National Park After Dark - National Park After Dark is Scared to Death

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Dan and Lyndze Cummins, hosts of Scared to Death join us today to share some creepy tales. First, we chat about their personal thoughts on and experiences with the other side before they bring us to California and Idaho for some very strange stories filled with legends, curses and the unknown. Catch them and their podcasts Scared to Death and Timesuck  on your favorite listening platforms!For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Rocket Money: Use our link to get started saving.Lume Deodorant: Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with@lumedeodorant and get 15% off with promo code NPAD at LumeDeodorant.com! #lumepodUncommon Goods: Use our link to get 15% off your next gift.BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yeah, so a lot of people are probably already familiar with Dan and Lindsay, but they are the host of Scared to Death, the very successful paranormal, creepy, legends lore, UFO abductions, etc. They cover it all on their podcast, and they also have another podcast, or Dan does, called Time Suck. So they were gracious enough to come on and talk with us today. We talk a lot about, you know, how they got started, just like their own personal experiences, things like that. But then, they bring us to some outdoor-based locations to share some stories of there's a mysterious disappearance and just some like creepy legends and lore and stuff going on in. Oh, you talk about. Yeah, this is a really fun episode. So I guess we will just get right into it. And we will welcome Dan and Lindsay to National Park After Dark. Well, thank you so much, Dan and Lindsay for joining us on the podcast.

We are so excited to have you both here today. Yeah, thank you for having us. We're excited to be here. I'm so excited. We heard you were fans, which was very trippy, because we've been listening to your podcast for a while. And you guys have been doing this for years. So we feel like we're with veterans, which is really fun. Oh, that's sweet.

We're old. I'm old. Speak for yourself, friend. It's funny because I was actually listening to your podcast on my way home last night. night and you, I was listening to your episode, The Visitors, and you covered a story that's like my biggest fear. And I was listening. I'm like, no. And it was the story at the beginning, the visitor, where he is laying in bed and someone comes in and this man stands over him and looks down at him. My biggest fear of a haunting is someone standing over me in bed. But then you two

added this other fear factor that I didn't even have, it touched him and pulled his face. And I was like, what is going on right now? I, a new fear unlocked, you guys, successfully scared the shit out of me. Sorry. No, it was great. I loved it. Have you ever had sleep paralysis? I have not, thankfully.

Knock on wood. No. Yeah, I haven't had since I was a kid. Oh, really? So, Cassie, are you living in the apartment that might be haunted? No. Oh, you're not there anymore? Or was that you, Danielle.

I was in a cabin in Colorado that definitely had some sort of something going on. And it's so funny you bring that up right now because as we're recording this, it's like the second year anniversary of when I had my biggest experience there. When I saw a group of people. Yes. that's what I was thinking of because I was like, well, wait a second, Cassie, you said no sleep paralysis. And I'm like, wait, one of them, Danielle, because I remember you saying, like, you woke up and you felt like you were in that, like, heavy space between like, I'm awake, I'm not awake. And then like this group of people. Yep. But it definitely was not sleep paralysis. It just happened to be, I was laying in bed and had just woken up. Because I've seen people experience sleep paralysis and it was not that.

Okay. But, yeah, knock on wood, I have never, I've never experienced that. And it seems terrifying. Yeah, it seems like a, like a, it is a terrifying feeling when you can see what's going on around you, but you cannot move. You're paralyzed and just that helplessness. That's a fear of mind, too, if somebody approaching you while you're in your bed, you're just so vulnerable and you can't scream and you can't move, it's just, yeah, it's just pure panic.

Yeah. Yeah. There's something about being in bed, I think, especially in your home because it's your safe spot, you know, so to, it's definitely like, it's a fear for sure. Yeah. Yes. It should be your refuge, you know, should be your safest place. Yeah. Well, before we, before we get, we're going to go off the rails. I already sense this. So before we do that, which is totally fine, let's like formally introduce you guys. I know a lot of our audience is probably very familiar with your podcast, scared to death. But can you just give us some insight on how you decided to

start this, where the inspiration was, like tell us everything. Okay. Go ahead, Dan. He's the more succinct storyteller, so we'll let him do it. Yeah, Lindsay was so, it's so awesome that she was willing to go along for the ride because she was not a big horror fan because it scares her, you know, like it gets a little bit, gets into her head a little bit more than it does me and really kind of messes up her sleep and just overall well-being, I guess.

Yeah. But the idea for Scared to Death came when I was. doing time suck for a few years this other podcast and it's it's very analytical uh critical thinking based and just kind of looking to poke holes in the supernatural and things when i approach those kinds of topics and it's when i would do i did like amniville i did uh shadow people on time suck and it was fun to explore the mythology but then i found myself just trying to like disprove it and that wasn't very fun because i like a sense of mystery and i like a sense of wonder and And I was like, this is not the right vehicle for these types of stories.

This is just like, I'm just peeing on the parade every time I go into one of these areas. And I don't know, you know, what's real. I haven't been there when these people make these claims. And I don't know what's exactly the nature of our universe. And so I approached Lindsay. I'm like, what if we added a show where I share some of these supernatural tales. And the goal is to try to scare you and thinking that if I can scare you, I can also scare the audience. because as a kid, I loved horror movies, loved horror books, campfire tales, just that

that rush of adrenaline you get. Like, I feel like horror gives you that more than any other genre of storytelling. It's just, it's so powerful. Like, the feeling you get when you get scared is such a raw, primal emotion. And so we just gave it a shot. We just, it's like, okay, I'll tell you a couple stories, see if they scare you, see if the fans like them. Luckily, they did.

And then within a few weeks, we just got to. outpouring of people sharing their stories. And on TimeSuck, I would read updates from listeners. So we carried over that to scare to death. And it's like, well, what if we read their stories? And Lindsay started to read those. And it really balanced the show out. And then now she's trying to scare me with these listener tales.

And yeah, that's just kind of how it got going. And we've had the same format ever since. I love that. So Lindsay, do you sleep anymore now that you're doing the podcast? Thank you for asking. It depends. But in the beginning, I definitely was like, oh, this isn't going to go well.

I'm not going to last. We were kind of like counting down the days until I was like, I just can't. I just can't. And then I don't even know what happened that I sort of got over the hump and was like, I'm okay. I can do this.

I think Dan finds more fear in the fan stories. Like there's more possibility because it's coming from someone. While we don't know them, they feel like we know them adjacent. And for me, I was like, oh, well, they're okay. I'm okay. And so I think that it changed, like, how I feel about it.

And then over time, I've actually gotten, Dan gets more scared and I get less scared. Interesting. The tables of turn. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like a real, but I'll have moments like, I still have rules. Like, okay, if we're going to a horror movie, I don't want to watch it at home because that's my safety. That's right.

And I just like don't want to think about those things in the house. So I'm like, okay. So I'll go out to a horror movie. I'd rather watch it like 2 o'clock in the afternoon than like 10 o'clock at night. I need lots of time. And then I need like, you know, melatonin, which can go both ways because I can also give you horrible dreams. But yeah, I feel okay in it now.

And I don't know. I think you just find peace in it. like, okay, well, maybe there's something in the Great Beyond. And, like, my family growing up, we experienced a lot of death and loss. So I think it also just gave me, oh my God, I feel like I'm going to cry. My grandmother and I were really close. And at some point, her spirit showed up in the studio. And I was like, okay, okay. Like, I can do this. And so I just came at it from a different space instead of just always like, I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm like, yeah, I'm scared. But also, it's fine. Like more interesting.

and more, there is something to be said about learning more about the great beyond and like what's going on over there. And there's, there is a comfort, especially when you have loved ones that are on that side to have these experiences or stories of other people having these experiences that there is something going on over there. And there is something to be said that there's a comfort in that, even if sometimes it's scary. I think so. I totally agree. Yeah. And I would say that like I too have experienced a lot of death and loss with my father and my fiance. And I feel like my interest in the paranormal, Great Beyond, all that has never waned, but it's definitely evolved because you have a definite, I feel like people who you're not

looking at it purely for entertainment anymore. You're kind of personally invested in it in a different way and it just adds so much context and it makes it more layered and more intriguing. And if anything, I feel like I definitely have a lot more respect than I did before for these types of stories or people who experience things like this. But it's never changed. It's never gone away. It's definitely just made, if anything, I'm like way more intrigued. Some people call it a spiritual awakening or, you know, your Saturn return or, you know,

whatever it is. But I definitely have never shied away from any of these stories. And we love the variety of stories that you guys share on the show. I mean, there is everything from your legends, lores, UFO abductions, paranormal stuff, like curses, everything. It kind of runs the gamut. Is there a particular theme that either of you lean towards or enjoy? sharing stories about the most. Oh my God. Can I say what I hate the most? Sure.

Yes. You said UFOs? And that's like the one thing that's still like why? Why UFOs? Why aliens? Like they're probably out there listening right now. Are you afraid to be abducted? I am.

I am. I am. Okay. Like if we were just like having dinner and you're like, what's your greatest fear? I would say I'm not really afraid of anything. I'm not afraid to die. I'm not afraid of like things of the unknown in that space except UFOs. Like I'm afraid of heights.

Definitely afraid of heights. I have a deep rooted fear of frogs. I don't know what that's about. Okay. Like I probably need to talk to a therapist and UFOs. Like the thought of some foreign entity that no one can prove that they've seen an alien, in my opinion. So it's like, okay, I don't know what they look like, not really.

Like, are the gray's real? I don't know. But like, if that comes for me, I don't, I don't know what an alien technically looks like. I don't know where they come from. Like, I have no facts to go off of. And now they're what, just going to come take me and shoot me up to some spaceship and probe my body. Why? And then send me back.

And no one's going to believe me because I would believe you. Thank you. I would also believe you. Thank you. We don't need you, Dan. you can leave now. I just think like, why do they have to be malevolent? Like, I would kind of want to be abducted by an alien if they were going to like,

you know, bring me back because like, what an amazing experience. But I'm a big sci-fi geek where it's like, if I could be inside of a spaceship, that would be maybe the most amazing experience of my life. And yeah, they might do something bad, but they might be cool. They might just want to like, I don't know, ask me some questions or draw some blood and I feel so similarly to you. I am totally camped in on this. Because.

And Lindsay, you and I are kindred spirits. Because thank you. Well, if you think about it, I mean, we do this same exact thing to species every single day. Like, if you're looking at it from a removed point of view, we do this exact same thing to wildlife all the time. Imagine we're in a helicopter. Okay. Dart an animal down. All of a sudden, all their friends are like, oh, my, what is happening to him?

You know, he goes to sleep, wakes up. People are poking him, prodding him, weighing him, doing all this stuff. And then all of a sudden they come to, and his friends would never believe him. It's like somebody from the sky, you know, abducted me and did all this testing on me. And now I'm back, but I can't prove it. You know what I mean? Yeah. And people, like, they freak out over implants, but it's like, that's what we do into animals in those situations.

We give them a little tracking tag on their ear or whatever and then let them go back. It's like, okay, you put a little tracker in me. That doesn't mean it's going to hurt me. It's just, you just want to know what I'm up to. Yeah. I'm okay with being studied. I totally agree. And I mean, what an experience to have with like such an advanced intelligent life form that is just like eons ahead of the human race.

Yeah. I think it would be amazing. And I love that it would just, it would just be proof such like, you know, strong, strong proof of there being so much out there in the universe that we don't know about yet, which draws me to the paranormal space and general, just like the magic of it. On the scary side for me, uh, and it's the stories I like to tell the most also is just poltergeists. Like really aggressive poltergeist freak me out, but also they're my, I'm drawn to those stories more than any other. Okay. So two different, well, wait, Lindsay, are you just telling us what you hate and we'll leave it at that? I'm just so afraid of it. Um, okay. Like the, the best stories to tell are like the most, just intriguing that you enjoy.

almost. I think I like a good classic haunted house. The thing is, at the end of the day, I kind of love it all. I'm like, well, I like this little piece of this and this little piece of that. But a good haunted house always gets me, right? Because it can have, that feels so plausible. Like, I feel like any house could be haunted. Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. And why? Why do these spirits, like, hang on to these structures? Because I love our house. That's why. Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. I love my space. Uh-huh. And that those consistent themes of like when things get moved around,

it kind of awakens or agitates the entity and they're more active. So they're clearly attached to the way things were or it seemed seemed to be attached. I don't know. It's just fascinating like I guess the psychology of it. Like what is going on with the spirit that makes it want to be right here? Yep. Totally agree. Yeah.

And I think that haunted houses are something that is more like universal. You know, UFO abductions, there's definitely a handful of people who have said that they have, some people don't even believe in UFOs. But when you talk about haunted houses, there are so many stories and so many people have experiences with that. That it is interesting, learning the history behind it and then also learning what is actually happening in people's experiences in the houses. Yeah, yeah. And I feel like there's the most documented activity, paranormal activity, is far. and like the ghost realm just comes from houses where they can invite in experts and they can bring in their equipment and kind of study this. And you have so many cases of numerous witnesses, people who don't have anything to gain socially and actually a lot to risk socially by saying

they witness something. Yeah. Yeah. I think that adds to the validity. Just like going back to UFOs, because all roads lead back to UFO. Well, it's just like Travis Walton's story. I know you guys have covered Travis Walton's story. Yeah. And it's just like there is nothing, like this guy has been publicly ridiculed his entire life. Yep. And has gained very little, you know, monetarily from that. I mean, I know he wrote, you know, fire in the sky and it's been adapted and things

like that. But I mean, his story has never changed. He's like, right, right. I know you guys think I'm nuts. But I don't know what else to tell you. This was my experience. This episode is brought to you by Prime. obsession is in session

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with haunted stuff so just drawing off of something Lindsay said you said you witnessed the spirit of your grandmother in the studio. And so I had to ask, because I did read that your studio is across from a cemetery. Yeah. It already kind of has a spooky vibe. Was that kind of like an isolated incident or do things happen there often? I think we each have different experiences because Dan is braver than I am.

So he'll come to the studio and record at night by himself and has had like weird. energy shifts and I'll let Dan talk about that. My grandma being here was, it was just so strange because I couldn't figure out what was going on and somebody else came into the studio who's very in touch with the other side and she was like getting names, which I wasn't getting at all. I don't have that capability or if I do, I don't want to tap into it. Thanks, but no thanks. You can stay over there. But it just like, it would feel, you know, you know when you walk in a room and you're like, oh, the energy in here is not great. It was like, I would be like, God, something's off.

It feels cold in here. It feels hot in here. It feels, I don't know, I don't feel like myself. And then other times I'd be very up. And I just knew something was a little amiss. And then once we figured out that it was my grandma, I was like, oh, okay. Then I became open to this idea that like, well, maybe something else is also here. Like, it doesn't just have to be her.

It doesn't always have to be her. It could sometimes be her. So I went back and forth. And like, we were just recording two days. ago and I'll get like scratchy sounds in my headphones and you know it wasn't a tech issue it was like what is happening Dan couldn't hear it I could hear it but then it will go away or there'll just be these like moments where we sit across from each other and all kind of like look away and I'm like I feel something coming in that direction right like it's not coming from the energy that Dan's

bringing into the room but so it happens I don't know every couple of episodes where I I just feel a little different. But I can never, I'm not bringing a Ouija board in here. Like, I'm not trying to figure it out. I just kind of accept it and move on a little bit. That's pretty often, too, if it's happening every couple of episodes. And do you think it's from the content of what you're discussing or the physical space or both? I mean, yeah, we have so many things in that room where people have sent us supposedly cursed objects or haunted objects.

or haunted objects. So all these old creepy dolls and dibick boxes and things. So the space is littered with just supposedly paranormal items. And I want to, I don't know, for me, I like to try to write it off as my imagination. But I just, like, when I come there at night and record by myself, sometimes I'll record these horror fiction episodes. And I'll have to just stop sometimes and just like go home and maybe just come back. Like, oh, I'll record it the next morning. I do get pretty freaked out and I think I feel something near me,

but I don't know if it's just me getting worked up because of the story and because I'm alone in the building, in this dark space, or if there's something there. I try to think there's nothing there because I don't want to start getting afraid to record there. Gotcha. I don't know if you guys are welcoming cursed objects into your space, then who knows what's there then. There's all these, like, tiny, this is so creepy.

We have these, like, tiny, creepy little dolls everywhere. That would be so scary at night. Dolls, something about dolls is not. Yes, that's one. On Candy Valley. Look at how strange this. Why is this here? Yeah, you tell us.

We're not contributing. You guys have a lot of big fans and like, you know, they send you things and you're like, oh, okay. And so you start littering them around. I'm like, somebody could have cursed something and then sent it to us. Like we don't. That's true. We very stupidly do not cleanse. items before we put them in the studio, which I'm just in this moment, like, that was my next question. Do you guys do any sort of like cleansing rituals or periodic, you know, kind of just energy work in the space? Or maybe you should consider it. Before we record, I always like to go into my head envision like a white light protecting me. I have a little champ that I do in my head. And then I always have like a mound of crystals and some Palo Santo. So you have a

ritual, which is great. Yeah. Yeah, but not Dan. He's not. I will lean the other way sometimes, kind of like that poke in the bear, because I go back and forth. I think I really want a very intense paranormal experience, but it also scares me to think about like how intense it could be because then I can never unsee it. But I, but I'll do stuff sometimes like when I'm working on these stories late at night, I'll listen to these YouTube videos that are supposedly like demonic chanting or something like really creepy stuff. That is welcoming it for sure. Because I want proof.

I want proof. And I have had some little experiences, but sometimes I want that really intense. This figure approaches me. I know I'm seeing it. But again, simultaneously, that scares the hell out of me, like to think about something like.

I don't know. I walk that line where some moments I really want to be scared like that and have just such undeniable, powerful proof of life. after death, you know, of some form. And then other times, that seems like the worst thing that could happen. I don't know. I constantly am going back and forth.

Have you had an experience that you can't, like, you can't rebut? Like, this definitely happened and scared you? Yeah, just one. And it's like, I got a little taste and I want, I want more. But it was actually around the time we started the podcast. And we were in Los Angeles. I had a show at the comedy store. and we were, it was like an earlier show, like a seven or seven 30.

And I don't like to eat real close to the show. So we were grabbing dinner. You're having senior citizen dinner at 5 o'clock. Okay. Like 5 o'clock. I ate it around then. It's my favorite. No Harper, you know.

Yeah. At this place called the. Oh, yeah, yeah. The rainbow tavern. The rainbow room. Rainbow room. I always call it the tavern. I think that's like the official name.

But yeah, the rainbow room. And it's, oh, on the sunset strip. And it was like one of those old rock clubs where, like, you know, in the 80s, a lot of hair metal bands, those people would hang out and have drinks and like Lemmy from Motorhead would hang out there. So it's got like a little history and it's dark and moody. And it's like an Italian restaurant on the first floor, then a bar on the second floor with a little venue space and then a tiny little venue space up on the third floor. And we went and it was really dead. So it's like, I don't know, a third to half full.

We're just waiting in our little booth, like the old classic leather pleaded booth, real dark ambiance and waiting for our agent to come over. And I had to use the bathroom. So the bathroom's on the second floor. And as I walked up the stairs and I lived in L.A. for a long time, so I'm used to L.A. weird. Like, there's a lot of very weird people there. And this guy and this woman were coming down the stairs.

And it wasn't just that they were weird, but it was something about the way he looked at me. I don't usually get creeped out from just random strangers, but it really creeped me out. I'm like, what? That is not a good guy. There's something weird going on there. So that's kind of in my head. As I go upstairs, I'm the only person on the second floor. It's not serving anybody.

It's all the lights are off, but there's the bathroom. Walk into the bathroom. It's a very small bathroom. One stall, two urinals, and you have to walk right past the sink to go to the urinals. And as I'm using the urinal, I notice that the sink is on full blast now. And it's hot water and it's so hot that it's steaming. And I'm kind of the type of person where if I would have walked past that, I would have for sure turned it off. And also, I thought like, that's weird that they would let their water get so hot.

They're opening themselves up to liability. Like, someone's going to burn themselves and sue them. Like, why would they do that? So I'm having all those thoughts. And it just feels weird. It just, the room feels odd. So I go and I turn off the hot water, then I turn on the cold and hot, wash my hands, and it's still in my head.

And now I want to recreate how hot it got. So I just turn it to only hot, leave it on full blast for a while, doesn't get nearly that hot. And I'm like, ah, just, just, I just, just, I just, just, I just, just, just, I just, just, just it just, weird and it feels kind of cold in the room and it just kind of, I don't know, making my skin crawl. I don't know why I feel this way. So I go downstairs. One of the waitresses is walking past. This is literally the only time of my life I've asked this question. And I stopped. I was like, hey, I've never asked this before, but is this place haunted? And without hesitation, she just goes, like it was like a dumb question. She goes, oh, yeah, and just kept walking.

And I was like, oh, my God. So then when our waitress comes, I was like, hey, I just had this weird experience. And I supposedly, I guess this place is haunted. But I was up. in the bathroom and she stops me and she goes, let me guess, the hot water turned on all by itself. And I was like, what? And she's like, oh yeah, you met one of our ghosts. And then that, and again, like, like that was totally normal. And it's still, it's the tiniest experience, but it just gives me the chills because. You gave me the chills a little bit. I can't figure out how that would happen outside of the paranormal. And I've told some people who are very skeptical and they're like, the dumbest thing I heard was, oh, it's probably somebody in the kitchen that likes to prank people in

the bathroom by turning some pipe that would turn on hot. And I'm like, let me get this straight. It's far-fetched. They have to wait until someone uses the bathroom and then know that they're using the bathroom somehow and then turn on the hot water and hope the person is weirded out, but they'll never know because they don't have a camera there. That makes no sense. Right. Yeah, that seems very far-fetched to me. And to ensure that they're alone. Because then if there's like another person in the bathroom, then you, I guess you wouldn't think it's that weird because you're like, oh, it could have been them or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And then a fan wrote in, who I've actually met a few times,

it's kind of like, you know, diehard fan out in L.A. And he said that the same thing had happened to him at that same room. He's like a big rock and roll guy like a year or two earlier. And then he got all kind of weird vibes. So that's the only little experience I had. But as small as it was, it did kind of cement my belief in this stuff because I have thought about it for so long and tried to think of every angle of how that could be a prank and there's nothing. Is the ghost that is doing this? Do you know their story or is there a story behind him or her? Nobody's had a story that I've heard.

They don't know what's going on there. I mean, around the sunset strip, there has been a bunch of like overdoses, suicides. And so like a lot of these places are haunted supposedly, but I don't know specifically what they think is behind that one. Interesting. Very interesting. Did you look it up, Dan? I never asked you. Like, did you, like, ever spend any time in, like, Reddit threads or, not on Reddit? Figure it out. Not on Reddit. I did look just general, you know, like, rainbow room haunting kind of stuff and couldn't find anything. But yeah, Reddit would probably be a good place to actually dig a little deeper. You guys are brave for going on. You might be sad. You might, like, I'll just say that. It was the kitchen staff. After all that, you know, like, it might just be over. Yeah. There's no way. Well, thank you for sharing.

because, you know, after, you know, listening to so many of your episodes and just wondering where you both sat in your own personal views, because you do share a lot of other people's stories and experiences, either directly through reading different listener stories to your own research and people's experience on that end. And I know, Dan, that you write your own fiction short horror stories, which is a really cool addition to your feet as well. It's just a totally, different form of storytelling for people to listen to, which is cool. But lo and behold, we know you have some stories for us today. And before we get into it, because we know they're a little bit outdoor based. Are you outdoor people? Nice. We are. Yes. Yeah. I love it. Which actually, like, I think is part of why I love your podcast so much. Because I'm like places I have been, haven't been, want to go. I grew up in the city in Cleveland, like the suburb outside, so I didn't grow up being an outdoors person. And when Dan and I first started dating, one of the first trips we took was camping at Lake Kuyamaka, which is like, I forget, is that like the Cleveland National Forest, I want to say? Yeah.

And my mom was like, I'm sorry, you're sleeping in a tent? Like, what are you? My mom is going to be 69 in January. And she just said to me, she's like, do you know, I've never slept outside? And I was like, what? She's like, well, not intentionally. Like, okay. So I've got to fix that.

But yeah, so like I became more of an outdoors person in our relationship because Dan grew up in Idaho and just easier access to more natural outdoor. Just like, that's what everybody does. That's just the natural tendency where my tendency was like everyone goes to the mall. Yeah. Where I grew up is so small. I mean, like Riggins is 400 people in the center or center of. Idaho County. It's very, very rural. So there is no mall. There's no movie theater. There's no bowling alley. There's no arcade. There's none of that.

Arcade. God, you just dated yourself. Arcade bars are back. Yeah, it's true. Because they're retro. That's true. What was once old is now new. Yep, yep. But like, yeah, we did that like growing up. You know, I'd go camping. Man, it felt like every other weekend in the summers. We were just constantly up in like the gospel hump wilderness area, mostly around like these old abandoned mining sites of like Florence in Idaho. But it's, I mean, it's kind of funny looking back where it's like living in town was almost like living in the wilderness. It was so small. And then my stepdad, he is not a, he's a really social guy when you get around talking to him,

but he claims not to be a people person. And Riggins was too big for him. Like they ended up having to leave and live outside of a hundred person town called Whitebird and not even in town there. And he just loves to be out in the woods around just a few people. And so we had to get away from the city. And go into the woods all the time. So yeah, so I grew up in tents constantly. And I like to hike.

And yeah, we've done a bunch of tent camping, not as much the last couple of years as we've wanted, but over the years like a lot. Nice. And our kids are both into it, too. Like our son is in college on the East Coast and where he goes to school. They don't have a Greek system, but they have these like themed houses. So he's in an outdoors house and they're every weekend hiking, camping. Yeah. Honestly, I'm like, I want to quit my job and go back to college and live there and do what you're doing.

Because they're like, they summited Mount Washington. I know you guys are both originally East Coasters. Yeah. So he was really excited about that. And over the summer, I felt so bad for him, he was supposed to do Mount Rainier. And then there was an avalanche warning and he didn't get to summit. But he's really into the outdoors. And then our daughter, I think just by proxy, is like, you know, okay, I guess I do this too.

And we're in the Northwest, right? So it's like our access to amazing hiking, camping, just, it's just part of the culture here. It's just so different than what I grew up with. When you have it right out your front door, it's like, yeah, you got to go. It's right there. You can see it. It's a drive away. You have to.

Yeah. And that's really cool that your kids, you've instilled it in your kids, too, because I know when I was in college, I was not doing stuff like that, hiking and trying to summit linear. And that's amazing that he's already doing those things. It wasn't until after college where I was like, okay, I'm an adult now. I should do like more meaningful things in my life. So that's cool that he's already won 10 steps ahead. Yeah.

I mean, it's like, I think we learn like to get like spiritual or philosophical about it, but I think we learn like there's less satisfaction and stuff and more satisfaction. in putting our bare feet into the earth and connecting with our own spiritual journey and what Mother Nature has to offer us. And I don't know, nature's just, she's a powerful healer. And right, as we live longer and experience more things, both good and bad, getting out there and giving it back to where it came from, I believe, becomes really important. And yeah, I feel very drawn to being a dirty hippie as I get older. My, my grandpa's, that was like, my grandpa and grandma kind of raised me. And my grandpa would always just complain about hippies. That was like the antithesis of what he thought you should be. And now I just want to like be smoking weed and just eating shrooms up in the mountains. Yeah. If they could just be all the time. Yeah. That's a dream for a lot of people. You know, it's like, especially now with the advent of social media and you get to see glimpses into people. lives more and more often. You see this kind of like resurgence of I want chickens and I want a

piece of land and I want you know like the old type of like I don't want a TV in my bedroom. I want to just you know just like a kind of a rewind in years as far as what we shoved away for a really long time especially in like the 70s, 80s, 90s, early 2000s for sure. And we're just kind of like reverting back to, I think a lot of people are realizing and waking up to how, like you were saying, Lindsay, how healing being disconnected from technology and reconnected to nature can be for somebody and how important it is to spend intentional time outdoors. Yeah. I would love to live on a beach with just like the mountains somewhere in the background, so not too far away, but just like the sound of the ocean is so soothing and just, oh man,

That's my dream all the time is just like live some kind of tropical area where we're just right there by the water and drinking fresh juice. And yeah, just being outside of time. Yeah. Sounds like Hawaii. I was about to say when you're like, oh, the ocean with the mountains, I'm like, oh, like Alaska. And then you just went somewhere completely tropical. Cool. Well, we'll stop chatting and we'll start listening.

So what do you got for us? I was going to, and Lindsay, jump in as much as you want. I was going to talk about Griffith Park because we have at least a personal connection there where, you know, we would take the kids, Kyler Monroe when they were little on hikes around Griffith Park with our friends Dayton Bree and their kids and go to the observatory and just, you know, lots of memories of hiking around and being in Griffith Park. And so when we first came across the lore, I was a little surprised that there was so much like haunted lore. Oh. So to talk about Griffith Park, one of the largest urban parks in the U.S., it's over 4,200 acres, six and a half square miles, which is very cool for such a big, you know, sprawling city to have such a big natural area inside of it in L.A.

Yeah, zoo, observatory, museums, amphitheater. Former Griffith Park Chief Ranger Albert Torres, who passed away in 2019, he actually warned visitors to stay away from the interior at night saying, quote, if you knew Eiffith Park, even a quarter of the stuff we find within the park's perimeter, you'd never set foot in it again. Animal sacrifices, satanic cults, murders, stuff like that happening on a regular basis. So that's interesting for like the park range to say that. Yeah, I've been to Griffith Park a few times and I've never heard this before. So I'm very, very intrigued.

Yeah, the hillside strangler, which was actually two serial killers. They used to dump the bodies to some of their victims in the park. And then there's been so many unsolved murders, you know, even in recent years, like in 2012, two women walking their dog on one of the park's hiking trails right below the Hollywood sign. This is so disturbing. Found a severed head wrapped in a plastic bag. No idea, you know, what went on there. Day later, investigators scouring the scene found more body parts, a right hand feet buried in a shallow grave.

Two years before, hikers found a man's skull on the park skyline trail. And actually, like, you know, bodies are discovered somewhat regularly around Griffith Park, which is a non-paranormal scary. And there's some who think that some of these people have been sacrificed, like strange occult practices, perhaps. And a lot of people think, well, I should say a lot. Some people interested in this realm think that a lot of the stuff that's gone on in Griffith Park are because of this supposed curse that was placed over a century and a half ago now.

So like for the history of the park, way back in 1776, Jose Vicente Files, who was a Spanish soldier, He made it to the San Gabriel Mission, which was one of the first buildings by Europeans built in the area back in 1771. He ended up staying at this park in 1791. He was still stationed there when a group of 44 settlers arrived, some of the first Angelinos. These people would turn the area into what becomes Los Angeles. And he ends up staying, helps plan this community, kind of supervise it. When he retires, the Spanish king, Carlos III, gives him this grant of 6,6,6,000. 147 acres of land. And that land would become what is today, Los Files, East Hollywood, Silver Lake,

and Griffith Park. So it was like, you know, big part of the founding of L.A. And eventually that land became the property of Don Antonio Files. This is like many generations later. He's living there with his housekeeper and his niece. And in 1863, he's dying as smallpox. And then an influential local politician, former mayor of Los Angeles and future California state treasurer, Antonio F. Coronel, he comes to help him draw up his will, and according to the legend of this curse, he manipulated him. He meets with this guy, this guy is on his deathbed, he's delirious, he's very sick. Coronel takes advantage of that and tricks him into giving the land to him, signs the ranch over to him. And when his niece finds out about this, she becomes infuriated and supposedly curses the former mayor and curses the land. She reportedly swore, the substance of the Files family shall be your curse, the wrath of heaven and the vengeance of hell shall fall upon this place.

And then after this, the ranch changes hands very frequently over the coming years. Cornell, early on into his ownership, he gave the property to his lawyer for a bunch of cash, and then that lawyer was shot and killed while he celebrated the sale of the land's water rights. The curse is acting up already. Yeah, there is a lot of stuff. Curses are not generally my favorite kind of area, but this one's interesting to me because the next owner tries to turn the ranch into a dairy business. His cattle all get sick and die.

Grasshoppers and fires destroy his crops. And then it just keeps going like this, just malady after matter. And then during the tenure of its last owner, Griffith, J. Griffith, you know, the namesake of Griffith Park, a lightning storm brought down a whole bunch of trees, caused a flood with the rainwater that destroyed much of the ranch. And then ranch hand supposedly saw Files' ghost during this flood and storm cheering his successor's demise. And then Griffith, after this flood, this big storm, he was supposedly only visit the property at day because of something he saw at night. and he donates the land now to L.A. as a Christmas present. Just doesn't want it anymore. He said, get this away from me. I'm done. Too much has happened. It's a present. Yeah, this huge, very valuable chunk of land. He gives it to the city. A couple years later,

he goes to prison because he shot his wife in the face in Santa Monica one night. And she would survive this attack, although she would lose sight in her right eye. And then at the trial, she would say that he had been suffering from paranoid delusions for a long time before the assault. And some people think that that was the curse, that he was seeing things on the ranch. And that's when his mind started to deteriorate right before he kind of gave. The curse changed his mind. Yeah, that's what people speculate. And then so now the park belongs to the city.

And then the curse will be blamed for a lot of things in the coming years, such as in 1933, there was a huge wildfire in the park. And sadly, 29 civilian conservation corps workers died in that fire. A bunch of other tragedies are attributed to the curse, like the very strange death. This is wild. This poor young couple, 22-year-old musician Ran Garrett, aspiring actress Nancy Jensen. She's just 20 years old. They were making love on a park picnic table when a tree randomly fell on them and killed them both.

Oh, my God. What are the chances of that? Right. like the weirdest in the whole park in the whole park like that's where that yeah it feels like there's some bad

juju in this park for sure and then supposedly according to legend so now the city like a city worker this guy Morris Carl he's assigned to cut up that tree and remove it you know clean it up out of the park he when he's trying to clear the debris he has problems starting his chainsaw

and then he said he was overcome with the most intense case of the chills he had ever had in his life and when he's trying to figure out what's going on with his chainsaw he claimed to have heard a voice, speak from the air behind him and say, leave us alone. Totally freaks out, runs back to his truck, and then he said he found written on the dust in his windshield the words, next time you die.

What in the war? That just gave me chills. That is awful. Oh, my, no. Oh, God. That is, be like, I won't be back. They won't be the next time. Yep.

He drove and then quit his job. Never came back to that park. Same. Same. If that was me. Bye. No thank you. Yeah. And there's been a lot of apparition sightings over the years. The most famous one seems to center around the Hollywood sign, which is on the western edge of the Griffith Park.

And what happened in 1932, Peggy Entwistle, who was a young actress distraught with some stuff going on in her personal life. She jumps from the top of the H and dies. And then soon after, people start to see always at night, after dark, what looks like a young woman on top of the H jumping off, but then they don't hear any body hit the ground. It's just this apparition, just kind of repeating this final moment. And then people also supposedly start to see her ghost around the trails. And it goes on and on and on. We're more in recent years, it stands out more because she's dressed in, you know, clothing

from the 1930s. So, you know, stands out much more than a regular person will. Yeah. Sometimes her apparition appears so real that people just think it's a lady until it just disappears and they'll often smell gardenias which i guess was her perfume of choice smelled like gardenias uh so that continues to happen uh to this day lots and lots of sightings and then here's one that says uh devon morgan who lives in beechwood canyon this has recently said one afternoon uh during her usual exercise hikes along the trail she thought she saw peg's ghost up ahead she looked very

strange to me. She told a reporter. She had a very atheric quality. Instead of walking, she almost seemed to glide. She wasn't floating. She didn't look like she was a ghost, but there was something very, very strange about her, very soft looking. Morgan attempted to catch up and talk to this woman, and then she vanished. And then the only thing left in her place was that intense scent of Gardinius. And so that's kind of an example of there's been a lot of people who have had similar experiences supposedly in the park. It's hard to argue if there's so many people who are seeing the exact same woman walking around. Right, with the same sense, the same like kind of period piece clothing.

And then there's the merry-go round, which this one kind of creeps me out the most if I were to see this. Louise Alvarado, honorary mayor of Griffin Park back in 2016, reported the encountered a ghost there on two separate occasions. And again, other people have had similar experiences. And one night while checking to help ensure all visitors had left the park at sunset closing time, Alvarado watched as a man came down off one of the carousel horses. only to disappear soon after walking away from the merry-go-round. Alvarado said he looked around,

thought maybe the guy disappeared behind a tree, could find no trace. A few nights later, he was spooked when the same scene repeated itself. And again, not the only person to have seen this. One woman claimed that decades ago, when she was a teenager,

her and her friend snuck into the park late one night. This is like in 1980s. And she said that suddenly when they were walking by, the carousel lit up on its own. The old wooden horses started moving around to the old music of the carousel. As they hid behind some bushes and watched after about two or three rotations, they say they saw a dark figure,

like a dark maybe male figure riding one of these horses. No. And then eventually when it went out of sight just by going around the carousel, it just didn't come back around. So like there was just this dark figure riding the horse goes around. Same horse comes back around, no figure. They freaked out and ran home. Yeah, I would be one, I would think that, yes, like, haunting is written all over this, but if it's not a haunting and this creepy man just jumped off and is in the woods somewhere around or like around me.

Yeah. Oh, that is scary in so many ways. Yeah, that vision, that would freak me out so bad to see somebody on this little, like, you know, horse with that music that. And I kind of find circus music, like calliope type music, just very creepy. Yeah. I don't like it. Especially at night alone. Oh my God.

Something's lit up. The music adds this horrible touch to it that is like in every horror movie nightmare that I could think of. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, so that's, so that's Griffith Park. And there's so many, you know, like people have like, you know, spotted a dark entity walking down the trail at night, disappeared. And I think like it reminds me of like the hauntings with Griffith Park, like the hauntings you would maybe get more in a city in like an old apartment building where there's been a lot of murders and things. but it just happens to be outdoors because it's this weird space where L.A. has had so many serial

killers and so much horrible things that have happened over the years. And so that combined with the nature makes it a pretty, I think, unique place for paranormal sightings. Yeah. And it is a place because, and with all of the body parts that are showing up too, it feels like because it's an urban park and this is L.A. is so huge. It feels like the perfect, I hate to say perfect, but place to dump. Oh, totally. Because there's no one around and you're actually like in a remote location, which is. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I would never want to be there at night. I mean, especially after this, but any kind of big urban park, I would be very upset if like Lindsay was there alone at night, just, you know, because of the stats. But, but even I is just like a,

a random guy and someone on the larger size of a guy, there's no way I would want to ever be in that place at night. No. Same. I will not be going there at night for sure. Yeah. Urban parks have some sort of air of just, you know, when you're deep in the woods or in the back country, it seems to have an air of spookiness that is completely different than urban

parks. And I think it's because urban parks, your mind is so much on the living. and the people that could bring you harm. And that seems so much more realistic and probable than whatever's lurking in the woods that your mind is kind of filling in the blanks about. Totally. Yeah, urban parks are scary on a completely different level. Have you guys heard stories about anything from Central Park? I just thought of that.

I'm like New York Central Park seems like it would have a lot of lore. But I don't know that I know of any. I haven't specifically looked it up. I do know that there's like a high crime rate in Central Park. But as far as lore stuff, I guess because it's not a national park, we haven't like moved into it. But I would be really interested because of its location. And I'm sure New York just itself has a lot of very dark history throughout the entire city

that I would be curious to know what's lingering there since. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'll do. We have a, we don't have it officially planned, but we've been thinking about doing a joint trip to the city to go do a couple things, bop around there. So maybe we can do some personal research all like that. Yeah, there's got to be something there. No, thank you.

Not personal research at night in Central Park. And Central Park does also have the creepy carousel. So like, oh, I know. It was all I was thinking about Central Park and then it's like, oh, stay away from that. Yeah. It's so creepy. Yeah. No. Yeah, no carousels for me.

No, I'm good. And then if you guys have time for a smaller one, Idaho County where I grew up, there was a weird, very strange disappearance there several years ago. And those always freak Lindsay out a lot. Yeah, please share. U.F. Obductions. Yes. Great. We love to hear it.

So excited. Yeah. And Idaho County is, you guys would probably actually love it as far as the outdoor stuff. It's the least populated county, even though it's the biggest geographical, like, like, biggest. in size county in Idaho, which is obviously not a really highly populated state to begin with. So it's very, very rugged. Like, Lindsay has gone, we went on a float trip in Idaho County a few years ago. And I was like, do you guys want to come whitewater rafting?

Because, like, we could do a little combo trip. But it's so rugged, right? Great. See you there. Yeah. Like, Lindsay was blown away just the geography the first time I took her down there where it's very, like, sandy, rocky soil, very steep mountains. and just really impressive visually because they just really do just shoot up out of the river.

You know, like Hell's Canyon, which isn't far from where I grew up is like deeper than the Grand Canyon. It's just, I don't know, it's pretty intense landscape. And that kind of plays into the story a little bit. It was 2000. Can I say, can't remember which of you or if both of you have gone to Peru to Machupecichu? We both go. We both went. Okay.

I do for sure one of you have, but I can remember people. When we went to Peru, we were like, oh, this is so weird how similar it is, geographically to where Dan grew up. Like, it's just that same. Beautiful. Yeah, it's really, really amazing. Yeah, because for some reason, I don't know if it's the soil or what, but like a lot of parts of Idaho County aren't heavily wooded.

It's just, I don't know if it's too steep or the soil's too sandy, but it's much more rocky than that. But yeah, actually, Peru felt like the Idaho of South America because of the geography and they love potatoes. Yeah. That is true. That is true. I love the food.

Yeah, the food. the food there. I was like, oh, this is like a South American twist on what I grew up eating. But 2018, 26-year-old Terrence Woods Jr., who is getting into the reality TV space. He had worked on the Voice, UK, saving Africa's elephants, Hugh and the Ivory War. He'd been all around the world doing these different jobs. He grew up in Capitol Heights, Maryland, near Baltimore. And he gets this job going out to Idaho. Working on this show, it was a Discovery Series spinoff for Gold Rush.

It was called Gold Rush. Dave Turin's lost mine. Haven't seen it, but that was the show. And they go out to this area of Oragrand, which is an old mostly abandoned mining camp at the Gospel Hump Wilderness, over an hour and a half drive from Grangeville, which is actually where I was born, which is like 3,500 people. So it's an hour and a half away from a town of that size, kind of close to this little 170-person town of Elk City, but it's really just kind of out in the middle of nowhere. And he was supposed to stay with the 12-person crew until the project was over.

in mid-November, 2018. He gets there at the beginning of October. He texts his dad 5.4 a.m. the morning of October 5th, saying he's going to be heading home on the 10th of October, way before he was supposed to be done, but doesn't explain why. Some people have said that he probably wanted to get back to see his mom who was going through some health issues, but there's no certainty there. So there's a lot of speculation of like, why did he want to come home early?

Was something going on in this crew? With something out in the woods, freaking him out. Well, on the morning of the day, he disappeared, October 5th, the same day, his crewmates claimed that he had some kind of anxiety attack. But then he seemed to recover as the day wore on. However, when the shoot was winding down for the day, he did the weirdest thing. Out of nowhere, he tried to grab one of the crew's drone cameras.

Just tried to pull it out of the air. Couldn't do that. And then just took off after it. He took off his belt that had his radio, other gear attached to it, threw all of that on the ground, just jumped over the edge of a very steep ridge and just sprinted, full sprint down the hill until he disappeared into the forest below. One crew member, associate producer, Simon Gee, would say later that Terrence was, quote,

running faster than he had ever seen anyone run before in his life. But he doesn't fall. He just runs down there. Simon and some of the other crew members, they take off after him when he doesn't respond to their calls, and they just can't find him. They just chase him down into the trees, look all around, can't find a trace of him. They're calling out for him. Nothing.

He is just gone. no clue what else to do. They report him missing to local authorities, 6.41 p.m. that night. Someone on the 911 call mentioned that it seemed like he may have had a mental breakdown. Yet according to his family, he had never experienced any mental health problems prior. They bring in search dogs, usually pretty good at tracking a scent through the woods, especially in a remote area where they're not going to be confused with a lot of other people's scents. When the scent dogs reached the base of the mountain where he disappeared into the woods, completely lose the scent. Just like basically where he disappeared visually, it's like he just disappeared off the face of the earth.

By October 7th, so two days later, Idaho County Sheriff's Office has called in ground searchers. They bring in more search dog teams, U.S. Forest Service personnel, fishing game personnel, backcountry rescue helicopter team, a lot of different groups very specialized at finding hard to find people, cannot find a trace of Terrence. October 11th, after seven days of searching, the search operation is unfortunately called off because they just have nothing to go on. his parents come out there, meet with officials,

meet with the production crew, trying to get info, they can't find anything. They just have heard that he just simply ran off. One person did tell them something extra strange though. And just growing up

where I grew up with all these pine trees and how their branches go basically all the way down to the ground, this makes no sense to me. They said that they watched Terran's sprint,

like full sprint through dense trees in a way that did not look physically possible. Like he wasn't ducking, he wasn't sidestepping, he was just like running in a straight line past you know these convoluted webs of branches and brush you know there's rocks strewn all over the place fallen timber and it didn't look like he was

having any difficulty navigating that at all and uh yeah and then that's it there is nothing since like no one has found a trace of him to this day his dad still holds out hope his dad sadly said recently it eats me up every day with death you get closure and you can heal but with the unknown you know nothing. And it's such a strange story to me because I just don't understand in that type of terrain, it would be so hard to escape without leaving a lot of proof of where you ran to. Like the soil is soft. So if you're having difficulty climbing over rocks and debris, you're going to move a lot of debris. You're going to leave a lot of evidence where you went. And there was none of that with him. And some people speculated, oh, maybe somebody on the crew, you know, did something to him. That

doesn't make any sense to me because I actually worked in reality TV for a while on a bunch of different shows and I have a lot of friends in that space. And like, if you go out into the field and it's just you guys out in the woods, you would be caught so quickly if you tried to do anything because you'd have to get everybody on the crew on board with your lie. And these groups are not that close. It's a lot of freelancers who usually haven't even worked together on a previous job or they work together sporadically. There's no incentive to like, oh, sure, I'll just risk also going to jail as an accessory to murder. For this person I just met. Yeah. Yeah, like, nothing makes sense to me as far as any nefarious activity on behalf of the producers. They have cameras everywhere. They're

using these drones. I mean, that's what they're using to get like these establishing shots and stuff. So like, why would you do something in an area where you're filming everything and multiple people are filming? Like, you wouldn't know who happened to might, they might film something incriminating. It's just, it's so weird. Yeah. Do you have any theories on what it could be? There was supposedly some like UFO sightings in that area around the same time. And, and Terrence did, there was like speculation that like he thought when he was having his quote unquote breakdown, that he thought one of the drones might be a UFO. But then there was like, I think maybe he thought it was because there were people seeing other things in this area at this time.

I mean, if I had to pick one thing, I would think that. he was abducted. It's like just taken off the earth. And to bring it full circle in the beginning, you said, like, I wouldn't mind if they picked me up. They don't always bring you back. I know. That's the sad part is you wouldn't necessarily get to come back and see your family. But if I was alone, if it wasn't for you and the kids, I would be like, go ahead and take me. Go ahead and take me. Because then I don't need to come back as much. It's so interesting because there's just, there were so many people there and so many people witnessing him up to a certain point and then just absolutely nothing is bizarre.

And the weird circumstance of how he left in front of everyone too. Right. A lot of question marks. Well, the first thing I was thinking when you were describing just kind of his erratic behavior without knowing literally anything about this case, my first thought was some type of drugs like hallucinogens. Was he like on mushrooms? was he doing at like was he it seems like he was having going through he was in a trip like oh yeah the

the drone freaked him out and then he just randomly throws off his belt and starts running like that seems like somebody on drugs to me yeah yeah but that doesn't that only goes so far of explaining certain behaviors potentially because then if you like where does he but where did he go like drugs don't make you disappear like that in front of in to thin air right so that's kind of where as soon as you started talking about that, I was like, okay, maybe not. Never mind. Yeah. And I thought maybe he drowned.

You know, there's all these little streams and rivers and these canyons. But then why didn't the dogs lead the search party towards the water? Like, why wasn't there any evidence at all of him just like, you know, making it quickly to the water? And then, you know, yeah, I get that he could have drowned. But there's no like really deep river in that area. So even if he did make it to the water and drowned, why didn't they find anything later? I mean, growing up around the salmon river, sadly, people do drive their cars in, get drunk and fall in. They're fishing.

They fall in. Swimming. They drown all the time. They find their bodies 99% of the time. You know, and that's a very deep. So to disappear without a trace. Yeah. It feels like he hit a wall and then just, that's the hardest part for me is it's like with the scent dogs, right?

It's like that they just completely lose him. I can't wrap a head around. Like some type of like wormhole or something that was. Glitching the Matrix? Like what just happened? Where did he go? Yeah. And that makes me think of those parallel dimension theories.

No. Like the multiverse where it's like when he was running down the hill so unnaturally, it's like he was already somewhere else, you know, where the people watching him weren't and that he just fully went into that place. I don't know. Something's so weird. But you can't just poof. You can't.

Maybe you can, though. No. I don't want that as a possibility. It is a scary possibility. Yeah, it's just, it's very, very odd. And it makes it because it's hard to find a reasonable explanation of like, oh, like he was on drugs and fell and disappeared. But then like with no trace, it feels very odd. And especially if, say, he was, I feel like if he was on drugs, then that probably would have been brought up.

the investigation, but if he's surrounded by people who are not on drugs, it feels like they would have been able to catch him or find him, follow him, for him to just disappear. It's, it's very hard to find a explanation that isn't some type of paranormal. Yeah. Yeah. Why didn't he fall? Like if he was on drugs, why didn't he stumble? I mean, this, this mountain, like, it's so steep and the ground is so sandy that it's like a miracle that he didn't just eat it on the way down the ridge. Like he shouldn't have been able to just run without falling. Yeah. Or run that smoothly and fast.

Yeah, straight down. That's what they said. Like he just ran straight down. I've never seen anybody do that. And I've climbed like mountains like that so much growing up. We would actually, me and my friends, we would just to speed up going down the mountain to get home faster. We would just kind of like turn to the bottom of our shoes almost into a sled. and just kind of like kick, kick one leg out, put one foot under our butt, and just kind of slide down.

Yeah, the easiest way. It's so steep you can actually do that. And to try to run, oh, man, I just, I just don't know how you would do that. Yeah, it seems, I'm very curious now to kind of keep an eye on like developments in that, just because there is such a strange air to it. And we just covered a story of a disappearance that is still unsolved. But there's like, it has a lot of themes of that. It was the case of Trenny Gibson who went missing in the middle.

She was on a field trip with about 40 other students on a very popular short trail in the Great Smoky Mountains. And she was in the middle of her group on the way back. And one person saw her kind of step off trail. And then she's never been found. And this was in the 70. what was it 70s 80s? I forget. I just presented it. I already like the dates are jumbled. But regardless, you know, it's been decades. But there had and so there's like, you know, kind of disappear in front of a bunch of people seemingly into thin air. But there has been some clues that allude to the fact that including scent dogs that she was potentially abducted and taken from the park or somewhere else.

But even that, it's like there's so many question marks. And it's a. similar case as far as people throwing out, you know, there are all these X, Y, and Z theories that fit people who go missing in the wilderness as far as accidents, exposure, you know, all these things. But then there's the, but there's something weird about it and you can't help but wonder if something else is at play. And it's difficult because you don't want to be disrespectful to the people who are actively mourning their loved ones. Yeah. Yeah. Disappearance by being like, they're with the aliens. It's like if someone said that to me, you know, But you can't help.

You can't help but be like, God, it's just, but what else would fit here? Abducted me would be furious that Dan was just like, I don't know. I'm just, I guess the aliens got her. I call up. I call up the search. You've got me strapped down, please. Call the ghost custers. It's like you've been gone an hour and I'm like, no, she's fine.

She's fine. She's just up with the aliens. Hopefully they'll. returner. I'm excited to hear her stories when she gets back. I know. The other one partner you want if that happens to you because he will believe me. I'll be like, so last night. Yeah, you never know. Yeah. Yeah. The human monsters like you were saying that girl's disappearance, they do scare me a lot more than aliens or ghosts or anything. It's like that is just so terrifying that there are just people out there in the world that are like, you know what? I'm going to go hide in the woods and wait for a kid to walk by.

It's like you're a literal monster. You're like a boogeyman, a real boogeyman. Yeah. The stories we cover that have, you know, a human at the center of them are always the most terrifying. Just because, you know, you can't wrap your head around it, but it happens so often. It's so frightening, you know, just what people are capable of. And it's clearly you love it as much as we do to fill in the blanks of certain stories of like, but what if and like what is the possibility of this?

But sadly, the reality of this. But sadly, the reality is a lot of times the scariest things in life are people. Totally. That's like those kind of movies. Like, you know, Lindsay doesn't get as scared as I do anymore in a lot of horror movies. And we saw kind of within close proximity, Smile 2. I just watched Smile 1. I love it.

I love it. It's so creepy. You were? Yes. There's so creepy. There's so many jump scares. I feel like they're all predictable. I was screaming during Smile 2.

I was like the most annoying. screaming, like yelling. Embarrassing. I get jumpy and it just was scary me over and over again. And so I was just having these big like, oh, God damn it. And then just so it really, but then the, but way scarier was actually this movie called Speak No Evil with James McAvoy. I've heard about.

Oh my God. It's terrifying because as extreme as it is in some ways, it's like, oh yeah, there are people who have done that. Like it's based, you know, much more in reality. Yeah. And so terrifying where I'm like, as evil is this thing, I don't want to spoil it, but as evil as this thing going on is, I'm like, oh yeah, I've covered enough true crime where I know that that stuff does happen sometimes. And this isn't totally based around something paranormal that may or may not ever happen to you. I'd way rather take my chances with ghosts or other entities than just with people.

For sure. That is fair. I don't want to, I'm a person who doesn't enjoy being haunted or anything and I would much rather be haunted. to then take my chances with someone who had ill intent towards me for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing everything with us and chatting with us.

And it's been really fun. The last question that we have for you, it's kind of like a left turn from what we've been talking about. But we saw that you guys do camps. Oh, yeah. Lizzie, you should talk about that. Oh, my God. It's funny because actually, I was seeing like your guys is like meetup hike trips.

I'm like, I have so many questions about your trips to national parks with your fans. That looks so incredible. It's been very fun. It's like connecting with the fans is possibly the best part of the job. Yeah. Yeah. Right? You just set out to do this thing to share your love of the national parks or history or, you know, paranormal, true crime.

And then it just grows into this magical thing. Or summer camp, yeah. So summer camp is next September. and it is in upstate Pennsylvania, like right on the edge of New York. And it's a Thursday to a Sunday. And it is magic. It is pure magic. Um, stand up shows, live scared to death. Karioki is like a, sounds so silly. I love karaoke. I think it's so fun. Yeah. I'm too shy for it. Um, and I can't carry a tune in a bucket. But I love, that's what karaoke is for. You don't need to carry a tune. That's what you say. But then.

when people are like belting out, I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I guess you're the next American Idol. But yeah, it's just such an amazing four-day event. All you can eat, all you can drink, all the hang time. It's so beautiful. The people, it's like babies have been created there. Marriage proposals, people meet their new best friends. They're now traveling across the country, across the world to see one another. it's just a no judgment zone, right? So everyone just gets to show up as they are. And you already have this love of the show. So you have this great jumping off point of like, oh, what's your

favorite episode? Right. Because of making adult friends is maybe one of the hardest things you can ever do. And you don't know where people stand, but if you come from this one similar space and like Dan and I are very open about our values, our morals, who we are as people, I know you guys are the same where it's like, you know, we're putting ourselves out there week after week. So then birds of a feather flock together and you just get this amazing group of like collective acceptance. We're all a little bit weird and a little bit like awkward. But it's it's so, so fun. We would love it. You guys should come. And the setting is so cool. Let us know. Come up. Yeah. If you guys wanted to like set up your own camp or whatever, we can talk to you

about that, you know, anytime like after the show, but it's this place called Camp No Counters. And it's this, they own this site up there. I can't remember how many acres, 450 acres somewhere around there, like a lot. They have an enclosed natural lake on the property, all these beautiful old cabins and lodges. And what they'll do is like basically in the summer, they'll use it mostly for these kind of bougie summer camps for these kids who parents will go, you know, maybe live in the city, go up to the Catskills or whatever. And then their kids will be here for like, I don't know, six weeks or whatever. But they have 13 weeks. Oh, sorry, 13 weeks.

And they have X amount of weeks just open. for these adult camps where they'll use the same staff, amazing staff that are staying over from the kids. Most of them are from Australia or Ireland randomly. And it's such a well-oiled machine. And so all your meals and everything, they've been doing it all summer long. So they're like they're really in this great groove

of just making this camp seem so effortless and smooth. And there's archery. You can go fishing. Like I caught some bass in that little lake. Like you can go on a stand-up paddleboard. You can go kayak. Huge water. Slide.

Painting in Prosecco, yoga. Yeah. Volleyball on the beach. Wow. This sounds so fun. Yeah. It's really pretty. Sign us up.

Sign us up. Yeah. If you guys have questions ever, like, yeah, you guys could be our guest if you want to come and just. I'd love to have you. Yeah. You can do. That sounds so fun. If you want to just check it out for your thinking about your own thing down the

road, whatever you want. Cool. And I would imagine there's got to be, so it's like cat skills. There's got to be a national park. Oh, yeah. Right by Woodson. stock. There's at least a lot of national forest and we will take that. Yeah. It says national. We're in.

It's managed differently. That's just who cares about that? Yeah. It says national. So we're good. Yeah. It sounds really cool. And we were just really intrigued by that because, you know, like you said, connecting with fans is really what this is all about. And when you see that in person, You know, because we're doing this virtually. And at least you guys are together. You know, Cassie and I are very rarely together. So it seems like you're just kind of like talking into the void and seeing people comment and things is great.

But then when you actually get to have some face-to-face time and then seeing other people create friendships and relationships from just like this foundation that you built is so it's just like the best to witness. So we have to ask about it. Yeah, we, I'm sorry, Dan, go ahead. No, I would just say, I say we try to like not make it about us. Yeah. And really just connect fans to each other.

And that's the most rewarding part because then you get to watch these friendships grow or romantic relationships. We've had those two marriages come out of stuff like that. And it's just so cool to see these friendships be built. Yeah. Sorry, Lizzie. And, oh, yeah, I'm just going to say, like, I'm sure you guys have this too, but just amazing stories of there was like this one that like always gets me. but this woman was in an abusive relationship and she needed to get out. And she was very close with the community online and was expressing what was happening.

And they all rallied around her, got her money, got her a car, got her away to get from one coast to the other and helped her rebuild her life and just start over. Strangers, people that she will most likely never meet in real time. And it's like, yeah, and you just, when you have these fan interactions, the best part about camp is the meet and greets because these hugs from people and they're like, you just can't believe. Like when you started National Parks after Dark, it's like, I doubt you were ever thinking that you were ever like saving somebody, right? Oh, yeah, no. That was not, yeah.

It was not something that we thought would happen. And then when we started getting messages that were very similar, we haven't, that I know of had something like that happened, which is so beautiful that a community came around this woman. but we have gotten messages that talk about people being saved by our podcast and the content. And it's just like, wow, this is so much more than I ever could have dreamed for it to be. And it's so meaningful to us that it comes like that. And like you're saying, to have your community come together and save this woman's life in such a beautiful way is amazing.

Yeah. It's like at this point, like we've all been through something. And so to see that connection. And then you're like, did we do that? And it's like, I feel like a facilitator for the universe. And I think I get that vibe from you guys too, where it's like, you didn't know that you were called to do this. And now you're in it. And you're like, okay, well, we show up with a certain level of responsibility to the people who are listening.

And it's to see it then play out in such a magical way of like, they're joking around and they're laughing and they're having a good time. But you know that when they leave this space, they are now more secure, more loved, have a new lease online. and like just are like, okay, see you at camp next year. It becomes this annual thing. And it's like, oh, it's just so sweet. Yeah, well, let us know. I mean, we will certainly stay in touch about it because it sounds awesome. And even to just go and, yeah, be a witness to it.

Like, we don't have to even do anything. We'll just come and just like go swimming and do the rock climbing and pickleball and all the things. Yeah, we like to share like, you know, whatever we've learned or let people like, you know, watch what has worked for us and take it and incorporate it into their own communities. And yeah, so maybe you guys could show up and see some cool things. Like, oh, okay, I want to do this aspect of this for our fans or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

We do a lot of group travel. So that's kind of been our jam for a little while. But it would be cool to pivot eventually. I don't know. Our calendars are so full. We're like maybe in 2027. We'll figure it out. Wild, right?

Yeah. How quickly things. book up, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because how many trips a year are you guys doing? Oh, what? It varies. It varies. I think our busiest year for, because, you know, we have our group trips for National Park After Dark, but then we also have, like, business trips, which is Cassie Night, and then we have, like, personal trips. But our busiest year group trip strictly, I think we did seven. Oh, my God. But they're all over, I mean, like, they were all over the world. Madagascar, Egypt, Africa, Peru, Alaska, like, Canada.

Like, it was nuts. It was nuts. We were gone for like six months of the year and we're like, oh, my God. They're like, at the end, we were like, this is amazing. But we have to get back to our lives a little bit and we have to be home a little bit more. And we were, you know, produce it. We take, you know, we take two weeks off a year from the podcast. So two episodes basically a year off.

And you know how it is. Like just you're traveling and you're doing all this stuff, but you still want to make sure that you're, you know, doing your job. Content. You know, and content? And so, you know, that gift of like the guy who opens the door and just collapses inside? Like with this briefcase? Like, that's how I felt at the end of that year.

I was like, oh, my God. I mean, and you don't want to complain because it's like the most amazing thing ever because who would have thought? You know, and it's just such a blessing. But God, only two little people. You know, right. I always compare that because I'll feel bad about complaining too. It's like I feel so much guilt.

But I finally found a way, at least for me, to try to explain it to somebody. I'm like, imagine, like, pick whatever your favorite food is, you know, and you should add, you have a little slice after dinner and you're like, oh, that was great. And then before you go to bed, they're like, hey, do you want another slice? You're like, sure, I don't make you feel bad. I'll have another slice. And then, like, all of a sudden, like, the next day, you're eating four slices of pie. And then the day after that, you're eating like six slices of pie.

You don't want to complain because it's your favorite pie. And then pretty soon you're having like a dozen slices of that pie a day. And then like you finally reach this point. You're like, I can't have any more pie. I have a break of pie. I really love that analogy. Yes, yes. It's totally relatable for sure.

Cool. Well, thank you. Again, I mean, oh my God, we could keep. I kind of forgot we were recording for a second. But yeah, thank you so much for coming on and sharing everything with our audience. And we mentioned where people could find you. But do you have anything else to plug? Any other projects coming up or anything you want to talk about?

I don't think so. We're just, yeah, scared to death and time suck. You know, just keep doing the podcast. I do want to do a book at some point of the nightmare fuel. It's just tricky. Like kind of you guys mentioned, it's like finding time. when you're focusing on weekly content every single week. Yeah.

But someday we'll figure out how to get that out there. And I don't know, Lindsay, what? A book? Yeah, there we go. Yeah. Well, as soon as it's out there, we will happily read it and would be very excited. Oh, thanks. Yeah.

Thank you. Very fun. Yeah. Very lucky. And congrats again on you guys' success. And we'll be sure and talk about this, obviously, on our podcast. And I obviously love, I mean, not obviously, but I love seeing to, women just crushing it in this space and it's such a unique angle on it, you know, it's,

it's really beautiful to see. And it makes me, I'm like, yes, go, girls, go. Thank you. We really appreciate that. We really appreciate that. We really do. Yeah, cool. Awesome. Well, Dan, Lindsay, thank you so much for coming to see us today. Thanks, Danielle and Cassie. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail to tale or story suggestion, send us an email at Stories at npadepodcast.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Join our Outsiders only community on Patreon or Apple subscriptions to listen ad-free, unlock

monthly bonus episodes, and exclusive content. And remember, when you support our sponsors, you are supporting our show. For our exclusive discount codes and source information from today's episode, check out the show notes. For more information on our show, our book recommendations, merch updates, and more, visit our website at npadpodcast.com. And please rate, review, and subscribe from wherever you listen to podcasts. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by.

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