National Park After Dark - Trail Tales 57

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Today’s stories include disembodied voices (and fingers ?), questionable aliens, conjuring spirits and peaks beyond the veil. Outsiders Only bonus stories available for Patreon and Apple Subscribers!We love our National Parks and we know you do too but when you're out there, remember to enjoy the view but watch your back. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe from wherever you’re listening to NPAD! Become part of our Outsider family on Patreon  or Apple Subscriptions to gain access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more. Follow our socials Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. To share a Trail Tale, suggest a story, access merch, and browse our book recommendations - head over to our website.Thank you so much to our partners, check them out!BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off.AG1: Try AG1 and get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase at drinkAG1.com/NPAD.Prose: Use our link for a free in-depth hair consultation and 50% off your first subscription order.Lumen.me: Head to lumen.me/NPAD for 15% off your purchase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture. My work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data.

It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff, knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Girl, winter is so last season. And now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders.

That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to National Park After Dark Trail Tales Edition, spooky

trail tales edition. Yeah, happy spooky season, everybody. We have lots of fun episodes, lots of fun stories for you all today. As always, thank you so much for writing in. If you are interested in writing in your own trail tale, please go onto our website, M-PADPodcast.com, and there's a submission link to send in your own trail tales, which we always love to hear. Yep, and every story this week is a creepy. coded a little bit to keep on theme with October. So would you like to go first or would you like me

to start us out? I can go. Mine's fun. Okay. Mine is titled, Internet Satellite or UFO cover-up. Hi, Cassie and Danielle. I'm a new listener of the pod but became quickly obsessed after listening to a couple of episodes on a whim recently when NPA came up in my suggested podcast. I am an avid podcast listener and your podcast encompasses everything I love in one. The paranormal, spooky stories told in first person, true crime, and of course, national parks, camping, and adventuring. First off, to give some backstory, I grew up right next to a national park, though probably one of the least exciting, it's beautiful nonetheless and actually pretty high up there on the most visited list, Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. I grew up in the neighboring suburb of Bath and spent many days in the park hiking, running the

trails for cross-country practice and working at a farmer's market during the summer in Everett, the ghost town with abandoned houses. Aside from that, I've been visiting National Park since early high school with my dad, sister, and grandma. One of our first was to Sequoia National Park on a road trip from San Diego where my dad and grandma lived at the time. My dad moved there when I was 12, and my grandma had lived in California our whole lives. So every trip my sister and I had with them growing up was very special. The second trip we took with them was to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton's, which is still to this day one of the best experiences of my life. I was having a difficult time leading up to it, and that trip healed me in ways I can't even

begin to explain, as well as fully solidified my love for nature, travel, and the mountains. We went on to do more during the rest of my high school and college years, including the Smoky Mountains, Mammoth Cave, Joshua Tree, the Grand Canyon, Redwoods National Forest, and Yosemite. But it started to become difficult for my grandma to do so much hiking or long drives, and even more difficult for everyone to find the time off that aligned, let alone agree with what we wanted to do. My sister was always more of the, let's stay in a lodge and spend most of our days driving the park, looking for wildlife, or in air-conditioned museums, we're taking the occasional leisurely stroll.

While I craved more difficult, longer, faster-paced hikes and adventures, camping and roughing it a little. My dad was in the middle trying to appease us both. So along the trips growing up were so special to me, And I could tell you many stories from there, like how my sister is an expert manifester, and we encountered a baby black bear climbing a tree mere minutes after she said she wanted to see just that. Or how in the Grand Teton's we went back and forth the entire time on whether the moose welcoming us into the park was real or mechanical, and our running joke was, but I saw its head turn. And then we saw a real baby and mother moose standing in the river on the way to the airport in Bozeman, Montana. or when we had to cut our trip a day short in Yosemite due to the town going into COVID lockdown and the power going out in our verbo, forcing us to evacuate. But I digress.

So many national park adventures. So eventually I began planning my trips with adventurous friends and met my partner who is equally into and more experienced in adventure, camping, and road tripping as I am. Thus, in our first six months of dating, we planned a trip with a couple of my college friends who lived in Idaho to Utah's national parks. of Arches, then a road trip stopping at Bryce Canyon and Zion, with our final stop being L.A. to to visit some of my parents' family. In mid-August of 2003, we met up with our friends late the night of our arrival at the campground right outside of Arches in the small desert town of Moab.

The following day, we did probably the most popular and crowded hike in the park to see Delicate Arch. Tried to stay cool at the Moab Food Truck Park and did another amazing hike outside of the park in Moab to a small watering hole. It was full of people and children playing in water so we didn't go in. However, my partner saw a man with his dog walking up higher on a ridge alongside the trail, and we decided to check out where he was going. What he found was a beautiful, secluded pool of crystal clear water directly above the pool below that had a small waterfall leading into it. He waved me up from above, and hoping my friends didn't mind, I told them I was going to check it out and made my way up the ridge. My friend was having knee issue.

at the time, so we were taking it easy. When I got there, it was just him, and we had a beautiful few minutes alone waiting in the pool and gasping in awe over the view of the specialness of being up there, just the two of us. On our way back, we encountered some wild dogs, who we luckily saw quickly enough to back away from and ran into another braver hiker, who went right up to them and tried to pet one of them before it growled at him and the dogs sprinted off. After some much-needed rest in showers at the campground, we headed back into the park to embark on a stargazing mission. A co-worker had texted me telling me that there was going to be a meteor shower that night, so we were expecting to see some shooting stars, but we weren't expecting or prepared for what we

actually saw. We drove around for a while looking for a good spot where it wasn't too crowded, but where we wouldn't be completely isolated. We saw in the park brochure that there was a lookout off of the windows road that was great for stargazing. So we had, decided to check that out. As we pulled into the curved parking lot, we saw a couple of cars and some people camped out throwing around a frisbee. A man immediately started shouting for us to please turn off our lights, which we did after parking, but were slightly annoyed as he did this every time someone pulled up almost as soon as they entered the parking lot. We were like, dang, bro, give us a minute. But we just chuckled about it and let it go. Excited because the skies were clear and growing darker and

darker as the minutes went by, the sun fully set. It was gorgeous. We sat down on the edge of the curb and laid back on the rocky ground using our shirts and sweaters as cushions. We immediately saw several shooting stars and were ooing and awing quietly while using an app on our phones to look at the constellations. We could see the Milky Way more clearly than I ever had. I felt fully content being there with my friends and partner in the cool desert night air laying on our backs gazing at the wonders of the sky. After probably 15 to 20 minutes of hanging out there, we saw something unexpected. A trail of 12 bright lights that look like stars or planets in a perfect row moving in a diagonal line across the sky. They were literally in perfect formation moving in a line in unison.

We started to hear murmurs and gasps in the lot from the other people saying, Hey, do you see that? At the same time, my partner was pointing into the sky saying loudly and repeatedly, Guys, what the fuck is that? No, seriously, what the fuck is that? People were exclaiming in awe, gasping, laughing nervously. Someone called out, has anyone ever seen that before? We all said no and shook our heads in disbelief.

I watched as it began to fade into the Milky Way. It's going into the Milky Way, I exclaimed as I tried to capture photos of it. We didn't know what it was, but my mind immediately went to aliens and UFOs, some sort of extraterrestrial life. I was in awe, but also a little scared and was prepared for the sky to start melting or chaos to ensue. a UFO to beam us up, etc. My friend beside me, always a rationalist, said, guys, I think it's a satellite. She even pulled up an article to her phone.

But we were all too stunned and surprised by what we were seeing to think logically. My partner was like, I've never seen anything like that kind of satellite in my life. And I kept saying, but look at all the other satellites. They're so tiny and dim. There was no way that this was a satellite. Then we noticed a black SUV pull into the drive. A man got out and had a brief conversation with the group across. a lot from us. We heard him say,

oh yeah, that's just the Starlink satellite from Elon Musk, or something along those lines. I couldn't make out what else he said, but the people around us seemed to settle and the energy calmed. Then, to our surprise, the man just got right back into his car and drove away. He wasn't even there to Stargaze. It was like

he was on a mission to go tell everyone what it was, which seemed very suspicious to us and had my conspiracy and true partner definitely hinting at a government cover up. Even after we had a rational explanation, the excitement over the sighting still lingered in the air, and we laughed and joked about it for the rest of the trip, and even saw it again the next evening. After another full day and night of exploring arches and

Moab, my partner and I parted ways with my friends and continued our adventure to Bryce Canyon, which was by far my favorite park we visited, though they were all beautiful. It just had such a magical vibe to it, and our stay was nearly perfect. We did run into creepy vibes, however, when we drove up to Rainbow Point, the uppermost point in the park while the sun was setting, underestimating how long it would take to get there. When we did, it was completely pitch black and started to rain, thundering, echoing in the distance. We got out of the car for a few moments before getting the hebi-jeebies and running back into its enclosed safety. My partner said he felt like something was watching us.

After moving along and hiking at Zion for a day, we stayed at the beautiful, secluded hip camp outside the park, where we definitely heard, but thankfully didn't see, coyotes that came very close to our camp. I barely slept in the tent that night due to the sounds of critters outside our tent and feeling something hitting my foot through the tent and our air mattress slowly deflating through the night. Been there for sure. You were just there. I was just there the other night. I know how awful it is to wake up on the ground. In any case, the sun in the morning over the ranch and rock walls surrounding made it well worth this day.

We rounded out the trip in comfy, clean, and cool hotel rooms in Orange County, L.A., eating good food and spending time with my partner's. family. It was an amazing trip, and I will never forget the feeling of believing I was seeing something extraterrestrial, even though it turned out to be a very earthly thing. Satellite Internet. Yep, there it is. Even stranger, though, than the man in the black car, pulling up slowly to give us an explanation so shortly after we saw the satellite, was the fact upon our return, everyone seemed to know of it, and we're seeing it regularly. Both my mom and boss that day, I returned, said they had just seen it too. And my mom told me unprompted before I even told her the story. Literally no one had mentioned it or seemed to know about it before we left. It could just be that it was visible only at a

certain time or it was going through a test run or something. But my partner and I still talk about how strange and mysterious the whole thing felt and like to conjecture about conspiracy theories. Anyway, thanks so much for reading this if you do. I really enjoy the podcast. It has truly brought more depth and richness to my understanding of these parks, as well as inspired me and cautioned me to prepare better for my next adventures. As I write this, I'm preparing for a trip to Olympic and Mount Rainier with the same group of people and I'm hoping I come away with more trail tales to share, though nothing too crazy or terrifying. So with that, thank you for reading this and for creating such a great podcast. I've attached some photos of the trip and of the satellite, which you are free to share. Remember to always enjoy the view, but watch your back for strange things in the sky and men in black who swoop in with all two convenient explanations. Jenny. I agree that it's a cool memory to have even if you're like, oh, it's just a satellite, which I do think that I do understand that no one was talking about it. And then all of a sudden it felt like overnight everyone was talking about it.

And it must be because it was visible. Yeah. And it made like this grand appearance. I remember the first time I saw them because I was out camping too. And I was sitting around a campfire with a bunch of other people. And suddenly we all looked up, saw the string of life. and we're like, what is that? And for a minute, I was like, oh, my God, are those aliens? You know, and then someone was like, oh, that's Starlink. Those are the satellites. And then we were watching them and they

were there for a while. And then everyone started talking about them. And then I googled them because I was like, what are you talking about? Like, I've never seen this before my life. And sure enough, that Google Photos versus what I was seeing was like the exact same thing. I just Googled it because I've never seen it in real life. Okay. Yeah, I've never seen it before. But yeah, I definitely imagine seeing that in the sky and having no idea what it could possibly be. Like it definitely feels unearthly. Technology is crazy. But we live in a time now that it's just like, I don't know.

Like that the videos of the robots have been on my algorithm. Elon Musk's robots that come do your chores. Yeah. It's like has. Do we all remember I robot? Do we all remember Will Smith? We know what happens. What's about to happen.

Yeah. We know what's about to happen. Don't let one of those things in your house. Yeah. Well, everyone's going to let one into their house as soon as they can afford it. I would think. I'm not. Can you also afford it?

I don't know. How much is it cost? I don't know. I feel like a lot. It just seems creepy. There's also a creep factor to it. I don't want that shape like a person. What would you want it shaped like?

I don't know. Make it a dog that mops your floors. I don't know. Make it cute. Like a tall person. It's taller than me, I think. I don't want something like to beat the shit out of me in my own house. Yes.

Yeah. I don't know. What I was trying to say with that is like, I feel like the magic of the unknown and stuff is just kind of dissipating over time, especially as technology moves forward. Because I feel like now people are going to be like, oh, it's this new whatever. Because technology is so crazy now it could be. Anything. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime. Original's have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already

read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Okay, my first story is titled Conjuring the Spirits of the Adirondacks. Hi Danielle and Cassie. I've been following the show now for about four months, and I love how you cover national parks and people and tell their stories. As you can tell by my title, this isn't in a national park, but instead in the Adirondack Park of New York. I have been hesitant. I dabble in witchcraft and tarot cards. Let me know if you ever want a reading. I'll gladly do it for you all, free of charge as always. Anyways, as my title hints at, I did a little witchy stuff in the Adirondacks, and I paid the spooky price, or at least that's how it seems for my. eyes. I'm Stacy, feel free to use my name. I'm 33 years old and I have been practicing witchcraft

for about eight years and still to do to this day. I have no idea how I got so deep into the mess with spirits that led me to leave my... Actually, let me just start my story before I spoil it. This story takes place in June of 2024 in a primitive campsite in the Adirondacks. I don't want to give the exact location so others won't go there and try to communicate with spirits. But it was a simple one and a half mile hike in and it's located on a beautiful lake. I got there and set up my hammock and rainfly and built a small fire. I did the only logical thing and went for a swim in the awesome lake, came back, hung my clothes up with the 50 feet of rope I brought, thank you, to harbor freight. I changed and did some grounding exercises to get close to the earth. Then I did a tarot read

for myself and got the high priestess. Pretty much the best card in the deck and yes to a question. I asked out loud, are there any spirits here that wish to contact me? And then drew that card. Excitedly, I did a quick protection spell and re-grounded myself to try and connect with the spirits that wanted to speak. I couldn't get them to vocally communicate, but I asked them to touch my right or left arm for yes or no responses. And it worked. I asked simple questions, like, are you okay? Do you need help moving on, etc. I then closed the session and thanked Spirit for talking. It was sundown when the spooky stuff began. A random storm rolled in that didn't show up on my phone, but as the old saying goes, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. I was tucked in my hammock reading a book and the rain

finally let off. I put my fire out and tried again to make a new one and got it going and it was super smoky as wet wood doesn't like to burn all too well. My clothes that were dry on the line were soaked again. I was semi-dry and debated about going back, which I probably should have, but decided to stay. It was about nine o'clock now and the sun had set, but there was still a little. bit of light in the sky. I managed to dry some of the wood and figured I could leave the next day, since navigating at night wasn't my forte. I snuggled into my sleeping bag in my hammock, and the wind just cranked up out of nowhere. I chanted another protection spell and closed my eyes. I could hear my fire whipping and burning hot behind the thin hammock wall. The wind died back down and all was normal,

crickets chirping, and all that. I knew it was going to be a long night because I clearly pissed off something that I couldn't see, nor did I understand. I'm now seriously contemplating leaving and taking my chances walking the woods to my car. I laid down and zipped up my sleeping bag and clutched my phone and closed my eyes. I finally fell asleep, but had the worst dreams I've ever had of something chasing me down in the woods that was trying to drown me in the nearby lake. It then let me go when I reached my car as it was clawing at the windows trying to get in. A window broke and I was abruptly awoken from my dream gasping as I bounced around in my hammock. Notice how I said,

bounced around. The next part, I literally cannot make up if I tried. Either it was a human or something supernatural. I woke up in my sleeping bag, in my hammock, completely cocooned in the damn thing. I was kind of mummified in it. The rope that I had used to hang my clothes was wrapped all around the hammock with me inside of it. My legs, torso, arms, everything was stuck inside of this hammock, as I struggled, I felt something touching my face, and it was the end of the rope. It wasn't knotted,

but it was looped under a few courses of rope. I bit down in my struggling frenzy and shook myself loose and got out of the hammock as fast as I could. It took me about 10 minutes of panicking and struggling to finally get free. I've never taken things down so fast and packed my soaking clothes, which were now on the ground, laid out as if the rope was lowered down and taken from the spot. I got back to my car as the sun was breaking the night sky, and I tried. I tried to chucked everything in the passenger seat of my forester and went home. I cried that entire way, but never, ever told anyone about it until now. I did another protection spell and have not returned to that site or done anything else trying

to contact spirits since then. I also have not had any issues at home involving spirits. Love you both. Thank you for all you do. And for God's sakes, don't mess with spirits in the Adirondacks. Love Stacy. So they just like whipped her up in her. That's so scary.

I can't. Right. tie. She's essentially tied up. If it's wrapped around her like that. Yeah. That's so scary. Is that freaky? That's so freaky. I would. At first I was like, okay, you did say that there was wind happening. But wrapped around you so like precisely. Yeah. And all the, the close would just be like laid down on the ground perfectly. That's, I don't know. It's. No. No. The worst part about the story is that I am going to the Adirondacks in a couple of weeks. And now I'm scared. Oh, yeah, you are. Well, are you going to be conjuring spirits? Probably not. Probably not. Knowing you. Knowing

myself, I probably will not be not be doing that. But yeah, so I think you're safe. But you can do like a protection spell regardless. I'm going to be Googling protection spells for sure. Okay. All right, my next story is titled, He's Sitting Right Over There Can't You See Him? No. No. All right. Hi, NPAD.

I'm Sam, and you can use my name. I've been a huge fan of the podcast for over a year now and have almost completely caught up. I feel like we have been friends for the last year. I have laughed with you, cried with you, mourned with you, and been scared during ghost stories in my shower. or have creepy men on my hikes with you. That being said, let me tell you my tale. This was not in a national park, but in a cemetery in Indiana. My grandmother died about a week before my third birthday in 2004.

I don't remember much about her, but have always felt so connected to her through exploring our Appalachian heritage, specifically East Tennessee. As you know, we are very superstitious. About a year after her passing, we went to visit her grave. My mama, dad, and my little brother, who was two at the time, were there. I called my parents to get the details straight, and here is what they said. We were standing by Grandma's grave when I turned around, pointed up a hill behind us, and said, Why is that man sitting there alone?

My dad turned around to an empty cemetery and said, who? I told him there was a man sitting there all by himself. My parents both looked at the empty hill and laughed a little, telling me that nobody was there. I insisted that a man was sitting there and began describing him. I told my parents he was in a red chair, wearing a jean shirt, had a beard, and was holding a drink. They continued to assure me that nobody was there, but I continued to press on that a man was there in a red chair. After a little while, we decided to head home. My dad loaded us all up in the vehicle and decided we would go look up the hill because he thought it would be funny.

Obviously, nobody was there, so what's the harm? My dad described climbing up the hill and seeing nothing but an empty cemetery. And when he looked down to walk back to us, something caught his eye. A headstone laying on the ground with a small picture of a man with a beard, holding a beer, wearing a denim shirt, and sitting in a red chair. No, no. The chills I just got. He came down the hill and told my mama what he saw. We hadn't walked past that way.

We parked very close to my grandma's grave. there was no way I could have seen him. Years later, my grandfather passed and we were bearing him next to my grandma. We were all heartbroken and in an attempt to lighten the mood, my dad told me, You better not see a ghost this time. That reminded me of the story, so I went to check on that man and wanted to pay my respects. I found his grave and told him that I hope he had found peace in the afterlife. I took a picture of the headstone to research when I got home.

Roger had passed in 1999 at 26 years old after completing suicide. I looked up his obituary today to refresh my memory, and his sister posted a tribute to him. On my birthday, what a coincidence, saying that he was loved and missed. I will attach a picture of his headstone so his memory will live on through you and your listeners. Roger, I hope you have found peace, your friend, Sam. Wow. That is so cool. You definitely saw him.

Why can't? That happened to me. Yeah, you definitely saw him for sure. Yeah. It's so specific to the exact. same setup as in the photo. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing else that could have been. Yeah. We all know. Yeah. And kids see things that they're attuned. Yeah. Or younger people. Adults. For sure. Yeah, for sure. Okay. My second story is titled, Not Even Kind of a Trail. Perfect.

Hi, ladies. This is actually my third submission. What can I say? I've lived a bit of a crazy life. The first two were legitimate trail tales, but this one has nothing to do with the outdoors, animals, or National Parks. It's just some spooky stuff that happened to me that I knew you guys would get a kick out of. For some context, I served in the Marine Corps for nine years. My first deployment to Afghanistan ended rather abruptly after I was shot while on a mission and flown home to recover from multiple injuries. Along with the many surgeries, physical and occupational therapy, there were many side effects like poor sleep, nightmares, and so on. With all of this, there was one experience in particular that will forever stand out to me as the most startling.

I was asleep in my hospital bed, exhausted and recovering from a long surgery earlier that day. I was in a deep sleep but had a lucidity that made me aware of my body outside of myself. It was as if I was watching myself from the side of my hospital bed. In the state of awareness, I was able to witness as Marines who were represented by different uniforms from past and present appeared out of nowhere and began. to walk towards me circling my bedside. They were silent and calm, I would say even peaceful. I knew they had no ill intent towards me, but I also knew that they were there to take me with them. They were serving as escorts to the afterlife, intending on guiding me to stand alongside them in the prestigious history of the Marines who had died before me. I am not a religious person, but I am

spiritual and I felt their presence as real and as tangible as any physical experience I'd ever had before. They were absolutely real. As they began to draw nearer to my bedside, I was suddenly met with a decision. Do I surrender to this or do I fight and stay? Obviously, I stayed. I woke up to the sound of myself, screaming bloody murder and grasping at the air, desperately trying to plant myself in the real world. I wouldn't say internally I was scared. I think instead my own mortality was suddenly put into sharp focus, and I knew I didn't want to go just yet. So I woke up swinging like a lunatic, frightening all the attending nurses and my current partner who was sleeping on the couch in my room.

The poor guy must have been terrified as I was wide-eyed and babbling about, they're here, they're here. Luckily, I calmed down shortly thereafter and was never visited again by these Marines, but in a way more insane twist, I have met other present-day veterans who have had a nearly identical experience to mine. Following combat injuries, they were visited by the same marine escorts and summoned. They corroborate my descriptions of the varied uniforms, the feeling of calmness, and even the fact that it felt completely real. I feel deeply honored to have bore witness to this phenomenon and even more privileged to still be here and to share my story. Thank you so much to you ladies for all you do. Hopefully I won't have any more trail tales for the future. I wouldn't mind some less intense experiences, Amber.

Wow. I think that's the first near-death experience we've had submitted. I agree. We've had third man factor experiences. We've had signs and synchronicity stories. And this is the first, yeah, NDE experience we've ever had written to us. Yeah. Wow. What a, I think it's so interesting hearing stories like this because there are so many that have a similar story where they're asked if they're ready to go or come back. And obviously the people who come back have these. stories. So to hear that reiterated and then with such a military base around it as like your brothers and sisters came for you after you succumb to a battle. Like it's just like it's very, it's very interesting to hear. Yeah. Have I told you though my dad's NDE? I think it was an NDE. No. It's really short. So I'll share it. This was a few months before he actually died, which makes it even more like, Oh, spooky.

And he said that he was laying in his bed and he was asleep. And he had an experience where, so his physical body was laying down, but he sat up. So like he and he looked behind him. So like his legs were still in his legs, but like his torso and everything was like kind of like a 90 degree angle just sitting up. And he remembers looking back at himself. And then he looked at the foot of his bed and there was a man standing there at really. really tall man with a tall, dark top hat. And he was silent and didn't say anything for a bit until my dad, like, adjusted to his presence. And then he put out his hand and said, well, are you

coming? And my dad was like, I felt like I had a decision to make. And I got scared. And I laid back down into my body and like absorbed back into my body and then came to. Wow. That's so. And did he like wake up feeling weird at all, like sick or... He said he... No, he said that he came to or woke up feeling like he wasn't even asleep. He was like that. It felt so real. Like it wasn't a dream.

It was just a different type of experience. Wow, that's so interesting. And then he actually did pass away a few months later. Wow. Yeah. So I think there's something to that of like, I think in a lot of situations, situations, especially if you're young or what people would consider before your time, I feel like you're faced with some sort of decision like that.

Yeah. And I think that there are some points in time where your physical body just can't, like, there is no option. Yeah. Like there is no option to come back. It is your time. Yeah. But I remember it's just so interesting because I, the first thing.

that I said to Ian in the hospital room before anybody else was able to make it. I was just like in my mind pleading with him. I was like, if you are somewhere right now where you are able to come back, like, please come back. And I just kept like it was just so vivid in my mind of like, I know you're in a, you can make a decision right now, I think. So like please come back. It's like there's still time to choose to come back. Right. And then literally like 20, 20 minutes later, the doctor came in and he said, I can tell you with 100% certainty, he can never physically recover from this. So even like, he will be in a vegetative state in his entire rest of his life if he survives. You know, like his physical body just was literally unable to

continue on. So I feel like in those situations, it's different. But in situations like Amber's where you just had like a significant injury or a surgery or whatever, I don't know. Every NDE I've ever heard, people explain this of like feeling like they have this choice to make. And they're either, they either make it for themselves or they're like, oh, no, I want to stay. And they're like, nope, not your time. And they get like shoved back into their body. Yeah. I've definitely heard that reversed option as well where they're like, oh, wow, this does seem really nice.

I'll keep going. And then whoever's on the other side is like, nope, just showing you, get them. back in there. Face palm, back. Not yet. Just something to look forward to, but go on back. I know. You imagine, oh, my God, the way that your life changes after something like that.

Yeah. Like, you guys don't even get it. It's so much better over there. And I have to come back to this hellhole. Anyway. Okay. All right. My next story is titled Spooky Voices on the AT.

Hi, Cassie and Danielle. My name is Ella, and I've been a long time listening. of your podcast. You ladies have been my go-to listen on all of my adventures since I found you all in 2022. I recently finished my solo through hike of Appalachian Trail, Appalachian Trail, two weeks ago, which as you can imagine, yielded a ton of trail-worthy stories. Congratulations. That's amazing. Big accomplishment. Yes. Before I go into my story, I have to share this tidbit of serendipity that pertains to both one of your episodes and the start of my through hike. I'm from Maine, and for the longest time have been dying for you to cover the story of Don Fendler.

He is a complete legend in our state, and I actually got to meet him in elementary school when he came to do a big book signing. Sadly, he has passed on, but even at age nine, I was able to tell that he was an extremely kind and caring human being. A while back, y'all put on a request on your Instagram story for suggestions, and I recommended that you cover this story in Baxter State Park. Coincidentally, you released that the very day I was flying down to Georgia to start my hike at Springer Mountain. I got to listen to an extra special episode of my favorite podcast on the

bus ride down to the airport that day. It felt like the universe was looking out for me as I was questioning my life choices. Anyway, onwards to the original story. This all takes place on the section of the Appalachian Trail in Maine between Saddleback and Sugarloaf Mountain, roughly around mile 2000. For the majority of my time on the trail, I had been hiking alone. I don't entirely know if this is rumor or fact, but some other hikers had alluded that down in Georgia, the gender makeup of through hikers this year, based on statistics from an online registration called AT Camp, was around 75 to 90% male and 10 to 25% female. This largely, at least for me, remained the case for the rest of my five months I was on the

trail. I have nothing bad to say about any of my male counterparts. I absolutely adore them, but I got a little sick of sharing a hotel room with six guys. Fair. So imagine my relief when exactly five months. and around 1,980 miles into my hike, I met another girl my age. She ended up being one of the other two other 21-year-old girls I met out there. Upon the first time running into each other, we spent the whole rest of the day chatting away,

apparently both feeling afflicted by social isolation. We decided to both camp at the same places, at least until we reached the next hostel in Straton, Maine. The rest of the day we spent together was amazing and honestly proved to be one of my favorite days on the trail. We talked to a hot ridge runner for almost an hour about the shocking amount of calories we could put away and ran into a lady and pet her pigeon. Odd, I know, still trying to unpack that one. We ended up spending the night together at Poplar Ridge Shelter right after Saddleback Mountain. The weather the next morning proved to not be as beautiful as the day before, but cool and misty weather on the trail wasn't the worst. Pye Queen, the other girl I was hiking with, and I decided to

try to increase our mileage for the day. That way, we could make it to the hostel earlier the next day. We left around 7.30 in the morning, which now integrated back into regular life feels early, but that was quite a late start on the trail. All the other older men, which was the typical shelter crowd at the AT, had left closer to six, so we were utterly alone when we set off. We ended up hiking around eight miles at a shockingly faster pace than we had anticipated, which meant we could sit around at lunch for longer than an hour than we normally would. I filled up on water and we sat inside the shelter hoping that the mist that had blanketed

the forest would burn off in the late afternoon. Around 12.30, if I remember correctly, we set off again. We had only been hiking for about 30 minutes when we hit a steep ascent and we both put our heads down to truck on. Then, out of nowhere, we heard a woman's voice say, hello? It was loud and it sounded very monotone, like there was no emotion behind the voice, but it was definitely someone talking. Pye Queen looked back at me confused. Did you say something? I shook my head also confused. I thought that was you, I responded. Our eyes widened and we both sped up the hill pretending like we didn't just hear a disembodied voice. The next day at the hostel, we were checking up with another hiker and recounted the story.

He was immediately convinced we heard a skinwalker and started giving us the whole missing 411 talk, which Pye Queen and I decided to not listen to. Hell no, dude, I still have to hike alone for another 200 miles. I'll forget about the disembodied voice for now and finish my hike in peace. Thank you very much. I finished the trail on August 12th with Pye Queen and two other through hikers and my mom who'd join me for the last 120 miles. The re-entry into life was hard. The trail is a complete suffer fest, but the utter simplicity of life, the community, and the connections to the natural world cannot be replicated anywhere else.

I still miss it dearly to this day. Completing the IT and going back to regular life hurt worse than any breakup. A few weeks later, while I was packing to leave for school, I received a text from Pye Queen that read, So you know how we heard that disembodied voice say hello in Maine? Well, a woman died after leaving the Poplar Ridge leaned to, which is the one we stayed at the night before that day, getting lost in the woods and running out of food. Spooky coincidence. No shit. She then proceeded to send me a link to the New York Times article on the matter.

I'm spared most of the details because I, for some reason, feel as though you ladies have briefly talked about her story before and maybe said you were planning to do an episode on it. In short, her name was Geraldine Large and on July 22nd, 2013, she accidentally got off the trail and became lost. She waited nearly a month for help, yet was never found even though she was less than a mile or two from the trail. She recorded her experience all the way up until her passing in a journal. Her remains alongside all her gear and her journal were recovered by a logging company survey or almost two years later. This story proved as both a haunting reminder of wilderness preparedness and all, also a perplexing coincidence. I know this story is a bit long, but I would be so honored if you guys read it.

Thank you so much for all you guys do. All the love, Ella. I mean, I don't know how many times we have to say it. There's no such thing as coincidences. Right? Especially for you both to hear it at the same time. Yeah. In that particular area.

And it's a woman's voice. And you went out of your way to explain and lay the groundwork that, you know, mostly it was men on the trail that you were encountering. And I don't know. It just there's a lot of, hmm, that's strange. Yeah. Little pieces to that story. Something's going on over there.

Yeah. But yes, you're right. We are going to cover that story at some point. Yes. In the future. At some point. For sure. Okay.

My next story is titled The Finger. It's not what you think. The ghost or lake monster of Lake Warren, question mark. Dear Cassie and Danielle, I'm an avid listener of your podcast and have listened to every episode at least twice. Wow. Thank you. Wow. Thank you so much. As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in nature, I wonder if I have a trail tale to tell. Probably not, because my experience is pretty ordinary. I grew up in New Hampshire and spent my summers at a family compound, really a bunch of small camps owned by my grandparents. The property is fairly

remote on a dirt road about 20 minutes from Key New Hampshire. Summers at the lake were magical. We, my siblings, cousins, and I grew up feral, running. through the woods, shoeless and dirty. We hiked and explored the trails and logging roads lined by birch trees. We would dig for treasures and old cellar holes in the woods, former homes and former fields outlined by stone walls. We built a triple-decker treehouse in the woods alongside the water, spying on adults and sometimes scaring them from the trees as they passed by on their boats. We were no strangers to wild animals, deer, bobcat, fisher cats, beavers, chipmunks, bear, snakes, salamators, toads, snapping turtles, and fish. They were all apart,

of the nature that we loved and cherished. I'm grown now. I used to have the opportunity to visit when I lived in New York City, and the area is the same. There are now Amazon trucks barreling down our dirt road, and we have cell service and internet, but it is still an enclave of natural habitat that is special and I hope will never change.

Now I live in Austin, Texas, and the climate is harsh. I miss hiking in the nature of New England. I fantasized about the summers I had as a kid, and I hope that one day I'll be able to spend my summers like that. again. Free without a care in the world. I usually plan a hiking trip to Big Bend, Paulo Duro, or New Mexico, but this year, I decided to book a trip to Scotland. While it isn't a hiking trip per se, I can't wait to see Wild Scotland. I hope to hike the West Highland Way next year. As a part of my trip planning for this trip, I made sure that I

made time to visit Aberdeen and Loch Ness. I've always dreamed of finding Nessie or the Loch Nossi. When a co-worker asked about my obsession with Nessie, it brought me back to my childhood summers at the lake. There we had a monster of our own called the finger. We, my sisters, friends, and cousins would often take out our rowboat or canoe and paddle the lake at dusk. The choppy waters would turn to glass and we would search the shores of the lake for lily pads, frogs, or turtles. We would check the progress of the beaver dams and eat wild blueberries that grow on the edge of the lake. Or we would just putter around the lake as kids do. One day, we noticed it. It was a brown, stickler.

like thing protruding from the water. When we paddled towards it, it started to move, leaving behind a trace of water on the smooth lake. That was weird, I said to whoever I was with. We didn't think much about it until we continued to see this thing follow our boat at dusk. By now, all of the kids had seen it and were equally fascinated and totally freaked out by its presence. To explain this phenomenon, we decided that it was the ghost of someone who had died on the lake. See, there was this rumor that there had been an old lake side hotel in the area in the late 1800s to early 1900s. The hotel had a paddle boat that would take tourists around the lake. The rumor was that it capsized, people drowned, and the boat was at the bottom of this very lake.

Aside, this is an absurd story, and the lake is a tiny pond, really, and very shallow, and if a boat of any size capsized there, it would have already been recovered. We decided to call the apparition the finger and decided, indeed, it was the finger of a ghost of someone from the boating accident walking back and forth, back and forth along the bottom of the lake. The weekend after I booked my trip to Loch Ness, I decided I wanted to validate my story about the finger, so I took to Facebook and tagged my sister and my cousins just in case this was a figment of my imagination. All of them replied with their very own memories of being taunted by the finger. They all insist, as I do, that the finger was indeed real. I did ask my mom if she remembered and she said yes, and that she and the rest of the adults thought that we were all making it up. Whether there was a logical explanation for this, maybe it was a turtle, a snake, or an eel,

or maybe the ghost of someone who really did drown in the lake, we will never know. I do hope to glimpse Nessie on my upcoming trip and tell her that her cousin from New Hampshire says hello. I will let you know how that turns out. I love the show and keep doing what you're doing. Enjoy the view, but watch your back because you never know when a lake monster or ghost might be following you. Your fellow New Hampshireite. Is that cute?

That is really cute. Such a cool story. It just like brings me back to childhood. Yeah. So hard. Yeah. I agree. Just like, I don't know.

And then reaching out to your like cousin and being like, hey, this was real, right? Like we really did have that memory together. Right. I didn't just like make that up. Yeah. And it's so cool to have childhood lore. Like it's just, it makes life so interesting and rich. And your imaginations are just so much more active.

And you have a lot bigger sense of wonder about the world. And I don't know. I just think it was a cool story. I know it's probably, it was probably something very natural. But it's just fun. Who knows? Maybe not. Maybe not.

Yeah, that's right. Well, thank you, everyone, for sharing your story. Again, if you want to send in your own, you can go over to our website, npadepodcast.com, and you can submit your story there. We do have two more today for stories that will be on our Patreon page. Mine is titled UFTA. It was definitely not a moose. And mine is titled Friend or Foe. And, yeah, our Apple subscribers and Patreon subscribers will get access to these two bonus stories.

And so let's go tell them. Yeah, let's go tell them. If you're interested in our Patreon, we just revamped a bunch of stuff last month. We have a book club on there. We have a lot of bonus content. We do bonus live streams. It's a fun time. Go check it out. But for everyone else, we will see you. If you're not going to join us on Patreon, we will see you next time. Enjoy the view. If you refuse. If you refuse us, we can, we'll still have more stuff for you as well. But just in the next episode. So enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at Stories at npadpodcast.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 npaddpodcast.com. And please rate, review, and subscribe from wherever you listen to podcasts.

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