrow and winding, but well marked, so we made pretty good progress. But as we hiked deeper into the woods, the trail began to get harder and harder to follow. It splintered off in different directions, and in some places, it seemed to be a little bit more.

to disappear altogether. Eric and I exchanged a look at one point, our excitement changing into curiosity. Bushwhacking a trail was nothing new for us, and we welcomed the challenge. We pulled out our little hand map and took a bearing, pressing on. Hard to follow trails aren't really uncommon here or really anywhere, just a factor of the terrain. Some areas encourage people to wander in all directions, and when this happens, the trail gets diluted and seems to go in every direction. This had been the case in this area, to the point that the main trail turned into a ghost of itself, and we really struggled to follow it. We just pushed on with it and did our best. After another hour or so, we were 99% sure that we'd been successful.

The trail seemed to re-establish itself along the correct route, deeper into the valley. Either way, the place was breathtaking, and had my attention pretty much held hostage. I didn't care if we were lost. The way back to the car was clear as day. It would take miles and miles of unknown navigating for us not to know where the car was. As we continued on the trail, the beauty of the wilderness enveloped us once again. The trees towered above, their leaves rustling in the gentle breeze. We walked hand in hand, taking in the sights and sounds of nature. There was water somewhere far off, like the echoes of a waterfall, and it was carried up to us. We lost ourselves in the woods, just soaked it in one beautiful step at a time.

Soon after this, we found ourselves inside a small, grassy clearing, surrounded by three or four different trails, breaking off in multiple directions. A large wooden sign stood in the center, but it was old and vandalized. The letters were faded and pretty much unreadable. This was a rest stop that we'd been counting on as it's well marked online. Everybody said this was the intersection of many different trailheads. One would lead to the spring, one to the riverway, and several just went up towards a jagged rock base that offered absolutely beautiful views.

The problem was, we wanted the spring specifically, and without the sign, we didn't know which way to go. Great, Eric said with frustration etched on his face. Now what? I pulled out our handmap, but it really wasn't much help. The trail seemed to twist and turn in every direction. It was pretty disheartening. Both thought the trail would clean itself up and get more defined.

Alas, it was more diluted than ever. Just then, we noticed a man sitting on a log across the clearing, dressed in worn hiking gear. His face was weathered from years of exposure to the elements. We shared a wave, and Eric and I approached him. He smiled pretty much right away, seemed friendly enough. Like I mentioned earlier, I wasn't fond of approaching strangers, but this was pretty much our only option in the moment,

so I was actually grateful to see a friendly face out there, especially one that might have directions for us. Hey there, Eric said, his voice almost jolly. We're trying to get to the spring. Can you help us out? The stranger looked up at us, his eyes squinting in the sunlight. Ah, the spring, yeah, it's a beauty. Eric and I nodded. can you get us there he asked um yeah sure he said his face was weird though he was kind of looking all around

not really making eye contact when he said this i didn't know what to think other than it was weird maybe he wasn't very social maybe there was a mosquito buzzing around his face who knows he said he had the directions and that's really all that mattered to me great i said relieved we're having a bit of trouble finding it. The trails out here are pretty unclear. The stranger nodded. His eyes alight with a knowing look. Yeah, it can be tricky, but I can help you out. The trail that you want is the one to your left. It'll take you straight to the spring. He pointed down the trail that he indicated, giving additional directions. Stay to the left. Don't go over the boulder. Stay left of that too. And when it forks, follow it uphill, not downhill. Even though.

though the downhill side looks more promising. He explained that we had to hike a series of ascending switchbacks that would route the hillside and then right to the spring, which was tucked back in the furthest slot of the canyon. Thanks, Eric said his voice grateful. How far is it, though? The stranger's smile was cryptic in the moment. Oh, it's not far. Just a few miles. You'll see some landmarks along the way, so keep an eye out for an old oak tree with the carved initials. that'll let you know that you're on the right path. I don't know why, but I felt a shiver run down my spine

as we thanked the stranger and continued on our way. There was something about him, something unsettling that just didn't quite add up. The more he spoke, the less he looked at us. Once he did, he was looking at my legs. It gave me the creeps. I said thanks anyway and followed Eric down the path, super glad to have him with me.

Otherwise, who knows with that guy? He just had that energy of something. someone up to no good. As we walked, the forest seemed to grow darker, the trees twisting and turning in ways that seemed almost sinister. I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched, that unblinking eyes were trained on us from somewhere out in the shadows. Eric, I whispered, my voice barely even audible. Do you hear that? He looked at me, his eyes questioning. Hear what? That right there, it's like crunch, ing or something. I could hear it somewhere behind us, inconsistent, distant crunching off in the tree line. It sounded like walking,

but I couldn't tell if it was two-legged or four. It stood out to me because we hadn't heard or seen anybody throughout this entire time, so a person all of a sudden hiking parallel to us was pretty strange. He shrugged, his expression reassuring. It's the woods, babe. It's normal to feel a little spooked. But I knew what I heard, and it wasn't just the woods. Either way, I pressed on, eager to put some distance between myself and whatever was lumbering around behind the trees. There are various predators out here, of course, snakes and spiders, and Eric and I have had our fair share of encounters with them. I didn't get the vibe that it was any kind of animal like that around, though, as the birds and bugs continued to bustle around, making noise. Usually, once a predator enters the area,

everything moves on or gets quiet. Whatever it was, I would be. was the only one who found it creepy. We hiked for another mile or so, enjoying the terrain and views inside that area. The sun was shining, and birds were singing their sweet melodies. But as we walked, that feeling came back, the feeling of being watched. Throughout this time, I kept looking behind us, and that's when I saw him, the man from earlier sneaking through the brush following us. Eric, look, I whispered, tugging on his arm. He turned just in time to see that guy creep back into the foliage. What is it? he asked.

That guy from earlier, he's following us, I said, my heart racing. I was sure that it was him. He was a ways off. I'd say a good quarter mile, but the slope we just climbed gave me a great vantage. I pegged him the second I saw him. You couldn't miss those scruffy clothes, that torn up red backpack, same haircut and beard. I mean, he was the only person we'd seen out here. Who else could it be?

Eric immediately shrugged it off. Baby, he's probably just out here hiking like we are. He has just as much right to be out here as we do. I know what I saw, and I know it didn't feel right. The guy was trying to keep hidden, at a half crouch, sticking close to the brush and branches. I kept a close eye on the trail behind us, my senses on high alert.

This is exactly why I don't like hiking with people I don't know. Another mile, and we encountered another couple hiking in the opposite direction. To me, for the first time ever, it was a godsend. They were using the trail and going the opposite direction, looked totally normal. I was relieved to have strength in numbers just in case that guy decided to pop out, waving a knife or something. We asked them how much further the spring was. They looked at us with complete confusion.

You're not on the spring trail, they said. This is the lookout trail. It gets seriously steep in about a half a mile. It starts to climb up the canyon wall. My heart immediately sank. We'd been walking for close to two hours, and now we were on the wrong trail. We went back and forth with them for a while, just to clarify what they were saying and where we were.

Super disappointing. Only added more confusion and creepiness to the situation that I believe we were in. I mean, it's obvious, right? That guy back at the rest stop was not making eye contact with us because he was giving us bad directions, or in other words, lying out his ass. Now here was the real question. Was he just messing with us, or was he setting us up for something weird? I was grateful for the honesty of the couple, as it told me they weren't involved with that guy at all.

Thanks for letting us know, Eric said, his voice laced with frustration. The other couple bid us farewell and then disappeared around the bend. I gave them a brief warning about that guy down there, just saying that he gave us bad directions and that he was now coming up behind us. They agreed it was weird, and they would keep an eye out as well. Eric and I stopped for a moment, just taking inventory of where we were now, how far we'd gone. I think Eric just wanted to settle and take the situation in alone. I mean, we were out of options, a lot of the day had gone.

by, so the spring was probably off the table now. We just needed to decide if we were committing to the lookout point or turning back now for something else. We weighed our options for 10 minutes or so, long enough for me to forget about scanning the trail, and that's when we both heard it, the shutter of a camera. It was so jarring that we literally stopped talking, and looked back at one another, went pale in the face. I could tell now Eric was suddenly on board with the strangeness I'd been talking about. We both looked up to see that stranger from earlier, hiding behind the trees and branches. He had a camera, and he was snapping photos of us. My blood immediately ran cold, and I know this sounds weird, but stuff like this is literally

my nightmare. What a weird, creepy thing to do with people you don't know in the woods. It implies a mindset that I can't fathom. When I think about it, it still makes my skin crawl. What the hell? Eric exclaimed, his voice angry. He's normally a very level guy, but I could tell he was seething and just ready to go ballistic. Get away from us, I shouted, my heart racing. I shouldn't have said anything, but I wanted to match Eric's energy. Do my best to get this guy out of here. The stranger didn't move, his eyes just fixed on us with this unnerving intensity. It's not like we were trapped or anything, but we were alone with this guy in the wilderness, and he was within 30 yards now. He never said a single word. We just heard the shutter a couple more times. Dude, what the hell is your problem? Why did you give us bunk directions? Eric asked. This time, the guy laughed a little, snapped another photo, and then disappeared behind the tree trunk.

Remember, this is the Pacific Northwest. The area that we found ourselves in was beyond thick, overgrown to the point of jungle status. Huge leaves blanketed branches. This guy vanished like a ghost right in front of our eyes. Now we were both officially creeped out, and Eric did not want to go off trail and risk getting injured or something with us being far from the car. We just turned around and started that long slog back to the car. It was something like four miles. We took this as a hard defeat, but on the surface we were just glad to not have anything worse happen. I don't know what that guy was capable of. We didn't hear or see him again after we turned around. We made it back to the parking lot and didn't see another soul.

We drove back home and theorized what the hell that guy was about. This all took place a few years ago, and still to this day, I wonder why he took those photos and more importantly, what he did with them. It almost makes me ill, thinking there could be photos of me floating around out there, pictures that I'll never see. The sun fell below the mountains as I settled into my solitary post atop Pine Ridge, my home for the summer as a fire lookout worker. I enjoyed the isolation, crisp mountain air, vibrant sunsets, and the occasional rustle of wildlife in the underbrush, a welcome reprieve from the chaos of the city.

This was my sanctuary, a small cabin with a panoramic view of the forest stretching endlessly in every direction. As darkness took the forest, I turned on my oil lamp. Its warm glow flickered against the wooden walls. The radio crackled with static, a reminder that I was connected, however tenuously, to the world below. I kept my logbook nearby, jotting down the day's observations and checking in with the Ranger Station. All clear, I reported, feeling a sense of pride in my responsibility, but tonight felt different. A dense fog rolled in as the sun sank, creeping up the trees like a ghost,

swallowing the last hints of daylight. I peered through my binoculars, scanning the sprawling woods that now seemed to swirl with shadows. The sound of rustling leaves filled the air, louder than before, as if the forest was alive and whispering secrets I couldn't quite decipher. Around midnight, my ease exploded into full-blown terror. It started subtly, a flicker at the edge of my vision. I turned quickly, convinced I'd see an animal or perhaps the wind playing tricks on me, but there was nothing there. I returned to my logbook, dismissing it as fatigue.

Sleep had been elusive these past few nights, and the shadowy edges of my mind were beginning to fray. Then the first cold thump echoed through the cabin. I held my breath. It was followed by two more deliberate and rhythmic thumps. Someone, something, was knocking on the wooden exterior of the lookout. Goose bumps prickled my skin as I glanced around, my heart pounding. The sound was organized, almost as if it was trying to get my attention. Hello, I called out, trying to sound unafraid. Is anyone there? Silence.

Yet the knocking resumed, louder, more insistent, each thwack resonating through my bones. I peered out the small window straining to see through the fog. The trees loomed like sentinels, blocking any trace of movement. Was it the wind? an animal testing the boundaries of my sanity, I returned to my desk telling myself I was alone and began to write again, hoping to drown out the sounds. But then I heard a soft voice whispering my name,

barely audible over the howling wind. Claire, chills cascaded down my spine. My name echoed in the emptiness, its source lost to the night. Who's there? I exclaimed, panic rising in my throat. Show yourself. The answer came as the cabaret. and violently shook, rattling to the very foundation. The knocking morphed into thunderous blows, as if something immense were trying to break through the walls. I leapt to my feet,

gripping the table for stability, the lantern's flame dancing wildly, threatening to extinguish. Stop it, I shouted, eyes wide and frantically searching for anything to explain this madness in my mind. I replayed every horror story I had ever heard about fire lookouts, ghosts of past rangers, lost souls wandering the woods seeking revenge. I couldn't let those stories control me. I had to remain calm, but the voices grew louder, overlapping in a cacophony that filled my ears. Claire, help us, we're trapped.

I stumbled back, heart racing, terror flooding my senses. The air grew thick and heavy, the temperature dropping as if I had entered a tomb. Against my better judgment, I opened the door, desperate to confront whatever had invaded my sanctuary. The fog swirled in, cold and biting, wrapping around me like icy fingers. Show yourself, I yelled into the void. But all I saw were the intimidating silhouettes of trees, their branches reaching out like skeletal hands clutching at the sky. Then in the dense fog I spotted them, figures emerging silently, pale and translucent. Their faces were etched with anguish and fear. They moved slowly.

toward me, mere shadows in the night, but their eyes were piercing. I could feel their sorrow deep within my chest. Please help us, one whispered, echoing inside my skull. I stepped back, stumbling over the threshold, my breath hitching. What happened to you? I asked, desperation spilling from my lips. Trapped! The voice reverberated, a mournful chant that resonated with the woods' essence. We cannot leave. You must help us. The figures advanced and I could feel their pain washing over me like a wave. I realized then that they were lost souls, perhaps victims of past fires or tragedy,

forever haunting this landscape. I wanted to run, to lock the door, but a force held me in place, compelling me to listen. Tears filled my eyes as I searched for words, something to ease their suffering. What can I do? I asked, voice trembling. They seemed to unite in a whisper, but I couldn't understand it, something about breaking a barrier. Their voices, a haunting melody, wrapped around my heart. The weight of their collective grief bore down on me, and I thought about the fire season, the control towers, and what I had learned, that the woods were fragile, their spirits woven

into the fabric of nature. The only way to help them, I realized, was through acknowledgement of their existence and understanding of the life and death that occurred in the very trees surrounding me. Heart pounding, I returned to the cabin, moved to the center of the room and declared, I see you, I hear you, I acknowledge your pain. I repeated it over and over, my voice carrying into the emptiness. Slowly, their forms began to dissolve, warmth flooding the air, and the sorrow in their voices faded into a gentle, whispering breeze. The voices turned into a murmur, and then slowly drifted away, leaving the cabin unbothered by their long, haunting presence.

As dawn broke, the fog lifted, and I could see the sprawling expanse of the forest. Exhausted, yet somehow relieved, I took a deep breath, knowing that Pine Ridge would always carry the weight of those lost souls, even as it stood guard over the living. Some nights, as I sit alone in my lookout, I hear the rustle of leaves and whispers in the lost. wind, a reminder of that chilling night I learned to listen not just with my ears, but with my heart.

And sometimes, when I'm in solitude with my mind, the cries of the lost become an echo of hope. To those willing to hear, you should always remember. There are strange things in this world, but sometimes a small bit of compassion can make everything okay, at least for the time being. I know it's a bit of a stereotype, but I've always heard it's hard to make friends as an adult. I never really took this into consideration until I was close to becoming a fat, middle-aged loner. I've lived in the same little community for many years. After the kids moved out, it was just me and the wife. Many of the guys I called buddies had moved on to the city,

gotten arrested, or simply lost interest in being friends anymore. Suddenly, I had a lot of free time, lots of stuff I wanted to do, but nobody to do it with. My wife and I have our own hobby, and date nights, mainly going to the movies, but when it came to outdoor recreation, I was largely on my own. My wife thinks activities like hunting and fishing are gross and archaic. She's a girly girl, and I love her for it. About ten years ago, I did the unthinkable. I made a friend. He was actually a guy I'd known around town, but one day at the tackle shop, we started exchanging info regarding fishing spots and other stuff like that. We decided to plan a trip out together.

We've been fishing buddies ever since. My friend's name is Scott, and my wife calls him my mistress, which is pretty funny. Anyway, Scott and I are river fishermen. We hit the lake sometimes if we have the itch, but for the most part we stick to the moving water. It's more fun and more isolated, typically yielding a better catch too. I compare fishing a lake and fishing a stream to driving an automatic or a manual. Sure, they both get you from A to B, but one of them is just more fun. This particular trip was just like all the rest.

Scott swung by and scooped me up around 5 a.m. just before sunrise. We buzzed out of town and into the woods. There are all kinds of old logging and service roads that cut through the forest around here, and Scott had the wise idea one day to get Google Maps out to see which one got us closer to the river. Not an actual parking lot near the stream, but a place we could park along the road, kind of in secret, then hike back to the water itself. This way, we'd come up on part of the stream that others couldn't access, hopefully tapping into a source of fish that were otherwise unknown.

Sure enough, he found a perfect little place way back in the woodland, where very few people knew the water cut through at all. Man, I love this time a day, Scott said. his voice low and gravely as we drove down that winding road. World's still waking up, and we're already out here getting our day started. I grunted in agreement, sipping at my coffee as the darkness outside seemed to press in on us. We've been coming out here for years at this point, but it never really got old. There's just something about being in motion when the rest of the world is still asleep.

It's like I know a secret that I can't share. It's hard to explain, but I've always loved being an early riser. Scott, not so much, but his love for fishing overrides his laziness, so he gets his butt in gear when he needs to. You know, I was thinking, Scott said, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. We should come back again tomorrow before the holiday weekend. I'd be down for that, I replied, my eyes scanning the darkness outside, but we'd have to find a way to make it work with our schedules.

As we drove, the trees seemed to close in around us, their branches creaking on, and ominously in the wind. Scott worked for the town. I own my own small business, so throughout the week we stayed pretty busy. Typical old guy stuff, you know. Almost there, Scott said, looking out over the dash. Hurry it up, I joked with him. Finally, we arrived at the spot where we usually parked. It was just this little hairpin of a turnout, barely enough room to park his truck, but very few people drove out this far, and it was still pretty early in the morning. We didn't didn't expect to see anybody until the afternoon, if at all. We took a moment to bundle up in the cab, put our fingers in front of the heater one last time, and took a final sip of coffee before

we pushed out into the wilderness. We unloaded our gear and started the trek to the forest, our flashlights casting eerie shadows on the trees. We went light, just a couple of creel bags, our rods, and whatever food and water we packed ourselves for the day. It's easier to fish a stream with light tackle as you constantly find yourself moving up and down the creek, hopping rocks, and maybe even climbing trees just to get a little better vantage over the water. I love this part, Scott said, his voice barely above a whisper. It's like we're the only two people in the world. I nodded, my heart pounding in my chest.

We walked in silence for a few minutes, the only sound being the rustling leaves beneath our feet. I'm not really afraid of animals or the dark or anything for that matter, but I am afraid of circumstances. That dark trek through the trees was only a little unsettling for me because if something bad were going to happen, that'd be a damn good time for it to happen. We each kept a firearm, most outdoorsmen do, but it wouldn't be any use if a mountain lion decided to stalk us through the dark,

or if we accidentally stepped into a snake pit. We did our best just to follow that same little strip of terrain, trip after trip year after year and hope for the best. It had been working for us so far at least. We stumbled along until we could almost hear water, which always put my mind at ease. We were more than halfway at this point. We used this big old ugly tree as a kind of waypoint to let us know of our progress. I lit it up with the flashlight and took in the gnarled old form,

that dead gray trunk reaching up into a black maw in the early morning sky. Then that's when we saw them. A pair of boots, unlaced and upright, sitting at the base of a tree. My heart skipped a beat as I felt sweat come to life along my back and forehead. In all the years that we'd been coming out to this area, we'd never seen any evidence of another human. Not even so much as a piece of trash or a boot print. Absolutely nothing.

So, to see something so personal out there, it was really weird. What the hell? Scott breathed. His eyes fixed on those boots. He didn't move a muscle, almost looking like he was expecting a person to jump out from behind the tree at any point. I shook my head, my mind racing with possibilities. Who would leave their boots out here and why? It seemed like a delicate thing to just leave behind, especially in the dark. But what did I know? They could have been sitting here for a week, never to be picked up again. It gave me this eerie feeling that maybe something had happened to somebody out here. We stood there for a moment, our flashlight beams

fixed on the boots. They seemed so out of place, like a piece of a puzzle that just didn't quite fit. Well, that's weird, Scott said finally, his voice low and cautious. I nodded, my eyes scanning the surrounding area. Yeah, it definitely is. We looked at one another, and I could sense the unease in Scott's eyes, but we didn't say anything more. We didn't need to. We both knew this was something strange, something that didn't belong in our little slice of wilderness. We stood quietly and strained our ears for anything strange, anything out of place.

The silence stretched on for what felt like forever, interrupted only by the occasional chirp of a cricket, or small bird waking up to the early morning light. Let's just leave them, Scott said finally, his voice decisive. Maybe they belong to somebody. and they'll come back for them. I nodded, and we continued our trek through the forest. Now, as we walked, that silence seemed to grow thicker,

like a fog that clung to our skin. We didn't talk about the boots anymore. We didn't need to. I know we were both thinking the same thing, that it's something strange, but ultimately, maybe it's nothing at all. After all, it was just a pair of shoes. It's not like we found a severance.

not like we found a severed head or something. Finally, we emerged from the trees and saw the river stretching out before us, calm and peaceful. The first rays from the sun glinted off the water like a thousand tiny diamonds. We stood there for a moment, taking it in, then we split up, each of us finding our own spot to fish. We didn't go far, I'd say maybe 50 feet or so, far enough that we wouldn't have an issue getting our lines tangled,

but also close enough that we were both within earshot. As the day went on, we'd move further and further from each other, sometimes a mile or two, just to get all the good fishing that we could. By midday we'd start working back towards one another, have lunch, and then hit the river for another hour or two before heading back to the truck. As I cast my line into the water, I felt a sense of peace wash over me.

This was what I loved about fishing, the quiet, the solitude, the sense of being completely alone in the world. And yet, as I stood there, I couldn't shake that feeling that I was being watched. I kept an eye on the other side of the river, looking for anything along the bank that just might be out of place. I imagined seeing footprints scampering through the mud, but I didn't find anything. Hey, Scott, I called out, my voice low and casual. You, uh, see anything weird?

There was a pause, and then Scott's voice. voice came back, equally casual. Uh, no man, just the usual, you know, fish, trees, water. I nodded, even though he wasn't looking at me. Yeah, me too. We stood there in silence for a few minutes, the only sound being the gentle lapping of the water against the shore. And then, without warning, a fish bit my line. My heart skipped a beat, just like it does every time I get a bite. muscle memory took over from there drop hold yank real after a few good turns i knew i had him biting left right down up before finally giving up and letting me haul him in yeah i exclaimed my voice loud and triumphant i got one nice let's see it scott's voice came back equally as excited i grinned my heart pounding with excitement i hoisted it up and let scott have a look though it was only about 12 inches long, not a trophy by any sense of the imagination. It was proof that there were fish here, and they were biting.

A good omen, if you will. I got it off the hook and released it, per usual. It's always been a little weird superstition of mine. Let the first catch of the day go, so he can tell the others that were merciful. The hook is safe to bite. I know it's silly, but it's just more old man thinking. The sun came up, but Scott and I didn't move yet. Catching a fish that early meant we were in the right place at the right time, so we wanted

to fish this pool raw before moving on. I cast out a few more times and tried some different jigging patterns, but got nothing. Scott, however, had a couple of bites, and on the third landed a decent-sized trout, something like 18 inches. I kept my line in, watching as he worked to get the hook free. I wanted to see if he would put it on the trout line and keep it or not. What happens next is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. As I watched Scott work the line and the hook,

I caught movement across the river in my periphery. It was so quick and small that I didn't even look over at first, but the moment it stirred, I remember getting this dizzy, almost sick feeling. I knew whatever was moving shouldn't be, and honestly, I think I was afraid to look. It was moving backward and quickly disappearing into the foliage, and then it all went still. This all happened in a matter of a few seconds.

Then before I could shout any kind of warning, something came flying out of the brush over the stream and right at Scott. I thought it was a bird at first, almost giving me a sense of relief, but as it started to arch back towards the ground, I knew it was an object, a rock or a stick, something like that. It hit Scott right in the chest, and I could tell it scared the crap out of him.

He froze up, totally rigid from top to bottom, then dropped both the fish and his rod, and scrambled back from the water. What the hell was that? I hollered over, setting my rod down and slowly approaching. I pointed across the water. It came from the other side of the river. Scott took a moment to gather himself, then stood up and scanned his little alcove. I think it was a rock, he said as he looked around. Whatever it was, it was heavy. Our eyes naturally wandered across the water, scanning for anything and everything. I don't pack much heat when we're out there, just this little snub 38 special. Even then, half the cylinder is full of snake shot.

If I came up on anything small, I could take care of it, but much more than a coyote, it's probably a goner. Scott, on the other hand, carried his baby out there, a wood-handled, stainless steel.4-4-magnum, a real showstopper. He kept a hand on it as he checked the surrounding area. We took another moment to compare notes, and I told him what I saw, and he told me what he felt. Whatever the case, and whatever happened, there was nobody to point a finger at. We started entertaining weird theories, maybe some kind of rogue water current pushed a rock up,

and it flipped out of the water, maybe a raccoon threw one. It was hard to be sure of anything when it happened so fast. We went back to doing really the only thing that we could. fishing the river. This time, we really didn't watch the water, just kept our eyes up for anything weird. We stood a little closer to each other this time. I wanted to mention the boots, but I also didn't want to spoil the trip with fears and worries. I kept my concerns to myself, and just did everything I could to enjoy the peace and quiet that would soon only be a daydream. However, I'd say maybe an hour later, I caught a little movement, a little disruption across the river that I

almost didn't look up for. Again, thinking about the incident earlier, I decided to look. To my horror, I saw a sliver of a guy looking back at me. He was shirtless, dirty, barely peeking around the tree trunk across the river. I froze in place and did my best to pretend not to see him. When I let my eyes flip back to the guy, he was gone. Now I knew who threw that rock earlier. I crept down to where Scott was and nodded to get his attention. He came over and asked me, me what was up. I think I just saw somebody across the creek, I said. What, fishing? He asked, agitated. He looked around and started scanning the area. No, no, he looked like a kid, and he didn't have a shirt on, I clarified. How old? Scott asked. I don't know, maybe 21.

We both looked back over the water. There was nothing there. We agreed the whole thing was weird, packed up and just headed downstream a bit. This turned out to be a mistake truly. I wish we'd gone the other way, upstream. What we found downstream ruined that trip and sent us packing back to the truck. We came around a bend and saw this beautiful pool, one that we fished often. In one of the shallow, sandy basins, though, there was what looked like gallons of blood all in the water. Because the pool was so big, placid areas formed along the shores where the water moved a little. little less, and so debris or whatever could actually choke up there, much like the blood was doing. We both stopped in place, looked at one another, and just shook our heads.

At the foot of that shoreline, I swear to God, there must have been a hundred massacred fishes, all sizes, all different species, all gutted, inside out, some smashed to a paste, others chopped up. It took up the whole shoreline, the water, everything was painted. with blood and organs, and the gutted fish showed us that whoever did this was human. No bear, no eagle, no animal at the time would do this. It just creeped us the hell out. We had a brief conversation, added everything up, and decided it wasn't worth it. We packed everything up, turned back into the woodland, and didn't even bother eating lunch,

just to hopefully create a little more distance. This wasn't the same route back through the woods that we usually took, so we were a little off course. but still had a pretty good idea of the direction we needed to go. We kept a steady hand on our guns as we walked through the trees, looking over our backs every few feet. As we got closer, though, we had an itch. Scott had mentioned it before, and we both wanted to walk over to the old dead oak tree,

see if those boots were still there. It was only 10, maybe 20 minutes off course. So we redirected ourselves and started cutting a path. As I'm sure you can imagine, we got to the tree and there wasn't any sign of those boots. In fact, there was evidence of water in the dirt at the base of the trunk, like a person who was wet from the waist down had been standing there. We knew then that that person had crossed the river by foot,

had come back and gotten his boots. We chalked it up to a hunter or woodsman just having a rough night. When we got back to the road, we still hadn't seen anybody else. There were no cars parked near us, so we really didn't know what to make of it all. I mentioned calling it into some kind of agency, but Scott said no. The guy was throwing rocks, he can find his own way back.

We left, never saw that guy again, but I can say that was the weirdest fishing trip of my life. We ended up hearing later there had been this big college party blowout a couple of nights before. Search and rescue was even called. Some of the guests took hallucinogens, had wandered off, and got seriously lost.

We thought maybe it was a leftover straggler from that, but even then, what the hell was he still doing out there, gutting fish by the dozen? The experience left us both shaken and with a lot more questions than answers. Every fishing trip after that, we were more cautious,

more aware of our surroundings, and frankly, less inclined to stray too far from familiar waters. The wilderness had always been a place of solitude and respite for us, But that day, it revealed a darker, more unpredictable side. As we drove back home, the silence between us was thick, each lost in our own thoughts, the usually lively banter about our catches, and the one that got away was absent.

Instead, there was a mutual understanding that we had just experienced something out of the ordinary, something that neither of us could easily brush off. In the weeks that followed, I kept a keen eye on the local news, half expecting to hear about a missing person or some bizarre incident in the woods, similar to what we had encountered. But there was nothing, no reports, no follow-ups, no closure. It was as if what we had witnessed was isolated entirely to our own reality, a chilling thought that made the woods seem even more vast and secretive.

Scott and I discussed the possibility of going back, perhaps with more people, or even notifying the local authorities to have them check the area, but deep down, we knew that whatever had happened was probably long gone, swallowed up by the dense, unyielding forest. Our fishing trips continued, but we never ventured back to that particular spot. The memory of those eerie discoveries, boots, blood and all, was enough to keep us from trying our luck there again. Eventually we found new spots, new routines.

The rivers and streams still called to us, and we answered, but always with that lingering unease in the back of our minds. The woods were no longer just a backdrop for our angling adventures. They were a reminder of nature's deep, abiding mystery, capable of hiding stories and secrets far beyond what we could ever hope to uncover. This happened not too long ago at my dad's house in Charleston. It was about a month back, I think. I was in my room and couldn't sleep, so I just decided to.

to watch TV. I've always had a weird feeling about my room at my dad's place. You see, we have this small room behind a bookshelf that opens like a door. I've lived in that house since I was seven. I've never been scared of it before, even as a little kid, but for some reason my room has been freaking me out lately. The creaking of the ceiling fan, the faint noise of the air vent that barely works. It all seems a bit unnerving. As I was watching TV, I heard something coming from the bookshel door, a faint tapping noise. I rewound the show I was watching to see if it was part of the program, but I didn't hear the tapping this time. Once I turned off the TV, I heard the tapping again. I just assumed it was my dog, who sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night. Now I'm not

going to say the tapping didn't scare me. It definitely did. I tried to go to sleep, but the tapping started once more, louder than the first time. Scarlett, I know that's you, I yelled. thinking it was my little sister. The tapping then stopped, and I heard a voice at the door that sounded like my little sister. Macy, please, can I sleep in your room tonight? I can't sleep, the voice said, but I knew it wasn't my sister.

My sister would not have started talking to me outside of my door like that voice did. The voice sounded like my sister, but something about it also sounded inhuman. I didn't reply to it. I didn't say anything. I didn't know exactly what to think of it all. All I knew was that it was not my sister. I then heard slow stomping as the thing at my door began to walk away.

I locked my door and kept my lights on. I don't exactly know how I went to sleep after that, but I did. The night after, my dad and my little sister went to the store. I was home alone. I was on the phone with my friend, as I was scared that that thing would show up again. After about an hour, she had to go, so I said goodbye and hung up reluctantly. I went downstairs to watch a movie with my dog. I didn't feel so creeped out after all.

My dog is a 150-pound Great Dane. Halfway through our movie, I heard a knocking at the front door. Hello, I got locked out of my house. Can you please help me? It sounded like my neighbor. I walked over to the door and was about to open it when a thought popped into my head. That's not my neighbor. She should be out of town.

I quickly backed away from the door, grabbed a knife from the kitchen in case whatever was outside tried to get in. The knocking got faster and louder. Tears welled up in my eyes. I was so afraid. After a while, the knocking stopped and the thing outside walked away. My dog was cowering in a corner instead of barking. Eventually my dad and my sister came home and we all went to bed. After that night, I've not heard the thing again. I'm still scared of my room to this. this day, but as long as I have my lamp on, I'm okay. I will never forget those experiences. This story includes my personal account and my friend's multiple encounters. Let's start with mine. I'm from rural southern Ontario, Canada. I was 18 years old and in college, often getting

home late due to professors having other jobs and teaching us on the side. In late November, I noticed that whenever I came home and went to unlock the house, the noises would stop. For context, I live on a main side road with bushes dotted along the road. My house is situated across from a bush, with two rows of trees on one side and more bush at the back of the house. For about two months I shrugged it off as the cold pushing all the animals south, or them hibernating. That was until one night I was taking out the garbage to the laneway late at night because the garbage truck was coming early in the morning. As I rolled the bins to the end of the laneway, I noticed a pair of eyes staring at me through the bushes. I instantly felt dread pour through my body, so I booked

it back to the house. When I looked behind me, there was nothing, not a light in sight except for the house lights. I shrugged it off as the house lights reflecting off of something down there. Those were my first two signs that something was out there. About a month and a half later, I got out of my truck to go inside the house through the garage. As I was about to open the garage, I heard a blood-curdling scream from the middle of our field, maybe 400 feet away. It took me a second to unfreeze myself, and then I quickly opened the garage door and booked it inside. Since then, things have gone back to normal for me. I hear birds, owls at night, and even coyotes, until one week in the spring.

There should have been birds out chirping and crickets being out and about, but I didn't hear a thing. I remember thinking that thing was back, and a feeling of being watched accompanied me every time I was outside. Now, onto my friend's story. This also takes place in Ontario. He's had three encounters with what I think was a skinwalker. I'll share the story from his perspective. I was on my way to my girlfriend's dad's cabin in Ontario, around Algonquin. We were about 20 minutes out from his place. The drive had been peaceful so far. The two of us were exhausted from the long drive. Out of nowhere, I saw this dog on the road. It was a kilometer away, but just sitting there, not moving. I started to slow down.

I flicked my high beams off and on, but nothing. It wouldn't budge. I slowed down even more until I was about three meters away from it. Suddenly, my girlfriend spoke up. What the heck? Why is it just sitting there? I shrugged and continued to watch it closely. Then I watched it get up and begin to walk around towards the passenger side of the car, not bring to it. breaking eye contact with me. I kept staring at it until it was around the back of the car. I think that's the neighbor's dog, said my girlfriend. They have two dogs. Maybe one of them got out. Okay, I'm going to walk to the house and see if they're home to see if their dogs are there. Could you go grab it? I nodded and the two of us got out, going our separate ways. I could see

the dog through the car's tail lights and the houselights as I started to walk towards it. It began to move away in a kind of sideways walk, all while keeping eye contact with me. Weird, I thought. How was it keeping pace with me like that? I decided to start jogging after it, and still, somehow, it kept pace with me. Then it started getting faster. It was strange. I was jogging pretty fast, and it was just out walking me.

It then began to bark in a weird way, like every bark after the first was just a copy paste of the first one, like a program or something, same pitch and everything. It then ran backward into the ditch, and I followed it. By now, I was around a kilometer away from the car, so I couldn't see anything. I could hear it barking out there, but it seemed far away. I went into a sprint and got to where it sounded like it was coming from, and... Nothing. I then heard more barking farther away, somewhere else.

That's not possible, I thought. I can't be running that fast. I then pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. As I did, I saw something run across the road into the opposite ditch. Then something even stranger happened. The dog stood up on its hind legs and ran into the trees on those legs. I froze. Then, when I broke out of my state of paralysis,

I truly realized how far away I was from the car. I turned around and ran as quickly as I could back to my car. My blood was really pumping then. I felt as if I'd gone into fight or flight mode, like that thing could possibly be on my heels. I tried to run even faster. As I drew close to the car, I saw my girlfriend running towards it. Get in, she called.

We have to leave. We both hopped into the car and gunned it down the road. I looked in the rearview mirror, and that dog was sitting in the road again, about five meters from where the car was. What happened, she said. I steadied my breathing, then told her what happened. She started to cry and told me something.

I walked up to that house, no one was home, but the door was open and the screen door was shut. I peered inside. Both their dogs were asleep on the couch just fine. I don't know what you were chasing because it looked like you were chasing a replica of one of their dogs. I heard footsteps and saw you running and I knew something was wrong. We were both shaken up and made it to the cabin, ready for asleep. That was my friend's first experience.

His second happened at the cabin he stayed at, about 20 minutes from where the first encounter was. Here's that story. My girlfriend and I were staying at our cabin in the woods one weekend. We had a good time and went to bed drunk. I woke up in the middle of the night with a dry throat, so I went off to get some water. As I was drinking, I had an urge to smoke a cigarette, so I opened the screen door and walked outside along the wet grass. grass. I pulled out my pack of cigarettes and lit one. It was a peaceful night, very quiet. I was half asleep still, so I didn't notice the lack of noise around. As I took a drag of the cigarette,

I noticed a coyote walking up. This thing's got balls, I thought, as I kept smoking. The large coyote walked up about ten meters from me, got up onto a picnic table, and sat there. As I looked at it, It seemed off. It had patches of fur missing, seemed a little too skinny, and it sat more like how a man would sit if he were pretending to be a dog. Its joints were just skin and bone. Somehow it didn't really click with me just how off this thing was. So I finished my cigarette.

I flicked the butt towards the thing in front of me, and both me and this thing watched it fall to the ground. I stared at the cigarette for a second and looked up. Within that brief moment, the thing was gone. like it had never been there. Wow, I must be really drunk, I mumbled, as I turned away and walked inside to bed. My friend's last encounter was again in the same place, on yet another weekend. Here it is. In the fall of 2023, my girlfriend and I were again at her dad's cabin in southern Ontario. It was a weekend of just her and me drinking with ourselves and the cats. It was a good night.

At around midnight we were watching a movie when I noticed something was weird. The insects outside that I could clearly hear a moment ago went silent, not a sound. I didn't really focus on that fact, and instead watched the movie. As the movie came to a close, I felt a feeling of dread. I looked over at the two cats that lived in that cabin. They were staring at the door that led outside, hair straight up, mewing weirdly. My girlfriend started to get scared, and I tried to reassure her. Then we heard a thump upstairs.

What the heck was that? my girlfriend whisper screamed, I don't know, but I'll go check it out, I said. I grabbed the machete that was beside the door and went upstairs, with the wood creaking all around me. Just a possum or raccoon, I thought, as I hit the top of the steps. As I walked through the upstairs, I noticed it was coming from the roof. I could hear something walking around on the roof up there, and it was big. I hustled back downstairs, but had to keep calm as I saw that my girlfriend was now crying. It's fine, it's nothing, probably just a raccoon walking on the roof trying to get in. I made up a quick lie to calm her down. After that, I went around the house,

shutting the windows and locking everything up. As we huddled in the blankets and talked about what was happening, we both heard this distorted scream from the trees. It sounded like a man or a woman screaming, but twisted, in some way. It lasted for about ten seconds before, going quiet. After that, we stayed frozen to that spot till morning, not sleeping a wink. We packed everything up and left as soon as we could and made it back home safe. As dumb as I am, I'm probably going to go back there with her, but this time I'll be armed in case something decides to fight. My name is Chris, and I've always loved the great outdoors. Living in rural Virginia, the Blue Ridge Mountains were my playground. I knew them like the back of my hand, or at least

least I thought I did. I'm 32 years old and not much scares me. I've come face to face with black bears and I've navigated trails that would make a billy goat think twice. But this story is about the time I encountered something that chilled me to the bone. It was the first weekend of deer hunting season, my favorite time of year. I was excited to try out a new spot I had found in the Piney Grove Preserve. The area was deep in the mountains, known for its thick pine forests, and rugged terrain. It was a hunter's paradise and just the kind of challenge I liked. I had spent weeks preparing for this trip. I set up trail cams and marked my route with GPS so I wouldn't get lost. I felt ready and confident as I loaded up my truck with all my gear for an overnight stay.

The drive to Piney Grove was peaceful, the morning air was crisp, and the sky was a clear blue, just perfect for a day in the woods. When I arrived, I parked my truck near the trailhead and double-checked my equipment. I had my tent, my hunting rifle, enough food and water, and of course my trusty GPS. Taking a deep breath of the fresh mountain air, I started my hike. The trail was challenging, with steep climbs and rocky paths. It wound through the thick pines, which filled the air with their sharp scent. As I hiked, I listened to the sounds of the forest, the chirping of birds, the rustle of leaves, and the occasion snap of a twig underfoot. It was music to my ears. After about five miles, I reached the spot

where I planned to set up camp. It was a small clearing surrounded by dense woods, giving me a good view of the surrounding area. I quickly set up my tent and arranged my gear inside. Everything was going smoothly. With camp set up, I grabbed my rifle and headed to the tree stand I had installed earlier that week. It was positioned on the edge of a small clearing overlooking a well-used game trail. Deer frequented this trail, and I was hopeful for a good shot. Climbing up into the tree stand, I settled in, making myself comfortable for the long wait ahead. As the sun began to set, the forest changed. The light faded, and shadows grew long and deep. The noises of the daytime creatures quieted down and the night shift began. Owls hooted in the distance and I could hear the faint

rustle of nocturnal animals as they started their nightly routines. I felt at peace, alone with nature. But as darkness enveloped the woods, an uneasy feeling crept over me, it was quiet, too quiet. Even the usual night sounds seemed muted, as if the forest was holding its breath. I shook off the feeling, telling myself it was just the nerves of being in a new hunting spot. Little did I know, my peaceful night in the woods was about to turn into a nightmare that would haunt me forever. Sitting in my tree stand as the last light of day disappeared, I felt a chill that wasn't from the cold. Everything was so still that even the smallest noise seemed loud. I was ready for a quiet night of waiting and watching, hoping a big buck would wander by.

but what happened next was something I could never have prepared for. It started with a sound, soft and distant. At first I thought it might be the wind or an animal moving through the brush, but then I heard it again, clearer this time, a voice. It sounded like someone calling out, faint and far away. Hello, is anyone out there? It said. My heart skipped a beat. It was definitely a human voice, a woman's voice, sounding scared and loud.

For a moment I didn't move. People getting lost in these woods wasn't unheard of, but something felt off. The voice came again, closer now. Please, can someone help me? I'm lost. It sounded desperate, and my first instinct was to call out, to tell her I was here, but something inside me hesitated. Why would anyone be out here so late, so far from the trails? I was about to shout back when the voice changed. Chris, is that you? It was my mom's voice, calling my name, clear as day. But that was impossible. My mom lived three states away and hated the woods. She'd never step foot in a place like this. A cold shiver ran down my spine. How could this be happening? Son, what are you doing up there? Come on down. It's time to go home. Now it was my dad's voice, calm and familiar. But my dad had passed away

five years ago. My head was spinning and my heart was pounding in my chest. This couldn't be real. I was either dreaming or something very strange was going on. I clung to my rifle trying to make sense of it all. The voices sounded so real, so much like my parents, but I knew they weren't. I needed to stay calm, to think. But then the rustling started, something big moving through the underbrush to my left. my breath caught in my throat. Who's out there? This isn't funny, I called out, trying to sound braver than I felt. The rustling stopped and for a second everything was silent.

Then, right below my tree stand, a low chuckle broke the silence, a laugh that sounded almost, but not quite human. It was followed by a series of clicks and pops, like someone or something was trying to form words but couldn't quite get it right. Then, in a voice that was a chilling mix of my moms and dads, it spoke again. We've been waiting for you, Chris. It's time to join us. I peered down, my headlamp cutting through the darkness. At the base of my tree, I saw something, a shape, pale and shifting, with limbs too long and a face too smooth to be human. Fear like I'd never felt before took hold of me. My mind screamed to run,

to get away from this nightmare. Without thinking, I aimed my rifle and fired. The shot echoed through the forest, and a high-pitched, inhuman shriek filled the air. The shape darted away, disappearing into the night. As silence fell again, my heart raced and my hands shook. What was that thing? What did it want with me? I knew one thing for sure. I couldn't stay in that tree stand any longer. I had to get out of there. After I fired my rifle, everything went silent for a moment. My heart was beating so fast it felt like it would burst out of my chest. The creature, or whatever it was, had vanished, but the woods felt even more dangerous and eerie.

I knew I couldn't just sit in my tree stand all night. I had to get out of there, to run as fast as I could away from those voices in that terrifying shape. Climbing down from the tree stand, my legs felt shaky, but fear pushed me forward. Once on the ground I didn't look back. I just ran. The forest around me was pitch black, and the only light came from my headlamp, bouncing with every step I took. Branches scratched at my face, and roots tried to trip me, but I kept moving, driven by pure adrenaline. The voices didn't stop. They followed me through the dark calling my name. Some sounded angry, some sounded pleading, and some even tried to sound sedent.

as if they could lure me into stopping. It was like the whole forest was alive, trying to trick me into coming back. But I knew better. I knew I had to keep running. I ran without thinking about direction or distance. My mind was focused on one thing only, escaping. The voices seemed to be everywhere, behind me, beside me, even right next to my ear. It was terrifying.

Every once in a while I'd hear something that sounded just like my mom or my dad. and it would make me want to stop, to listen. But I forced myself to ignore it and keep running. I don't know how long I was running through those woods. It felt like hours, but it probably wasn't more than 30 minutes. Finally, I saw something that looked like salvation, a gravel road. It was the road where I'd parked my truck. I'd never been so happy to see a road in my life.

I sprinted down that road, my lungs burning and my legs aching, but I didn't slow down, not until I reached my truck. My hands were shaking so much that I could barely get the key into the lock. When I finally did, I threw myself inside, locked the doors, and started the engine. I was safe, or at least safer than I was in the woods. As I drove away, one final voice reached me. It sounded like a little kid, chillingly sweet. Don't leave us, Chris.

We'll be waiting for you to come back. I stepped on the gas, gravel flying behind me as I raced down the forest road. I didn't stop until I hit the highway. The drive home was a blur. I kept going over everything that had happened, trying to make sense of it. Could it have been a hallucination? Maybe some kind of gas leak in the forest, or maybe I'd fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing. But deep down, I knew it was real.

The fear I felt, the voices, that shape at the base of the tree, they were all too real. When I got home, the first light of dawn was just touching the horizon. I was safe back in my own driveway, but I knew one thing for sure. I was never going back to those woods. Whatever was out there, it knew me, and it wanted me. And as much as I loved the wilderness, some places are better left alone. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft.

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I've been holding on to this story for some time, and to be honest, I'm still not sure about sharing it. However, after listening to a podcast, it all came flooding back, and I feel like I need to get it off my chest. Maybe that will help me make sense of what happened all those years ago in Willow Creek. As a quick note, this town isn't actually called Willow Creek, but for the sake of privacy and anonymity, I'm going to call it that. For context, I grew up in a small town in northern Michigan, right on the edge of a vast stretch of wilderness. Willow Creek wasn't much more than a collection of houses, a general store,

and a small elementary school back then, surrounded by dense forests and winding streams. It was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else, and kids had free rain to explore the woods as long as we were home by dinner. I was 10 years old when it all started, in the summer of 1995. My best friend back then was a girl named Sarah, who lived just down the road from me. We spent most of our days building forts in the woods, catching frogs in the creek, and making up elaborate fantasy worlds. It was a scorching hot day in July when we decided to venture further into the woods than we'd ever gone before. We packed up some sandwiches and juice boxes, feeling like real explorers as we set off down an overgrown trail which led away from the creek.

We must have walked for a couple of hours, the forest growing denser and darker. I remember feeling a bit uneasy, like we'd crossed some invisible boundary into a place we were not supposed to be. I assumed it was the feeling a child gets when they travel too far, but Sarah was fearless, always pushing us to go just a little bit further. We were about to turn back when we stumbled upon an old, large, gnarled willow tree. Its branches drooped so low they almost touched the ground. There was something off about it, though I couldn't put my finger on what, What exactly? The air felt heavier there, and it was eerily quiet.

No birds singing, no insects buzzing. Sarah, always the brave one, walked right up to the tree and ducked under its curtain of leaves. I hesitated, a strange sense of dread creeping over me. Come on, Alex, Sarah called from inside the tree. It's so cool in here. I took a deep breath and followed her in. The space under the willow was dim and cool. a welcome relief from the summer heat.

Sarah was right. It was pretty magical in there, like we had discovered our own secret hideout. We were about to start planning all the adventures we'd have in our new fort when we heard it, a soft whispering voice coming from somewhere above us. Come play. We froze, looking at each other with wide eyes.

The voice didn't sound like anyone we knew, and it had a strange echoing quality to it. Did you hear that? Sarah whispered. I nodded, my heart pounding. It might have been the wind, I suggested, not believing it myself. The voice came once more louder than the first time. I'm lonely. Climb up here. Keep me company. Sarah, curious, started to look up into the branches. Do you see anyone? She asked. I scanned the tangle of branches and leaves above us, but I saw nothing. We should go, I said, tugging on Sarah's arm.

This is creepy. For once, Sarah didn't argue. We ducked back out from under the willow and started to speed walk back the way we'd come. As we left the clearing, I swear I heard a faint, disappointed sigh rustling through the leaves behind us. We didn't talk much on the way home. Both of us were trying to process what had happened. By the time we got back to our neighborhood, we'd halfway convinced ourselves we'd imagine the whole thing. But that was just the beginning. Over the next few weeks, we heard more stories from other kids in town. Jenny Parker swore she'd heard someone calling her name when she was picking berries near the edge of the woods, but when she looked around, no one was there.

The Thompson twins said they saw a strange, shadowy figure darting between trees when they were camping in the backyard. Each story was a little different, but they all had one thing in common, a voice that sounded almost, but not quite human. adults dismissed it as kids overactive imaginations, of course, but we knew better. We started to call the thing the whisperer, this entity that lurked in the woods and tried to lure kids away. It became our local boogeyman, the story we'd whisper to each other at sleepovers to see who would get scared first. I didn't have another encounter with it that summer, but Sarah did. She showed up at my house one evening, pale and shaking.

She said she'd been walking home from the library when she heard someone calling her from the woods. It sounded like her mom at first, telling her to come quick that there had been an accident. Sarah began to run towards the voice when she realized her mom was working late that night and could not possibly be in the woods. It wasn't her voice anymore when I stopped, Sarah told me, her eyes wide with fear. It got all distorted and angry. It said it would get me next time. I wanted to believe Sarah was just trying to mess with me, but I had never seen her so scared before.

We made a pact that day to never go back into the woods alone. As summer turned to fall, the encounters seemed to die down. We started to relax a little, thinking maybe whatever it was had moved on. But then, in early October, everything changed. It was a crisp Saturday morning, and the news spread through town like wildfire. Billy Hutchins, a seven-year-old who lived on the outskirts of Willow Creek, had vanished from his backyard the night before. Search parties were being organized, and soon the whole town was combing the woods, calling Billy's name. I remember the pit in my stomach as I overheard the adults talking.

Billy had told his mom he was going to play in his treehouse for a while before dinner. She called him in to eat about an hour later, but he didn't respond. When she went to check on him, the treehouse was empty. and there was no sign of Billy anywhere. The search went on for days, with police dogs, helicopters, and volunteers from neighboring towns. It seemed like the whole world had descended on our little corner of Michigan, but they never found a trace of Billy.

It was like he'd simply vanished into thin air. In the wake of Billy's disappearance, parents cracked down hard, no more playing in the woods, no more staying out after dark. The carefree days of our childhood seemed to end, overnight. But here's the thing that still haunts me to this day. The night Billy disappeared, I was sleeping over at Sarah's house. We were up late, watching movies in her living room, when we both heard it, a voice just outside the window, one that we recognized. I'm going with him, it's so fun, you guys should come too, said Billy. We looked at each other in horror.

Billy was not the type to walk alone at night, and we knew exactly who he was referring to. The whisperer. We huddled together on the couch until morning, too terrified to even think about sleep. We never told anyone what we heard that night, who would believe us. And more importantly, what could anyone have done? That thing in the woods, whatever it was, had won. It had finally taken a child. The strange encounters stopped after that. No more voices calling from the trees. No more shadowy figures glimpsed at the edge of the forest. We could only guess the whisperer had been satisfied and had moved on. Years passed, and life in Willow Creek slowly returned to normal.

Billy Hutchins became a cautionary tale. His story told to remind kids not to wander off alone. Most of the adults chalked it up to a tragic accident or a wild animal attack. Those of us who had encountered the Whisperer knew better, but we rarely spoke of it, even amongst ourselves. I left Willow Creek for college and never moved back, though I do visit my parents from time to time. Sarah stayed, taking over her family's hardware store. We don't talk much anymore. Too many painful memories, I guess.

Different lives to live. Sometimes. When I'm lying awake at night, I still hear that voice in my head, Billy's voice telling me that we should come too. I can't help but wonder, what if we had told someone? Could we have saved Billy? Could we have rallied the adults and torn Billy from that thing's clutches? Or would we have been the ones to disappear next?

I don't have any answers, even after all these years. If you're ever out in the woods alone and you hear someone calling your name, someone who sounds almost, but not quite like someone you know, do not answer, don't follow, just run. Hello, my family believes we are being stalked, hunted, haunted, haunted, and teased by one or more skin walkers. This has been going on for years, on and off. We live on a farm, and these entities have been making more frequent appearances than ever lately.

My kids are scared, as they've seen it several times, as have my husband and I. We even believe it's been indoors with us from time to time. The glimpses I've seen at first appear to be that of a naked man moving with extreme speed, faster than I can keep an eye on. It peaks around corners of the house at my kids and makes human and animal cries at night. It's terrifying. We have found doors unlocked and left open at night, and when we investigate, we catch a glimpse of it. Garage doors too.

Doors that no one ever opens. There's no good explanation for it. Living on a farm, we are used to the sounds of coyotes howling, barking, and different animals of prey screaming when attacked. The screams we've been hearing lately are not the same sounds of coyote attacks. These are screams that sound human, blood-curdling cries I've never heard anything like before. I don't know if there is something that can be done to keep them at bay. I believe many of these evil entities come in and out of our dimension, but I would love to keep them out if that's possible.

Here is one of the more terrifying encounters. It was August 14th, during a meteor shower that was ongoing until the 24th. I was curious to see it, so I went out late. At exactly 1 a.m. I stood in the middle of the road in front of my house, staring up at the clear night sky, watching some comets pass by. Across the road in front of my house is a good five acres of unclaimed desert land. I'm from Arizona, where Navajo skinwalkers are said to originate. As I was standing there, I began to hear odd noises,

like a branch cracking or crunching something. This noise came from directly in front of me, about 100 yards away. At the time, I didn't think much of it. It's important to note that, after this whole experience, I did my research, and everything seemed to add up to my story. There are reasons I believe it was a skin walker. It was far away, but I've read accounts where people mention that the farther away the sounds of a skinwalker might seem, the closer it actually is.

Not even ten seconds later, I heard a very strange noise coming from the left side of the front of my house. This was close, about 50 feet away. Having lived in Arizona for six years, these noises were unfamiliar and different. I was always out at night, and I could tell when it was just a desert rabbit or a couple of coyotes. As these strange noises occurred, the worst feeling I've ever felt in my 17 years came over me. It was very weird and made me feel very uneasy. It was that gut feeling like I knew something bad was going to happen soon, or was already happening, a sense of impending doom. Then, as fast as the noises started, they stopped, but this was a short pause.

I heard faint talking coming from the same spot where the noises had happened. Not long after, it sounded like a little girl. I couldn't make out a single word, as it was quiet, faint, and practice. but it was definitely feminine. Then it stopped again, and immediately after, clear as day and twice as loud as the talking before, I heard my name, Noah. In that very moment, I don't think I've ever been more truly terrified. I was super freaked out. I began to walk towards my front door. I read that Skinwalkers tend to mimic the voices of people and sound very human-like to try to lure people in. I also read that in most cases,

with kids, skinwalkers will purposefully lurk around or near houses, and everything unfolded just outside of mine. My heart was racing at that moment, and that gut feeling I got was still there, just as bad, if not worse. I was at the bottom of my driveway now, already turned around heading for the front door of my home. As bad and freaky as things already were, you'd figure things couldn't get any worse. That was until, on the right side of me, I heard the gravel of our front yard crunching. It was deep and long, two crunches. It was coming towards me now, no more than 20 feet away. Unfortunately, I hadn't seen anything with my own eyes. It was too dark, and the steps had occurred on the opposite side of my sister's car to the right of me, so I didn't have a clear

line of sight as I walked up the driveway. At this moment, I was scared out of my literal mind. When I heard the crunch of the gravel, I was on the verge of calling out or even yelling at whatever thing was coming my way, but I didn't. My gut instincts told me that initiating something like that would most likely make things far worse. I tried my best to keep my composure. The entire inside of me was collectively screaming as a whole. I was at the top of the driveway now. My driveway is slanted. I was no more than maybe five feet from the door when, on both sides of me, these sounds or steps picked up faster, coming towards me. Fortunately for me, I didn't acknowledge the things that happened at the time,

or at least I tried my best to ignore it for my own safety, and I didn't initiate anything with whatever was truly out there. I made it to the door and quickly locked it up behind me, but things just got freakier from there. Whatever had just happened had scared me out of my mind. You know how when you have a bad feeling, it tends to go away after the so-called bad thing happens. Well, that feeling hadn't gone away, and I was still on high alert.

I put the cover over our large dog door, locked the back door, the garage door, and made sure all the windows were locked. That bad feeling almost never went away that entire night, and I was still freaked out after what happened. Everyone was asleep, well, except maybe for my sister. I trusted that she was still awake. I went to her room, and when I knocked I woke her up. She said grogly that I could come in, so I came in quietly and sat down. She went back to sleep, and I prayed nothing bad would happen again. Of course, my sister is the only one in the house who keeps her blind up at night.

God knows why, and of course the screen of her window had fallen off, and she never bothered to put it back on, so it was just glass from there. I could see the entirety of the backyard, and if there was anything in my backyard, it could see me now too. I sat in her room for a good while. I want to say maybe 15 minutes had passed when, abruptly, out of nowhere, I heard faint whistling, very faint. However close it was, it didn't matter because it was coming straight from my backyard. It got closer, that whistling began to sound like a flute. I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it. Another quick note. After reading

some other person's story, it is believed that I could have heard the flute of a Navajo or Navajo witch. Now in the comfort of my own home came this strange music. Once I identified it sounded like flute music, it went away. I quickly got up, told my sister good night, and didn't say a word after that, leaving her room still creeped out. With everyone else asleep and being alone, I turned on a lot of lights and sat at the bar in the kitchen. At one point, I even thought to wake my dad up just so I could be in the comfort of another person. I was only 17. I ended up not doing it, thinking my dad would be teed off. As I sat there, once again came the faint crunching of gravel rocks from my backyard. Whatever was there, I could hear it. It was no more than five feet away from the back door.

Then came a small short knock on the glass. I froze and waited. Every minute came one more singular knock. This just scared me even more. Skin Walker or not, something was on the other side of that door, and I wasn't going to stick around to find out. Luckily for me, my back door has a cover, which is also just glass. I flicked off the lights and walked towards my bedroom.

I didn't bother looking at the back door. I stayed in my room for the rest of the night. I never left. I was up for a good three hours after everything occurred. Even then, I heard strange noises from outside my window too. I remained horrified until somehow in some way I fell asleep. The next morning, everything seemed fine. I truly don't know what happened that night, but I'm glad I went with my gut. I don't think I'd be here if I hadn't. I am 28 years old and live in Columbus, Ohio. I work in IT, and up until last year, I lived in a pretty standard apartment complex on the outskirts of the city. It's one of those places with a bunch of three-story buildings clustered around a central parking lot.

Nothing fancy, but decent enough for a single guy on a budget. This all went down right before Halloween. The complex had started to put up some cheap decorations. I had been living there for about two years by then, and nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened. The scariest thing I'd encountered was the occasional raccoon digging through the dumpsters. It was a Thursday night, and I was getting home late from work. We'd had a major system crash, and I'd spent hours trying to get everything back online. By the time I pulled into my complex, it was almost midnight.

To my annoyance, the parking lot was unusually full. There must have been some sort of event going on that I had forgotten about. All the spots near my building were taken. I ended up having to park clear on the other side of the complex, a good five-minute walk from my own apartment. Not a big deal, I guess, just inconvenient. I grabbed my laptop bag and started trudging across the parking lot. The yellow streetlights cast long shadows across the asphalt. I was about halfway to my building when I heard it, a voice. It was soft, but very apparent. It came from the shadows between two parked cars. Excuse me, can you?

you help me. I'm lost. I stopped, peering into the darkness. The voice sounded like it belonged to an older woman. My first thought was that one of the residence's grandparents had gotten turned around in the complex. Hello, I called out. Where are you? There was a shuffling sound. Then I saw a figure step out from between the cars. In the dim light, I could make out the shape of a small hunched woman with wispy white hair. She was wearing what looked like a night gown or robe. Oh, thank goodness, the woman said, her voice quivering. I was taking out my trash and I got all turned around. These buildings all looked the same in the dark. Could you point me to Building C? I felt a pang of sympathy. Building C was clear on the other side of the complex,

and this poor old lady had wandered pretty far. Of course, I said, taking a step closer. It's actually back the way I came. I can walk you there if you like. As I moved towards her, something made me hesitate. Maybe it was the way she stood completely motionless, like some sort of cardboard cut out, or the fact I couldn't quite make out her face in the shadows. I felt a chill run down my body then, and I found myself taking a step backward. That's very kind, the woman said, but her voice had changed. It was deeper now, and there was a reverb to it in a weird way that made my skin crawl. Why don't you come a little closer? I'm having trouble seeing you. Despite every instinct in my body screaming at me to run, I stood there petrified. I watched the figure,

which now seemed to shift. It was subtle at first, like a ripple passing through water. Then, in the span of a single heartbeat, it grew. The hunched form straightened and expanded. The wispy hair disappeared, and the figure shot up to well over six feet tall. What stood before me now was a towering, vaguely humanoid shape. In the dim light, I could see that its skin, if you could call it that, was a patchwork of textures. In some places, it looked like normal human skin. In others, it was more like rough tree bark or sleek animal fur.

Its face was the worst part, a blank, featureless expanse with just the suggestion of eyes and mouth, like an unfinished sculpture. I stumbled backward, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might burst from my chest. The thing took a step towards me, and when it spoke again, it was with a chorus of voices. Men, women, children, all layered over each other like a hellbound choir. It made my head spin. Don't go. I just want to talk. I just want to heal, it said, reaching out with a hand that seemed to be constantly shifting and reforming. I turned and ran, sprinting a crichting.

the parking lot toward the nearest building. I heard it behind me, a sound like bare feet slapping against asphalt, but much too fast, too rhythmic to be human. I reached the building and yanked open the door, not even caring that it wasn't my own. I raced up the stairs to the second floor and pressed myself against the wall, trying to quiet and steady my breathing. For a long moment there was silence. Then, from right outside the building I heard a voice, my voice. is anyone there? I think I'm lost. My blood ran cold. It was a perfect imitation of my voice, down to the slight nasal tone I get when I'm nervous. Can someone please help? I don't know where I am. I stayed there, pressed against the wall for God knows how long. The voice, my voice,

called out a few more times before eventually falling silent. Soon, I worked up the courage to peer out the window. The parking lot was empty. No sign of that. strange figure or anyone else for that matter. I waited there until the sun began to come up before making a mad dash for my apartment. I packed a bag, called in sick to work, and went to stay with a friend for a few days. When I came back, everything seemed normal. No one in the complex mentioned anything strange, and I tried to convince myself it was all some kind of stress-related thing, but I couldn't shake the memory of that voice, those voices. or the sight of that shifting impossible form.

I broke my lease two months later and moved to a new place closer to downtown. I tell myself it's for the shorter commute, but we all know the real reason. I still live in Columbus. I avoid that part of town now. Sometimes when I'm driving home late at night and see someone walking alone in a parking lot, I feel a surge of irrational panic. And every now and then, when I'm drifting off to sleep, I can remember that voice.

and I pray that I don't hear it again calling, Hello, is anyone there? I think I'm lost. Ever since I can remember, fishing with Dad was our thing, our special way to bond and to escape everything else. It was on my fifth birthday, during one of our fishing trips, that I had a dream I'll never forget. It was a perfect sunny day, the kind that paints everything gold. Dad and I were on our little boat in the middle of the calm green lake.

I loved watching the way the sunlight played on the ripples, turning them into sparkling gems. Dad was rowing slowly, taking in the nature around us. He wore his black cap, faded to a dusty orange by the sun, and those mirrored sunglasses that seemed like part of the official Dad uniform. Everything felt peaceful, just right. But dreams have a way of turning, don't they? Without warning, Dad stopped rowing. The oars slipped from his hands and sank into the lake with bare.

a splash. Then he did something that even now, years later, sends chills down my spine. He straightened up, placed his hands on his knees, and turned to me with a smile. But it wasn't his usual warm smile. It was broad and eerily forced, as if someone had told him to smile, but forgotten to mention he could stop. Despite the sunglasses, I could tell his eyes weren't smiling. They looked wrong somehow, like they were empty of all the daddness I knew. I asked him what was wrong, my voice shaky, but he just kept smiling that creepy smile saying nothing. The rest of the dream is a blur. I remember him just staring at me with that smile while I cried, feeling an eternity

passed between us. I woke up in tears, the images of the dream still vivid and haunting. Mom was already by my side trying to comfort me. She whispered that it was just a nightmare, but her voice couldn't chase away the shadows in my mind. I couldn't go back to sleep after that. The thought of closing my eyes and seeing that smile again was too much. So, I stayed up, watching cartoons on TV, their brightness a stark contrast to the darkness I felt inside. At the time, I didn't understand what had happened. It was just a bad dream, right? But somehow, it felt like more than that. It was as if something

had reached out from whatever place dreams are woven from, leaving a mark on me. little did I know that was my first encounter with something I'd later come to call the mimic. A shadow that knew no boundaries, not even those between dreams and waking life. Looking back, I wish I could tell that little boy

that everything would be all right, that it was indeed just a nightmare, but that would be a lie. That day on the lake was just the beginning, and there was so much more to come, so much more that I still struggle to understand. Life went on after that disturbing dream, but a part of me remained wary, always on edge. It was a few summers later, and I was about ten.

I loved spending my mornings bouncing on the trampoline in our backyard. It was my little bubble of happiness where I could jump and flip away my worries. That particular morning was bright and clear, promising a day full of play. I woke up early, pulled on my shorts and a t-shirt, and rushed outside to start jumping before. breakfast. The rhythm of bouncing felt freeing, almost like I was flying. As I was doing tricks, catching air and feeling the morning breeze, I noticed Mr. Thompson, our neighbor, walking towards our fence. He was a retired policeman and had always been friendly, waving and chatting whenever we saw him. He called out a cheerful, good morning, and commented on how early I was awake.

He mentioned something about the apple trees in his yard and how he expected a good harvest that year. I just nodded and smiled, not really paying much attention. I kept jumping, lost in my little world. After a while, I figured Mr. Thompson had left, as the conversation died down, and I heard no more from him. I decided to take a break and grab the edge of the trampoline to steady myself. As I turned to hop off, I froze. There he was, standing just behind the trampoline's safety net, his face unnervingly close to mine. His eyes were worried. wide open, unnaturally so, and his smile was broad and forced. The same kind of smile from my dream. It wasn't the kind Mr. Thompson ever wore. His eyes, usually kind and gentle, were now bright red,

as if he hadn't blinked in ages. He stared straight at me without blinking, without speaking, just that terrifying smile. Panic gripped me. My heart raced, and for a moment I couldn't move. I couldn't understand what was happening. Was this real? Was it another dream? The sight of him so changed, so creepy, it struck a chord of fear deep within me. Suddenly, my legs found their strength, and I jumped off the trampoline and sprinted towards the house, slamming the door behind me. I was panting and shaking as I told Mom what had happened.

She looked at me with wide, worried eyes, and immediately suggested we go over to Mr. Thompson's house to ask if he was was all right or if something was wrong. I was too scared to face him again, so she went alone. She returned quicker than I expected, her expression puzzled and concerned. Mr. Thompson had seemed genuinely confused by her questions. He admitted he had come by to say hello, but insisted he had left right after our brief chat about the apples. He denied ever standing behind the trampoline or staring at me like that. I didn't know what to believe. Mom seemed to take his word for it, but I couldn't shake the image of his twisted smile and those haunting, unblinking eyes. For weeks after, I kept a vigilant watch on his house from my bedroom window, half expecting

to see that creepy smile again. But everything seemed normal, at least on the surface. I tried to convince myself it was just a weird moment, a trick of light or my imagination running wild. But deep down, I knew it wasn't. It couldn't be. Something was very wrong. I was 14 now, and my days were filled with the usual teenage stuff, school, homework, and weekends at my grandparents' house. They lived close to my school, so I'd often ride my bike there on Fridays to hang out, do my homework, and enjoy my grandma's strong coffee. One typical Friday, I left school feeling particularly drained from a tough math test. I wheeled my bike up the driveway, dropped it by the porch, and let myself in through the unlocked door. Our family never worried about locking up during the day.

Hey, Grandma, I'm here, I called out as I entered. There was no response, which was unusual, because Grandma was always in the kitchen around this time, usually humming or talking to herself as she cooked or cleaned. I shrugged it off and headed straight for the kitchen to grab a snack. The house was strangely quiet. No humming, no clinking of dishes, just silence. I dropped my backpack and books on the kitchen table and noticed Grandma standing at the sink, her back to me. Math was brutal today, I started, hoping to strike up a conversation.

No reply. I frowned, waiting for some sign she had heard me. Grandma? Still nothing. The silence stretched on, becoming more unnerving by the second. She hadn't even moved since I'd walked in. Something felt off. I tried to see her face in the reflection of the shiny teapot on the counter,

but I couldn't make it out clearly. Curiosity mixed with a rising fear, I slowly approached her. Grandma, are you okay? No response. I reached out to tap her shoulder, but before I could touch her, she turned around abruptly. The sight that greeted me froze me in place. It was Grandma, but not the Grandma.

I knew. Her eyes were wide open, bloodshot, and her mouth. It was stretched into a grotesque, forced smile, much wider and more terrifying than anything I'd seen before. Her skin seemed almost purple, and her expression was one of pain and horror. I stumbled backward, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might burst. Grandma? I whispered, but the figure just stood there smiling that horrible smile. I couldn't take it. I turned and ran out of the house, leaving everything behind, even my bike. I sprinted all the way home, my mind racing with fear and confusion. As soon as I burst through the door, Mom saw my face and immediately knew something was wrong. She called Grandma, who answered sleepily. She said she'd been napping

in her room and hadn't seen me at all that day. That phone call confirmed it wasn't just my imagination. Something was following me, something that could take the shape of people I loved. From that day on, everything changed. I stopped going out much, my anxiety skyrocketing every time I had to interact with anyone. School became unbearable, and eventually, I just stopped going. People thought I was losing it, that the stress had gotten to me. Maybe they were right, but they didn't see what I saw.

They didn't feel the terror of seeing your loved ones morph into something monstrous. I withdrew into myself, my world growing smaller and darker by the day, until it was just me, alone with my fears, wondering when the mimic would show itself again. And as much as I wished I was wrong, I knew deep down that it was far from over. A few years back, I was hiking the Appalachian Trail with some friends, and we stopped at a campsite equipped with comfort stations. One night, around 2 a.m., I woke up needing to use the bathroom. The sight was a corner one, so there was a short trail at the back that led through the woods to the washroom.

Although I could have taken the longer route around the front, I decided to cut through the back to save time, as I was tired and really needed to go. As I was halfway along the trail, I heard a very faint noise to my right, something that sounded almost like laughter. I didn't freak out. I knew that raccoons and porcupines can make a similar sound at night. Since it was dark, I couldn't see anything, but I kept moving toward the comfort station without a second thought. A few seconds later, I heard a woman's voice deep in the woods asking, Hello?

To say I jumped was an understatement, but I was just startled, not scared. I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or someone else. I responded with a friendly, Hey, thinking that if a girl was out there, there freaked out by hearing footsteps in the middle of the night, I didn't want her to think I was creepy. However, after I spoke there was no response. By the time I reached the comfort station, I had managed to talk myself out of being seriously creeped out. I don't believe in ghosts, and I still don't. Despite the creepy timing and sudden silence, I rationalized that it was probably

just another person as spooked as I was. So I headed back the same way, thinking that if I heard anything this time, I would just sprint. The trail was eerily quiet. When I was about three-quarters of the way back, still hoping I hadn't scared the girl too much, I heard her voice again. But this time, it wasn't quite her voice. It sounded like her, but different in a way that made my skin crawl. When it said, Come back, I ran faster than I ever had in my life. I dashed back to my tent so frantically that I woke everyone up. They kept asking what was wrong, but all I could say was that I had freaked myself out. There was no way they would believe me if I told them about the voice change. They'd think I was drunk, high, or just a scared little man, or maybe a bit of all three.

We moved campgrounds the next day, and I didn't hear anything like it for the rest of the trip. I'm very glad that was the case, but I still wish I knew what I heard that night because I'd be lying if I said, that question doesn't still keep me up at night. My grandpa grew up in a little town called Grapefield, Virginia. These days, Grapefield consists of just four streets, with a creek running through it, but it used to be much more. Walk about a mile out of town past a pair of old logging patches, and you'll find the Appalachian Trail right there on your figurative doorstep. I used to think growing up in that kind of place would make for an idyllic childhood with its small town values, strong sense of community, and the great green forest for a backyard.

However, there was a reason Grandpa left there the first chance he got. They used to say they moved because of the Great Depression, and there might have been at least some truth to that. But if some of the stories Grandpa later told me are anything to go by, it wasn't just financial problems that made them want to move. Although it seems like a quiet and uneventful place, Grapefield, Virginia has a real dark past, and some of the folks living there still say it's cursed. Now, back before the Civil War, Grapefield was said to be a prosperous and promising little town, where the vast majority of people were employed by one of two plantation families who lived at opposite ends of the hollow. One family were slave owners, and employed white townsfolk

as drivers, overseers, tradesmen, and clerks, while the other family were staunch abolitionists, and employed all the same, except their farmhands and technicians were white townsfolk. For the most part, this arrangement worked out just fine for both parties. But as the violence over in Kansas got more and more out of hand, still waters came to a simmer. Before long, the subject of slavery was no longer something that could be discussed politely, and by the time the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, Folks in Grapefield weren't using words to settle arguments anymore. They were using bullets.

Obviously, the abolitionists had what you might call the moral high ground. The only trouble was, Virginia was a slave state, and the profit margins of the slave-owning side of Grapefield were much higher than those on the abolitionist side, who paid all their people well and fairly. But this meant the slave owners had mountains of cash lying around, cash they could use to hire all kinds of unsavory types to protect them from the abolitionists, and that protection usually involved violence, intimidation, and occasionally murder. Some of the abolitionists tried to fight back, but seeing as they were

outnumbered and outgunned, most ended up hanging from their barns, and anyone with any sense fled for northern states before they could be targeted. This would have all worked out just fine for the slave owners if it wasn't for the fact that the Confederates would go on to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Once the Federals arrived in town, the slave owners had to parlay their way back into ownership of their own plantations. Somehow, they managed to do just that, only this time they couldn't rely on free labor, and there were no more abolitionist farmers in town to help maintain the plantations. They had all the expertise they needed, just none of the manpower. Although they shipped

in folks from out of town to try and fill the gaps, things were never quite the same as they were before the war. The head of the slave-holding plantation family had been cruel and conniving, but he was at least competent. But then, his replacement, his eldest surviving son, was a fool, a tyrant, and a drunk. He might not have owned slaves anymore, but he sure did treat his people like they were. He didn't just treat them like his property. He treated their homes and their families like they were his property too. The new plantation owner was always a little too fresh with Grapefield's womenfolk, but then one night, after a man's wife returned home claiming the plantation owner had violated her, the townsfolk decided that enough was enough.

A whole mob of them marched over to the plantation house. But instead of dragging the owner outside and hanging him from his own porch, the mob started going around nailing doors and windows closed. Anyone who tried to escape was shot, and there were lots of folks in there too, not just the plantation owner and his family. They had maids, cooks, nannies for the children, all of whom learned to stay away from the doors or windows lest they face a hail of bullets. Once they had the plantation house locked down,

the mob doused the place and set it on fire. The mob was liquored up, and they clapped and cheered as the plantation house burned. But that all stopped when they started to hear the screams of the women and children upstairs. It was then, and only then, that they realized what a terrible thing they'd done. One man tried to pry the nails out of one of the window frames in hopes that he might be able to rescue some of the women and children, but it was too late.

There was no way back for them. They couldn't have any witnesses to attest what they'd done. The whole thing needed to look as much like an accident as possible, not so much for their consciences, but for appearances. No one could ever know the truth of what happened that night. Well, you can see how well that went. The mob must have done a decent job of covering things up when it came to the authorities because no one was hanged

for burning down the plantation house. But I guess at some point someone talked, either to their wife or to a minister, maybe even on their deathbed, because once word got out that the fire was no accident, it was like a darkness seeped into grapefield, one that never went away. The town's economy was completely torn apart.

Fear and suspicion became the norm. It took 40 years for the place to even start to heal. But even after things started to pick up again, folks talked of a curse hanging over the town. All that guilt meant a lot of drinking, and all that drinking meant a lot of broken homes, a lot of anguish, and a lot of misery too. And that, ladies and gentlemen,

is the kind of town my grandpa grew up in, far from the kind of hallmark card upbringing that I imagined he had. As you can probably tell, Grandpa talked an awful lot about growing up in Grapefield, probably in an attempt to instill gratitude in myself and his other grandchildren. I can promise you it worked, because as much as my grandpa had stories from his childhood that had you laughing your butt off,

he had one or two extremely creepy ones too. He wouldn't tell them often, and he didn't tell us any scary stories when we were kids. But once I was old enough, and I happened to be picking his brain one dark October evening, he told me one story I'll remember for as long as I live. It all started when a hunter named Hiram Carter walked back into town one day, after spending all morning sitting in his blind out in the woods. This was back in 1934, just after prohibition ended,

and someone had set up a little speakeasy kind of joint over on Apple Lane. Hiram walked straight into the speakeasy, drank a whole bottle of beer in four, or five gulps and chased it down with a double shot of whiskey. Then, when both bottle and glass were empty, Hiram asked for another round. Obviously, a man doesn't drink like that unless something very good has happened, or something very, very bad has happened. So naturally, Hiram's fellow patrons were pretty keen to know what the occasion was, but Hiram didn't have any good news to share. In fact, he was more frightened than he'd ever been in his whole life. He'd been sitting in his blind, which for those that don't know, is basically like a camouflage shelter

that hunters hide in. And Hiram was there for hours before anything came along. But sure enough, he starts seeing this big old buck walking through the trees towards him. It's still some distance away, so Hiram's got to wait as it gets closer and closer so he can get the perfect shot. He's got that buck trained in his sights. He's steadying his breathing, then something spooks the deer, and it goes bolting off through the woods. Hiram lowers his rifle, trying to spot whatever it was that spooked his deer. Then suddenly, he sees it. Something darts through the trees in front of him, too skinny to be a bear, too big to be a dog, and it's moving so fast that it just about scared Hiram half to death. He stays put in his hide for a few minutes, clutching his

rifle with sweaty palms, and then he rushes out of his hide back to his truck, and drives all the way back into town as fast as the engine could handle. He said that whatever it was, it was stalking him all the way back to his vehicle. It stayed just out of sight, but it was there, following him, and Hiram said it just about frightened the life out of him. The boys down at the speakeasy told him it was probably just some coyote or a mangy bear that didn't get enough food before hibernating. But Hiram said he was certain about what he saw, and he hadn't seen nothing like it before in his life. It was big. It was full. fast, and most importantly, it seemed smart. After finishing his drinks, Hiram walked out of the

speakeasy and made his way home, but not before warning every man in there to stay the hell out of the woods. Something was out there, and it was dangerous. When word got around about Hiram's encounter out in the woods, some folks took it with a pinch of salt, while the rest took, it with a whole shaker. See, Hiram was in the habit of telling tall tales after a few whiskeys. In fact, the only reason he was hunting in the first place was so he could spend half his grocery money on booze. Having the reputation that he did, no one took Hiram's claims all that seriously and went about their business as usual. But just seven days later, Hiram's story was the talk of the town, and unlike the week prior, they took his claims much more seriously. By the time my

grandpa was a boy, the site of the old plantation house, the one that had been burned down by the townsfolk, had been abandoned and overgrown for almost 50 years, with no heirs to inherit the property. The land had fallen under the temporary ownership of Bland County's controller, whose only task was to find the property a buyer. But then, in the 40-plus years it had been up for sale, the county hadn't been able to find one. Even the carpetbaggers from up in New York and Chicago wanted nothing to do with it. They'd roll through in their fancy stagecoaches and top hats, take one look at the land, and the folks living on it and say,

Thanks, but no thanks. As a result, the land was all waste, high grass, wildflowers, and cypress trees surrounding the brick foundations of the old plantation house. Local kids were warned to stay away from the place, but I guess kids back then were no different than kids today because they ignored their parents' warnings completely. I guess on account of how mysterious and spooky it was, but kids around my grandpa's age, so about ten or eleven,

would often sneak up to the old plantation to explore the grounds. My grandpa said that he went up there once or twice himself, but that he always got a bad feeling whenever he was near that place. He'd heard the stories, everyone had, about the plantation being haunted, about the town being cursed. It just wasn't enough to keep the kids away. And for one little girl, ignoring those warnings almost cost her her life, One day, a little girl came running back into town with her even younger sister in tow,

and they were both out of their poor little minds with fright. They'd been taking their beagle pup out for some exercise, and decided to take it onto the old plantation grounds to run him around a little. They were there for no more than a few minutes before their dog suddenly tucked its tail between its legs and started to growl. The older girl gave the dog's leash a tug, and it was only too happy to get the hell away from that creepy old place. But then, as they're walking, the older of the two girls sees something moving in the trees surrounding the old plantation, something that scared the

living hell out of her, something she later described as a monster. Later, when she was safe and a little calmer, the older girl was asked for more details on what she'd seen. She said that the monster had been creeping through the trees on all fours at first, but when it saw her, it raised itself up on its hind legs to watch her from across the clearing. Then, when she and her sister started to run back towards grape field, the thing in the tree line dropped back on all four legs again, then started running in their direction, like it was trying to cut them off. The two girls ran as fast as their legs could carry them,

with their dog doubling back every so often to bark up a storm in the hopes of protecting his owners. Thankfully, the girls managed to make it into town, before whatever it was caught up with them. But when they arrived, they were sobbing something fierce. The older of the two girls said the creature was huge, with shaggy hair all over its body, but none at all around its muzzle, which appeared horribly misshapen and deformed.

This time, people took the claims much more seriously, but they still thought that it must have been some kind of mangy bear that had attacked the girls after their hibernation period. If a bear can't find itself a snack quick enough, They can get really hungry, and you better believe that a hungry bear is a very dangerous bear. And having something raid a few chicken coops or butcher a few hogs, that was one thing, but having the thing hunting the town's children, that could not be tolerated. The most accomplished hunter in grapefield, a man named Rufus Robinson,

volunteered to head out into the woods with his Australian shepherd. He said he'd come back with the beast's head, or he wouldn't come back at all. Well, a few days later, Rufus's Aussie Shepherd came hobbling back into town, all on its lonesome. It walked right over to Rufus' cabin, but then, instead of sitting on his porch, the dog went and laid down on his neighbors, almost like it knew that Rufus wasn't coming home. Folks said Rufus' dog might have run ahead, gotten itself lost, then simply walked back home to wait for his master. They'll be back in a few days, they said. ain't no mangy bear got the better of old rufus but rufus never came back with no mangy bear's head in fact rufus robinson never came back at all and there was no sending a search party in after him

unless its first and foremost task was hunting down the bear that took him and that's when the town's folk formed a hunting party six of their best men would head out into the woods with shotguns and rifles and bring home Rufus' body and end the threat that that mangy bear posed once and for all. Well, according to a member of the hunting party, they were out there for less than 24 hours before they found the thing that had been stalking the town's children, and it wasn't no bear. One night, they set up a real simple trap, just laid some fresh meat as bait out in the open. Then all they had to do was wait. Well, they waited, and they waited, but not.

nothing showed. Then, just when someone gets up to collect the meat so they can move it someplace else, bingo. The thing comes tearing through the trees and attacks the man who approached the meat. It almost took a chunk of his arm before he managed to stick a knife in the thing. Then, once he was free of its grip, his hunting buddies emptied almost every shell they had into it, and they didn't stop firing until the beast stopped moving. Once they were quite certain the thing was dead, the hunters approached, shining their lanterns on the creature to get a better look. Only then did they realize what they were looking at. It wasn't any kind of bear. It was a man. His hair and beard were long and shaggy, his unclothed body so filthy in parts that the dirt and

mud appeared as a second kind of skin. Wherever there was bare skin, such as his face, his chest, and his shoulders, there were hideous webs of burn scars, so much so that the same. that the man beneath had been robbed of his human appearance. His spine was arched and contorted, his hands and feet bore heavy calluses, and at the ends of long bony fingers sprouted sharp, filth-encrusted claws. Obviously none of the men had ever seen anything quite like it, so they dragged the man's body out of the woods, then woke up the town's doctor to come inspect their quarry. Now, this doctor had been Grapefield's resident physician for the better part of 50 years. He treated everyone in town and had lived there since the 1870s,

including the old plantation owner and his family. It was him who realized who the man was, why he was covered in burn scars, and why he'd been living like a wild animal for what must have been decades. It was one of the plantation owner's sons. Back on the night of the plantation house being burned down, the mob encircled the building to make sure no one could escape. They took shots at anyone who came near the windows or doors, at least all except one. The plantation house was huge, so the dozen or so men that made up the mob had to space themselves out real wide to cover all the angles. One man stationed just off the east wing sees someone scrambling out of a small cellar grate. He raised his rifle, got ready to fire, but then saw it was just a boy.

His skin all scorched and blistering, and he didn't have it in him to execute a child. Besides, he was so burned up that there was no way he'd survive more than a day or two out there in the woods all alone. So instead of filling him full of lead like they did with the others who tried to escape, the man let the boy go, having no idea that in decades to come, his decision would come back to quite literally haunt them. No one knows how the boy survived out in the woods for so long, or why he'd chosen to live out in the trails of Appalachia instead of trying to settle down someplace. Most suspect that the grief of losing his whole family so suddenly drove him insane, and that fear of mankind kept him living in the woods like some type of animal. But there are

few who agree on how he came to look the way he did. Obviously, the scars were present all over his body, being from the fire. But what wasn't so clear was how the boy had come to be so comfortable running on all fours like some type of dog. Some said that he must have been born that way, and his appearance was probably why he couldn't settle down anywhere. They figured that since he got treated like a monster, he started acting, like one too, but others said that he was perfectly healthy, and that in slowly losing his humanity, he learned to run and hunt like an animal. Honestly, I don't know what to make of any of this, and neither did my grandpa.

He always thought it was some myth or legend, until his own ma and paw could confirm that it was indeed the truth. They said that the boy's death was just another in a long line of murders that never saw justice, and since they couldn't stand another one, they decided to move. Grandpa raised the point that it couldn't have been murder if the hunters were just defending themselves, and his paw responded with what I think are some wise words. He said that the boy never really survived the plantation fire that night. He was probably wandering around the woods, living like an animal, never truly being a person.

truly being a person. Whether he came back to Grapefield for revenge, or just to revisit the place he grew up, killing him meant finishing off a murder that started 30 or 40 years earlier. And that's why people say the town is cursed, not because there's some evil spirit lurking around the place, but because those who came before condemned those who came after to have all the same blood on their hands. My boots felt light on the Appalachian Trail, an unspoken promise of freedom with each step. I'd managed to drag Sam, an old college buddy, into this plan. A week in the wild, I'd said, what could go wrong? The eastern Tennessee woods echoed with a kind of stillness you'd pay top dollar for in therapy.

Sam and I weren't the hardcore hiker types. No, our hikes were punctuated with detours to whatever local haunts we could find. The plan was to walk the trail, sure, but also to soak in as much of the local color as we could. Our packs were stuffed more with comfort than survival gear, a decision that felt right every time we pulled out a pair of dry socks or a snack that wasn't just trail mix. By the third day, our easy pace brought us into Hancock County. We entered with the innocent aim of stocking up on beer and maybe a bottle of Jack to toast to our adventures. I still remember the chuckle from the lady behind the counter at the general store when we asked where the liquor aisle was. You boys aren't from around here, are you?

She asked. Her smile lined with the wisdom of someone who knew the punchline to a joke we hadn't heard yet. We're just passing through, Sam replied, looking to pick up some supplies. Well, you'll find plenty of supplies, but if it's booze you're after, you're out of luck. This here's a dry county. A dry county. The words hung between us, an unexpected barrier to our evening plans. We bought what we could.

could, snacks, more snacks, and a few more snacks. And on her advice, asked around town if someone could help us out with our particular dilemma. The townsfolk were friendly enough. Each person we asked met us with apologetic smiles and polite declines. Wish I could help you boys out, but I'm staying local today, seemed to be the theme of the responses. Disappointed, we trudged back toward the trail, the lack of liquor weighing heavier than our packs. That's when we saw him, stepping out of the same general store, a guy about our age with a face that looked like it knew its way around a good time. He had that lean, rugged look. Someone who spent more time outdoors than in.

His shirt faded from the sun. Jeans dusted with the telltale signs of the local red clay. Hey, excuse me, I called out, my voice cutting through the quiet of the early evening. He turned, eyebrows raised in a mix of. of curiosity and caution. I'm Mike, and this is Sam. We heard you might be heading out of town? Any chance you could help us pick up some beer?

His guarded expression shifted to a grin. Sure, I could use the company. You guys okay with a bit of a drive? What started as a simple question, a minor plea for assistance, was about to lead us down a path neither of us expected. As we climbed into his truck,

the setting sun cast long shadow, over the road, hinting at the darker journey ahead. As we rolled away from Hancock County, the landscape shifted, the dense canopy giving way to open skies. Our new friend, who introduced himself as Jake, had a truck that smelled of leather and earth, and his easy demeanor as he drove made the miles slip by like creek water over smooth stones. So how long you boys been hitting the trail? Jake asked, his eyes flicking between the road and the rearview mirror.

About three days now, I replied. It's been more about the escape than the hike, really. Jake nodded, as if he understood that perfectly. Sometimes you just got to get away from it all, huh? The conversation meandered through topics as varied as the landscapes we passed. Jake talked about growing up in Tennessee, about the trails and the towns and what it meant to live with the rhythm of the seasons. He spoke with that blend of pride and resignation you hear from people who love their home,

but know its limits intimately. It was when the topic turned to our futile quest for alcohol, that Jake's tone took on a conspiratorial edge. You know, he began, glancing at us through the mirror. There's another place I know. Not exactly legal, mind you, but if you're looking for real local flavor, his voice trailed off, inviting our curiosity. I exchanged a glance with Sam.

The thrill of the forbidden added an edge to our adventure, we hadn't anticipated but were not opposed to exploring. You mean moonshine? I asked. Jake's smile was all the answer we needed. Real moonshine made by a guy who knows his craft. But it's in a dry county too. You're not cops, are you? He half joked.

But his eyes searched ours for any sign of deceit. We laughed, shaking our heads. No, just a couple of guys looking for a good story to tell. That seemed to put him at ease. Well then, if you're up for a bit of a detour, I can introduce you to some of the best shine you'll ever taste. The decision didn't take long. Curiosity. That relentless driver of human folly nudged us forward.

Let's do it, Sam said, and I nodded in agreement. Jake turned the truck onto a less-traveled road, the setting sun casting long shadows across the gravel. As we bounced along, the woods closed in around us, and I couldn't shake the feeling that we were diving deeper into the unknown. We'll be there in a bit, Jake said, his voice now lower, almost reverent. Just a heads up, this isn't your typical roadside stand. What we saw as we pulled up wasn't what I'd pictured. No quaint, hidden shack with barrels and a smoking still, but a larger building, rough and imposing. It looked more like a community center abandoned by time, except for the row of motorcycles lined up out front. My heart sank a little. Uh, Jake?

Are you sure this is the place? I asked, the first twinge of real apprehension squeezing my chest. Trust me, he said with a grin that didn't reach his eyes. You wanted authentic, right? Doesn't get more real than this. As we stepped out of the truck, the sound of our boots on gravel felt ominously final. I looked at Sam, his face mirroring my unease, as we followed Jake towards what promised to be much more than just an illicit transaction. The door to the clubhouse swung open with a groan that felt too cinematic, like the first note of a score meant to unsettle. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of oil and tobacco,

an undercurrent of adrenaline lacing through as we stepped into the biker's domain. Jake led the way, casual as if he was walking into his own home, but Sam and I hung back just slightly. Our senses heightened to every movement around us. The walls were adorned with signs of allegiance, and brotherhood, patches and memorabilia that told stories of loyalty and wilder days. Make yourselves at home, Jake said, a bit too cheerfully. His voice bounced oddly off the concrete and wood. A dozen pairs of eyes turned toward us, their looks ranging from curious to downright

hostile. The warmth of the day outside didn't reach this place. We barely had time to take a tentative seat at the bar when a hush fell over the room. Through a door at the back, A man emerged, broad and commanding, his presence alone demanding respect or fear. He locked eyes with Jake, and without a word, the air shifted, charged with an electricity that felt like a storm about to break. Jake approached him, speaking in low tones we couldn't catch over the hum of conversation that resumed, nervously, around us. Sam leaned over, murmuring,

Mike, I've got a bad feeling about this. Before I could answer, the quiet exploded into chaos. The sound of a fist-meeting flesh was startlingly clear. Jake reeled from a blow by the biker president, his earlier confidence shattering like glass under a boot. Panic clawed at my throat as the president dragged Jake back by the collar, his shouts filling the room, punctuated by Jake's grunts of pain. Are you trying to get us busted?

You bring cops in here! The accusation was a slap of reality against, my already racing heart. Sam and I stood, our chairs scraping loudly against the floor. The room's attention pivoted to us, and for a moment I felt like a deer caught in too many headlights. No, we're not, I started, but the president cut me off, pointing fiercely towards the exit. Get out, now. Relief was immediate and overwhelming, but it was tangled with a nauseating guilt. Jake was still being held, now quieter. The fight gone out of him as quickly as it had escalated. We can't just leave him, I said, my voice low, urgent. He's not your problem, one of the

bikers said, stepping aside to clear our path to the door. The president's eyes were on me, hard and unyielding. He was robbing you. Get out while you can. Outside the night air was a cold slap to my heated face. Sam and I didn't speak as we hurried away. the sounds of the clubhouse fading behind us. Guilt gnawed at me for Jake, for the thrill that had led us here, for every step we took away from that place. The drive back was silent,

each of us lost in our own thoughts. It was only miles later, the clubhouse a nightmare in the rearview mirror, that I could breathe again, the adrenaline slowly ebbing from my veins. Next time we stick to the trail, Sam finally said, his attempt at a weary joke doing little,

to lift the heavy cloak of what ifs and maybes that settled around us as we drove back into the night, leaving behind a story we'd never forget, but never wanted to relive. Living in Clinch Valley meant being surrounded by the kind of beauty that could take your breath away. The lush green mountains rose around our little cabin, their tops hidden by the morning fog that seemed to hold secrets of its own. I, Willa Mae Martin, stood on the porch of our home, my eyes tracing the familiar ridges and valleys that I had come to know so well.

Life here was supposed to be peaceful, a perfect place for Alden and me to start our family. But peace was as fleeting as the morning missed. We married young, both of us just 17. It was a shotgun wedding, pushed forward when we found out I was expecting. The joy of our soon-to-be expanded family brought a fleeting harmony. Alden, with his strong hands and warm smile, promised me the moon. and I believed him.

I believed that our little cabin, with its creaky wooden floors and the fire always burning in the hearth, would be filled with laughter and love. But as the leaves turned golden and fell to the ground, so too did our happiness. I lost the baby midway through the pregnancy. The loss devastated me, but Alden, he took it differently. He blamed me, said it was my fault for not being careful enough, for not loving him enough. His words cut deeper than the cold wind of Appalachia, and his warm smile turned cold. Alden worked as an oil driller, a job that took him down to Texas for two weeks at a time.

Those two weeks he was away were my respite, my little slices of heaven. I cherished the silence that his absence brought, the way the house seemed to sigh in relief with me. But the dread of his return grew with each passing day he was gone, knowing that the man who would come back through that door was not the one I married. His return marked the beginning of my two weeks of hell. He drank. The whiskey seemed to fuel his anger, his disappointment in me, in us, and he lashed out leaving marks no one could see, hidden beneath my sleeves and skirts.

I learned to flinch at the sound of his boots on the porch, at the turn of the door handle. It was during one of these dark times that Silas came into the pit. picture. Alden had asked his brother to check on me while he was away. At first I was wary, unsure if Silas was just another spy for Alden. But Silas was different. He had a gentleness about him that Alden had lost long ago. He did the chores without needing to be asked, fixed the broken steps, the leaking roof, and sometimes he just sat with me, listening to the radio and talking about everything and nothing. One evening, as the sun dipped behind the Appalachian mountains, sending long shadows across the valley. Silas asked me if I was happy. It was a simple

question, but one I hadn't asked myself in a long time. Tears welled up in my eyes as I shook my head. No, I was not happy. That was the first time I admitted it out loud. Silas listened as I poured out my heart, telling him of the abuse, the loneliness, and the despair. In the flickering candlelight of our kitchen, I saw something in Silas's eyes that I hadn't seen in anyone's for a long time. Genuine concern. It was then that I began to feel a glimmer of hope, a whisper of something that might resemble happiness. As we sat there talking into the night, I realized that perhaps, just perhaps, there was a way out of this darkness. And maybe, just maybe, Silas would be my beacon. The sun was just beginning to. The sun was just beginning to

to rise, painting the sky in shades of pink and orange as I stood at the kitchen window, watching the day awaken. Each morning brought a new sense of dread, but also a flicker of hope, especially since Silas had become part of my life. Those days when Alden was away working in Texas were my sanctuary, my brief escape from the nightmare my life had become. Silas started coming by more often, under the pretense of helping around the house, or just checking in on me as Alden had asked. But we both knew these visits were more than that now. We talked about everything, the books we liked, the places we dreamed of visiting, and sometimes just the simple beauty of Clinch Valley that seemed so untainted, unlike our lives. One afternoon, Silas brought a small

radio and we sat on the porch listening to music from far away places. It was during one of those moments with a soft country melody playing in the background that Silas took my hand. It was a simple gesture, but it felt like a lifeline. I looked into his eyes and I didn't see Alden's brother. I saw a man who made me feel safe, understood, and importantly, valued. I care about you, Willamay, Silas said softly, his voice barely above the whistling wind. I hate seeing you hurt like this. His words warmed a part of my heart that I thought had gone cold forever. We sat there for what felt like ours.

Our hands entwined, letting the music envelop us in a cocoon where the harsh realities of my marriage couldn't reach us. But with each visit, the weight of our secret grew heavier. We were both aware of the sanctity of the vows I had made to Alden, however broken they might have become by his own cruelty. It felt as if every stolen moment with Silas was brought, both a salve to my wounds and a new cut to my conscience.

One evening, Silas stayed later than usual. Alden would be returning the next day, and a sense of urgency hung between us. Willa, we can't keep doing this, he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. It's not right to you or even to Alden. I knew he was right, but the thought of not having Silas in my life was more painful than any physical wound Alden had inflicted. What are we going to do? I asked, my voice barely a whisper, fearing even the walls might hear.

We have to decide, Willamay. Either we stop this now, or you have to leave him. You deserve happiness, not this. Not a life filled with fear and pain, Silas said, his tone resolute. That night I lay awake, thinking about everything Silas had said. By morning my decision was made. I couldn't and wouldn't live in fear any longer. With Silas's love giving me strength, I began to plan my escape from Alden.

The next few days were a blur as I packed my things secretly. Each item stashed away a silent testament to the years of suffering. I wrote a letter to Alden, telling him everything I felt, sparing no detail of the pain he had caused, and my resolve to leave him. When the letter was done, I felt a mix of relief and overwhelming sadness. I knew there was no turning back now. I was leaving to meet Silas, clutching not just my suitcase, but the fragile hope of a new beginning. As I rode the wagon to Bean Station where Silas and I planned to start our journey to California,

I felt the chains of my old life breaking, link by link. The cool morning air nipped at my cheeks as I stepped off the wagon at Bean Station. My heart pounded with a mixture of excitement and fear. Today was the day I would start anew with Silas. My eyes scanned the small, bustling station for his familiar face, but instead, a chilling sight caught my breath. It was Silas' favorite felt hat and jacket, but the man wearing them was not Silas. As the figure turned toward me, my heart sank into the pit of my stomach. Alden.

It was Alden wearing his brother's clothes. My mind raced, trying to piece together how he could have known where to find me. panic clawed at my throat as he approached his steps steady and sure his eyes cold and unreadable alden what how did you my words stumbled out tripping over my shock and fear thought you were smart eh willam may leaving me for my own brother his voice was low laced with a bitterness that sent shivers down my spine i stepped back but he was too quick grabbing my arm with a grip that promised pain he didn't wait for my response With a forceful pull, he led me away from the station, away from the public eyes that might have offered some semblance of safety. We rode in silence, the only sound the clopping of the horse's hooves and my heart pounding in my ears. I didn't know where we were going until we turned up the path to Silas's house. As we approached, my worst fears were confirmed. Hanging from the porch beam was Silas, lifeless.

A scream tore through my lips, a sound of pure agony and despair. Alden dismounted, dragging me closer to the horrifying sight. Look at him, Willa May, look at what you did. Alden's voice was a harsh whisper in my ear. I couldn't tear my eyes away from Silas, from the man I loved, now gone forever because of the twisted path my life had taken. Tears blurred my vision, and grief overwhelmed me as Alden continued his cruel. taunts. Finally, he forced me back onto the horse. We're going to the sheriff. You're going to tell

them everything. But Alden's plans changed quickly. Upon arriving in town, he didn't head for the sheriff's office, but instead handed me over to the deputies, telling them where to find Silas's body. He confessed to his actions, his words cold and detached. They took him away, leaving me alone with my grief. The next few days were a blur. I was lost. I was lost. in a fog of sorrow and shock. When they went to collect Silas' body, it was gone, vanished as if it had never been there. And with him, I felt my last connection to this world slip away. That night, I made my decision. I couldn't stay in Clinch Valley, not with the ghosts of my past haunting every corner. I left, under the cover of darkness, leaving behind the pain,

the sorrow and the love that had turned so tragically wrong. The morning after I left, they found a cart in front of the sheriff's office. Underneath a tattered sheet lay Silas, embalmed and pristine, with a wedding band on his finger, a band I had never seen him wear. It was a final message, a sign that perhaps Silas was still with me, in some way, guiding me as I fled from the horrors of my past, searching for peace that I hoped still existed somewhere in the world. The regions surrounding the fabled Appalachian Mountains

are home to some fascinating but often misunderstood myths and legends. Many are already familiar with the likes of the Mothman, the red-eyed harbinger of doom who lurks at the locations of impending disasters, or the Flatwoods monster, who many believe is an example of extraterrestrial visitation. Yet, fewer are familiar with another Appalachian legend which, after some research, might just be rooted in a very unsettling truth. In certain parts of southern and eastern Appalachia, some folks still talk of an eerie,

nocturnal race of imp-like humanoids known as the moon-eyed people. The moon-eyed people are said to be around four feet high with pale, ghostly bodies and large, slightly bulbous eyes. They are mostly harmless, and only ever come out at night due to their general fear of humanity. But go walking on the trails where the moon is big and bright, and you might just spot a moon-eyed person bathed in silvery light. To most, the moon-eyed people sound like nothing but a quaint rural folk tale, but like many so-called myths and legends, there can be varying degrees of truth to them, and in the case of nocturnal gnomes, that degree of truth might be very

large indeed. Prior to the removal of 1838, North Georgia and other parts of the Appalachians were still part of the Cherokee nation. In 1782, the region's governor was a man named John Severe. That same year, Severe paid a visit to the Cherokee Chief Okoda at Fort Mountain, who had recently reached the ripe old age of 90 years old. Given his status as the regional governor, Severe and Okoda dedicated a great deal of their discussion to local politics. Severe sought the old chief's wisdom, yet he also sought his experience. and before long, the conversation turned to history. Severe and Okoda began discussing the origins of the Cherokee,

with the old chief describing how his people had migrated to Appalachia from the northern Great Lakes region. Okoda claimed his ancestors had arrived to find another people had settled the area, a people so sophisticated that they turned the mountain into a veritable fortress, hence why it was given the name. The Cherokee fought hard to conquer the indigenous tribe, but eventually prevailed and drove their enemy from the region before settling it themselves. Severe then asked the old chief if he knew anything of the vanquished tribe.

What he was told shocked him deeply. Chief Okoda's forefathers told him that those who had occupied Fort Mountain before the Cherokee were, and I quote, white men from across the Great Sea. The chief went on to describe how these moon-eyed people earned their name. Not only did they have huge disc-like eyes, much larger than any humans, but they evolved to be viciously effective nocturnal hunters with natural night vision so strong that it struck fear into the hearts of the Cherokee, who didn't dare venture away from their camps after dark. Governor Severe was stunned and assumed that these Caucasoid tribespeople were merely the stuff

of legend, yet Chief Okoda assured him that his account was no mere myth. Severe promised to return the following spring, and in the company of a historian, so that the chief's account could be officially recorded. Yet sadly, when Severe returned in the spring of 1783, he discovered that the elderly chief had passed away. Despite Chief Okoda's death, rumors of the moon-eyed people did not abate. In fact, almost every band of Appalachian Cherokee was familiar with the legends, so much so that it attracted the attention of a man named Benjamin Smith Barton. Born in 1766 in the British colony of Pennsylvania, Dr. Barton was one of the early United States most prominent physicians.

He studied at the Philadelphia School of Medicine, but also at Scotland's University of Edinburgh and Germany's University of Goddingen. He was also such a famous and well-respected figure that he received honorary diplomas from both the Lisbon Academy and Kieland. University. At one time, Dr. Barton specialized in botany, and after corresponding with naturalists throughout the United States and Europe, he published the first American textbook on the subject. Yet, around the end of the 18th century, Barton became fascinated with the subject of anthropology and more specifically, the origins of humanity. After many years of study, Dr. Barton

published his 1797 book, New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, The book includes excerpts of an interview with a U.S. Army Colonel named Leonard Marbury, fluent in the Cherokee language. Colonel Marbury acted as an intermediary between the government and the natives for the better part of 20 years, and in that time had heard many a story regarding the so-called moon-eyed people. The Cherokee tell us that when they first arrived in the country which they inhabit, they found it possessed by a certain moon-eyed people, Colonel Marbury explained. These wretched people could not see in the daytime and were expelled following a brief but bloody war.

At first, Dr. Barton theorized that there had been some kind of miscommunication and that these pale, moon-eyed people were not some previously undiscovered race of stunted humanoids, but rather a collection of French settlers. The Cherokee had sometimes described the moon-eyed people as possessing what they described as alien or unfamiliar weaponry. Yet when Dr. Barton interviewed one frequent visitor to the Cherokee, he claimed these alien weapons were little more than hose, axes, guns, and other metallic utensils that had been brought to the New World by the French. Many others have supported this assertion, claiming the moon-eyed people were no more than rogue European settlers who specialized in hunting by night rather than by day. Yet when South Carolina historian B.R. Carroll interviewed merchant explorer James Adair, he refuted any and all claims that the moon-eyed people were European.

Born in the Irish County of Antrim in 1709, Adair sailed to the New World with a British trade mission at the age of 26. He spent the next 40 years living among the natives, chiefly among the Chickasaw and eastern Choctaw, while being almost entirely cut off from the outside world. In 1775, when Adair was in his 60s, he was encouraged to pen an account of his experiences with the native tribes, titling the book, A History of the American Indians. The book cemented Adair's status as one of the most knowledgeable Indian experts of his generation, hence why he was sought out by the author B. R. Carroll. And when asked if he was familiar with the so-called moon-eyed people, he replied in the affirmative.

Adair claimed that almost all of the Appalachian tribes had stories concerning this primordial race of albino-humanoids, but it was not the frequency with which he encountered these stories that convinced Adair of their veracity. It was the consistency with which they were described. Each and every tribe spoke of the moon-eyed people being stunted, nocturnal, and incredibly pale, and what's more, most tribes agreed that the cause of their malformation was that they chose to live underground. Scientifically speaking, the moon-eyed people's wide-eyed form is entirely consistent with an offshoot of humanity having taken to living underground, especially if they've done so for thousands upon thousands of years. And while this all might sound like the stuff of science fiction, it is firmly rooted in truth.

Back in 2003, a team comprised of local and Australian archaeologists began excavating in an Indonesian cave known as Liang Bua, in the hopes of uncovering pre-modern human remains. Two years later, the team was undertaking a routine dig when they discovered evidence of a human skull. When a section of this skull was sent away for analysis, Indonesian scientists believed that due to its relatively small dimensions, the skull must have belonged to a child. Yet after more of the person's skull was uncovered and analyzed,

it was discovered that their teeth were that of a full-grown adult. The remains they discovered were not those of a of a young, Homo sapien, they belonged to a previously undiscovered relative, Homo Floresiensis, named after the island of Flores, in which they were found. Homo Floresiensis were determined to be an extinct species of small, archaic human that inhabited the island until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago. The remains found in the Liang Bua Cave belonged to an adult female, believed to have stood at 3 feet 7 inches tall, which earned her the nickname, the the Little Lady of Flores.

If the Cherokee did indeed migrate to Appalachia around 12,000 years ago, which is when the last of the Flores, Hobbit people, are believed to have died out, it's frighteningly feasible that they encountered a prehistoric race of subhuman cave dwellers, against whom they waged a terrible and ultimately genocidal war. But then again, how could the Cherokee be so certain that every last one of the moon-eyed people were extinct? Perhaps they simply took shelter in the deepest recesses of their subterranean settlements and became even more cautious following the arrival of European settlers. Maybe the stories of stunted, ethereal-looking beings roaming the Appalachian Trail aren't just stories,

but rather an aspect of ancient anthropology that we have yet to fully explain. After all, if the little lady of Flores and her kin were only discovered in 2003, what else has mankind yet to discover regarding our ancient? and mysterious origins. I remember the day we moved to the holler like it was yesterday, even though it was a bunch of years ago. My dad said we were going to live in Kentucky, right in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

I didn't know much about it then, but I learned fast that life there was different from anywhere else. We lived in what everyone called a holler. It's kind of like a cul-de-sac, but instead of being surrounded by other houses, we were nestled between big old hills covered in thick trees. Our house was a cozy double-wide trailer in the middle, with family homes scattered around, but none directly behind or across from us.

It was just us in the woods. My grandma, who everyone called Grams, was pretty serious about her rules. At first I thought they were kind of silly, like something out of an old storybook. Don't mess with the wild animals, she'd say. Or, never go into the woods by yourself. Those made sense, kind of. But then there were the weirder ones. don't whistle at night.

If you hear your name called from the woods, don't answer it. And the strangest of all, if you see someone you know in the woods pretend you didn't. I figured maybe these were just things old folks believed in, like superstitions. But there was something about the way Grams looked when she said them. It made my stomach twist a little. Life in the holler was quiet mostly. My dad worked a lot, and when he was home, he liked to spend time outdoors. We'd often take walks along a path he'd mowed through the tall grass and bushes just left of our place.

He said it was good to know our own patch of land well. Sometimes, on special nights, we'd camp out there, just a stones throw from our house, so we could still keep an eye on grams. One night, Dad decided it was perfect for camping. We set up our old green tent and gathered some wood for a campfire. As the sun set, the sky turned a deep orange, then purple, and finally black. The stars came out, but they were often hidden by the towering trees around us. We roasted marshmallows, and Dad told me stories about his childhood adventures in these very woods.

It felt magical, like we were part of the wild. The sounds of the night were loud around us, crickets chirping, the occasional rustle of small animals in the underbrush, and the distant hoot of an owl. It was peaceful, and for a moment all of Graham's strange rules seemed unnecessary. As the fire crackled, Dad checked his watch. I need to head back to the house for a bit. Check on Grams.

You going to be okay here for a few minutes? He asked, tossing another log onto the fire. Yeah, I'll be fine, I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. He nodded, gave me a pat on the shoulder, and walked back up the path towards the house. Sitting there alone, the fire's warmth felt good, but the woods seemed to close in around me. The noises of the night grew softer, and a chill crept up my spine. I pulled my jacket tighter around me, staring into the flames, wondering if maybe, just maybe, Grams' rules were there for a reason.

There I was, sitting by the campfire, trying to remember the exact way the stars looked because Dad had once told me that no two nights under the sky are ever the same. The woods were alive with sounds, just like they always were. Crickets were singing, and somewhere far off an owl was hooting like it was talking to the moon. But then, something weird happened. It was like someone had turned down the volume of the world. The crickets stopped mid-chirp, and even the wind seemed to hold its breath. I shivered, not from cold, but because the silence felt wrong.

It was too quiet, too still. I scooted closer to the fire, hoping the crackle of the flames would make things feel normal again. That's when I noticed the taste. It was like I had a mouthful of pennies, that sharp, metallic tang that made me want to spit. I didn't know what was happening, and I really wish Dad was there instead of back at the house. The fire popped, a spark flying up into the dark, and I jumped. Just the fire, just the fire, I told myself, trying not to think about Grams' rules or what might be out there beyond the light of our camp.

Then, out of nowhere the first drop of rain hit my forehead. It startled me and I looked up just as the sky opened up. The rain wasn't heavy yet, but the sound of it hitting the leaves brought some noise back to the woods. I felt a little relieved until the first flash of lightning lit up everything. The whole world seemed to freeze in that white light. For just a second, I saw past the stream, beyond the yard, and over the road. There was something standing there. It was too far and too quick to see clearly, but it looked like a person, only wrong.

The next rumble of thunder was distant, but it felt like it rolled right under my feet. I squinted into the darkness, trying to see if the figure was still there. But it was too dark, and the next flash of lightning was a long time coming. When it did, the figure was closer, near the first line of trees. It didn't move like a person. It sort of wobbled, like a shadow that didn't know how to be real. I stood up. The fire was behind me, my only source of warmth and safety, but it didn't feel safe anymore.

It felt like a beacon, calling attention to me standing there alone. Dad, I whispered, but the wind swallowed the sound. I wanted to run, but my legs didn't want to move. They knew running in the dark, in the rain, wasn't a good idea. Then the figure was in the middle of the road. The last flash of lightning, but, before the storm really hit showed it standing there, looking right at me. I couldn't see its face, couldn't see much of anything really, but I felt it watching me. That was enough.

I turned and ran, not caring about the rain or the mud or anything. I ran all the way back to our house, burst through the door, and slammed it shut behind me. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would break my ribs. Grams was at the sink, washing dishes. She looked up, surprised to see me so wet and scared. I tried to tell her about the figure, but my words came out all jumbled. Before I knew it, Dad was there, locking doors and pulling curtains. I didn't sleep in the tent that night. I didn't sleep much at all. The next morning felt different. The sun was out and the birds were singing again, like they were trying to make up for being so quiet during the storm. But even with the sunlight streaming through the windows and the

normal sounds of the holler filling the air, I couldn't shake off the fear from last night. Dad and I went out to check on the campsite. The path was muddy from the rain, and our footsteps squelched loudly as we walked. When we got there, the first thing we saw was our tent, or what was left of it. The door of the tent looked like something had ripped it off. It wasn't torn or cut, more like it had been pulled apart by something strong. Dad frowned as he examined it. This wasn't an animal, he muttered, more to himself than to me. I just nodded, not knowing what to say. The image of that strange figure by the trees flashed in my mind,

and I felt that weird metallic taste creeping back into my mouth. We didn't stay long at the campsite. Back home, Grams was waiting for us. She had heard about what happened from Dad, and she had that look on her face, the one that said she was worried but trying not to show it. The next few weeks were strange in the holler. I wasn't the only one who felt uneasy.

Something had shifted. Even the adults were acting differently. They started accompanying us kids to the bus stop every morning, which never used to happen before. Dad had to go to work late because he was one of the adults who stayed with us until the bus came. I tried talking about what I saw that night a few times, but it was like the adults had made a pact not to discuss it.

Whenever I brought it up, they'd change the subject or tell me not to worry about it. It was frustrating. It felt like they knew something they weren't telling me. Years passed and I grew up, but I never forgot about that night. It wasn't until I was in my 20s at a family gathering for Halloween that I got some answers. I started telling my cousins about what happened, thinking it was just a spooky story for the occasion. But my aunt overheard me and got really upset. Don't you tell them that, she snapped.

Don't you put that evil on them? Her reaction shocked me. It was the first time an adult had reacted so strongly to the story. Later she calmed down and explained why she had been so angry. She told me about the goat man, a creature from local legends, known for causing fear and mischief. It was the same name she had shouted at me during the party. Suddenly, all those years of being shushed and brushed off made sense. The adults hadn't been trying to ignore the problem.

they had been trying to protect us from it, from the fear and the truth of the goat man. I wish I could say knowing the name made everything better, but it didn't. It did give me a sense of closure, though, to finally understand what I had seen that night. And now, whenever I visit the hauler, I make sure to remember Grams' rules, because some things are better left alone. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Life moves quickly, and taking care of yourself shouldn't be. feel like another chore. With the new Nespresso virtual up machine, morning routines become rituals. Whether organizing, getting the household moving, or preparing for the day, your coffee shouldn't ask for more.

With Virtual Up, just press brew and your morning begins. Rich aroma, bold flavor, zero effort. Press to explore. Every coffee, a new world. New Virtual Up, shop now at nespresso.com. Everyone thinks, wouldn't it be great to come out to the forest and live in a fire tower? But imagine being out here alone for weeks at a time. There's some weird, creepy stuff out in these woods. I know because I've seen it myself. A lot of hikers and campers go missing around here. Some return with stories you wouldn't believe.

Others never come back. I'm one of those people. I went missing for four days and am lucky to still be alive. If you're ever out in the woods and you hear some of you. Sirens, run. So, if you've ever thought about living in a fire tower, it's not like a long vacation in the national parks. In reality, you end up carrying water, food, books, and other supplies up 11 flights of stairs, all to live in a 10 by 10-10 room and sleep on a bunk bed that's been used by a hundred other people. Yes, the view from the walk-around deck is

spectacular, and if you're good with being on your own, it might be a good fit for you, but today was a very bad day. I'm standing here in a tiny room, 120 feet up in the air, watching rain come down in buckets. Thunder is booming, and the wind must be upwards of 60 miles an hour, so the whole tower is swaying back and forth. My dog, who's terrified of loud noises, is hiding under the bed. To top it all off, I left my boots on the porch, and they're now filled with at least six inches of water. On the positive side, After a heavy rain like this, I won't have to worry about fires. On the other hand, there's going to be a lot of debris to clean up.

The rain continued for the rest of the day and on through the night. When I woke the next morning, sunlight was peeking through the clouds. I had to coax my dog, Molly, a three-year-old border collie. I got from a dog shelter when she was six months old, out from under the bed with scrambled eggs and bacon bits mixed in with her dog food. Border collies are working dogs. so they don't like being left alone for long periods. They like to be close to their person,

and she's an escape artist. She can open a closed door and climb over a six-foot fence. Luckily, I work for the Forest Service. It's a take-your-dog-to-work kind of job, and she's proven herself to be a valuable part of the team. Once, when I was clearing a trail, two panicked parents ran up to me. They said they were hiking with their nine-year-old son, Daniel,

but when they turned around, he was gone. They called and searched for over an hour before seeking help. I had them take me back to where they'd last seen him, and Molly saved the day. Dogs can hear much better than we can, so I blew the emergency whistle I had in my gear, and had us all stay completely quiet. Molly must have heard him calling for help because she took off into the woods. After a 40-minute trek through the undergrowth, we found him, exhausted and pretty scratch. I walked with the family back to their car, and while we were walking, I asked Daniel what happened.

He said he was following his parents on the trail and looking for some cool rocks for his collection. Suddenly, he saw something move beyond the trees, so he stopped to get a better look. About 10 feet off the trail, he saw a giant white owl, just sitting there, staring right at him. Daniel took a few steps off the trail to get closer. The huge bird fluttered its wings and hopped a little further into the woods. Daniel had almost caught up to it when it disappeared. In its place was a small black stone. Daniel said the stone had strange markings on it.

He picked it up, put it in his pocket, and turned around to head back towards his parents. But instead of seeing the trail, he saw a high rock wall going at least 50 feet straight up. He said no matter which way he went, he couldn't find his way back to the trail. When Daniel started getting tired, he remembered to stay in one place to make it easier for people to find him. So he sat down under a large tree and called for help, but no one came. And here's the really strange part. The boy had been lost for maybe two and a half hours at most, but Daniel said he was gone for three days. He said he saw the sun go down three times, and he never heard anyone calling for him.

But every few hours, he would hear something big walking through the woods. Daniel couldn't see what it was. He said he was too scared to look. He just hid behind the tree and tried to stay quiet. The only thing he saw was Molly running towards him right before he got rescued. I asked Daniel if I could see the stone he found. But after searching through his pockets, he couldn't find it. He said he must have lost it, over there.

The way Daniel said, over there, made it sound like it was another planet. We got back to their car. They thanked Molly and me again and headed home. But the parents must have called the local newspaper because the following week, a reporter came out to take some photos of Molly. They put her picture under the headline, Hero Dog finds Missing Boy. She's been a bit of a local celebrity after that.

Sometimes a hiker will recognize her. And whenever we're in town, she always gets a free scoop of ice cream. And Molly seems to really enjoy the Forest Ranger lifestyle, but she's afraid of loud noises like thunder, so I couldn't really blame her for hiding under the bed during last night's storm. I spent the morning after the storm picking up branches from around the base of the tower.

Once that was clear, Molly and I checked the trails. There's really only one main trail this far out into the forest. It enters the clearing by the fire tower from the south, then keeps going farther north. There are a few small offshoots and overlooks into the valley, but they're all dead ends. ends. I found a few small trees blocking the path, and those were easy enough to clear by hand. As I tossed those into the woods, Molly helped by dragging away some of the smaller branches.

A few miles from the fire tower, a huge pine tree had come down right across the trail. That was a bigger job, involving a chainsaw. So Molly and I took a break for an early lunch. I was sitting on a log, finishing up a bag of chips, when I noticed Molly was acting strange. Ordinarily, when I'm eating something shareable, Molly will be staring at me with the intensity of a thousand white-hot suns. But she was looking off trail towards the valley. Her head was tilted to the side, and she was whining softly. What is it, girl? I stopped chewing to listen, but I didn't hear anything.

Molly and I are always out in the woods. She completely ignores rabbits and squirrels and barely gives deer a second look. So I thought maybe a mountain lion was passing by. Molly took a few more steps into the woods. When I walked up next to her, I could see she was trembling. Following her gaze, I noticed an overgrown path, an offshoot from the main trail that I'd never seen before. Maybe that fallen pine tree had blocked it from view.

Curious now, I carefully headed down what remained of the old trail. I knew it couldn't go very far, because unless I'd gotten completely turned around, the path should end at a steep cliff overlooking the veld. Valley. Ten minutes later, I came to the end of the trail. Blocking the way were two huge boulders, with a ten-foot opening between them. The opening was blocked by a massive deadfall of tangled branches and small trees. There was no way around. On the other side of the boulders, there was a steep drop-off into the valley.

What the hell is this? I mumbled. The whole thing looked strange. It looked old, sharp, and dangerous. For some reason it reminded me of a Stephen King book, Pet Cemetery, when the old guy and the new neighbor climb over a huge deadfall at night to bury a dead cat. After standing there for a few minutes, I decided to head back to the main trail to get back to work and start cutting up that fallen pine tree. I'd made up my mind to ask Chester if he knew anything about the old hidden path and the massive blockade of piled up branches. Chester had been a park ranger in this area for at least 25 years. He knew this park, inside and out. If anyone would know about it, he would. I started walking back when I realized Molly wasn't with me. I turned to see her about

80 feet back, standing perfectly still, staring at the deadfall. Her head was tilted like she was listening to something in the distance. All of a sudden she took a running leap up onto the deadfall and started climbing. No, no, Molly, come, I yelled, running back towards. her. But she didn't stop. By the time I got back to the deadfall, her tail was just disappearing over the top. I ran around the side of one of the boulders still calling for her. But I couldn't see anything, only a sheer drop. I heard Molly bark from the other side. But when she barked again, a few minutes later, she sounded much farther away. I ran back to the main trail to grab my pack with my supplies. I quickly hid the chainsaw and tools off trail in case any hike

with children came through. I rushed back to the deadfall and started climbing. It was only about 15 feet high, but it was dangerous. A couple of times, branches broke under my weight, and I almost fell through. This is a great way to break a leg, I thought to myself. Reaching the top, I looked down to find a small path at the bottom of the deadfall. It looked like it was carved right out of the side of the mountain. On the left side of the little two-foot path was the rocky face of the mountain. On the right side was a sheer drop-off. I swung my leg over and started climbing down the other side of the deadfall. If I fell now and missed the path, I'd enjoy a 200-foot drop straight down to the valley floor.

No wonder they blocked this trail. Breathing a sigh of relief, my boots finally hit solid ground. I used the high vantage point to check for any signs of Molly. But all I could see was the steep trail I was standing on, slowly descending down the mountain and into the tree line. There were no clearings that I could see in the valley, just dense forest. So I started down. I had to watch my step because every once in a while, a chunk of the trail had fallen away,

and there would be a two-foot section of open air. But about halfway down, I began to notice a slight haze along the base of the trees. The closer I got to the valley floor, the more the light mist turned into a heavy fog. It was cool and damp at the bottom of the trail. The temperature must have dropped 10 or 15 degrees. I called out for Molly, but the sound of my voice seemed to fade in the mist. So I blew my emergency whistle. Molly would hear that from a long way off.

I listened for any sign of her but heard nothing. Looking down, I noticed paw prints in the damp ground, heading into the forest. So I followed. Thirty minutes later, I lost Molly's trail. I decided to walk in a large circle and try to look for any paw prints. I marked my starting point with a piece of rope tied to a massive oak tree. After 45 minutes of walking through dense forest, I realized I was lost. It was hard to see ten feet in front of me through the heavy fog,

and I started to get the feeling that something was watching me. Shaking off the paranoia, I blew my whistle again to see if Molly could find me. The sound might also scare off any mountain lions. Then I sat down on a log for a drink. I was putting the canteen away when a man stepped out from the trees. He was young, maybe in his twenties, thin, in tattered clothes with an old backpack slung over his shoulders. Startled, I said, Hey, I'm looking for my dog. Are you okay?

Without saying a word, he put his hand up to cover his mouth. Signaling for me to keep quiet, he pointed into the trees. I felt the vibration through the soles of my boots. It was a ways off, but every four or five seconds I could feel the ground shake slightly. Then I heard it, a soft boom. The sound would repeat every few seconds. It was like something huge was walking through the valley, and it was getting closer. I looked over to the guy and saw that he had plastered himself behind a large tree.

And that's when I heard the siren. It was so loud. I actually fell back onto the ground, and the sound was coming from above the tree line. This thing, whatever it was, seemed close now. I stayed low. The ground shook with each step. There was a fallen log on the ground next to me, and I saw it roll away to the left. It was the next blast of the siren that got me moving.

It was so loud that I could feel my eardrums ringing. It sounded like it was almost on top of me. I scrambled towards the nearest tree and held onto it. My face pressed into the bark. Then there was silence. Everything was completely still. I didn't move. I didn't even breathe.

And then it was moving again, moving away from us. I thought about Molly, how she was so afraid of loud noises. She must be as far away from here as possible. I hoped she was okay. I looked over to where the guy had been hiding, but he was gone. legs shaking. I slid down to the ground and tried to catch my breath. It was then that Molly's head poked through the underbrush. Molly, man, am I glad to see you? I patted my leg for her to come, but she didn't move. It's okay, girl. Come on, let's get out of here. But Molly stayed where she was,

whining softly. She looked back into the brush, then took a small step towards me, and something came with her out of the bushes. It was a little bit of the bushes. It was a little bit of a little girl with long dark hair, maybe nine years old. She was wearing a rug rat's t-shirt, and she was clutching Molly's fur like it was a lifeline in the ocean. I could see the girl was scared. So I spoke as quietly as I could. Hey there, I see you've met Molly. She's a good dog. The girl looked down at Molly and then back up at me. What do you say? The three of us find our way out of here? She stood there motionless for a full minute, then gave a slight nod. Okay, good. You hold on to Molly so she doesn't get lost. Can you take my hand? I stood where I was

and held my hand out toward her. After a moment she slowly came toward me and took it. Grabbing my backpack, I pulled out a fresh water bottle and offered it to the girl. I bet you're thirsty. Would you like some water? But she just stood there, staring at me. Okay, not right now. We'll try again later. Then I looked down at Molly and said, let's go home, girl. She sniffed at the air and then headed into the forest. We followed close behind. Twice more we heard something huge walking through the trees, once from a distance and once too close for comfort.

We stayed silent and unmoving until the danger passed. We walked for hours. I was sure we'd never find our way out. We eventually decided to sit down to rest, and I was once again trying to get the girl to take some water. Suddenly Molly jumped to her feet. Her head tilted to the side like she was listening to something in the distance. Then she took off straight into the woods.

I grabbed the girl's hand and we ran after her. Whenever Molly got too far ahead, she would stop and wait for us. She'd keep barking till we caught up. Then she'd take off running again. When I saw the rope tied around the tree I'd used for a marker, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was only a little farther till we reached the trail that led up and out of the valley. As we came out of the mist, I couldn't believe my eyes.

Chester, I mumbled. There was park ranger Chester Miles, with a relieved look on his face. He had a length of rope tied around his waist. Jim, thank God. Come on, he said. Hurry. I picked up the girl and we made our way back up the path carved out of the cliff face. As we climbed, I told Chester about the hiker I saw in the valley. valley. He said, he'll have to find his own way out. We're not going back there. The only reason you three got out is because Molly heard my emergency whistle. When we got to the top, Chester took off the rope and tied it around the girl's waist, then told her to climb over the deadfall slowly and carefully. We climbed up right behind her. I carried Molly under one arm. When we made it to

solid ground on the other side, we stopped to catch our breath. All of a sudden, I was incredibly thirsty. I pulled out the water bottles, gave one to the girl, and we both drank until the bottles were empty. Easy, easy there. You don't want to make yourself sick. A little at a time, Chester said, taking a sip from his canteen. Jim, I see you and Molly have a new traveling companion. Now who have we here? Chester asked. I just shook my head. She hasn't said a word, I replied. That's okay. Let's all get back to the fire. tower and we'll figure things out from there. Chester replied with a smile. Molly took the lead with the girl following close behind. Chester, I said quietly. If you've got your phone with you, call for an

ambulance now, because it'll take them over an hour to reach us. Chester shook his head. No calls. He pointed towards the girl. I'll explain later. I looked over at him, wondering what was going on. But I trusted Chester. He's a good guy. So I just nodded and kept walking. By the time we got back to the fire tower, the sun was setting. We were all exhausted. The girl refused to go more than three feet away from Molly, so we made a campfire in the clearing below the tower. We cooked up some food and set up a small tent for her and Molly to sleep in. Chester and I sat by the campfire and had a couple of cold beers. When we were sure the girl was sound asleep, I turned to him and asked, so, what the hell is going on? She needs to get checked out by a doctor, and her family

needs to be informed now. How long do you think you've been gone? Chester asked. What does that have to do with anything? I replied. Just answer the question, he said. I sighed. Okay, I guess I was gone for maybe eight or nine hours. Chester shook his head. You were gone for four days. That's not funny, Chester. I'm not laughing, he said. When you didn't report in for three days after the storm, Kenny assumed that the storm knocked out the equipment again. Like it did last April.

And with all the power outages and flooding, we had our hands full for the last few days. But when I heard Kenny mention that you hadn't called in, I dropped everything and came right over, because I knew exactly where you were. How? I started, but Chester cut me off. No, let me finish, he said.

There's something wrong with that valley. I don't know exactly how to explain it. But let's just say it goes to another place. Not always, but sometimes it does. When I first started here as a new park ranger, about six months in, a couple of hikers disappeared, boyfriend and girlfriend. They were heading down into the valley to camp for the weekend. They never came back.

There was a big search. It went on for over three weeks. Never found anything. not a tent or a backpack or a shoe, nothing. Like they just vanished clean off the earth. About a year later, a 12-year-old girl goes missing about 50 miles from here. Her name was Allison Beckett, if I remember correctly. Anyways, this search party was massive.

Always is, when a child goes missing. There must have been 400 people out looking for her. They found nothing. Six weeks later two women were hiking through our valley, and they found her, huddled up against a tree, brought her back, called her parents. She was okay. But remember, she got lost 50 miles away. So how did she end up here, in the valley? Our mayor held a little celebration to thank the two women and present them with an award. Allison and her family came down to attend. There was food and drink. Everyone was happy. just for a moment I happened to catch Allison sitting by herself at a picnic table,

so I sat down and asked her what really happened. She said that her family was hiking up to a waterfall, and her little brothers were arguing. Her parents stopped to separate them, and while they were stopped, Allison kept walking. She said she was tired of listening to her brothers argue. She went around a curve in the path, and off the side of the trail, about 50 feet into the woods, was a merry-go-round. a full-sized merry-go round, with lights and music and everything. She said she stepped off the trail, walked over to it, and held out her hand.

Allison said she just wanted to touch it, to see if it was real, and as soon as her hand touched the carousel, she was standing in a different forest, and everything was covered and missed. There were three more disappearances over the next five years, and that's when I decided to block off the trails that led to the valley. You did that? I asked, you made the deadfall. Yes, and I don't regret it.

Because the disappearances fell off after that, Chester continued. I blocked off every entrance, and then I hid the trails leading to the valley as best I could. Things were pretty quiet here for a long time, but four years ago, a little boy went missing. His name was Jackson Perry. He was six years old at the time, and again, a massive search. locals, reporters, even some people from out of state came to help. We looked everywhere, brought in search dogs too, and you better believe I searched those hidden trails, even climbed up the deadfalls to look. There was nothing there. Five days later, I found him sitting at the base of that

same deadfall we climbed over today. I'd already looked there three times, so I check him for broken bones, and he looks okay except for some scrapes and scratches. I pick him up and carry him back to the search party, and while it's just me and Jackson, I ask him what happened. He says he was playing hide-and-seek with his sister, and he was hiding behind a big rock. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his sister was gone, and he was in the woods, and he couldn't see very far because there was smoke everywhere, like when there's a fire. He got scared and started crying. Then he heard a big noise, kind of like a fire truck. It made his ears hurt. The ground started shaking. Then he says, a giant picked him up and carried him over the trees. He said it was

like flying. Jackson said he could see a long way. Then the giant set him down on top of a big pile of sticks, and he climbed down and sat at the bottom. And after a while, I came and found him. When I brought him back to his parents, they rushed him to the hospital. The doctor said the only thing wrong with Jackson, other than some cuts and scratches, was a burst eardrum. The doctor said that could happen from being close to a loud blast of noise. I think Chester noticed that I went pale after that last story. He stopped to open another beer.

I asked him the only question I could think of. But why don't you want to take the girl to the hospital to get checked out? we have to find out who she is. I know who she is, Chester said quietly. Her name is Olivia Hernandez. She's eight years old, and she went missing over 20 years ago. How? I started again, but Chester interrupted me.

You were gone for four days. Time is different over there. How could you possibly know it's her, I said. I looked for that girl for weeks. I guess I never really stopped looking for her. I memorized her picture, and I recognized the real. Rugrats T-shirt she was wearing when she got lost. It's faded now, but it's the same shirt, and I remember her father Miguel. Long after they called off the search, he was up here searching

side by side with me. Every weekend and every day off, he was out in these woods, looking for Olivia. He said he knew she was still alive. He knew it. But 20 years, I stammered, how could she survive? What did she do for food and water? And how did she keep away from the things that that live over there? I don't know, Chester said. But at first light, I'm going back to base. I'll find contact info for her parents. They'll have kept it current. Parents of missing children always keep their contact information current, no matter how much time passes. I'm going to have them get out here as fast as possible. I guarantee, if they're still breathing, they'll be here by tomorrow night. In the meantime, she stays here with you, and before you start to argue with me,

let me say this. That little girl has been through more than we could ever imagine. If we take her in, there will have to be a report. The press will show up, and eventually they'll figure out her story doesn't make sense. They'll be all over her and her parents for months. It'll be a crap show. And if you need another reason, take a look at her sleeping with Molly. I think she feels safe for the first time, in a long, long time. Do you want to take her away from Molly? Molly and leave her at the hospital with a bunch of strangers. Let me answer that for you. No, you don't. It's not right. Let her stay with Molly till her parents get here. I thought for a moment about what happened to me and about what people would say if I told them what happened to me. They'd think I was

crazy. Then I thought about Olivia. Chester was right to keep things quiet. Okay, I said. Olivia will stay here with me and Molly until you come back with her parents. I fell asleep in the chair by the fire, and by the time I woke up, Chester was already gone. He'd left a note under a rock by my chair. I'll be back by tonight, was all it said. I spent the day watching Olivia play with Molly in the clearing. And true to his word, by five that evening, Chester called to say he was waiting at the airport to pick up Olivia's mother, Maria Hernandez. She was flying in alone because her husband was finishing his last round of chemo and was too weak to travel. When I heard the truck pull up two hours later, I waited at the head of

the dirt path from the parking area. A few minutes later, they came walking up. As soon as I saw Maria, I knew it was Olivia's mother. I could see the resemblance in her face. She was visibly nervous as she asked. Where is she? I pointed to the clearing. Olivia was sitting with Molly and weaving dandelions into her collar. Maria gasped and clutched at her heart. Oh my God, can this be real? She whispered. She walked slowly towards the girl. Olivia, she whispered. It sounded like a prayer. Olivia stood looking at the woman for what felt like an eternity. Then she ran, throwing her arms around her mother, her little hand still clutching a flower. Then Maria was full on weeping, still holding tight to Olivia. I had tears in my eyes, and I looked over to see that Chester did

too. It was one of the best moments of my life. I'll never forget it. After things calmed down, we all talked for a while. Maria thanked us over and over, saying she could never repay us for what we had done. Olivia still hadn't spoken, but she held tight to her mom. Chester drove mother and daughter to the airport. Maria wanted to bring Olivia back home to see her father as soon as possible. She said that seeing his daughter would be the best medicine he could ever have. After they were gone, I sat by the fire, thinking about everything that had happened. Molly was sound asleep at my feet.

Weeks went by and things settled back down. Then I got a call from Chester, asking if I wanted to meet for dinner in town. We met at the local diner. They had good burgers, and there was a patio outback that allowed dogs. After the waitress took our order, Chester said, I got a letter today from Maria Hernandez. She said her husband's cancer is in remission. She wished we could have seen the look on his face when he saw Olivia.

It was like a huge weight he had been carrying for 20 years, had been lifted from him. She also said Olivia's coming out of her shell. She's talking again, and Maria said she took my advice about keeping things quiet. She just wanted her family back. In fact, she's homeschooling Olivia right now, because she can't bear to be apart from her. A few weeks ago, they took Olivia to the local dog shelter and let her pick out a puppy. She named it Molly, and the puppy sleeps with her every night. Maria also said that Olivia's birthday is next week,

and she and her husband would be honored if we would come celebrate with them, because they have a lot to celebrate right now. Chester looked at me and asked, So what do you think? You two up for a road trip. Always, I replied, grinning. Molly looked up at the words road trip and woofed her agreement. After dinner we walked out to the parking lot, Chester got in his truck, waved, and pulled out onto the road. I stood there for a minute, looking down at Molly. There was a family, I said, with a judgment. With a judge of giant hole right through the heart of it, and you patched it up, Molly. You did this. She stared up at me, head tilted to the side. I gave her a scratch behind the ear and said,

Job well done, girl, let's go home. The end. I never thought I'd find myself heading back into the wild, especially not to a place as mysterious as Dietloff pass. My name is Dan, and these days, my best friend is my dog, Colt. He's not just any of a little. He's not just any dog. He's a hero who served with me on the police force before I retired. Now it's just him and me against the world. Or so it felt until my old buddy Steve called. Dan, you've got to get out of the house, man. Come with me to Deatloff Pass. It's going to be an adventure, just like the old days, minus the paperwork. Steve always knew how to mix excitement with a touch of madness. His voice crackled through the phone like he was right next to me, pulling me out of my slump. Despite myself,

I felt a spark of curiosity. I hadn't left my house much since retiring, except for walks with Colt. Steve, that place is not just any camping site. You know the stories. I replied, trying to sound cautious, but a part of me was already packing bags in my mind. Yeah, yeah, the stories make it even better. Imagine the thrill, Dan. Plus, we'll be careful. We're not rookies. He'll laughed, brushing off the danger as he always did. I couldn't help but smile. Steve could always make the darkest alley seem like a stage lit up for a grand adventure. After hanging up, I looked down at Colt, who was watching me with his keen, intelligent eyes. Looks like we're going on a trip, buddy, I said. He wagged his tail, almost as if he understood. Maybe he did. The next day was a blur

of preparation. Packing felt strange, like I was dusting off a part of my life. I was dusting off a part of my life, I had put away. Warm clothes, camping gear, and of course, Colts essentials. We were ready to go before I knew it. Our journey started with a long drive to a small remote Russian village. It felt like traveling back in time. Wooden houses scattered around snowy fields, smoke curling up from chimneys, and a silence that spoke of both peace and secrets. The villagers eyed us with curiosity mixed with a hint of suspicion. They knew where we were headed. Andy, our tour guide, was a young, eager man with a thick accent and a bright smile. Welcome. I prepare everything for journey. Snowmobiles are ready, yes?

He announced proudly, gesturing towards the sleek machines behind him. His enthusiasm was infectious, and even I felt a thrill looking at the snowmobiles and the untouched white landscape beyond. Steve was in his element, chatting with Andy and loading our gear onto the sled attached to one of the snowmobiles. I took care of Colt, making sure his special coat was snug against the cold. He seemed excited, his nose twitching at the new sense, his eyes bright. As we left the village, the reality of where we were going hit me. Diatlov Pass was not just another wilderness.

It was a place of mystery, where a group of hikers had lost their lives in strange circumstances many years ago. But as the cold wind brushed against my face and Colt sat close by, looking as fearless as ever, I felt alive. For the first time in a long while, I felt like I was part of something adventurous again, something bigger than the small world I had confined myself to. Tonight we would camp where they did, under the same stars surrounded by the same silent, snowy peaks. I wasn't sure what awaited us, but I knew we were in it together. As the sun dipped below the icy horizon, the whole world seemed to hold its breath. The pass, with its haunting beauty, felt alive, as if the snow and trees were watching us set up our little camp. We were far from everything and everyone, except

for the eerie memories of those who had never left this place. Steve and I, along with Andy, managed to set up our tents quickly. Colt, ever vigilant, patrolled around, sniffing and sometimes growling softly under his breath. He was uneasy, and seeing him live. like that made a chill run down my spine that wasn't from the cold. Animals sense things we don't, Andy had said earlier, and his words echoed in my head now. As darkness wrapped around us like a thick blanket, we gathered around the fire. The flames crackled and danced, throwing shadows that twisted and turned on the snow. It should have been cozy, just like the camping trip Steve and I used to take. But tonight, each snap of a twig, each whisper of the wind seemed loaded

with warning. We tried to keep the mood light. Steve joked about old times, and Andy shared stories about the mountains. But amidst our laughter, a strange sound cut through the night air, a sound that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. It was a low, haunting melody, like a flute playing a tune meant to lure or to warn. I felt my heart skip a beat. Do you guys hear that? I asked, glancing around. Steve shook his head. looking puzzled, while Andy stopped mid-sentence, his face turning serious. Music, here, he whispered, and there was fear in his eyes that made my stomach turn. The music grew louder, weaving through the trees, a sound no wind could mimic.

Colt started to bark, his body tense and alert. Something was very wrong. I reached for my radio, trying to contact anyone who might be out there, but all I got was static. And then, the compass Andy had been playing with earlier started spinning wildly. It was as if the very earth beneath us was shifting, refusing to be still. No good. This place? It has bad spirits, Andy muttered, looking at the compass with wide eyes. We should not have come.

But it was too late for regrets. We were here, and the night was only getting darker. Suddenly, out in the distance, lights appeared. They were like nothing I'd ever seen before, red orbs floating above the ground, moving in patterns that made my head spin. They flickered and darted through the trees, as if they were watching us, deciding what to do. Colt growled louder, and I felt a primal fear rise in my chest. We need to stay together, I said, my voice barely above a whisper. Steve nodded, his usual jokes gone.

He pulled his jacket tighter around him as we watched the lights dance. The night air grew colder and the music played on. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but it felt close, too close. Then the unthinkable happened. The music seeped into our radios, a clear, sharp melody that was impossible to ignore. It filled the camp, drowning out the sound of our breaths. Colt barked furiously, and I grabbed my flashlight, shining it into the darkness beyond our camp. There, in the beam of light, were footprints in the snow.

They circled our tents, overlapping and weaving, a dance of shadows and threats. They weren't just human, some were too large, too misshapen. I swallowed hard, trying to steady my shaking hands. We need to be ready for anything, I told Steve and Andy. We agreed to keep watch and shifts through the night, each of us on edge, listening to the haunting melody that refused to let us rest. As I settled down with Colt by my side, I knew one thing for sure. We weren't alone in Dietloff Pass, and whatever was with us didn't want us here.

The darkest part of the night seemed to last forever. Every minute felt like an hour as we sat huddled in our tents, listening to the strange haunting music and the eerie silence that followed. I tried to sleep, but my eyes kept snapping open at every little sound. Colt was restless, too. His ears perked up. His body tense as he lay by the tent flap. As dawn finally broke, the light brought little comfort.

Stepping outside, I saw our campsite in disarray. It looked like a storm had hit, but the chaos was too focused, too deliberate. Tents were torn, our supplies scattered across the snow. The snowmobiles were overturned, looking like fallen giants in the pale morning light. Steve was missing. Andy was still tied up, but he was different now. his eyes had a wild terrified look as he mumbled incoherently. The rope that had bound him was shredded, soaked in blood.

It was clear that something horrifying had happened while I was trying to catch a few moments of rest. Steve? I called out, my voice echoing off the distant mountains. There was no reply, just the whisper of the wind through the trees. Colt barked, his growl low and ominous as he stared into the woods. I followed his gaze and saw footprints leading away from the camp. Some were boots, some bare feet, and others were too strange to identify. With no sign of Steve and Andy nearly catatonic, fear and responsibility weighed heavily on me. I had to find Steve.

I had to find out what was happening. Grabbing my flashlight and radio, I set off into the woods, colt by my side. The forest seemed alive watching me with unseen eyes. every rustle of leaves, every snap of a twig made my heart race. The footprints we were following were erratic, weaving between the trees as if whoever made them was running from something, or toward something unimaginable. As we went deeper, the air grew colder, the shadows darker.

Then, just when I thought we were lost, we came upon a clearing. There was Steve, standing in the middle, looking confused and scared. His clothes were torn, his face pale and drawn. Steve, what happened? I asked, stepping closer. He looked up at me, his eyes unfocused, as if he was seeing me through a fog. He came at me, Dan. I had to defend myself, he stammered, his voice barely above a whisper. In his hand, he held a knife, its blade stained with dark blood. I froze, taking in the scene.

The ground was disturbed, signs of a struggle evident in the snow. I didn't want to believe it, but something terrible had happened here. Colt growled again, his body tense. He didn't trust Steve, and I had to admit, something felt off. The Steve I knew wouldn't act like this. He was always the steady one, the jokester, not this haunted figure before me. We need to get back, I said slowly, watching Steve closely. We can figure this out, but we need to be safe, back at camp.

Steve nodded, but his movements were jittery, uncertain. As we walked back, I kept Colt close, the dog's unease mirroring my own. When we returned to the ruined campsite, the full horror of the night hit me. The snow around our tents was blackened, as if burned. The food and gear were ruined, scattered like leaves in a storm. Then out of nowhere, the haunting melody started again, soft and close. Voices joined it, forming a haunting chorus that seemed to come from all around us. I spun around trying to locate the source, but it was everywhere and nowhere. Colt barked furiously,

and I felt it then, a pull, a tug in my chest, like the music wanted me to follow it. I resisted, focusing on the dog beside me, on the cold wind against my face. We're not going to let it take us, I said to Colt, though I was really trying to to convince myself. We're going to make it through this. The haunting melody that had plagued our night was now a constant echo in the woods around us. The more we tried to block it out, the clearer it seemed to become. Steve's movements grew more erratic and his eyes darted around, as if he was seeing things in the shadows that I couldn't. Colt stayed close, his growls low and menacing. We should have never come here, Steve muttered, his voice trembling. This place,

It's cursed. I couldn't disagree. Everything that had happened since we arrived at Dietloff Pass, the strange behaviors, the supernatural occurrences, and now, the eerie music that wouldn't cease, it all pointed to something beyond our understanding, something malevolent. As the day wore on, the sky remained a dull gray, the sun hidden behind thick, oppressive clouds. We tried to reorganize what was left of our camp, but our efforts felt futile. The sense of impending doom grew with every passing minute. We need to leave, I said decisively. Now, we'll pack up what we can and get out of here.

Steve nodded, but his gaze was fixed on something behind me. Turning around, I saw them. Shadows at the edge of the clearing. Not just shadows, but figures. Human-like, but distorted. Their outlines blurry as if seen through water. They were moving towards us, slow and deliberate. Dan, they're coming, Steve's voice cracked as he backed away, stumbling over a fallen branch.

Colt barked ferociously, positioning himself between us and the advancing figures. I grabbed my flashlight, shining it directly at them, but it did nothing to dispel the gloom that seemed to envelop them. As they drew closer, the details of their appearances became horrifyingly clear. Their eyes were hollow, their mouths agape in silent screams, and their skin pale and translucent. Some bore the marks of violence, others the decay of time. The melody grew louder, a cacophony that seemed to be coming directly from the figures. It was as though the song was their voice, a siren call that was both a warning and a lure. "'We can't just stand here,' I shouted over the din, grabbing Steve's arm.

"'We need to move!' We ran, stumbling through the snow and underbrush, the figures mirroring our movements just beyond the tree line. Every glance back showed them closer, their numbers seemingly multiplying. Suddenly Steve stopped, his face going white as he stared at something ahead. Dan, look. In the path before us the ground was moving, not with life but with a swarm of shadows, forming a barrier that writhed and twisted on the snow. It was as if the darkness itself was alive, blocking our way forward. Trapped, we backed away, but the figures from the woods closed in, encircling us. Colt snarled and lunged at the nearest shadow, but it was like biting air. There was nothing solid to hit. I could feel the cold seeping into my bones, the song piercing my

mind, urging me to give in. Steve was beside me, shaking uncontrollably. I can hear them. They're in my head. The figures converged, the music reaching a deafening pitch. I clutched my head, trying to block out the sound, but it was inside me, a melody that knew no end. In that moment, the world narrowed to the song and the cold, the darkness, and the pressing weight of eyes unseen. The last thing I felt was Colt's fur against my leg, his body pressed to mine in a final, desperate attempt to protect me. Then everything went silent. The Diatlov Pass claimed us, as it had claimed others before. The melody lingered in the the air, a final note hanging in the chill, a reminder that some places are better left unexplored.

I've always had a weird group of friends. They all went into manly careers like logging, oil rig work, and construction. I'm the black sheep of our little group of high school buddies. I went into IT. They give me a hard time about working on nerd stuff, and I give it back. Me no likey computer, me dig. I'm an unlikely addition to their group of friends, but it works somehow. So there we are in a bar. This is one of those rare occasions when everyone's back in town together, and we're getting drunk, swapping stories about horrors on the job. Someone talks about when part of their oil rig blew up killing three people a few years ago. Danny, an actual lumberjack, talks about seeing a guy working not ten feet from him get his arm torn clean off by a log line,

just a quick zip, and a limb went flying. He held a shirt to the wound as the man bled out, babbling and whining in agony until a life flight came, two hours too late. And all the while, I'm sitting there, knowing I've got a story, but it's not the kind of story I'd usually bring up to a bunch of drunk sort of friends. Not the kind of story I'd tell anybody. It's the kind of truly unsettling memory that you worry should you tell it. You might give it life, you might feed it somehow, make it more real. I carry it around in the back of my mind like a caged, dangerous animal,

not considering letting it out until now. Everyone has said something already, and I'm just sitting there, looking sheltered, looking obvious. So I ignore that voice in my head that says, Don't. I ignore my dry, tightening throat. I've got one. My voice cracks, and they look surprised.

I'm surprised. They all give me doubtful, amused looks. Go on then, the looks say. And so I do. I work from home on our 30 acres outside of a small town in Alaska. I live alone, no kids. It's a college town, just a small liberal arts college of a few hundred, but it's the heart of the town.

The campus is huge, with the natural beauty of the area being a big draw. Reservation land neighbors the campus, and the tribe sort of acts like park rangers for the hundreds of miles of forest trails. My own land borders part of the campus on the other side. One day, I'm out at the edge of the cleared part of my property, right behind my house. It's probably about 200 yards from the house. I'm watering a set of raised beds I have right near the tree line, just enjoying the scorching sunny day. And that's when something weird happens.

There's this sound, like a record of someone speaking, coming from a few hundred feet into the woods. It's like someone talking to you through a bad cell connection, where only parts of the words are coming through. and it's just noise, but you can tell it's supposed to be words. I just stood there, listening to the noise, curious but not afraid. I didn't even turn the hose off. I think looking back, that's why it took me so long to get freaked out, to start taking it seriously. Weird things like that, supernatural things, they happen at night, deep in the woods,

not at one o'clock in the afternoon, while standing right in your backyard. After about 30 seconds, it just stops. I turn the water off, then figure out if it actually stopped or just got quieter. Nothing. I file it away as a minor oddity, something to be brought up later as a casual conversation token, or more likely forgotten. That was my first regret. Fast forward a couple of weeks. I'm on a hike at the back of my property on one of the trails I started last summer, which is pretty overgrown at this point.

I'm strolling, lost in thought beneath the tree cover, simply enjoying the gorgeous midsummer weather. I'm pulled from my thoughts when I hear the odd sound in the woods, far in the distance. There's the sound of garbled human speech. The forest around me, though, is oddly quiet. Now, I'm not much of a risk-taker, and I generally prefer looking irrational to looking dead. I casually turn and walk back towards the trail entrance, not wanting to encourage any large predators by fleeing suddenly. What the hell's making that sound anyway?

I resolved to bring Danny along to check it out when he comes to visit in two weeks. Two weeks later, I'm back at the trailhead, alone because Danny bailed on me. I told him that if I died, I'd be coming straight to his apartment to haunt the hell out of him. I'm looking down the seemingly innocuous forest trail. I steal myself, check my pack, bear spray and brand-new Bowie knife. which I have no idea how to use. It's just a sound, I tell myself. I start down the path.

A few miles and about an hour in, I hear the first signs of that odd sound in the distance. It's maybe a hundred yards ahead and just off the side of the trail. The forest, however, moves and rustles with life in that familiar, reassuring way. I carry on. As I approach the origin of the sound, I put my hand to the hilt of my bowie knife. The source of the sound, now within 20 feet or so, is not immediately apparent.

It's the same stream of incoherent babble, but with a distinct crackling sound to it. Looking up, I see a small black speaker fixed to a tree, about ten feet from the ground. Huh. Fairly confident the speaker poses no threat. I take my hand from my knife and inspect it. Written on the side of the speaker, in white paint, is the name of the local college and the words forestry department. Ah, a clue and a reasonable explanation. Go figure. Content that I won't have to stab anything or haunt any apartments this day. I head back home.

During a slow day the next week, I call the forestry department of the college. Yes, I'd like to speak to the dean. No, I'm not a student. No, they don't know I'm calling. The dean answered in a bored voice, but seemed eager to answer my questions as if I were the highlight of an otherwise mundane day. As it turns out, the speaker is, or was, a sort of live art project in which students could write and record poems to be spoken aloud in the forest. It's solar paneled, but he suspected the connection to the speaker I found had gone bad. Once per semester, someone was supposed to come out and upload new MP3s to a waterproof MP3 player near the base of each tree. He went on to say that they discontinued the project due to outcry from the nearby tribe.

Initially, he ignored their request to take down the speakers, but the vice president of the college eventually stepped in when complaints persisted, worried about souring good relations with the tribe. They'd probably missed my station when they went to take them all down, he said. Mystery solved. Hiking season passes without incident. About a month after the snows finally melt, I decide to go on another hike.

on the trail with the speaker. I've got some overnight camping gear with me, and I plan to camp out near my turnaround point a few hours away. I almost miss the speaker when I'm about an hour in. It's completely silent now. I stopped to poke at the electronics event, but there's nothing obviously wrong with it. The fraying connections appear to have finally worn out over the winter. I continue down the trail. About two hours later, I've set up my tent and prepared a simple camp. It's late afternoon, but I'm restless. With a few hours of daylight left, I decide to walk ahead of my turnaround point for a little bit.

I pick a little offshoot trail that leads upward, perhaps with the promise of a nice view. Just a few minutes into the walk, my mind is drifting. I'm just soaking up the late afternoon sun and basking in the first good weather of the season. I've picked the perfect time to explore. Damn, this is nice, I think to myself. And a moment later, I hear that familiar, unsettling sound of speaking in the distance.

I pause on the trail, my brain still registering the noise as something innocuous. This sound is a little different, and even so far away, I can tell that it's a higher quality than the first speaker. I get closer, and have to go a little off the trail to make out the words. It's definitely missing that crackly sound, so I can easily make out the words. It's the sound of a woman reading poems, just as the dean said. Less perturbed than I once was, I decide to sit on a rock near the speaker, pull out my water, and take a little break.

I'm sitting there, listening to the sounds of the forest and the voice reading the familiar poems. It still feels a little eerie, though, and after just a few minutes, I decide it's time to get going again. I toss my water bottle into my pack and stand to leave. And that's when I hear the other voice. Someone nearby is babbling these crazy nonsense words. I perk up, curious, but not yet afraid. It has this strange warbling sound,

like the natural rise and fall of pitch in a sentence, but in all the wrong places. Like someone turning random words in a sentence into questions. It's the kind of sound you'd laugh at if you weren't alone in a forest, miles and miles from help. The forest goes dead silent around me, as if flipping a switch. The sound begins trailing close through some thick brush in front of me. I'm totally frozen in place, just listening to this ridiculous noise, like a giant basso baby voice.

I utter under my breath, what the hell? I see just a glimpse of something coming through the brush, and then my trance is broken. My conscious mind is slammed to the back seat, as my animal instincts send me sprinting back toward the trail. I'm already careening back down the trail before, I even realize what I'm running from. And then it hits me. A wall of realization. A great towering cloud of cold, crippling realization. I actually stumble.

My neurons fire in slow motion. The implications are forming in my mind like a slowly condensing water droplet just before the release, and then the fall. My chest tightens, and I take a sudden sharp breath. It was a hand, some kind of elongated, grotesque hand reaching through the brush, a body to match that distorted voice. It's then that I hear it again on the path, right behind me. What the hell? It warbles, like it's learned a phrase for the first time and it's trying it out loud. And then I'm running. I'm barely touching the ground, feet flying

down the tight forest trail in the late afternoon sun. Tree branches are slapping at me as I barrel down the path, careless, mindless. My nerves are on a knife, edge for the entire sprint back to camp, ears pricked, skin covered in goose bumps. I enter a clearing and slow to walk cautiously into camp, my hand hovering lightly over my bowie knife. I see my tent in the small clearing where the main trail splits into these smaller tributaries. The tent sits in the shade, flap partially open. I stop, staring at it. It would take about ten minutes to pack it up. I contemplate it for about half a second. Nope. And then I'm moving again, back on the main trail.

Now I'm holding a sustainable jog, but after about 30 seconds, I slide to a stop because I hear something new. And then I hear nothing. A quiet deeper than anything before. No distant birds, no rustling leaves, no quiet breeze or chirping insects. There's only complete and unnatural silence. It's almost suffocating. It's like having a giant glass jar dropped around me.

One second there's a rich blanket of forest sounds and then next it's like I'm in a vacuum. I freeze. I can feel my heart pounding out of my chest, but otherwise I'm as silent and still as the forest around me. The air is hot, still, and dead on my sweaty skin, like standing in a silent summer attic. An odd thought occurs to me, an intuition that I shouldn't move. People always get that feeling like they're being watched, but it isn't quite like that. It's not like being watched, it's like I'm being examined. And my guts telling me to blend in, to do what the bugs and the birds and the trees are

doing. Sit still and wait. Do as they do. This isn't something you run from, do as they do and survive. So I wait, frozen in an awkward position mid-stride, mid-breath, refusing to even blink or look around. I stand there, like a store mannequin in the closet, watching through wooden slats as something very bad looks back at me, trying to figure out if I'm actually a mannequin or just something

pretending. We look at each other like that. This force and I, for 10 seconds. My head is swimming with terror. 20 seconds. My lungs are screaming for air, and my heart is pounding still. It examines me, and suddenly the gaze is broken. Its focus is on something else. My vision narrows to a pinpoint because my brain is clamoring for oxygen. Far off, I hear a rustle of leaves and then slowly, it comes my way. Not the rustle of a creature, but a great collective exhale from the forest. The sound of the forest returns in great sweeps past me. I bend, put my hands to my knees, and join in with a heaving gasp of my own.

The rest of the trip back is a barely restrained panic. I jump at every twig snapping, but I'm in a forced calm, in a forced calm because the logical part of me knows I can't run forever. I set my pace at a brisk hike for two hours into the late evening. It's getting dark by the time I get back to my property. In the bar, my friends are all statues, still faces slack. No one's touched their drink in five minutes. My whole body's shaking as I absent-mindedly run the fingers of both hands up through my hair. It was like I was staring down the barrel of a gun, I say. A gun I couldn't see, but I knew.

I knew that if I had so much as twitched, I wouldn't be here right now. It would have known I was there. It would have known I was real. And I never went back for that tent, I say, taking a sip of my beer and taking a little grim satisfaction in my friend's stunned, distant faces. They let out a few half-hearted, nervous chuckles at my attempt to lighten the mood, but otherwise, everyone seems intensely interested in their drawing. drinks, the table, or the floor.

Man, one of them eventually says. Yeah, I reply. We're all pretty quiet and unusually pensive until we pay our tabs and leave the bar. On the way out, one of my buddies pulls me aside and asks, Was that really true? All of it, I mean. I just sort of squint and look up at the stars in the Alaskan sky. Eventually the words I'm looking for come to me.

There are things out there that no one can explain. things that don't have names, and I think, every now and then, someone comes across one. The smart people, the lucky people like me, are the ones who get to tell their stories. He looks at me for a moment longer, then, seemingly content with my answer, he nods and walks to his car. Night, he says, of course, I don't tell him there's more. I don't tell him it wasn't some ethereal, invisible force staring me down in the woods. It was a monster, a lanky, horrid, yet somehow human thing. It was in the shape of a man, but it was no man.

God gave me two gifts that day. The first was sparing my life, and the other was keeping that creature in the periphery of my vision. I did tireless research after that incident in the forest. I found out about a missing homeless man and the dismembered corpse the cops found in the woods, parts of a corpse anyway. And I found out about something called the Akadixite. I think that's how you say it. A follow-up call to the dean from the nearby university got me that.

And it got me a meeting with the grandson of the shaman who asked the university to take the speakers down. I met with him the very next day. I don't know how well I can explain it. I don't think of it the same way my grandfather does, Ida says. I follow up immediately. Try me. You know how everything that's a lie.

today has some of the same DNA? Like if you go back far enough, we all have a common ancestor, even really different things like germs. Well, I think Akadixite are in that family tree. I think they come from something else. He sort of trails off, perhaps expecting skepticism from me. Two days ago, maybe, but he doesn't know that I have a good reason not to be a skeptic. These things aren't a joke, you know, he tells me, fingers wrapped around a Frappuccino. people at the college think my grandfather's crazy. They only listen to him because he's respected in the tribe, but even though they respect him,

most of the tribe thinks he's crazy too. Do you think he's crazy? I ask him, about this? He looks brave, and the sudden seriousness from this man surprises me. No, he's not crazy. He's not crazy because I saw one. It was like five or six years ago. I was out in the woods on an ATV, just weaving through trees.

and I was going too fast. I was stupid back then. I did a lot of stupid stuff. Anyway, I'm in some pretty sparse woods, so it's easy to see far off, and I see this animal laying down in the distance. I turn my ATV to get closer, and I can tell it's a deer.

As I'm pulling up to it, I cut the engine and just roll to a stop about 20 feet from the thing. I think it must be hurt or something because its back legs aren't working, and it's pulling itself along by its front. legs. Thinking I'll need to kill it, I go to pull out my knife. As soon as I reach down, this thing's head just snaps towards me. And I don't mean it heard a sound and sort of looked around, then saw me. It just immediately jerked its head right towards me. It, um, it didn't look right.

It was like someone tried to make a deer, but didn't have all the right parts. It was all twisted and gangly with these nasty swollen eyes just staring at me. And I got this feeling like it was trying to figure me out, trying to figure out what I was. And then a couple seconds later, it just turned and dragged itself away. Wow, I say with real awe. I pushed my ATV as fast as it could go back to the house, and that's when my grandfather told me about the Akadik site. He said they were bad spirits that spawned deep in the forest. They're attached to signs of life. noise, sight, stuff like that. And when they find something alive, they sort of copy it, but they disassemble it first. Once they've copied something, they try and find more of it to make a better

copy. I don't really know why. It's just what he told me. Most of the time, they're harmless, but every now and then one shows up in the shape of a deer, a dog, or something else. And then some men go out and take care of it. Huh, so what did they do about the one you saw? They went out to find a deer, a real deer. When they caught one, they brought it to the Akadixite. The only way to kill them is to make them copy something already dying. We sat in silence there for a moment, drinks forgotten. I saw one, I say. What? he says, surprised. And I think I know why your grandfather wanted the speakers taken down. What he was afraid of, it happened. Wait, wait, slow down. What are you talking about? There is a human Akkadikseed out there.

A few hours later, we're standing at the trailhead behind my apartment. It's turning into evening now, with only about an hour of real daylight left. There's a group of men nearby from Ida's tribe, talking to each other in hushed voices. Behind them are a dozen or so women and children, and some of the women are crying. Ida, what's going on? I ask in whispered tones. But he motions for me to wait as the circle of shaman breaks up. An older man in his early 60s, who I assume is Ida's grandfather, walks over to us at the entrance to the trail. He doesn't stop to talk to us, but just nods his head in our direction and continues past us down the trail.

He has a wiry sort of strength to him, despite his age, and the feathered garb and war paint on his body lend him an air of danger. I see an ornate stone dagger on his belt as he goes. Eventually I speak, when's he coming back? And Ida just gives me this flat, mournful look. He isn't coming back. And then I remember Ida's words. The only way to kill them is to make them copy something already dying. Around November 1970, I had just secured a job as an entry-level reporter for the Post Standard,

the local newspaper here in Syracuse. I was young, had my dream job, and life was good. However, just six weeks later, my entire world came crashing down with the arrival of one letter. To Daniel Frederick Wilson, you are hereby ordered for induction into the armed forces of the United States. I had been drafted. Despite numerous stops at various induction centers, training facilities, and Air Force bases, I was ultimately destined for Vietnam. What followed was eight weeks of boot camp at Fort Dix.

For a while, it looked like I was doomed to join the infantry. But due to my degree in journalism, there was a chance I might be able to weasel my way onto the writing staff of Stars and Stripes. Just a few days before we were due to graduate, my drill sergeant pulled me into his office with some bad news. Stars and Stripes did not need any more bodies. However, there was an opportunity for me to become a military dog handler. It wouldn't keep me out of the field completely, but according to him,

all I'd have to do was roll up with my K-9, sniff out a few booby traps, and after that, the engineers would roll up, and I'd be back in the rear in a hot minute. But as it turned out, all that stuff about being safely in the rear turned out to be a bunch of bologna, because me and Tack, my three-year-old German Shepherd, ended up in more firefights than I could have possibly imagined. Tack got his name after a particularly close call that occurred on a routine patrol near Koo-Chi. We were on point when suddenly Tack, who was called Rex back then, started alerting like crazy. I had never seen him act so downright scared before, and when the lieutenant saw this, he ordered his guys to unload their weapons onto the jungle ahead of us.

What followed was nothing short of a storm, tearing up the foliage in front of us for a solid minute. When the fire finally stopped, nothing moved, and there was a moment where we thought the whole thing might have been false alarm. But sure enough, as we pushed through the jungle, we found drag marks, bloody trails, booby traps, the works. If it was not for TAC there's a chance the entire platoon would have been wiped out. He saved our lives. God- Dang boy, I remember one grunt saying, The hound of yours is sharp as a Tack, isn't it? And it just sort of stuck. Tack sniffed out every single ambush we ever came up against. Even the one that almost killed him. Some poor grunt managed to snag a tripwire connected to a 125 millimeter tank shell.

I don't even really remember the blast. I just remember waking up on my back with someone dragging me back through the jungle. My first thought was for tack, and as I looked to tell the soldier dragging me to go back for my canine, I saw that it wasn't a soldier at all. It was tack. He had one of my shoulder straps between his teeth and was dragging me back towards the relative safety of the platoon with all his might. We were putting out a lot of fire, but Charlie was giving as good as they got, and one burst of machine gun fire ripped up the ground in front of me before I watched a piece of my fatigue pants just pop open. I let out a scream loud enough to wake the dead, begging for the platoon's medic. Only the next thing I know,

I hear Tack let out this almighty yelp before he dived on top of me. I had no idea what just happened, and for a second I thought he had been shot, but he had not. He was trying to shield me from the bullet. The poor little guy had no idea how the enemy was hurting me. All he knew was that he wanted it to stop, even if it meant putting his body in the way of their bullets. I tried to push him off of me. I tried to keep crawling, but he wouldn't budge.

Only when the shooting died down could I shift him, but by that time, instead of getting to his feet, Tack just slumped down next to me. He was alive, just barely. and I said to the platoon commander that if he didn't put him on the medic vac with me, I'd make sure he never received K-9 support again. It was a total bluff, but it sure worked. Yet it had taken some considerable amount of time and insubordination to save Tack's life.

When we landed back at Da Nang, I carried Tack off the Huey myself before hollering over to the medical tent to demand one of the surgeons save his life. Get that mud off my operating table, soldier, one of them said. I'm a doctor, for Christ's sake, not a veterinarian. I didn't say a word in response. I just pulled out my 45, pulled back the slide, and then pointed it at his head. The surgeon looked me in the eyes and saw months of firefights, booby traps, and night patrols staring back at him.

A moment of silence followed, and then the surgeon got to work saving Tacks life. I'm sure you'll be as pleased as I am to learn that he survived. It turned out to be nothing more than a few years. shrapnel wounds, and although it took him a while to get back on his feet, TAC did make a full recovery. The incident left the brass in a predicament. I know there was at least one lieutenant colonel who wanted me breaking rocks in Leavenworth, but then there was another who was in the middle of writing me up for a bronze star for having saved the lives of half of his battalion. In the end, their decision was more political and disciplinary, rather than risk angering the

rest of the dog handlers in the country. The brass just scratched my bronze star and gave me a medical discharge instead. I couldn't have cared less about some janky metal because I left Vietnam with the one thing that really mattered to me. Due to the wounds he'd sustained in combat, tack had to be scrapped from the military's dog program, and it looked like he was headed back to the dog pound back in the U.S. Unless, of course, I stepped in to take ownership of him. That's how I ended up back in Syracuse with my best friend in the world. I was an unemployed 24-year-old with a bum leg in a bad case of PTSD, but I didn't care because I had tack with me. It took me just short of a year to get back on my feet, and fortunately, I ended up picking up where I left off at the post-standard

after a chance meeting with the editor. I'll be forever grateful to him for giving me that opportunity, and with the structure and steady income it brought, I gradually got my life together. Then one day, he called me into his office with the proposition of a lifetime. Some editor-friend of a friend in D.C. needed an article written. Only the prospective author had just taken ill and couldn't make the assignment. Struggling to find a replacement, he'd fruitlessly called up their New York desk, which is how it made its way to us. What's the subject, I remember asking?

You ever heard of those churches down in Kentucky that handle snakes during their services? A little, I replied. I thought it was illegal. Since when did the law stop anyone from doing anything, kid? True, but who's this piece for? National Geographic, he said, a smile stretching across his face. I wouldn't want to go ahead and jinx you by saying this is your big break, but I think we both know what this is.

The drive down to Appalachia was going to be one son of a gun, but since the newspaper was covering my gas money, and TAC was used to being on the move, there was nothing stopping me from getting on the road the very next morning. The drive down to Kentucky was nine and a half hours of watching featureless suburban sprawl slowly erupt into the green rolling hills of Appalachia, and by the time we got there, my ass was in a coma. Tack didn't seem to mind the journey, though. Every so often he'd stick his head out the passenger side window to renew his spirit. That, and when it came to provisions, I had little choice but to buy him a burger at the roadside grease trap.

onions, mustard, and all. We rolled into Lexington late afternoon, and to my surprise, getting information on snake-handling churches wasn't all that difficult. All it took was a few pictures of Budweiser down at the VFW, and it had those crusty old veterans singing like canaries. They told me I'd have to look out on the eastern side of the state if I wanted to talk to any of the old snake handlers, and given that the practice was outlawed, finding them was certainly not going to be easy. That didn't bother me, though. After all, I had tack with me, and we were used to finding things that did not want to be found. One guy, Teddy, hadn't heard of anyone handling snakes in years, but the last time he did, it was happening at the old church up in the hills. And so I set out

for the eastern Kentucky hills with nothing but the name of a small hillside hamlet called Three Forks. The next morning, I was back on the road, driving in the direction of West Virginia. Somewhere by the state line, around four hours in, it felt like I had not just traveled 200 miles. It felt like I had traveled back in time by around 50 years. It was everything, the old Hudson trucks, dated-looking signage, and by the time I was out near three forks, the roads had degenerated into nothing but dirt tracks, flanked by dense, dark woods. Every so often, these claustrophobia-inducing country roads would open up into what the locals call hollows, relatively flat areas where the road is sandwiched by homes and small businesses. Frog Pond Hollow was home to the Rabbit's Foot General

Store, a place that doubled as both the hollow's gas station and barber shop. And as I pulled in to top up my gas tank, the clerk wandered out to greet me. Not often we see New York plates around here, he said, eyeing me suspiciously from across the forecourt. I explained I was in the air, on business and that I'd appreciate some gas and a bite to eat. For a buck fifty, the guy brought me a plate of something he called corn-pone pie, which was basically cornbread with beef-chilly filling, along with a plate of raw hamburger for tack. After I complimented his cooking, he nodded in appreciation before correcting me that it was his wife's, and that I told him he was a lucky man to have such a fine cook at home. He finally began to warm up to me a little when he asked what kind of business

I didn't want to spoil all the goodwill by telling him that I was a reporter charged with writing a story on a neighboring community that would well end with them being arrested, so I broke it to him gently. The instant he heard that I was there to write an article about snake handling, I could tell he felt almost tricked into talking to me. Sir, please hear me out, I countered. This country was founded on the promise of religious freedom, and the fact that snake handlers can be arrested for practicing their faith is frankly unobes.

American. So please help me show the world that these are good people here. Help me get these people their rights back. I fought for this country's freedom in South Vietnam and damn it, I'll fight for them here too. I think it was the last line that got him. He gave me another look over, then motioned for me to follow him inside. According to the clerk, almost everyone in Appalachia knew of at least one church that still took up serpents, as he put it, and it came as no surprise that those who practice it were still persecuted by the state. Three forks had been the subject of a crackdown on snake handling in the mid-50s, after their pastor almost lost his life to a rattlesnake bite. Since then, they'd taken their rather unique form of worship

underground, but a more pertinent question then, where are they now? Was how in the hell did their pastor survive the bite of an eastern diamond back? A snake whose venom is almost 100% fatal when untreated. Victims describe the pain of being bitten by one as like two red-hot hypodermic needles piercing your skin, and the venom causing the flesh surrounding the bite to blacken and rot. Even worse, the intense swelling of the affected area is said to be one of the worst forms of pain imaginable. But snake handlers vow never to seek medical attention or take any kind of painkillers in the event that they're bitten. Instead, they put their survival in God's hands. Sometimes he comes through for them, others not.

I asked the clerk if he knew of any local snakebite fatalities, but he just shook his head. They'd get bitten all right, not often, but they do. But the way I hear it, they always seem to pull through for some reason. Who knows, maybe the Lord really is looking out for them. It's then that I asked how I'd go about securing an invite to one of these snake-handling services. The clerk just looked at me, asked what unit? I served with, and then, once I confirmed, he walked into the back to make a phone call. When he re-emerged, he held a small torn-off piece of paper in his hand, one with the following

note written on it, walk into the woods off Laurel Fork after dark, no pictures. It was all the information he had for me, but it was all I needed. That night, once the sun had fully set, me and Tack walked out of the small inns motel where we were staying, got into my car, and drove back down to three forks. The darkness gave the overgrown, rust-eaten place an ominous feel, and the closer we got to Laurel Fork, the more anxious I got. By the time we reached the dead end of Laurel Fork, and I switched on the old flashlight I kept in the glove box, I'm not afraid to admit I was downright scared. It was the first time that me and Tack had gone anywhere in the dark in an unfamiliar area since NOM, but there was something else too.

Something I couldn't quite put my finger on until the following night. Like I said, I was so nervous that Tack could sense it, and he stayed glued to my heel for most of the walk. Then, after a few minutes of trudging through the darkness, I began to hear something, something that sounded almost like singing. Moments later I saw a dim light shining from beyond the trees, somewhere in the distance. I got a little closer, then realized what I was looking at.

It was the shape of a large revival tent set up in a small clearing, and the light was coming from the lantern of a dark, shadowy figure. Since I figured they were expecting me, I switched my flashlight back on, then slowly began to approach with tack by my side. Welcome, brother, the figure said. I trust you've adhered to the terms of our agreement. Yes, sir, I replied. No cameras, just me and my dog. Good, the stranger replied. Now come meet Pastor Childers. As he lifted a tent flap, I was met with a surprising sight. I'd gotten into my head that these folks were some serpentine death cult,

yet they seemed just like any other small-town congregation in America. A guy was plucking a guitar at the head of the congregation, while the worshippers sang a cheerful melody of, when I hear that trumpet sound, I'm going to get up out the ground. Ain't no grave going to hold my body down. Once the musical numbers ceased, the congregation applauded the banjo player before a very distinctive looking man took the stage.

He was pale and stick thin, with a shock of curly red hair and a fiery mustache, wearing a white button down in black slacks. As soon as he came into view, Tack's ears shot up and he softly began to growl. Brothers and sisters, the man began to bellow. We welcome an esteemed guest in our humble house of worship tonight. The announcement prompted a handful of worshippers to shoot a welcoming smile at me. He's come all the way down here to the holler tonight from New York City. He talked about the place like it could have just as easily been Mars.

But he isn't no federal man coming to take away your rights. He's come to show all those tyrants in Washington that what we are doing isn't harming anybody down here in God's house. Isn't that right, brothers and sisters? The congregation erupted in whoops and cheers of approval. And in a way, he was right. If folks were dying because they were dancing with rattlesnakes, that was undeniably tragic, but no one was forcing them to, and they weren't exactly going out of their way to hurt anyone.

So for me, it really did raise the question, do we live in a free country or not. The pastor continued with his sermon for a spell. Then after ushering in another musical number, walked down the center row of seats to greet me. But as he got within arms, reach. Tack exploded in a flurry of furious barks. Tack, I growled at him, quiet boy. But Tack just would not stop. He barked so loud and so intensely that some of the worshippers were turning to

us with angry looks on their faces. Brother, I really must insist you tie that thing up outside, Pastor Childers said, his cheerful demeanor slipping a little as he spoke. Normally if someone spoke about Tack like that, I'd tell them to kick rocks. But this was work, so I made an exception. I took Tack outside and asked what the hell had gotten into him. Then, for the first time since the day we had both been wounded in combat, he alerted. There were no booby traps here, no Viet Cong to worry about. But he still told me danger was present.

I was concerned, but I had not come too far just to turn back. I told him to stay and assured him I'd be back in a moment. Tack laid down, shooting me a frightened look, but did as he was. told. Must be that he can smell the snake on me, the pastor said when I reentered the tent. At the time, that made all the sense in the world to me, and since he had given me a conversational window into asking him about snakes, I took the initiative. My snakes really bite, he said with a warm smile.

They sure got the devil in them, all serpents do, but Satan's power is weakest here in the Lord's house. However, on the occasion they do bite. shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. That being said, he broke off, turning his neck to one side, revealing two dark pinprick scars upon his throat. To my knowledge, no one had ever survived being bitten on the neck by an eastern diamond back. Yet here stood this pastor, living, breathing proof that it was possible. Only that wasn't quite his version of events. When I asked him how he survived, his response was cryptic.

to say the least. That's just the thing, brother, he said. I didn't. When I asked him what he meant by that, the pastor called out to one of his congregation. Brother Robert, he yelled, show our guest here, how we are unafraid. I watched in disbelief as a boy no older than 20 fetched a wicker basket from one side of the stage before pulling out the biggest rattlesnake I'd ever laid eyes on. Then, in rhythm with the singing and clapping of the congregation, he started bouncing this thing up and down in his grip. I expected that the rattler would just wheel around and bite him in an instant, but to my amazement it looked completely disinterested.

My jaw is on the floor as I am trying to figure out if it's the music, the rhythmic bouncing, or if these snakes have been sedated before the service, and I only snap out of it when I hear the pastor speak again. You see, brother, he hissed into my ear. You see how we got the devil on a leash? I must admit, I was impressed. Balls for picking up a rattlesnake like that, but it didn't seem the least bit interested in biting him.

I had to drag myself out of that awestruck stupor to get the interview back on track. I finally asked him what he meant when he said he didn't survive the snake bite. He just looked at me and grinned. His lips squirming like the truth was on the tip of his tongue. But all that came out was a Bible verse. I am the resurrection in the life. Whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

My first guess was that Pastor Childers hadn't died. More like he had miraculously survived a period of unfathomable pain and suffering and lost a little of his sanity in the process. But Pastor Childers was telling the truth, only before I could question him any further, one of the congregation led out an ear-piercing screech. Another worshipper rushed to take control of the Rattler Brother Robert had been holding, while the boy himself held out his forearm, two tiny droplets of blood bubbling out before

running down his alabaster skin. He had been bitten. Excuse me, brother, Pastor Childers said as pandemonium erupted. But please come back tomorrow night. If the boy doesn't survive, he'll be resurrected. Come see, come see. And at that, he was gone, sucked into the throng of his. hysterical worshippers as they flocked around the venom-stricken boy. I left, disgusted at the waste of a young life,

switching on my flashlight as I walked back into the darkness. Come on, boy, let's get out of here. Tack jumped up, his tail wagging in relief before we trudged off through the trees. When I awoke the next morning, I had no intention of returning to the revival tent to watch Brother Roberts' resurrection. I had seen enough medics hopelessly labors. over dead men to know that once you're gone, there's no bringing you back. Instead, I planned to check out of the motel before the long drive back to Syracuse.

Only, as I was loading up my car, I heard a soft, mousy voice calling out from behind me. Hey, mister. It was a young woman, maybe about 16 or even 17 years old. You're headed down to the worship tonight, right? I hadn't noticed her the night before, but evidently she had noticed me. Uh, no, I replied. I don't know what they're going to do with that boy, but he... He passed, she interjected, a sadness in her eyes.

Last night, a few hours after you left, but they're going to bring him back tonight. She believed it too. You could hear it in her voice. I'm sorry, but you can't bring people back. I felt like a major jerk saying it to her, but it was the truth. At least I thought it was. Your pastor is a liar. He wasn't resurrected. There's no such thing.

Sure there is, Mr. And you're going to tell everyone about it. I slammed my trunk shut and turned to face her. And why would you want me to tell everyone? I asked. That'll mean feds crawling all over these hills. They'll arrest your pastor and take away your snakes. Because it needs to stop, all of it needs to stop.

She was growing more increasingly agitated, and her voice cracked as she spoke. What they're doing down there, it's... It's wrong. Sure, most of the time they come back okay. But every so often, they come back different, and they've got to put them down. I don't want to see Robert like that. I just can't.

But they're going to... And... I said, cutting her off before she descended into panic. I'll head down to the tent again tonight and try to stop whatever they're going to do. Okay, thank you, Mr. Thank you. The girl replied. replied, her cheeks now slick with tears. Before I had a chance to say anything else, she was on her way. That night, me and Tack repeated the ritual of gearing up, getting in the car,

and driving down to three forks. Only this time, I had even less of an idea of what to expect. We had hit the dead end of Laurel Fork, and again walked through the drizzling rain towards where the tent had been the night before. Once again, they were expecting me, but when I entered, I found the tone to be very different than the night before. Instead of singing, dancing, and clapping, the congregation was silent, and there was a distinct tension in the air. Ah, Pastor Childers! I exclaimed as I walked in. Welcome, brother. God told me you'd return. And here you are.

Childers was standing over two white plastic camping tables, which held up Brother Robert's lifeless corpse, and it was quite evident that he was. dead. He had that deathly pallor about him, that same grim jaundice I had seen so many others have in Vietnam. Behind him was the same man who had welcomed me into the tent the previous night. Only this time he was carrying a shotgun. Pastor, we need to talk. Not now, brother. Plenty of time to talk when Brother Robert is back. Brother Robert isn't coming back, Pastor. You and I. Please, no more talking. Pastor Childerz interrupted. All your doubts will be cleared soon enough. Now take your seats, brothers and sisters. The time of

rebirth is upon us. Again, Tack was growling something fierce, but he kept it low, sticking close to my side as we were waiting to what was to come. We got something special here, folks, Childers began. There's something in these hills that God put here long, long ago, and we must show our gratitude for it. A smattering of amends came back from the congregation before the pastor continued. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead, he said, his voice rising with every sentence. The body that is sewn is perishable, but it's raised imperishable.

It's sewn into dishonor, but it was raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, but it is raised in power. The congregation were calling back to him now as he motioned to a man offstage. Bring me the serpent that took this boy's life. Pastor Childers bellowed, and at his command, the man picked up the same wicker basket that Brother Robert had carried just the night before. In it was the snake that killed him, still alive and still deadly. Childers whipped open the lid, plunged his hand into the basket, and raised the snake up by its

head. And as he held it up to the congregation, he produced a small knife and began to slice through the snake's throat. Once it had been decapitated, another member of the congregation appeared to be holding a large glass bowl, and the snake's blood was carefully and methodically drained into it before they continued. The pastor then placed the snake's remains on Brother Thomas's lifeless chest before taking a short step back. I declare to you, brothers and sisters, he bellowed, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. We will not sleep. We will all be changed.

Changed, the congregation began to whoop and holler, and in turn, Pastor Childer's intensity began to build. In a flash, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. He was foaming at the mouth now, fire and brimstone in his words. Then, and only then, we will have the saying that will come true. Death has been swallowed up in victory. As Pastor Childers ranted and raved, my attention was suddenly drawn away from him. The headless snake that lay on Robert's chest, he began to move. It was only slight at first, little twitches that could easily be mistaken as belated death throws,

but soon it was unmistakable. The snake, the dead snake, was moving. Where, O death is your victory? Childer screamed, motioning to the sheer impossibility before him, Where, O death is your sting? And at that, the snake began to slither, stump first, into Brother Roberts' open mouth and down into his throat. I could not believe what I was seeing. Watching the headless, blood-soaked snake disappear down Brother Robert's throat was the single most horrifying thing I had ever witnessed.

Nothing I had seen in Nam could possibly compare, but instead of running for their lives, the congregation were in raptures. Some were weeping, others spoke in tongues, the rest simply stood there, as in a deep trance, swaying from side to side. Me, on the other hand, it was like I was dumbstruck. I was glued to that spot, just clamoring to comprehend what the hell I was seeing. Then, when I thought things couldn't get any more insane, Brother Robert woke up. Tack was just about losing his mind at this point, unleashing a flurry of high-pitched wines as he tugged at the sleeve of my jacket. He was begging me to leave, but I just couldn't. I remember putting a hand on my mouth in pure shock, watching as Brother Robert coughed, sputtered, and gasped for air.

He looked terrified, his sunken eyes wide and fearful, and they darted around the room in confusion. The congregation spilled out of their seats toward him. People were weeping. Others cried out, hallelujah! The joy they felt was otherworldly, and as brother Robert embraced his loved ones after a long deep sleep he began to smile all eyes were on Roberts not a single person wanted this moment to be missed this miracle of a resurrection all except one the girl who had visited me at the motel she was staring at me the desperate look in her eyes that screamed for God's sake to do something but i didn't have anything to do because Robert did it for me Give me some room, Pastor Childers cried out.

Let me welcome our dear brother back into the land of the living. The congregation rescinded like waves from a beach, allowing Childers to get face to face with the still smiling Robert. Only as I watched him approach, I noticed there was something horribly wrong about Robert's face. His eyes were wide open, almost like he didn't have any eyelids at all, and his smile was stretched so unnaturally wide that I swear you could see every single one of his teeth.

It wasn't a happy smile. It was something else. Something terrifying. Robert, Childers asked. It's me, Pastor Childers. I want to. Childers was silenced by the lightning-fast movement of Robert's arms. In an instant, his hands were wrapped around the pastor's throat.

He gasped for air as the congregation leapt to his defense, trying to pry Robert's hands off of his neck. But it was no good. for a man who had been clinically deceased just a few moments before, Robert was horrifyingly strong, and we all heard the moment he crushed the pastor's larynx with a sickening crunch. Robert then swung the pastor around, knocking down several of the congregation, as he flung the man's limp body in the direction. Robert, no, what in God's name are you doing?

Yet it was as if he could not hear them. He simply grabbed another member of the congregation and sunk his teeth into his head. her face. The scream she let out was gut-wrenching, punctuated by the sound of a shotgun shell racking into the chamber. Get the hell off of her, Robert, the armed man roared, aiming the barrel squarely at his head. Robert let go, spitting out the chewed remains of her nose on the earthen floor of the tent, and with that same sick smile splitting his face into two, he slowly turned back towards the armed man. Please, Robert, he said. Please snap out of it. Robert responded by taking a few slow steps toward him before suddenly and violently lunging.

Buckshot tore through the right side of Robert's skull, popping it open like a smashed watermelon. The boy stood there for a moment, staggering to and fro, and then it looked like he was about to drop. Then, out of nowhere, Robert once again lunged towards the man, grabbing hold of the shotgun, and using it as leverage to smash what remained of his forehead into the man's mouth. He fell back, letting go of the shot.

shotgun, blood pouring from his pulverized lips. Robert had racked around into the shotgun, a percussive hit to the melody of the downed man's pleas for his life. Some of his teeth fell out of his mouth as he begged. Robert aimed the shotgun square at the man's hands, clasped together in a prayer, and fired. The man howled as everything above the wrist simply disintegrated, all while the congregation and I begged Robert to come to his senses. Instead, he racked another round into the chamber, aimed the shotgun at the wounded man's head, and fired. The sound of his scream, degenerating into a gurgle, still haunts my nightmares. And that was the moment I came to my own senses, and got the hell out of that revival tent. Run, boy, run! I screamed, but Tack did not

need to be told. He bolted on ahead as the sounds of the unfolding massacre echoed through the trees behind us. And here's where I bring up my wounded leg. Remember the one I told you. you about 12 pages back. It means I can't run very far or very fast, and we ended up paying for it because at one point I looked back to see something catching up to us. I think it's another survivor from the tent, but when I turn, all I see is brother Robert hurling towards me, shotgun in hand. He pumps one final round into the chamber, raises the shotgun, and then something else tears past me in the darkness. It was tack, barreling towards the thing that used to be Brother Robert, and with his good eye it tracked Tack as he leapt towards him and took

its last shot. The next thing I see is Brother Robert in the dirt, and Tack has him by the throat, whipping his neck back and forth, chewing and piercing, drowning Robert in his own blood. At first I didn't think that had finished him off, but when Tack climbed off of him and Robert ceased to move, I breathed a deep sigh of relief, but it was one taken far too soon. No sooner than I had said, good boy, Tack collapsed to the ground. The thing that used to be Robert had indeed landed his final shot, filling Tack's gut full of buckshot in the seconds before he delivered the killer blow. I went to autopilot, picked Tack up, and ran as fast as I could back to the car,

driving like a man possessed, not even sure where I was headed. I just remember looking over at him at one point to see if he was still alive, if he was still with me, and he was gone. His big brown eyes stared off into oblivion. I pulled the car over to the side of the highway and burst into tears. I never loved anything in my whole life like I loved that dog after we got back from Nome, and the things had gotten bad for a while. He was the only thing that kept me from eating my gun.

Every single time I thought about ending it, I think, Who's going to feed Tack? And that was that. All the guys whose lives he had saved, they'd kick my ass if they knew I'd ever dared to mistreat him. He was my best friend in the world, and now he was gone. I tried and failed to save his life, just like he had saved mine that day in the jungle, and just like he did that day in three forks, and that's just something I must live with.

I couldn't bring myself to write up the story. I just apologized to my editor and told him I had to pass on it. After all, who in their right minds would believe me? When he asked about what happened in Kentucky, I just told him it was a hunting accident. A few years later, I took a job down in Florida, working as the sports correspondent for the Gainesville Sun, and I ended up retiring here too. I mean to go back to Three Forks one day to really address what happened. Just not yet, not yet.

I have a new dog these days, also ex-military, and he's also a German shepherd. I think he takes more care of me than I take care of him at this point. and he certainly makes for better company than my ex-wife. As for a name, I call him Jr., and I don't think I have to tell you who that's after. It was a typical chilly night at our campsite, nestled deep within the woods. The sky was sprinkled with stars, and the campfire crackled, casting flickering shadows on everyone's faces. My friends and I were huddled around the fire, roasting marshmallows and swapping ghost stories. Despite the spooky tales, the warmth of the fire and the laughter made everything feel safe and cozy.

Just as I was about to take another bite of my smore, I felt an urgent need to use the restroom. I'll be right back, I mumbled, standing up. The nearest restroom was a quarter mile away down a narrow, winding path that disappeared into the darkness beyond our campfire's glow. I grabbed a flashlight and started walking. The beam of light cut through the darkness, but it could have been. I couldn't chase away the eerie feeling that crept up my spine. Every rustle in the bushes and every snap of a twig made my heart jump. I told myself it was just the wind or a small animal, nothing to be scared of.

As I continued down the path, the outline of someone walking ahead caught my eye. It looked like one of my friends from the campsite. He had a peculiar way of walking, kind of a shuffle with one foot dragging slightly. I called out, hey wait up but he didn't stop instead he looked back and shouted why are you following me his voice sounded strained almost scared that was weird i quickened my pace to catch up keeping the beam of my flashlight steady on the path ahead i told you guys i was just going to the bathroom i yelled back but he didn't wait he turned and started walking faster and then just like that he was gone

swallowed up by the dark. When I finally reached the restroom, I was a little out of breath and a lot spooked. I did my business quickly, half expecting a ghost to pop out at any minute. The walk back to the campsite was even creepier. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see my friend or whoever it was, following me. But there was only darkness and the distant sound of laughter from the campfire. When I got back, I walked straight to my friend. the one I thought I had seen on the path.

He was sitting by the fire, roasting another marshmallow, acting as if he'd been there the whole time. Were you just on the path to the restroom? I asked, trying to keep my voice casual. He looked up, puzzled. No, I've been here the whole time. Why? What's up? I glanced around at my other friends. They all nodded, agreeing with him. But I saw someone, it looked just like you, I stammered, feeling a little. bit foolish. They all laughed. Probably just your imagination or maybe you saw a ghost. One friend teased, winking. I forced to laugh and sat back down, poking at the fire with a stick. Maybe they

were right. It was probably just my imagination running wild in the dark. But still, a nagging feeling told me something strange was going on. I decided to keep it to myself for now, not wanting to be the joke of the night. But deep down, I couldn't shake off the chill that had nothing to do with the night air. After the strange happenings earlier that night, I tried to convince myself everything was normal. I joined in the laughter and stories, but I couldn't completely relax. Eventually, I crawled into my tent, still puzzled, and fell into a fitful sleep. In what felt like just minutes later, I woke up again. My watch showed it was 3 a.m. and once again, and once again, I needed to use the bathroom. I didn't want to trek all the way to the restroom, so I decided

to just walk a little into the woods. I slipped on my shoes and quietly unzipped my tent, trying not to wake anyone else. The woods were even quieter at this hour, and a thin mist had settled around the campsite, making everything look ghostly. I shivered more from the eerie silence than the cold, and headed into the trees. After I was done, I started back toward the campsite. That's when I heard it, the distinct sound of a tent zipper. I turned my head just in time to see my friend, the same one I thought I saw earlier, stepping out of his tent. He pulled out a cigarette and his lighter.

The sparks from the lighter briefly lit up his face in the darkness, giving him a spooky look. Can you hear me? He called out softly, almost a whisper. I stopped walking, confused. Yeah, I can hear you. What's up? I replied, trying to sound braver than I felt. Can you hear me?

He asked again, this time much louder. It was as if he was talking to someone far away, not just to me. Yeah. What are you trying to do? Wake everyone up? I said, a little annoyed. He just shook his head and walked towards the cars parked a little way off from our tents. Curious and a bit worried.

I followed him. The mist made it hard to see, and he seemed to be just a shadow moving. ahead of me. When I reached the cars, he was nowhere to be seen. I looked around, bewildered, and not a little scared. This isn't funny anymore. I called out, but there was no answer. Frustrated and feeling a bit foolish, I walked back to his tent. It was zipped up, and I could hear faint snoring from inside. I stood there for a moment, trying to make sense of things. Was I dreaming, seeing things? Or was something weird,

really happening. Too wired to sleep, I returned to my tent, but I didn't close my eyes again that night. I lay there, listening to the sounds of the night, and wondering about what I'd seen and heard. It seemed impossible, but I was sure of what I'd experienced. The next morning, I watched as my friend climbed out of his tent, stretching and yawning like it was just another day. I wanted to ask him again, to see if he'd admit to anything now in the daylight. But the same, but the something in his normal sleepy expression stopped me. Maybe I'd just imagined it all. But the memory of that night stayed with me, a mystery that wouldn't quite let me go. I knew something strange had happened, even if I couldn't explain it. As I pushed past the low-hanging branches at the

edge of Ocala National Forest, the scent of pine and damp earth hit me. The forest, cloaked in its perpetual shadow, stretched endlessly before us, an impenetrable wall of green that had swallowed up countless sunsets. It was the kind of place you could get lost in without ever straying from a path, the kind of place that kept its secrets close. My buddy Mike, a sturdy guy with a keen eye for tracking, led the way with his usual brisk pace. We're going to find some good spots tonight, I can feel it, he said, adjusting the strap of his AR. 15 on his shoulder. I nodded, feeling the familiar weight of my own rifle and the sidearm at my hip. We were equipped for hogs but prepared for anything. The deeper we ventured, the thicker the

woods seemed to become. Ancient oaks twisted high above, their limbs weaving a dense tapestry that blotted out the moon. Only thin shards of light managed to pierce the canopy, casting eerie shadows that danced around our feet. It was well past midnight, and by my reckoning, we were about three or four miles from the main road, deeper than we'd planned to go. We should have turned back an hour ago, I muttered, checking my watch. The digital glow seemed out of place in the timeless dark of the Okala. Mike chuckled softly. Where's your sense of adventure, man? Besides, we're not the type to shy away from a little darkness. True enough. With our gear, our skills, and the moon providing just enough light to navigate, I felt a surge of confidence.

We were hunters, after all, descendants of a long line of humans who knew how to tread softly and strike fast. But there was something about Okala that made you feel small, a whisper in your ear that you were never truly alone. As we moved, the silence of the night was suddenly shattered by a rustling to our right. It was heavy, deliberate, the sound of something big pushing through the underbrush. My heart kicked against my ribs as I instinctively reached for my rifle. Hold up, Mike said, his voice low. He gestured for me to switch on the flashlight. We opted against the mounted lights on our rifles to avoid startling whatever it was. Maybe it was just a deer, or at the very least a bear. I clicked on the flashlight, the beam slicing through

the darkness. We stood still, listening as the rustling grew louder, closer, whatever it was, it was moving fast, heading straight for the trail ahead of us. I braced myself, ready to catch sight of a hog or a startled deer. But instead, there was nothing. Nothing but the quick flash of what looked like white legs crossing the trail some 50 feet up. Human legs, it seemed, pale and bare against the dark undergrowth. What the hell? Mike whispered. My thoughts exactly. What kind of person would be out here crashing through the woods in the middle of the night? We had a choice then, to follow the strange sighting and delve deeper into the unknown, or turn back and admit defeat. We chose to press on, our curiosity now as sharp as our blades.

The rest of the journey was marked by occasional sounds from the woods around us, a reminder that we weren't alone, but we saw no further sign of the mysterious night walker. Each step took us deeper into the heart of Ocala, deeper into its secrets. As the night wore on, the forest seemed less like a place on a map and more like a living, breathing entity, watching us with unseen eyes. I couldn't shake the feeling that Ocala wasn't just keeping its secrets, it was whispering them, one rustling leaf at a time, and I was listening, whether I wanted to or not. The trail became a narrow gash in the earth, winding its way through towering pines that seemed to lean. in, curious about the interlopers in their midst. My boots crunched softly on the bed of pine

needles, the sound almost devoured by the thick silence that enveloped us. Mike was ahead, his outline a ghostly shadow against the dark backdrop of the woods. We hadn't spoken much since seeing those white legs flit across the trail. The image lingered in my mind, unsettling in its ambiguity. Was it a prank, a lost hiker, or something else? something that didn't want to be found. The deeper we walked into Ocala, the more I felt the latter might be true. Our flashlights bobbed with our steps, twin beams that carved out small islands of light in the ocean of darkness. Every rustle, every snap of a twig underfoot, seemed amplified.

I kept my rifle close, the grip reassuring against my palm. We should be nearing the car soon, Mike said over his shoulder. his voice barely above a whisper as if afraid to break the night's spell. I nodded, though he couldn't see it. The promise of returning to the familiar cramped space of my old Ford was a welcome one. As much as I loved the hunt, tonight had woven a thread of unease through the thrill. Finally, the outline of my car materialized through the trees, untouched and solitary, under the watchful eyes of the forest.

A wave of relief washed over me. We quickened our pace. our beams of light swinging wildly in our haste. As we stowed our gear in the trunk, the silence of Okala seemed to press in on us, dense and expectant. I glanced around, half expecting to see a figure standing at the edge of the light, watching us. But there was only the forest and the night.

We climbed into the car, the interior a bubble of mundane safety compared to the wild outside. I started the engine, the purr of the motor a comforting sound. Mike fiddled with the radio, settling on some late-night talk show that filled the cabin with inane chatter. But as we drove down the forest road, the headlights caught something, a figure walking along the roadside. It was a man, his shirt, a checkerboard of light and shadow, wearing shorts and no gear, no flashlight. That's got to be the guy we saw earlier, Mike murmured, his tone a mix of disbelief and curiosity. The man didn't look up as we played. past, just kept walking with a steady, purposeful stride. Where could he be going? There was nothing

for miles, no reason for him to be out here. It didn't make sense. As the road straightened and we neared the paved exit of the forest, the man vanished from view. Mike and I exchanged a look, questions unspoken but hanging heavy between us. The rest of the drive was silent, each of us lost in our thoughts. The encounter had cast a shadow over the night, turning an otherwise successful hunt into a puzzle we couldn't solve. I dropped Mike off at his place with a casual wave, the night's events still swirling in my mind. As I drove home, the empty streets of my small town seemed eerily similar to the dark paths of Ocala, quiet, deserted, and full of secrets. I knew one thing for certain, I'd be back, not just for the thrill of the hunt, but to unravel the mystery

of what, or who was sharing the forest with us. Sometimes you hear stories that you just can't shake off, no matter how hard you try. That's exactly what happened with the story Jay told me one chilly evening as we sat curled up on the couch, sipping hot cocoa. Jay, my boyfriend, had always been interested in all things spooky, and I guess that's one reason we clicked, because I'm pretty open to that sort of stuff too. Jay had this old intriguing tale about his childhood, one that involved a dusty old Ouija board he found in his grandma's attic.

He was just about my age then, maybe a bit older, always looking for adventures or something mysterious to solve. But this wasn't just any adventure. It was one that he'd remember forever, and not in a good way. He told me how he had dusted off the board, the letters almost faded, and the planchette, a little pointer, quite wobbly. Despite the eerie feeling it gave him, curiosity won over, and he decided to play with it, alone. He asked it silly questions at first, like if he'd pass his math test, or if any girl in his

class liked him. But then, he asked it if anyone was there with him. The planchette moved to yes. That was the start of everything. From that exact day, Jay said his life changed. It was like he had opened a door he couldn't close. Weird things began to happen. He would hear his name whispered when no one was home. Doors would slam shut. And sometimes his things would go missing. only to turn up in odd places. At night, it felt as if someone was watching him, and not in a protective guardian angel kind of way, but something more sinister. Listening to him, I felt a chill run down my spine. I believed in spiritual stuff, yes, but Jay's story seemed like something straight out of a horror movie. Despite my fears, I couldn't help but be drawn into his world,

wondering about the unseen and the unexplained. As Jay's story under the story under the I found myself looking around our cozy living room, half expecting to see something uncanny. But all that greeted me was the soft glow of our lamps and the comforting crackle of the fire. Yet something about Jay's tale made the room feel colder, the shadows darker. I never touched a Ouija board again after that. Jay concluded, staring deep into his mug as if it held some secret. I reached out, squeezing his hand, trying to bring him back from the haunting memories. The rest of the evening, we switched gears and decided to listen to some creepy encounter podcasts,

which we both loved. But in the back of my mind, Jay's story lingered, making each podcast feel a little more real, a little more possible. What if these things weren't just stories? What if something really was out there, just beyond the edge of what we could see and understand? As we settled in for the night, those thoughts swirled in my mind, unsettling, yet oddly thrilling. Little did I know, the night was about to take a turn, bringing Jay's stories terrifyingly close to reality. That night, after listening to a couple of spooky

podcasts, Jay and I decided to switch to watching some scary stories on YouTube to wind down before bed. It sounds weird, right? Watching scary things to wind down. But for us, it was our way of relaxing. It was like riding a roller coaster from the safety of our couch. But what happened next wasn't something we could have ever predicted. We were halfway through a particularly creepy story when a scream shattered the quiet of our room. It was distant yet clear, cutting through the narrator's voice on the TV. It sounded like a little girl's cry for help coming from somewhere outside in the dark. I looked at Jay, my eyes wide with fear, and he paused the video. We listened, holding our breaths.

There it was again, the same scream, only this time it seemed closer, more desperate. I felt a chill run down my spine. Jay muted the TV, and we sat in silence, straining our ears against the stillness of the night. The scream came again, and it was unmistakable this time. It wasn't just our imagination. Suddenly, our cats, who had been sleeping peacefully at our feet,

jumped up. Their backs arched, and they hissed towards the front door. Their eyes fixed on something we couldn't see. Their reaction made my heart race even faster. Animals are supposed to sense things humans can't, right? What were they seeing that we couldn't? Before we could comfort them, a new sound began. It started as a soft tapping, like fingertips drumming against the window pane.

Then it grew louder and more insistent, as if someone, or something, was tapping on a every window and door around the house. Tap, tap, tap. It went on and on, a sinister rhythm that seemed to echo the beating of my own heart. Should we check it out? Jay whispered, his voice barely audible. No, let's just stay here, I replied, my voice shaking.

I wasn't about to go anywhere near those doors or windows, not with that tapping, not with those screams. We decided to hide under the bed, which might seem silly, but it felt like the only safe place at that moment. We crawled underneath, pulling a couple of blankets with us. Lying there, in the cramped, dusty space, I held Jay's hand tightly. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I tried to stifle my sobs.

I was scared that whatever was outside could hear us, could sense our fear. The tapping continued for what felt like hours. Tap, tap, tap, tap, it was relentless. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. The silence that followed was almost worse than the noise. It was heavy, filled with anticipation of what might come next. We didn't dare move. We stayed under the bed, holding each other, waiting for the sun to rise.

Neither of us spoke much. What was there to say? In that moment, we both understood the reality of fear. Not just the kind you hear in stories, but the deep, primal fear that makes you realize how vulnerable you really are. As dawn finally broke and the first light crept into the room, we finally allowed ourselves to breathe. Whatever had visited us that night had gone, leaving us with nothing but the echoes of our own fear. But the question remained what was it, and more importantly, would it come back?

Life, as they say, can turn on a dime. For me, it seemed to turn on every restless thought and every sigh that escaped my lips in the silence of our too empty house. That Sunday night, the world outside was alive with the usual hum of the main road, a constant reminder that life went on, bustling and busy, just beyond my front door. Across the street, the high school stood like a sentinel, dark and quiet, a stark contrast to the chaos within its walls during the day. My wife, Emily, had gone to stay with her mother in a neighboring city a few weeks ago. We were taking a break, a phrase that felt like a thin veil over a gaping wound.

our conversations had become minefields, our home a battleground of silent treatments and whispered grievances. She left in search of peace, I suppose. And me? I was left grappling with the pieces, trying to forge some semblance of normalcy in the echoing spaces of our once shared life. The kids were tucked in bed, their gentle breathing, a rhythmic comfort as I moved through the motions of organizing our home. Boxes, once packed with the optimism of a family making a new start, now stood as monuments to our fragmented reality, stacked neatly by the front door. I had decided to unpack them, not because they needed unpacking, but because the task gave me a sense of purpose,

a distraction from the heavy cloak of loneliness that had settled around my shoulders. It was late, maybe too late for the noise I was making, but the emptiness of the house swallowed the sounds. leaving behind a quiet that was too loud in its silence. I was winding down, my thoughts turning to the week ahead, when a sound sliced through the night, so out of place it made my heart stop. A baby crying. At first I thought it might be a trick of my weary mind,

a phantom whale born from too many sleepless nights, but there it was again, a clear, sharp cry that seemed to come from just outside. I froze, listening, trying to make sense of it. My children, six and nine, were far past the age of nighttime cries. A chill ran down my spine as I moved toward the door, driven by a mixture of concern and a growing unease. Peaking out, the night greeted me with its cool indifference. The street was empty, the usual nighttime quiet settling over the neighborhood like a thick fog. But as I strained my eyes in the dim light, I saw it,

an unsettling misshapen figure shuffling up the sidewalk. It was too far to discern details, but it was definitely not human. Not anymore, if it ever was. I stepped outside, the door slamming shut behind me and my haste. The sound seemed to startle the creature. It paused, turning its head in my direction. Heart pounding I could only stare as it faced me. The details of its form were obscured by the shadows,

but the feeling of wrongness it projected was palpable. Panicked, I retreated back inside, slamming. the door and locking it. My mind raced as I backed away from the door trying to process what I had just seen. It wasn't just fear that gripped me. It was the realization that my understanding of the world, of what was possible and what wasn't, had just expanded in a way I was not prepared to handle. I grabbed a machete from the utility closet, a laughable defense perhaps, but it was something. As I stood there, weapon in hand, the silence of the house now seemed oppressive, suffocating. I was alone, truly alone, and for the first time the weight of that solitude felt

like it might just crush me. The moments after I slammed the door shut felt longer than any I'd experienced before. My heart was pounding so loudly I was certain it could be heard throughout the quiet house. The machete felt clumsy in my hand, a poor substitute for actual safety. Yet it was all I had to defend myself against whatever was out there. I stood there, frozen, listening intently for any signs of movement outside. The soft ticking of the kitchen clock mocked the rapid pace of my pulse. I was expecting to hear the shuffle of footsteps, the scraping of claws, or the ominous silence broken by another cry.

Instead, there came a different sound, a heavy, deliberate set of footsteps that seemed too rhythmic and solid to belong to anything human. They sounded like hooves, clicking against the concrete of our front walk in a steady, haunting cadence. minutes stretched into an eternity as I waited, every sense strained in the heavy silence of my fortress of solitude. Finally, when I could stand the suspense no longer, I edged toward the door, machete gripped tightly. I peep-hole, but saw nothing but the shadows of the night. Taking a deep breath, I unlocked the door and pulled it open with a swift, determined motion. What greeted me was chaos. The neat stack of boxes I had earlier arranged sort of,

so meticulously, was now a sprawled mess across the driveway. Boxes were torn open, their contents strewn about like the aftermath of some bizarre tantrum. The night air was still with no sign of the creature that had caused such disarray. I stepped outside, my eyes scanning the darkness for any sign of movement, any hint of the misshapen figure I had seen earlier. But there was nothing, just the ordinary night sounds of a town at rest, as if the world were wholly unaware of the terror that had visited my doorstep. Over the next few days, the weight of what had happened bore down on me.

I found myself jumping at shadows, every sound making me tense and ready for a confrontation that never came. My sleep was fitful, filled with nightmares that left me waking in a cold sweat. During the day, I scoured the internet for any explanation, any similar experiences that could tell me what I had encountered. That's when I stumbled upon tales of skinwalkers. Creatures from Native American lore said to be able to transform into, possess, or disguise themselves as animals.

Could my emotional turmoil have attracted such a being? Was it possible that these entities were drawn to the lonely and the broken-hearted, feeding off their despair? The thought was both terrifying and strangely validating. It meant I wasn't crazy, that perhaps there was more to my experience than just an overactive imagination fueled by stress and fear. As the days turned into weeks, the immediate fear began to dull, replaced by a lingering caution and a deep-seated curiosity.

I was more aware, more watchful, no longer the passive observer of my own life, but an active participant in a mysterious, unseen world. I decided to share my story, not just as a warning to others, but as a way to find connection and perhaps answers, If anything, I hope that by reaching out, by exposing my vulnerability and fear, I might find others who had witnessed the inexplicable, who could offer understanding or, at the very least, the comfort of shared experience. It was a step towards healing, towards reclaiming the peace that had been so brutally disrupted that unsettling night. For the longest time, my best friend

since childhood was obsessed with Northern British Columbia, up in Canada. I guess to some people that might sound like an odd place to become fixated on. But once I saw some of the pictures on her Instagram feed, posted by hiking influencers who often visited the region, I started to understand why. Northern BC is one of the most beautiful places in the entire world. Although Lana, my BFF, wasn't an active hiker or anything, she fell in love with the place. She said it was one of her dreams to visit Atlin Provincial Park, all because of this mountain they called the Cathedral. Just below the peak, there's a strip of flat land with a small lake on it that turns piercing blue in the summer.

Lana was totally obsessed with it. She had one photo of it as her phone background for months on end. When she finally switched it up for another, it was yet another picture of the cathedral. The last straw was when she started saying things like, It sucks I'll never get to visit it. I don't have anyone to go with. I guess I just wanted to be that kind of friend that helped her dreams come true, so I started looking into how to get there. I found out that we could catch a seaplane to a place called

Peggy's Island, and from there, a wilderness tourist company could take us all the way over to the foothills of the cathedral by boat. After that, it was really just a case of climbing the cathedral slopes, which apparently weren't all that steep. And then, there you go. We were at my best friend's number one favorite location on earth, a place she thought she'd never, ever see. I figured if I planned the whole thing in secret, told her to expect a weekend vacation to Cancun around the date of her 29th birthday, and then actually pulled the whole thing off, I'd be the greatest friend in the history of friends. It took a load of saving and planning, but eventually I was able to spring the surprise on her. For months, I had been telling her that we were headed down to Mexico for a few days in the sun,

which is how I made sure that she had a valid passport without alerting her to my real plan. Then, on the very same morning that we were due to fly down to Cancun, I got to see her face when I told her that we weren't headed to Mexico. We were headed to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island, where we would catch a seaplane all the way up to Peggy's Island and the cathedral. She was ecstatic, and although it meant that she had to totally repack, I'd made her dream come true. But if I had known what I was getting us into, I wouldn't have been so happy at all. We caught our flights up to Vancouver, made our way to Port Hardy, and then flew all the way up to northern BC in our very own tin bucket of a chartered seaplane. That flight alone could have made for its own scary story, but we made it up to Peggy Island safely and set up our tents at one of the campsites they had there. After that, we had our first face-to-face with the person who would be our tour guide the following day.

Charles was around the same age as Lana and me, late 20s or early 30s. And to be totally honest, he was a very beautiful man. You could tell that he worked out a bunch and wore a tight ranger-style uniform to show it off, but he also pulled it off. He had deep brown eyes and a mustache that somehow didn't make him look like a creep, but only more masculine. He was handsome, charming, funny, and we thought that we'd hit a total jackpot with him being assigned as our tour guide. After walking us through the plan for the next morning, we went back to our campsite and relaxed until it was time to sleep.

The next morning, we met up with Charles, bright and early, had a little hot breakfast over at the tour center, and then climbed into the boat that took us across the lake to where the cathedral was. Charles was just as charming as he had been the day before, even in spite of it being so early in the morning, and he even took us on a small tour of the lake, stopping so we could take pictures before heading over to the shore. on the other side. It took us a while to get up to the flat part of the mountain. We'd been going hiking together in the run-up to the trip, putting Lana through some unexpected mountain-climbing training, but even with all we'd done, hiking up the cathedral was tough. We were spent by the time we reached the flat section that we'd seen so many times on Instagram, but when we did, it was every bit

as magical as in the pictures, which meant each of us got very emotional. Charles just watched on with a smile, letting us have a little moment together. Then at some point, I looked over to see him talking into his radio. Charles had been checking in with the tour center every so often the whole time that we'd been out, so seeing him talking into his radio wasn't unusual or concerning in the slightest. Lana and I carried on doing our thing, taking pictures and videos, etc., until suddenly, Charles called out that we had to end the trip prematurely. I remember turning around to see him looking kind of anxious before asking why exactly we needed to cut things short. We'd agreed to climb a little more of the mountain so we could get some more shots of the views on the other side. So as much as we were

happy to be up there, we felt a little short change that our guide was suddenly calling time on the proceedings. I remember asking why we needed to head back early, and I'm being 100% honest, when I say that if he'd given any kind of half-decent answer, I would have complied without complaint. But when I asked why, all Charles said in a very uncharacteristically rude way was, Don't question my decisions. I guess that on paper that sounds fine, and that maybe some kind of unforeseen problem had arisen, but I literally cannot over-emphasize how much don't question my decision,

sounded like because I said so. I asked again why we needed to head back early, and was almost stunned into silence when the same man who'd been veritably Prince Charming just 24 hours previously suddenly became incredibly rude and abrupt. And not just rude, this might be hard to describe, but Charles almost seemed scared and scared in a way that he was trying to mask it with bravado. And this led me to keep asking him why we had to leave early, because naturally, if we were facing any kind of real danger, like a storm or something similar, then we wanted to know about it.

We'd also paid for a whole day's worth of our tour guide time, so we wanted to know if we'd be getting a partial refund or something to that effect. I guess this makes us sound like total Karens in a way, but I swear to God, if Charles had just said something like, okay ladies, we've got a sudden stormfront heading in, so we just need to conclude this tour a little earlier than expected. We both would have been like, okay, no problem, let's go. But we felt like we were being kept in the dark by a guy whose sudden turn in behavior was deeply alarming, and that just didn't sit right with me at all. Eventually, Charles said, F this, turned around, and then started walking off towards the trail, which led back down the mountain.

But he didn't just wander off either. It looked like he was walking off as fast as he possibly could. And considering he was a tall, fit guy, and an experienced hiker, it wasn't long before he'd put a very worrying amount of distance between Lana and me, who by that point had no. choice but to follow quickly. We kept yelling for him, calling out Charles' name, and begging him to wait up so we could catch up to him, but he didn't stop. He didn't turn around. He just kept on walking down the mountainside, putting more and more distance between us as time went by. It got to the point where Lana and I thought that he was going to leave us behind, and all we had with us was our bags with a little bit of water, some snacks, and some waterproof material.

We had no maps, no compass, nothing to tell us where we were exactly or which direction we were going. So if Charles actually left us there alone, we would be in a lot of trouble. It was Lana who first suggested that he might just leave us there and drive off in the boat, and when she did we both went into full panic mode. We started screaming, like full-on screaming for Charles, begging him to wait for us and not leave us behind. And then finally, he stopped, but he didn't just stop. dead on the trail, and he didn't start walking back up towards us either. He just started pacing

back and forth and talking to himself, and I say talking to himself, but it was more like he was walking in a circle, fists clenched, and every so often he'd yell something that either we could or couldn't understand. As we got closer, he started yelling things at us in the same sort of way, like he was literally so furious that you could only make out every other thing he was saying. I managed to catch things like Always got to have things your way And never think about anyone but yourselves But the rest was pretty much garbled yells

I guess instinct kicked in for me Because I started apologizing to Charles over and over Because by then I'd have done almost anything to get him to calm down So we could just leave in peace Lana started apologizing too But it didn't seem to do any good He just kept pacing around and yelling about how we needed to listen

how no one ever listened to him, and how was he supposed to act when no one listened to him? It was only then that it occurred to me that something else was going on. There wasn't an emergency, or at least there didn't seem to be one, if Charles was content to just stop on the trail like that. But then something had definitely happened to make him start acting that way, and the change seemed to occur after he talked into his radio for a minute. I still had no idea how the two things were connected,

as in like what was said that made him go crazy, but it definitely seemed like he was having some kind of breakdown right there on the mountain side. We kept apologizing, begging him to just calm down and take us back to the tour center, and although we eventually agreed, Charles's mood did not improve. He yelled at us to follow him and not fall behind,

and then he marched off again at the same speed that he had previously. Luckily, we were much closer to where the boat was parked, so we didn't fall too far behind, and we were able to make it to the shore just as he was starting up the boat. He was still yelling when he told us to climb in, and he also seemed to be gradually calming down, like he was on the back end of whatever he was going through. Only with that in mind did we climb back into the boat, but Charles hadn't finished just yet. As he drove us across the lake, Charles carried on that thing of being quiet for a while, and then yelling a curse word or something.

But he also drove way faster than he had before, to the point that it was actually scary. Lana and I kept yelling, slow down, and at first he just yelled stuff back that was drowned out by the sound of the engine and the water. We went a little further, and we started yelling again for him to stop, and then suddenly, he did. He stopped the boat right there in the middle of the lake, turned around, and just sort of seethed at us. He was so flushed. His whole face was pink, his fists were clenched, and I swear I've never seen anyone's eyes go so wide in my whole life. I thought he was going to hurt us, kill us even, and out there in the middle of the lake we had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. It was like he was thinking about it, really weighing up his options, and the voice that was saying,

don't hurt them, was only just barely winning. For as long as I live, I'll never ever forget the sound of Lana saying, please don't in this really shaky voice. I think that actually made him snap out of it a little, because after that he turned around, got back in the little driver's seat, and then carried on driving the boat back to the dock or whatever, and only by this time, in complete silence. All Lana and I did was sit there in the back of the boat, eyes glued to the back of Charles's head, shaking with fear, while we each hoped that he wouldn't turn around or stop the boat again. As soon as we arrived back at the dock, Lana literally jumped off the boat onto the wooden dock

before Charles had a chance to even bring the boat to a complete stop. I was quick to follow her, but as Lana ran all the way back to our tents, I turned back to give Charles a piece of my mind, basically about how we were going to get him fired for the way he treated us. Again, total Karen thing to say, but it was literally the first thing that came to mind, and all I was thinking about in the moment was warning his boss or co-workers

that he was having some kind of violent episode. I guess I was feeling brave because we were back on dry land, but as Charles climbed up onto the dock, I kept on berating him, which admittedly was not the best idea ever, because after finding his feet, he walked towards me, wrapped a hand around my throat,

and started to squeeze. It was probably the single scariest moment of my entire life seeing those wild eyes come back again, knowing that he could crush my neck if he wanted to, and worst of all, I felt like an idiot. I should have run back to the tent with Lana, or straight to the tour center to warn Charles's co-workers, and I paid for it by getting choked so hard that I thought I was going to die. Luckily, though, people had already heard me yelling at Charles, and were approaching the dock. By the time he grabbed my throat, within just a few seconds, we were being separated by a bunch of of guides and campers. Two of Charles's male co-workers walked him off someplace, and we didn't

see where, and as the people around us started asking what had happened, we broke down into tears as we told them. Charles had been fine one second, then the next. It was like he was a totally different person. It was honestly so scary to see that kind of change in him, and we had literally no idea what had happened to make him act like that. The head of the tour company then brought us to their office, got us some coffee, and offered to contact the seaplane people so we could leave that day if possible. And they were honestly super awesome about the whole thing, probably because they were terrified of getting sued. But all we wanted was a promise that Charles would be fired, and to know exactly what he'd been told that made him go crazy like that. The head of the company

didn't know everything that had been going on in Charles' life, but she had been the one to pass along that piece of news on the radio. Apparently, she'd gotten a call from his wife, asking if Charles was available to talk. Obviously, he wasn't because he was out conducting a tour with us. The head of the company then asked Charles' wife if she'd like to call back, and she said no, and that she never wanted to hear from him again. All she wanted was for the company head to pass along a message. I caught him cheating again. I'm taking the kids, and he's never going to see any of us ever again. Personally, I'd have waited until after the tour to tell him such life-changing piece of news, but I guess the head of the company thought it was the kind of news Charles

needed to hear right away. That part did make me consider hiring an attorney, but like I said, they'd promised to fire Charles, and were good enough to tell us something they had every right to withhold, so I decided not to. Filing a lawsuit would have destroyed their company all over one dumb mistake, and above all, it was Charles' decision alone to act like such a monster, no one else's. And besides, no amount of money could help with the guilt I felt afterward. Lana said that she didn't need an apology, that it wasn't my fault, and I understand that, but I still feel terrible for promising my best friend the trip of her dreams, and pretty much having it turn into a living nightmare. When I look back at one of my hitchhiking adventures,

I now realized just how lucky I was that I wasn't raped or murdered. At the time, I was having fun in the 60s, and never considered that anything really bad could ever happen to me. I mean, come on, it was the decade of free love and acceptance. New-Agers and hippies were trying to see the beauty in life, not the heinous. Sometimes being naive could blind someone to the realities of life, or even certain situations like hitchhiking. I have to give you a little background before you read about the same.

the truly scary part of my story. The summer after high school, I worked at my parents' gas station in trade for tuition at a business school in the fall. I tried to be good, but got myself kicked out shortly after I mastered typing and lost the art of shorthand. Whereas this has always been a valued skill, it was really all I learned. So I didn't bother finding another job in 1969. The lore of drugs and rock and roll, coupled with teenage angst and hormones, gave me one choice. Grab life by the balls and run as fast as you can. I kissed the hippie lifestyle and embraced every romantic notion to become a full-blown hippie. Headbands, smoking pot, listening to music society deemed unacceptable, entertaining ideas of a different age. I moved down the road a little

bit to Eugene Oregon, a university town with a football team and everything. It was a bit of a culture shock, but with my new perspective on life, a culture shock was kind of what I was looking for. I wanted things to be new, different, and above all, exciting. My very first communal house was on Gate Street, just blocks away from the student union, also known as the Cannabis Campus. I didn't hitchhike around town much because I was young and either walked or just got a ride with rich friends who had cars. I saved myself for the righteous times at the coast, and that was only about an hour away. I'd stick out my thumb, hitch a ride in a slugbug with hippies that shared their brew and pot. Sometimes I would even get invited to gnarly parties with hunks and jamming music.

What a gas. This is a true story. My best friend and I decided we were stoked to go to the coast and watch the sunset. A big, hulking, greaser-type guy picked us up in his Dodge Charger muscle car and took us the final 20 miles. He'd recently come home from Vietnam, and even though we weren't warmongers, he thought we'd be stoked to show him a groovy time. We partied for a long time with a bonfire on the beach, weeners on a stick, and some boss weed. She married that man. And you know what else? After her brother came home from Vietnam, I married him. We both got divorced, but she's still my best friend, after 50 years of growing up and now growing old. I hitched mostly alone, went to places like San Francisco just to say I did so. Other times, when someone would want to go somewhere,

I'd offer to be the freak in charge, guiding us down a major highway with our thumbs out. It never soaked in, past my drug-dilated eyes that something bad might have happened to us on one of these trips. I was, and still am, naively confident that I had. can take care of myself. Nevertheless, sometimes things happen that scare me now a lot more than they did back then. This was another time and a different friend that wanted to go down to Kukamanga, California. When she said the name, I thought she was screwing with my head, and I told her I needed to see the sign before I believed it. It was such a stupid name. That's how easy it was to find somewhere out of sight to waste our time if it had a weird enough name. That was a reason to spend a

weekend hitching there. We beat feet on a hot summer day. The rides were short, but so was the wait time. I suspect our perky youthful attitude was apparent in her big chest and my cute butt. I know what you're thinking, that I'm exaggerating, but these were the real bartering pieces of the road. When we hitchhiked with a man in our company, we had to do our best to hide the freaking guy, because we knew girls were more likely to get picked up. Once we got a car to stop, we put our bubbling faces up in the window, and the driver didn't care if it was a guy or two, as long as a lady sat up front to do the entertaining. But if it was just me or one or two of my pretty friends with nice bodies, we were flying down the highway, having people fight to give us a ride.

That is such a scary thought to me now. What the hell were we doing exposing our bodies on the street in order to get a stranger to stop? Like I said at the start, I'm truly amazed that I was never murdered. Around Medford, we could see the Cascade Mountain Range and were ready for cooler temperatures and a change of scenery. Our last ride was a bug with working windows in Primo Weed. We were having a blast, excited about catching some California rays. Along comes this fancy new F-100. We P.E. signed each other for luck. This truck would surely have some AC, and the chrome dome would be safe. I slid to the middle, and my friend squished her tall frame next to the door. Less than 10 miles down the road, this guy starts talking in riddles. I love the way this

generation accepts everybody, is open-minded about new things, he said. He rambled on, then explained how he's into flower power and free love. Out of nowhere and in a flash, his thing was out, and he asked, you don't mind if I get off, do you? My face turned towards her. My eyes got so big they nearly popped out of their sockets. What the hell, I said. I turned to look out the window. This was slowly turning into a nightmare. This was real danger, and I didn't have any means of escape.

I was literally sitting right next to the psycho. We were flying down the road at 80 miles per hour. Even if we had to jump, we'd be nothing but a blood stain on the road when it was all set and done. He's booking it at freeway speeds, his right hand doing the Johnson jerk at the speed of light. Thankfully, it's over pretty fast, and he goes right back to talking about politics or music or something else. It was all smiles, completely polite, when he dropped us off a few miles down the road. When his sperm-white truck disappeared over the hill, we dropped to our knees in a laughter that was mixed with hysteria and a little paranoia. We still had a long way to go, needed to flip-flop our head away from Peter Guy and towards the bitching times ahead.

Whenever I swap stories with hitchhikers, this is definitely the most common one that I hear. It's like, everybody who's ever stuck their thumb out, man or woman, has ended up on the wrong end of some driver wanking it. It's super weird. I think it has to do with the power of actually driving the car, but who knows. It's fortunate that most of my trips were playful and exposed me to some interesting people. I was pretty insulated inside my rural community. The college town itself had very little diversity. I know how naive it sounds, but I met my first out of the closet gay as a 19-year-old.

It was the wee hours in the morning on the outskirts of Chicago. I figured I would be standing by the exit rail till dawn. It was bone cold. I was dead tired, and a misery level four had just kicked in. Then I saw a car coming out of the fog. It slowed down and stopped directly in front of me. I didn't even have to run down the road, wondering if they would take off again when I got close. Sometimes jerks thought it was fun making the stupid hippie run because, well, they always did anyway.

They were cool heads, only a few years older than me. At first, they started a banter like they were movie mobster types. I'm not scared. I'm wearing my gifted paracord bracelet. I'm just an Oregon hick, and these boys were deciding to educate me in the moment. It turned out one guy was an actor, and they were coming home from a place. They were going to a party at home with wine and hash, and offered the couch if I wanted to rest. At this time of night, it sounded like a utopian dream, and I sure as hell hoped that they shared that hash.

We continued driving through the well-lit streets to where the worn-out buildings are kept. I remember the stairwell was so narrow that my backpack banged against the walls. My goofy giggle echoed my awkwardness. I don't remember exactly how far up it went, but I do remember that they had this tiny window that looked out onto a neighborhood that, before tonight, I never knew existed. God, I was so young and unseasoned about big city ways. The night unfolded with some wine, and they didn't Bogart the hash. It was weird how these guys never mellowed out.

They geared up and became the most outrageously campy gaze I've ever met, like right out of a movie. got more and more wild, more and more feminine before eventually clothes started flying off. I partied hardy as long as my hazy brain could last, but too much too soon, and I had to crash. I lay on the couch, loaded to the max, trying to absorb all the groovy expressions and stories being thrown around. I felt so grown up, hanging with all these city people, and wanted to season myself with their worldly ways. I tucked that memory in tight and felt like the flavor of me had just gotten a little spicier. This experience was only scary because at one point,

I woke up and two of them were trying to tie my hands behind my back. I yanked free and asked what they were doing, to which they both got very embarrassed and started acting weird. They gave some form of excuse, something like they were practicing for another play scene, and it involved tying up a person on the floor. I said whatever, and went back to bed, but part of me thinks I might have interrupted something spooky back then. I do have another trip that got way too hairy. It was made worse by the Buffalo City pigs calling my parents in Oregon at midnight. What had their freaky firstborn done now?

It was barely dark, and a passenger car had picked me up just outside of Buffalo. He said he was going to Albany, which would be a choice ride. Usually the truckers are the only ones with the long freeway stretches. The locals were the hip-hop around or go. go through the big cities. To get into a nice cozy car and be told it's going to be for a few hours, that's good luck, man. The guy was just typical. It didn't bother me when he said he had to jump off the freeway for a minute to check a construction site that he was running. He went down the exit about a mile or so, pulled into this little closed business parking lot, turned off the car,

and as fast as a rattlesnake grabbed my wrist. What the hell is going on with this guy? What happened next is one of those many impossibilities that have happened in my lifetime. My right hand grabbed for the door handle. At least one leg was reaching for the ground. Out of nowhere, a cop pulls up on my side. The guy immediately lets go. I yank my backpack over the seat and was safe outside of the car in just a moment. I should have felt grateful I was saved from getting taken or even murdered, but mostly I just felt panic. Oh no, oh no, I got a joint in my pocket. How do I get rid of this? Since nothing really happened, I thought when I told the cop what the guy did, he would let me go, maybe slap the guy around a little bit.

No, the damn pig decided I was lying about everything, told the guy to take off, and he would take care of me. This nightmare scenario was getting worse, as the guy that was clearly about to hurt me just got let off the hook. Whatever consequence was coming had my name written on it now. I wasn't handcuffed, but I sat in the back of the car. I never found a time where I could eat or ditch the joint. I expected I'd be going to jail, well, forever. I was really sweating back there, as I knew there wouldn't be a quick way out. There's no sticking my thumb out this time, or getting carried away in a stranger's car.

I was already in a stranger's car, and that act alone might mess up my life forever. Thankfully, he didn't search me, but did call my parents and let them know what their daughter was doing. I can only imagine the helpless anguish they must have felt, as they didn't tell my parents that I was hitchhiking. They told my parents I was a hooker, soliciting in back alleys. I mean, that's what it looked like with the guy in the car. Now my relationship with my folks is on the line. This was actually the scariest part of the story, though being alone with that cop was just me and that one officer. After he got done with whatever he needed to do to secure the scene, he came back and opened up

my door, told me to get out. Whoa, no way. I guess this is my lucky day. Maybe he is letting me go. Wrong. He looked me up and down a couple of times, even asked me to spin around, then made some of the most disgusting threats I've ever heard, explained exactly what he wanted to do to me. How hard he'd do it. Just that typical slime ball stuff. Scary again, because I was powerless in this situation. This guy could do whatever he wanted. wanted to do, shoot me even, lie, and he would never see the inside of a jail cell. All I could do was take his threats and hope to God they stopped right there. After that, he put me in the back of the car, drove me to the station.

While we drove, he reached a hand in the back seat like he wanted to cop a feel, but I was done being a push over. I'd scream, bite one of his fingers if one of them wormed their way over to my legs for a little touch, I got to the station unmolested, where I was led into a holding room. I sat in the hallway for a few hours. Eventually they let me walk out the front door and down the road. I found a little hidden spot behind this dumpster, decided to just lean back, smoke the evidence, and let well enough alone for the night. There was clearly no help to be had in the city.

Nobody I could turn to. So, being on the street kind of frightened me. I wouldn't be caught walking around in the dark, so I just hid back there till sunrise, then did my best to hustle a safe ride home. I was young, clueless about how dangerous hitchhiking could be. I was so mad at that cop in the moment for getting me in trouble with my parents that it didn't even dawn on me what predicament I had just escaped. Clearly that man had driven me to some seedy back alley area of the city to hurt me back there.

How bad, I can't say for sure, but I will say I later learned. and found out that that area was a known sight to dump off prostitutes. There were probably dead girls back there while I was getting arrested. It's how bad that area was. When you read this or hear this, I'm sure you're yelling or saying to yourself, Stop, what the hell is wrong with you, girl? It's true, I had a lot more miles notched in my backpack than friends,

but it seemed like my niche. Also, these were much different times when peace and love was the slogan and challenging the status quo was the decree. I indulged in lots of pot and hallucinogens, but never got caught up in the hard drugs. I didn't trust myself. Still, I wouldn't change one minute during this two-and-a-half-year stage of my life. Honestly, I wish I had the stamina and a long weekend to do it all over again,

even if I still look back and shudder. While hitchhiking from London to France, my girlfriend and I mistakenly tried to catch a lift on the M-20 off-ramp. We had seen plenty of people hitchhiking there before and didn't think much of it. It was the busiest roadway leading in the direction we were trying to go. The issue was that we had never actually hitchhiked before and ultimately had no idea what we were doing. A security car pulled up with wailing sirens. A man in a yellow jacket jumped out, barked at us to put our bags down and waited for the police.

Not long after, a police car arrived and two friendly young police officers. told us that hitchhiking was not allowed there. They ended up giving us a lift to the port at Dover, where we caught a ferry to Calais. The police seemed pretty understanding, especially after we spoke face to face, and they could see we were just a harmless couple trying to travel for free. They offered us some advice while driving us to the port, and even more after we landed in France. They were very understanding and got us on the right foot towards our ultimate destination. Our real mistake was not finding an onward lift from our fellow travelers while on the ferry. The boat was packed with all manner of cars and travelers, most of whom were paired up.

We were the only people on the boat without a ride the second we hit the port in France. Instead of networking during the ferry ride and securing a ride to the next township, we just sat with one another and chatted. By the time we crossed the channel, the other travelers were loaded up into their cars and ready to hit the road. Exiting the ferry at Calais, we walked out of the port and stood on the on-ramp with our thumbs out, holding a cardboard sign with our destination stenciled on it in thick black ink. We were headed for Austria ultimately, with a deadline to meet family traveling more conventionally in Salzburg. It was naively optimistic to have a date in mind when hitchhiking long distances.

As we walked out to get into our hitchhiking position, we watched with growing realization as everybody just rolled by in their cars. problem immediately became obvious. The port is designed to get cars straight off the ferry and onto the motorway. It doesn't lead anywhere else. So once every half hour or so, we'd get a single wave of cars rushing by. The rest of the time, zilch. Again, these are people with their own schedules, trying to quickly race off the ferry through town and into the mainland. We didn't have much of a choice, so we just stood there, watching each pack of cars stream past

us, no one even slowing or looking in our direction. We'd arrived early in the afternoon, and soon it began to get dark, making hitchhiking impossible and even dangerous. At this point, we were along a coast in a country that we weren't from, and no one seemed interested in lending us a hand. This is when the trip started to take a turn, and our energy teetered on that of defeat. We debated trying to get back into the port and catch a bus into Calais, but decided it was getting late, so we opted to camp on the coast and try again the next day. This was kind of scary at first. We didn't know what to expect in the dark, but we were committed to whatever lay in store for us. I was doing everything in my power to remain positive, even if it was just for my partner's sake,

but I could see the situation starting to take a toll on her. Once we reached the dunes along the coast, we realized that this stretch of coast is where all the migrants and refugees who want to get across to England, camp out. It's a huge space for temporary travelers of every variation. Some folks had been there for weeks, even months. It seemed like a whole little community with its own economy, literally thriving right there on the fringes of the desert. It gave us a bit of comfort, as there were plenty of women and children around, and there didn't seem to be a huge cause for alarm from bandits or even thieves, just generally good-intentioned people waiting for their turn to travel.

So there we were, two young Israelis in our little tent surrounded by Arabic-speaking families and lots of young men. I'm sure we were completely safe, but we didn't feel it inside that tent. So many strangers around us were unsettling, but also kind of disarming, because none of them seemed to be dangerous or scared themselves. We just relaxed, cuddled, and slowly drifted off to sleep. In the dead of the darkness, though, I heard the last thing I wanted to hear. here, somebody fumbling with our zipper. I woke and just laid there, listening for a moment before my girlfriend woke up and jostled me, urging me to take some form of action. I cleared my throat

and shouted at the top of my lungs that our tent was occupied. We were armed inside and prepared to call the police. The person outside immediately let go of the zipper once I said this. I could tell they were alone, no speaking, no communication otherwise. I told them to leave and not return to our tent, and that's what they seemed to do. No more issues for the rest of that night. I don't know what they wanted, but it was beyond bizarre. It had to be a thief of some kind, right? Perhaps even worse. I think the fact that I was so loud drove them off immediately, not so much the threats. We were camped by some families that seemed to be good-natured, so yelling of any kind would be sure to get somebody else's attention. A few months later, we read in the

papers that the police had raided the Calais encampment. People were beaten, tense trashed. This didn't happen to us, but I imagine it was terrifying for anyone caught in the chaos. The next morning, we woke up not feeling very refreshed and decided to try out hitchhiking again. We chose a spot where there was room to pull over, and enough of a straight for people to see us and then slow down. It was the most logical place for us to stick our thumbs out. It also got us away from the majority of the desert dwellers that we had just spent the night with. We spent that morning getting cleaned up and presentable, as that was key in my mind. Clean travelers seemed to be more likely to get picked up. 8 a.m. Wush. A dozen cars whiz by.

8.30. Wush. 9 a.m. Wush. 9.30. 10 o'clock. 11 o'clock. Noon. Wush. Wush. We were getting seriously demoralized by now. Out of our four days to get to Salzburg, we had spent the first day and a half standing in Calais. This was before cell phones, so there was no way to let our family know that we were running late or even if we were okay. It was starting to dawn on me that this was a mistake. We were potentially stranded without any idea of how long it would take us to get back. 1 p.m. comes and goes. 2 p.m. the same. Nobody even slows down. My girlfriend at this point is just sitting dejectedly on our bags while I try to look cheerful. Nobody's going to

stop for miserable-looking hitchhikers. At this point, though, there are large gaps between the rushes of cars, and for some reason the ferry traffic was slowing down, and with it our chances of getting a ride anywhere. I could feel the hungry, prying eyes of the desert-dwelling campers behind us, eager for us to return to the camp for the night so they could try their hand at raping or robbing us. This isn't any kind of racial slight. It's just the reality on the road. Bad things can happen to hitchhikers going international.

2.30. Nothing. 3 p.m. nothing. The usual wave of cars just whizzing by us. But then, out of nowhere, a squeal of brakes. A big black BMW at the rear of the pack comes to a complete stop, a good 300 meters beyond us. Everybody else disappears over the horizon as our Savior slams into reverse and accelerates the whole way, then squeals to a stop right next to us.

Get in, our Czech hero says. His wife beside him handed him a Red Bull every 100 kilometers. I don't remember their exact business, but the couple seemed pretty well off, affluent, and very busy. In hindsight, I think they were high, probably on Coke or some other stimulant. They talked loud and fast and were interested in any kind of discussion. I will call the driver Jacob and his wife, Cat. Jacob's foot is lead heavy. He has a radar jammer to foil police speed traps,

and he does not go below 200 kilometers per hour all the way through France and Belgium to Frankfurt, which is where he dropped us off. And I'll admit, it felt only like 10 minutes later, but was actually 600 kilometers closer to our destination. To say that we were flying was a drastic understatement, but we were grateful either way. Jacob decided to stop here and stretch his legs, while Kat used the toilets inside. While we unloaded and eyeballed the area, another big black BMW came over.

Jacob started having words with the driver in a language that we didn't speak. Before Cat even returned, both hatches lifted. Jacob and that stranger began unloading duffel bags and suitcases from the car that we were just in, then loading them into the other BMW that had just rolled up, some kind of bait and switch. The cars were literally identical. Even the drivers looked similar. It was honestly kind of funny to watch, like a pair of cartoon characters.

As we unpacked our own stuff and slowly moved across the parking lot, we watched as a nearby policeman took interest in the pair of blacked-out BMWs. At first, it just started out like a basic line of questioning, but within ten times. 10 minutes, a whole fleet of investigators descended on the checks and their suspicious vehicles. My wife and I watched in horror as the police exposed Jacob and Kat as drug runners, or illegal transporters of some kind. I never saw what was in the bags, but by the sudden turnout of law enforcement, I knew it had to be drugs or guns getting taken over the border, and we were just sitting in the car with them.

Had we pulled over, especially with Jacob's erratic driving, we'd all be under arrest. and God only knows for how long until things got cleaned up. Jacob was a godsend for us, but by the end, the real fortune was being able to step away before he went down in the books. Our next lift came much faster now that we were on real roadways, with a friendly truck driver pulling up not 30 minutes later. He welcomed us in, and the cab actually smelled fresh and clean,

with hints of herbs that he liked to cook in there. My wife was run ragged by the road, and she wore it all over her face. The truck driver was kind enough to let her sleep in the bunk in the back of the cab. She did not hesitate to climb right in and promptly fall asleep. That just left me and the trucker, and we'll call him Johan. He was, I believe, a German citizen, based on his looks and dialect, but across the sprawling border of Europe, it's hard to be sure of anybody's heritage.

We listened to music at first, but he quickly grew bored and decided to talk with me instead. We shared our basic pleasantries, where we were from, how he started trucking, and why we were hitchhiking. It was all a very simple discussion, and as we talked, Johann asked me some basic things about my wife as well, which I answered, not thinking much of it. We rolled on to Munich, and the driver explained to me that this was all a very healthy hub for travelers going in any direction. Getting to Austria would be what he called smooth sailing. We'd easily find out of it. We'd easily find out of it. find a ride within a couple of hours. Finally, this trip had turned into everything I wanted it to be. He then explained he was headed in a different direction, so he could no longer help us. I thanked him a million times over, explained that he had literally saved our entire trip,

and he was very fortunate to have the company. Still, I tipped him what I thought was a respectable sum of cash, the least I could do, except from the driver's perspective, it really wasn't. He rolled his truck into a service station, further explained that we could possibly find a ride, even without leaving the parking lot. Lots of truckers would be going through Austria and would even be able to help for free or for a decent price. I slowly was getting my things together, half listening, also preparing to wake my wife. It wasn't until I turned my focus on Johan for a minute that I noticed he unzipped his pants and began stroking himself. I sat there completely stunned, unsure of what I was seeing was actually real.

He didn't even blink, just continued to talk casually, looking at me and out the window. I didn't bother asking. Clearly, this was part of whatever plan the trucker had in place. I gathered all of our bags and shouted my wife's name to wake up. It's time to leave. Johan became immediately agitated, saying he let her use the bed. The least we could do was stick around and break it in with. him. Honestly, I wasn't sure if he wanted to do it with me or my wife, or both of us. Maybe

he just wanted to watch. Whatever the case, we were literally trapped inside the cab of this man's truck as he continued to pleasure himself and slowly undress. My wife popped up, confused but alert, simply followed me through the passenger door. Johan never shouted. He didn't grab at us. I guess he knew better. He knew we were already creating a scene. He even kind of apologized through the door as I closed it in his face, turned my back on his truck, and hurried my wife to the trucking station. There were all manner of what seemed like normal people to create this buffer between ourselves and that creepy truck driver.

From there, I guess it really was smooth sailing. We reached our destination well before the deadline. After that trip, though, my wife and I swore off hitchhiking forever. She still to this day doesn't know how close we came to trouble in that case. cab. She just knows something was about to happen. It's my job to protect her, just like it was that day, even if it's just from the strange, ugly truths. Back in the late summer of 2009, I was working on a tugboat that was assisting an oil tanker off the coast of Louisiana. There had been some storms and rough seas, so although we weren't in any immediate danger, our tug had been helping

to stabilize the tanker, which was more vulnerable to the large waves. I've always loved the water, and I still do, but on the morning of August 17th, as we were guiding that tanker along the coast, something put my love for the sea to the test in a big, very bad way. I was in the bathroom when it happened, probably the worst place you can be when you get hit by a freak wave. I had been awake for maybe no more than 10 to 15 minutes, and then, out of nowhere, everything got turned upside down. One second the toilet was on the floor, and the next it was on the ceiling. I tried to open the bathroom door, but all the lights suddenly went out, and I could hear the bathroom slowly filling with water. I couldn't tell if it was blood or seawater stinging my eyes, and then, I finally got the bathroom door open.

But I didn't have long to celebrate at all, because I felt this heavy thunk as the tugboat touched down on the seabed, at least 100 feet below the surface. When we got the door open, everything was dark. Water was everywhere, and I had no idea which way I was facing. Our propeller was up, our wheelhouse was down, and in the alley next to the watertight door, which led to an exit hatch. I saw two of my co-workers struggling with the hatch as the water levels continued to rise. I panicked, thinking we'd all drown if we failed to get that door open, so I did something completely against my instincts, and dived into the water to look for a different way to escape. I don't imagine many of you have been in a shipwreck before, but when your ship goes down like ours did and takes on a ton of water,

it rushes through your ship in very odd patterns. Imagine pouring a gallon of water into an ant farm and watching how it reaches some tunnels faster than others and creates little air pockets here and there. Well, that's how I managed to get swept into a second bathroom, this one attached to the second engineer's cabin. With the door having been swept shut as I pulled it, it in. It created one of those air pockets I had just mentioned. At first, the water continued

to rise, and I thought that I was going to be trapped in there and drown, but to my relief it didn't fill the bathroom completely. It only filled up about a third of the way, and then just suddenly stopped. Part of the reason it didn't fill up was because we routinely kept all the cabin doors closed. We did this mainly as a security precaution, but it also secured parts of the ship from flooding, and meant that I could cling to a wash basin in my own private air bubble at the bottom of the Gulf. As I stood there in the darkness, I started to hear my co-workers screaming and yelling. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I figured that they might have gotten the hatch open, and so, with that in mind, I decided to do everything I could to swim back to them. But when I

tried to pry the bathroom door open, the door handle snapped off in my grip. I remember feeling a panic rising up in me again, one so intense I thought that I might lose my mind right there and then. But then suddenly, it just stopped, and I felt a strange sense of calm wash over me. Everything that had happened over the previous few minutes had been so chaotic and terrifying. But after that door handle snapped off in my hand, it felt like I had control of the situation. I knew where I was. I knew what I needed to do, and I had no choice but to solve the problem of opening the door. It was that, or die trying.

As crazy as it sounds to just think it to myself, all these years later, that brought about that strange sense of calm. It was just me and that bathroom door. Whatever came next, we could cross that bridge once we came to it. I remember spotting a vent and thinking that if I pulled off the steel grill, I could probably use it as some kind of tool. Luckily, it was strong enough for me to use to force open the bathroom door, but that wasn't an instant thing. It took a lot of time and effort, and during the attempt, I heard the

cries of my coworkers going silent one by one. I thought they had escaped, but now I know different. Once I had the bathroom door open, I was back in the second engineer's cabin. I saw two life jackets, each with a small flashlight attached. I put one in my mouth, lodged the other in the elastic of my underwear, and then attempted to swim for the escape hatch outside of the cabin. All the corridors were full of water, with no air pockets for me to use, meaning every time I ran out of breath, I had to stop trying to open the hatch and swim back to my air pocket in the engineer's cabin to take a breath. The first time I swam back, I almost missed the door to the engineer's cabin. It was dark. All the doors looked the same, and I knew that if I got lost or confused, I'd most likely drown.

I later found out the exact same thing happened to a co-worker who drowned in the mess room after confirmed. using it for someplace with an air pocket. To stop myself from getting turned around, I tore off some fabric from one of the engineer's coveralls, tied it into a rope, and then attached one end to the door of the cabin so I could use it to guide myself back whenever I ran out of breath. I tried again and again, but still the hatch wouldn't budge, and I eventually decided that I should save my strength, stay in my little air pocket, and rethink my attempts to escape. I had to just stay put, stay calm, and think. And I'm not kidding when I say hours went by. I ate tin sardines and drank canned soda just to keep my energy levels up, but I had to keep my legs out of the water.

I knew I'd scraped my leg during one of my escape attempts, and at first I thought the stinging was just the salt water getting into the wounds, but I quickly realized it wasn't just the salt water, it was little crayfish, swimming up to pick at the peeling skin around the wound. I also thought the water level would remain stable, but after a while, I realized it was slowly rising from how it seemed to be creeping up the wall, and that's about the time I just accepted that I was going to die. I kept thinking about my family, and it brought me a strange sense of peace, knowing that they'd be there to carry on without me. Sure, it had hurt some. My kids would grow up without their father, but they'd no doubt get a big payout from the company,

and then on top of my life insurance, they might just get a big enough check to keep them comfy for the rest of their lives, I imagine. And thinking those kinds of thoughts was all I could do to comfort myself, and I remember just sitting there trying to conserve whatever oxygen I had left in total silence, just waiting around to die. Then suddenly, the silence was broken by the sudden sound of metal on metal. It was like a hard clunk. And although I couldn't see what was going on outside the boat, I knew that there was a good chance someone was out there, someone that might be able to hear me. I didn't scream or yell, as that would have burned valuable oxygen. Instead, I started to hammer my fist against the bulkhead, hoping whoever was

out there would recognize that someone was alive inside the tub. Minutes later, I saw a light through one of the portholes and realized that there must have been divers swimming around outside. I took a deep breath and then dived back into the water. My goal was to find a porthole through which I could see the divers, so I went room to room, prying open doors, then heading back to the air pocket for another gulp of oxygen, then back I went, repeating the process over and over, until finally I caught sight of the divers outside. I remember pushing my hand up against the safety glass, and one of the safety glass, and one of the divers later said he just thought it was another body at first, but when I started trying to bang on the glass, they realized I was alive. I wasn't taken straight to the surface.

You'd think that that might have caused more emotional turmoil than it did, and after being trapped in a wreck like that, most would want to return straight to the surface, but you can't do that. The sudden change in pressure might actually kill you, so I spent a real long time at a diving bell, sucking air from a spare oxygen tank, before I was allowed to resurface. The divers told me I'd been down there for almost 14 hours. I don't even think it felt like three. I guess my sense of time was disoriented, but resurfacing to the night sky instead of daylight made it feel like I time-travelled or something. A bunch of medics checked my vitals to ensure my temperature and blood pressure were okay, and then they advised that I go visit a hospital, but all I

wanted to do was get home to my wife and kids. So, although I wouldn't advise anyone to ignore medical advice like that, I went straight home and gave them all the biggest hugs of their lives. I had some real bad dreams for a long time afterward. Sometimes I'd feel like my bed was sinking, and I'd wake up with sweat-soaked bed sheets, which I guess prolonged the process of realizing it was just a nightmare. Other times, I dreamt that water was rushing in via my bedroom windows, and that my wife was unconscious. I'd pick her up, carry her to the door, but it wouldn't open, and the water would just keep rising and rising until I woke up.

Some friends suggested that we just take a vacation someplace really landlocked, you know, and that helped a whole lot. I stayed away from the pool for a whole week and a half, though, until I finally forced myself to face my fears. I guess the context of that vacation helped, knowing that I was safe. and like I said at the start, I've always loved the water. When I was 14 years old, my family and I went on a boating trip out of Melbourne's western Port Bay. I remember being at the helm with my father, steering the little boat over the waves.

Then the next thing we knew, my big brother was shouting that water was coming in. It all happened so fast, Mom and Dad were shouting for us to stay together. Then suddenly, the boat tipped over, and we were in the water. We later found out that the bottom of our boat had been almost completely rotten, and its owners had been extremely and willfully negligent in renting it to us. We had no choice but to start swimming. Since it was late in the evening, no one had seen us go down, so it was up to us to rescue ourselves.

I was a reasonably good swimmer, and we all had life jackets on, but it was still around two miles back to shore, so land looked like it was a long, long way away. Darkness fell as we were swimming, but my dad started to struggle, and my big brother swam back to try and help him. My mom and I stuck together and kept going, but we soon lost sight of my father and brother. Seagulls cried out above me, and I kept imagining that they were warning me of an attack from sharks that were no doubt swimming in the waters around us. I could see land, but it didn't seem to get any closer. Finally, after more than three hours in that water, I felt the sand.

bottom against my feet. I'd reached the mudflats of what I believed was the mainland, but my mom, dad, and brother were nowhere to be seen. I was weak, cold, and exhausted. I dragged myself through the mud, which at some points was almost up to my waist, and this was even more terrifying than the swimming. The mud kept sucking me down, and I was terrified that I'd sink and be suffocated. My muscles ached. My lungs burned, and I felt like that I was stuck. I was like I was about to pass out at points, but at the same time, I knew the clock was ticking. It was essentially down to me and me alone to get help for my family. When I finally made it ashore, I realized that I was on French Island, an island with an old disused prison on it that has only

about 50 residents. I ran through the bushland, using up the last reserves of my energy, feeling thorns scratching against my legs and arms. I ran for a long. long time, stopping every so often to catch my breath before continuing through the bush. Finally, I found a house, and, after banging on the door, someone opened it. I told them what had happened. I just remember crying and crying as they tried to comfort me, and how I begged them to help find my family. They told me everything was going to be okay, and that they'd contacted the Victoria Coast Guard. I appreciate that they were just trying to console me, but I knew they were wrong. The next morning the bodies of my mom, dad, and older brother were recovered from the

water off the coast of Fairhaven. Words cannot express how devastated I was, and I was filled with this overwhelming survivor's guilt, thinking that I should be the one dead. For five long years I was a wreck, and I think I might be dead from drink and drugs if it wasn't for the birth of my first child. For a long, long time, I avoided any kind of large body of water, which included swimming swimming pools before my therapist suggested that I undertake some exposure therapy. This would involve brief trips to a local pool, but at first my anxiety was so bad that even if my head was above the water, I just couldn't breathe. I tried for four months, but nothing worked until a local swim coach heard my story and offered some help. Then, over the next year

or so, the therapy started to chip away at my fear, until finally I was able to look at the sea without feeling like I was about to have a panic attack. My proudest moments have been taking part in a charity swim across the rip, which is an infamously rough stretch of water. We helped raise money for a domestic violence charity here in Australia, which is a cause very close to my heart for reasons that could well make for another true, scary story. It might have taken me 20 years, but I no longer let my fear control me. I now understand that what happened wasn't my fault,

but the irony of needing water to heal the very trauma that it created has never been lost on me.