National Park After Dark - Trail Tales 6

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Today’s stories include stumbling across a body, cries for help, a ghostly encounter, camping in a graveyard, Icelandic lore, and a scary encounter … with a chicken? All tales shared with consent. 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 to gain access to ad-free episode, 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!   Magic Spoon: Use the code NPAD for $5 off your orderReel: Use code NPAD for 30% off your first order 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 Springs 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, everybody. Welcome back to National Park after dark, another Trail Tales episode. Easily my favorite, I think. It's just so fun. I love these. Yes, we love hearing these stories from you. And again, you all sent in these really wild and awesome stories. And you sent a lot of lighthearted ones this time, which we really liked. So we're going to read some of those. And we just have a lot of cool stories today. And we're stoked to tell them. Your stories. We're stoked to tell your stories. And before we get started,

last call for the Crescent Hotel Spirited Stays moment. It's just around the corner. So stoked for it. Very excited. We're going to have a ghost meter to see if it reads anything. I don't know. Oh, my God. Actually, look, it came.

You have it right there. She's holding it right now. This is it. It lights up. And I don't actually. Well, yeah. We got to figure out how to use it before we go. I'm turning it off because I don't want it to go bizarre.

I'm home alone. And I don't want it to like do anything freak out. And yeah. Okay. I'm just going to place it right over there. But we're so stoked for this moment. It's going to be really cool. We have some really fun stories that we're telling.

We do our own little ghost tour ourselves. So we'll tell you our experience there. And there's a lot of haunted history there. So this is going to be totally different from our first moment because we did survival stories and a little bit of like morbid desert stories. And now we're going full fled into hauntings and crazy history. So it's going to be a lot of. fun. You can get your tickets at momenthouse.com slash NPAD or through our links on Instagram,

Facebook. It's on our Twitter. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's all the places. Oh, and fun thing that we're doing after, we're doing a little after party where we're going to answer questions that you all have. So we're going to talk about the podcast. We're going to talk about hiking gear. We're going to talk about fun places to go venture out into. Really, whatever questions you have, we are going to take 30 minutes after the show to answer all of them. So that's another portion of the show that's really exciting. Yeah, and we hope to see everyone there. But now we have some stories to share.

And once again, so difficult to narrow them down. But I picked three, Cassie has three. And who wants to go first? I do. We got a... Okay. I want to go first. And it's because we got a message.

We got like, it was like a frantic message. It was all capital letters. And it was like, this just happened to me right now. I need to tell this story. story. And they labeled it as all capital letters. I found a decomposing body in the woods yesterday. It really just grabbed our attention. Yeah. How do you not open that email? It's like, oh my God, what do you mean? So we're going to tell this story. Before I go into this first trail tale that we received, I just want to say a warning that this one is graphic and it's pretty scary. So if it's

something that you aren't interested in hearing about, I would suggest skipping over it because it is a little graphic, but just wanted to give a heads up. They wrote, Hi, my fiancee and I love y'all's podcast. We listen to a few every time we go camping or even when we have a fireout back. This story takes place just yesterday, March 5th, 2022 in Austin, Texas. Not a national park, but a local trail. I, Murphy, a 31 year old male, have spent a lot of time in the woods camping or hiking. I was in the Army for four years and that gave me tons of outdoor time as well. I have backpacked Big Bend

National Park in November and last year alone spent over a month camping. I would like to think that I'm pretty knowledgeable with the outdoors. May that be building shelters or fire or even know how to build some traps and snares. So to say the least, I love the woods. Yesterday in Austin, we had some nice weather for the first time in a few weeks. I wanted to take advantage of it. With my fiance having to go to work, it would be a solo trip to one of our many local trails. I always try and get off the beaten path when I go out. I want to see things others don't. Well, yesterday, I did just that. About a mile or so into my hike, I turned down three smaller trails and I come up to a small hill.

Maybe 10 feet or so just enough so I couldn't see the ground to the top. I walk up and see a sweatshirt lying on the trail. I think nothing of it as we have a big homeless population here. I walk past it, about 10, 15 feet up the trail, cuts to the left a little bit. Looking ahead of me where the turn is, I see a dead armadillo. If you've ever seen a dead one, they curl up into a small ball, sometimes. So this is what I was seeing. Tons of flies all over it, but the color was off. Something wasn't right. I kept looking as I walked the turn to get another look. There was no feet. This was no animal.

I knew what it was, but I had to confirm. I stood there for a moment and walked into the woods, got down and looked at it. It was a half-rodded human skull. I won't get into the details, but seeing and smelling a skull half-decomposing was mortifying to say the least. I jumped up and I called 911. While on the phone with them, I see something else about five feet away under a tree. A small, shallow grave that the animals had started getting at. I could tell right away that the rest of the remains were most likely in that spot. I had called my brother in shock as I had to walk to the trailhead to find the cops since I was so far back. First thing he said was, don't hang around, get out of there. He was right. I started walking out and I hear it. Huge branches snapping behind me.

I have spent enough time out in Austin to know what certain sounds are. We don't have bears or mountain lions, no wolves. The biggest we have are coyotes and deer. Whatever this was, it was big and fast. Most likely a person, I thought right away. I pulled my knife out and ran for my life, yelling at my brother what trail I was on in case it went silent. I could hear this person.

This thing chasing me, the crunch of the leaves and the branches were coming after me. I just kept running and did the classic movie mistake. I fell. Knife went flying, phone goes flying and smashes, but it's still on. I grabbed them both, get up, and run until I can't run anymore. I finally see a family ahead and I know that I'm not alone. I wanted to cry, throw up all of it. I didn't know what to feel. Whatever or whoever it was had left. I met the cops and walked three of them down and sure enough, they found a shallow grave in the woods. The skull looked to have a bullet hole in it. It has now hit the news in Austin as of last night, but I can't get over the fact of knowing something or someone was coming after me,

and I can only imagine the outcome if they had caught me. Always remember, watch your back. Holy shit. Imagine, that's so scary. There's a lot of layers to that as far as it being frightening. Number one, the actual discovery, the panic that ensues after that, seeing it obviously in multiple places and in various stages of decomposition, and then the whole chase or whatever that was.

I'm very interested to see, you know, obviously this is just so recent, especially at the time that we're recording this. I wonder if anything will ever come of that. Yeah, or if anything has, because I haven't really checked the news and I just think about it. And they didn't specify exactly where they were. But part of why I think it's important to tell this trail tale is that if someone in the Austin area, like, was around this area or they saw or they know what we're talking. about based on news reports you saw after this. Like, who knows? You know, like someone might know something. So I think that's something to keep in mind. And I mean, the fact of finding something like that and then feeling like you're being chased. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, my God. I can't even

imagine. Especially someone who has spent significant time in the outdoors has a certain level of comfortability and was in the armed forces. If you're scared, I can't even imagine what I would feel in that situation. So, wow, that was a scary one. And I have a scary one too in a different kind of way. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals 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. Hi, Cassie and Danielle. Hi. Thank you both for all you do. My friend introduced me to your podcast starting with the Lightning Strike and Jenny Lake Ranger's story and I have been a huge fan ever since. Your fantastic storytellers, I thoroughly enjoy every episode and the range of emotions and new insights each one offers.

In particular, when you discuss the instinctual gut feeling of dread and knowing something is terribly wrong that many of these people in terrible situations experience really stuck out to me and reminded me of something I hadn't thought of in a while that I would like to share. Fair warning. This story is not uplifting or necessarily a pleasant one, and I've never spoken to anyone about this other than the ones that were with me at the time. Here's my tale. About eight years ago, I went on a month and a half long road trip during the summer. with my two best friends. For the majority of our trip, we were tent camping in national forests. We weren't stopping by facilities or places with showers, and as a result, we stayed clean by bathing in rivers, creeks, and bodies of water along our path. None of us remember exactly where we were when this happened. However, we all agree that it was somewhere in Northern California. We spotted a swimming spot with a beautiful, blue, almost clear water that we noticed had an area to park in above it

and a trail leading down. There were a couple of cars in. the parking lot at the time. We parked, walked down, swam for a bit, and had an amazing time. When we got back, a large RV van was parked next to us. It looked old and weathered. The inside and outside, I can only describe as incredibly sketchy. It had curtains that were old and torn, and it just seemed to be cluttered with stuff, although we couldn't really see inside of it. I believe we saw the man or owner of the vehicle walking down as we were getting back to our car, so we presumed that it was empty. I'm not entirely sure what we were doing,

either making some food to eat or trying to plan out our next destination. Regardless, we were sitting in our parked car right next to the van with our doors open. Then, I heard something that gives me chills to this day. It sounded like an extremely strained voice of a little girl crying out, help me. It gives me goosebumps and absolutely gut-wrenching feeling even retelling this story. I looked at my friends wide-eyed and asked them if they had heard, the same thing. One of them did, but my other friend did not. We didn't know what to do. We were trying to rationalize what we had just heard and looking at the van again, we knew something was terribly wrong.

While we wanted to take action, we tried to consider the situation logically. None of us had cell phone reception and the nearest ranger station was more than a few miles away. We were in a remote area, we had no weapons to defend ourselves, and we didn't want to start some vigilante investigation and attempt to break into the RV ourselves out of fear that the man may return at any moment and could quite potentially become extremely dangerous. We thought we might hear the voice again, but we didn't. We waited to see what would happen when the man returned. He got in and just drove off.

We watched the direction, he went, and we immediately left to go to the nearest ranger station. We told them what we had experienced and urged them to locate that van, as we all felt that something was definitely not right. I honestly have no idea if they took what we said seriously and investigated, but I hope that they did. And I hope if there was someone suffering that they were able to find help. I wish we had done more and acted in a more courageous manner. However, hindsight is always 2020 and things unfolded the way that they did. If you are out there, I hope you are happy, healthy, and safe.

Thank you again for all your hard work in creating this podcast. They're interesting, tragic, humbling, inspirational, informative, entertaining, thought and emotion provoking and so much more. Seriously, thank you, Spencer. That story gives me chills. That's so, like, devastating and scary at the same time. The word that comes to mind for me is heavy. Yeah. Not only is the situation heavy, but just the feelings that Spencer and their friends are carrying with them. Like the whole, like, what ifs, what was that? Did we really hear that? If we did and it was real what happened, just a heavy feeling. Yeah, like who was that and what was going on? I do totally get it. I totally get it. The vigilante investigation while it's tempting and maybe if the situation was different,

they did have weapons. They were in a better situation. They could call for help. There are so many other things that if they were aligned in a different way, things could have gone differently. But I, I mean, I understand. Yeah, it's hard to be. It's hard. It's scary. That's what it comes down to is that, like, you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know the type of person that you're confronting. And you like, you just, you just don't know. And that part makes things very scary. Exactly. So that one, like, brought me down. And it's older. I have been keeping that one for a while. I think we got this in, like, October. Oh, wow. Or November. We've had it for a really long time. Yeah. So if you haven't heard your trail tail, it doesn't mean it's not going to pop up here. Yeah. So anyway, do you have a lighter one or? Um, yeah, uh, kind of. Yeah, it's a little lighter.

Bring me up. Bring me up. I don't know if it's lighter. But we'll go into this one. This one is called My Parents stayed at the Banff Springs Hotel. Oh, yeah. I feel like it's later already. Yeah. And if you guys haven't listened already, we did do an entire episode on the Banff Springs Hotel and the hauntings there. This email that we got says, hey ladies, I recently discussed. your podcast and have been binging it while recovering from a knee injury and have already joined your Patreon. Hey, hello. Welcome.

So I can listen to the episodes there once I'm caught up. It's quickly becoming my favorite podcast. So now why I'm emailing. My parents married in November 1977, but waited to have their honeymoon until the following year when my dad's schedule was supposed to open up. Well, that ended up not happening, but my dad, ever the romantic, asked his work if he his wife could come with him on one of his upcoming business trips to Banff. They agreed and even gave them an additional day so they could have an actual vacation.

For four days, they stayed at the Fairmont-Bamp Spring Hotel in room 773 right below, room 873. And if you remember in our episode that we did, room 873 is supposedly a room that is very haunted. Their first night there, they were awoken in the middle of the night to yelling, screaming, and loud thudgeoning. above them. They called down to the desk and were told the issue would be handled. Within 30 minutes, the sound stopped and they went back to sleep. The second night, they were woken by the same noises and again called the desk. This time they told them, no one is in the room above you. My dad told the person at the desk that someone must have found their way in there. He was told they'd look into it again and the sound stopped shortly after the call ended. On the third night, when it happened again,

my mom said that she was going to handle this. Not knowing what she might be interrupting, my dad went with her, only to be greeted by a wall where the room should be. Thinking it must be a large suite, they knocked on the closest door. When the door opened, it was an elderly couple. As my mom put it, they looked frazzled. My mom asked them what they were doing to cause so much noise, but the couple said that it wasn't them.

But they had heard the noises too. This was their first night in the room, so couldn't explain the previous nights. But also, my parents glanced around their room. It was obvious that if there were any shared ceiling slash floor space, it wasn't large enough to hear everything that they had heard. The following morning, my mom demanded she speak to someone who could put an end to the disturbing nightly noise. The manager said that there was no room directly above them and couldn't explain the noise,

but that no one else had made a noise complaint. They ended up moving my parents to a different room for their final night, but my mom wasn't going to let it rest. Since the noise had happened around the same time each night, she went to the floor earlier and was ready to confront the noise maker, even if it ended up being the sweet elderly couple. Around 1215, she was in place, but no sound came. She paced the halls and tried to listen into rooms. Suddenly, she felt an immense cold and swore she could feel someone staring at her. She turned around, but no one was there.

And then, clear as a bell, heard the voice of a woman whisper in her ear, run. She didn't need to be told twice and returned to her room. My dad didn't believe her and said she had just gotten worked up. Years later, she watched a documentary about haunted places, and that was when she learned of the history of the hotel. She believes the woman who had been killed by her husband was the voice she heard, urging her to get out of the way before the ghost husband could harm another person. Being a late in life child, my parents told me things that weren't really age appropriate because I have vivid memories of being terrified of all hotels until the age of five.

Convinced that any bump I heard was a ghost coming to kill me. Nonetheless, I love the story and I hope y'all enjoyed it too. Enjoy the view, but watch your back. I love that. I mean, I think it's cool that the mom was just so insistent that she was like, I got to take care of this. She's like, even if I'm not here anymore, I'm going back and I'm going to find out who's causing this. And she didn't know the history of the hotel until later. It doesn't sound like it, yeah.

So that's very interesting. Because I feel like if she had that knowledge, maybe it would have influenced how she perceived her experience there. Yeah, like if she had like some pre-expectations of things that could happen with hauntings, you almost look for noises that would sound like what you heard might happen. But for her, she had no idea. It just happened to her. Right, right. And nothing ever happens to me. And that's why when you're like, I'm nervous to go to the crescent, like, I'm scared.

You're with me and literally nothing ever happens to me. So I think we're going to be safe. But I enjoy hearing about things from other people. Yeah. I like hearing ghost stories from other people. I have no interest in experiencing my own ghost story. Unless it's like a really nice. Like the Bellman at the Bamp Springs Hotel.

Yeah. If you guys listen to that episode, the Bellman, he's really nice. He helps you with your luggage. He's a ghost that I can hang out with, you know? But, no, screaming. and a woman whispering in my ear to run. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, my next one does not have ghosts,

but it does have a little bit of folklore sprinkled in. Oh, okay. Hello, friends. I know we aren't friends, but you two really feel like friends from listening so much to your show. We're friends. We're friends.

It's no big deal. My name is Elizabeth, and I live in the beautiful state of Vermont. A Vermonter. Hello. I knew you were going to perk up at that. We're definitely friends. I so enjoy your work and especially love your connections to New England, having lived here my whole life.

I am writing to you with a magical story from some time I spent in Iceland. A few friends and I decided that we wanted to go on a trip in the spring of 2019. Unsure of exactly where we wanted to go, we settled on traveling to Iceland. We were drawn to the low ticket costs and booking seats on a Wow Airlines flight, a budget airline much like Spirit. I totally get that. I am a frequent spirit flyer and I am not ashamed. That frontier, as long as it gets me there, I mean, me and Netaya, when we went to Abiza in like 2016 or 17, whenever that was, the entire reason we picked that is literally

we went on SkyScanner, picked cheapest month, cheapest flight, and then the locations that came up, we just picked from that list. We're like, oh, Abiza. That's how I went to Costa Rica is I found the cheapest flight. I flew from Boston to Costa Rica on Spirit Airlines. I was fine. I survived. I just wore all my layers and packed all my stuff into one tiny bag because they charge you a ton of money to bring a bag.

I remember that because we were at the hospital together and you're like, yeah, I'm going. And you're like, yeah, I'm just bringing my backpack. I'm like on an international trip. Yep. I went to Costa Rica with a backpack because I didn't want to pay the $60 that they charged to bring a bag. We're always, always traveling on a budget. So we get it. Long story short.

Our trip was set to be a week and a half and we planned to explore Reykavik and rent a car to drive around the Golden Circle and really hoped we get the chance to see the northern lights. We hiked a glacier, explored waterfalls, and goggled at the beautiful Icelandic horses along the roadway. We also learned about the hodl folk. I don't know how to pronounce that. But thankfully, they're also nicknamed the Hidden People. which I can have my mouth around. Thankfully. Fingley.

Supernatural beings of Iceland who are believed to live parallel but invisible lives to humans. In 2013, a road was even protested to be diverted due to its past trajectory going through a formation of rocks that were believed to be a hidden people community. Hold of folk. Someone knows how to pronounce that. Just like, say it and send us an audio message because YouTube has a. helped me. As tourists, we were interested in the elusive nature of these beings as well as their trickery and connection to Icelandic heritage. They became like another member of this trip, expressing thanks to them when things went right, questioning their meddling when things went

wrong, and superstitiously, leaving little offerings for them like stones and beautiful locations, which was basically everywhere. Iceland is beautiful scene after beautiful scene. It all felt playful and lighthearted, much like leaving cookies out for Santa as a kid. As a group, our beliefs were split. Some entertained the idea, but did not believe. Others, myself included, felt as though they were real. While visiting a waterfall one day, our group checked into Wi-Fi at the visitor center. It was then that our phones got flooded with notifications from loved ones.

Did you fly WOW Airlines? Did you see what happened to Wow Airlines, etc., etc.? We checked our emails, nothing from the airline. Then we did a quick Google search and found that Wow Airlines had gone out of business. overnight. They let no one know and just closed up shop. We were left with no ticket back home, and at the time, there were only two airlines flying to Iceland. Price's home skyrocketed. We had little money, so we had to wait it out for a week plus to finally get on a flight back that we could afford. Immediately, we pointed to the hidden people. They didn't want us to leave, one said,

and I agreed. I didn't really want to leave either. I was grateful to tell. I was grateful to to have longer in this beautiful country. And in a surreal life moment, it was easy to think, the hudel folk wanted us to stay. So, with all of this gifted time, we traveled north to a gorgeous part of the country with tremendous cliffs, seafaring communities, and former setting for Game of Thrones film sets.

We had checked off a lot of boxes on the trip so far, but still had not seen the northern lights. On our last night before our long-awaited flight back to the U.S., We were playing cards and celebrating my friend's birthday with chocolate cake and blueberries. Suddenly, the front door to our stay was caught by the wind and slammed, mimicking frantic knocking. It spooked all of us and we froze. I went to the door to check that no one was trying to break in. When I opened the door, I was in awe.

Above my head was a faint, swirling green. I called for everyone to bundle up as fast as they could and we quickly made our way to the darkest point we could find in town. an unlit lighthouse on a small hill surrounded by sea. We sat there together and watched the northern lights for hours. It was spectacular. I felt as though you could truly see the curve of the earth's atmosphere in the way the lights moved overhead. They pulsed like a heartbeat.

There was such a magic to this moment. We were quick to chalk it up to the hudul folk, knocking for us to get out and see what we came to see. Maybe they kept us there for so long to give us that moment. Or maybe it was a string of wildly random events, one after another. Either way, we left a few blueberries and a crumb of chocolate cake on the base of the lighthouse and thanks to the hidden people for being our guides through our elongated stay in this beautiful country. P.S., I know you aren't supposed to leave food as it is against the Leave No

Trace Guidelines. I try to adhere to those guidelines in my day-to-day life, but some ritualistic need to leave offerings took me over. Anyways, I'm always looking for hiking buddies in Vermont, so hit me up, Elizabeth. Sounds good. I'm always looking for hiking buddy, so that sounds great. That's such a fun story. I love that. I love that so much because I really think that everything does happen for a reason and to be able to see the Northern Lights and, I mean, who has an entire airline

shut down when you're on vacation? It just had so many cool aspects. I love that story because it had some folklore that they were weaving throughout their trip that had to do with where they were and the culture. And it was just kind of like a fun thing. And then they kind of used it to turn what could be a really shitty situation into kind of like an adventure. And it ended up being a really magical memorable moment with your friends. Like, who could ask for more than that? That is something that they, that group of people will remember for their whole lives. Yeah, I love that. And also I just think of it like, what's a better

excuse to not go back into work, then be like, sorry, I can't make it. My airline that I took in, totally bankrupt, shut down. No flights got to stay in Iceland for another week. Sorry. Like, just put in my PTO for me. Thank you. Your boss would be like, what? I don't believe you. But I do kind of remember that. I remember when wow airlines shut down. I like, I specifically remember looking at it because I used to look at their flights all the time to go to Iceland. Because they were cheap. You could go there for like from Boston to Iceland. You could go there for like 90 bucks. I think. I wonder if that's how Niteo, because Niteo went to Iceland from Boston. I bet it is. I bet it is. And I'm sure it was in that era. Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. Oh, and Molly did my cousin went.

Everyone that has gone to Iceland. I haven't gone. Yeah. We'll see. Either way. It's on the list. It's on the list, baby. You know what else is on the list? Norway. I want to go there so bad. It is so high on my list of places to go. And I know that that doesn't mean anything to anyone because all of my places seem really high. But Norway is so high on my list. And our next story is written from someone who was in Norway. I know. I feel like you're like the boy who cried wolf with that, though. I'm not lying about any of them, though. I know you're not lying, but it gets to the point that people like take you less and less seriously when you're like, this is literally the place that's on the top of my list. And then a week later, it's something new.

You got to just like get a top five. I do have a top five. And Norway is on there. I can give you my top five really quick. Okay, go. Patagonia, Africa, Norway, Norway, Norway, Norway. I feel like glaciers on there. Isn't glacier on there? Glacier's on there, but I'm talking about like, oh, top, top, top, top, top, top, top. top. I mean, we can add glacier in there, but it's the bottom of the top, like four, but still high on there. Actually, Iceland is pretty high up there to go as well. Okay, since when? Since that story? Yeah. No, I was thinking about it, and I was looking at trips, so I'll add Iceland on there, too. Okay, so you're chalkful. You're done. You hit your limit. Did I say Patagonia? Yeah, that was your number one. That makes sense. Okay. Anyway, this story says,

Hi girls. My name is Julia. I am one of your European listeners that just literally binge listen to all the episodes while recovering from eye surgery. Love the work you do. My story is not set in a North American national park, but I really feel it matches the vibes of your podcast and the trail tales. So if you're also open to overseas stories, here you go. We sure are. Always. Always. Always. It's on my list. Anyway, in 2018. Don't pull your ass. In 2018, I was living in Norway and I decided to join a cleanup weekend. Our destination was a tiny island in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. The name of the island, which I can't pronounce, this means dwelling place for geese, which often uses these grass-covered islands as a last stop before flying overseas. Due to the nature of the Norwegian coast and the currents, it is unluckily just so easy for trash to end up in these remote islands in one. wash out on the shores. The island looks really like a paradise destination, all green with sandy

shores and a crystal clear water. It was August back then, so very sunny and warm. We spent two days picking up trash, filling a whole boat with it and camped overnight. But this island is not only a tropical-like place and a sink for pollution. The island is abandoned, with no one living there, and is only reachable by private boats that can dock a small pier. Besides the, the island, the island three abandoned houses, there is only a building on the island, a chapel that was built during the Second World War that is not used anymore. In addition, no one warned us that the whole island had been used as a giant graveyard by the inhabitants of the closest islands. Once we stepped foot on the ground, we saw a field of old gravestones popping out from the grass, surrounding the church and extending

down the beach. That night, we literally slept between graves, and as far as we know, I pitched my tent above some dead person. During the night, I remember the wind blowing like crazy and whispering. Not sure if this is the right term for it. With this gloomy weather, I realized that I was in the middle of the sea on an abandoned island, far from civilization, with no transport connection or illumination, spending the night among dozens of dead people from the last century. I don't know if ghosts exist, but surprisingly, I did not feel creeped out. I started to like the idea that we were keeping company to these souls, who now rest in such an untame and quiet place. I am also not a religious person, but for some reason those two days I felt so different,

so blessed. I have slept outdoors many times before, but never have I felt that strong desire to contemplate and be grateful for how lucky we are to have this beautiful world, whoever created it. Oh, that's nice too. Yeah, I really liked this one too. And I thought it tied really well into our podcast as well, like they said in the beginning, because a lot of our stories we do are like, know the places you're going. Like, find these stories.

This is wild. And sometimes in your travels and your adventures and wherever it brings you, it brings you to a place that you know nothing about. And then you get there and you're like, whoa, what did I just step into? You literally stumble into them. Yeah. So it's so cool to know, I'd be super curious if you ever figured out the history of exactly. why the place was abandoned and why they chose that island for graveyards. Yeah, just to learn more. It sounds super interesting. And I sure it's amazing and beautiful there. So I just, I like that story too.

And what a unique experience. You know, not everyone has that type of outdoor experience or experience in general. And out there doing such a nice charity work. Like you literally just went out to this desolate island in the middle of the Atlantic to go pick up trash. And like, that's just so nice. What a nice activity to spend your weekend doing. I just, I really loved it. I thought it was great. I agree. Well, my last one is a little bit lighthearted. So I feel like we had a good mix this time around. It started off very morbid and I feel like it's slowly, progressively been getting a lot lighter harder. It's lighter. It's getting lighter. Yeah. Hi, Danielle and Cassie. I absolutely love your podcast. I love how informative and fun you make it and it's great to hear stories from people who are as like-minded and

nature-loving as I am. Anyway, I heard your call for submissions for trail tales and I thought about a few I could submit. I could tell you about the haunting I encountered at a hotel right outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. Yeah, you know the hotel, but I've opted for a more spirited tale, one that will hopefully make you chuckle. My husband and I were spending some time out west and stayed in Jackson Hole for a few days. Around the area, we would see countless stores advertising bear spray, because when you're in a sticky situation with a bear, a spray really is going to do the trick, I joked. Sure, you're going to get that close to a bear for spray to work. Anyhow, this became an ongoing joke for us. One afternoon, we took a hike up towards Jenny Lake. It was populated with a few hikers, but not many. We decided to

split off on a trail going up towards the mountain that was less populated. When we got a few miles up the trail, we heard a real low noise, a rumble like whooping sound, accompanied by thumping, almost like a rumble, almost like a call. But the sound was so low. I thought I imagined the whole thing. When we hiked up a few more yards, we heard it again. We stopped dead in our tracks. My husband and I looked at each other, terrified. All of a sudden, that bear spray we had been seeing didn't seem so bad. The only thing I had on me to make a loud noise was a whistle, but I hardly thought that that would chase something like this off. There it was again, F this. My husband and I slowly backed away several paces and then booked it out of there, constantly looking around us as we descended back

towards the lake. We warned other hikers of what we heard and told them to beware. There was something huge up at that split of the trail. Finally, we got back towards the trailhead without further incident and decided to calm our nerves with an afterhike beer at a local bar. Sounds so familiar. We did this with our bear encounter. Fast forward, a few days later, we had traveled towards West Yellowstone and were staying on a ranch not far from the National Park. We went with a small group horseback riding around the trails. It was the two of us, two guides, and a family of three, mom, dad, and a daughter of about 20 or so. When we were pretty far along the trails on the ridge, once again, we heard the low

grumblings somewhere close by. I tried to get the guide's attention, but she was too far ahead of me. it was, the low whooping and rumble noise. Now I feel like I was scared out of my mind. What the hell was this thing? I didn't think it was a bear this time, but I did not want to take my chances. As our horses were casually sauntering along, I turned in my saddle and asked the guide farther behind me, what the hell is that noise? It's not a bear, but it sounds huge. What noise? He replied. That noise. There it was again, the ominous low grumble. Oh, that, he chuckled. That's just a blue grouse. It's just a dumb chicken. So there you go.

That's how my husband and I got ourselves scared shitless from a big, dumb chicken. And for all those blue grouses out there, find someone else to scare. Hope this made you laugh. Cheers, Melissa. Thank you, Melissa. Chicken. I just can't. Oh, my God.

I just resonate with that so bad because I, too, just hype myself up so bad. I'm like, I always think of the worst. case scenario. Yeah. Her story actually, can I tell my own trail tale? Please, yeah. And her story actually just re-brought a memory to the forefront of my brain of a trail tale that I have. So, sorry. Dear Danielle. One day. Dear Danielle and Cassie. I really enjoy your podcast. This was back in 2016, I believe, or two, no, it was later than that. In 2018, I went to California. My partner and I, we did a motorcycle trip up the California coast.

We went from L.A. up to Big Sur area. And we were camping out there, hanging out on the beach. Really lovely time. One night, we're camped out on the side of the road in like a little area. And we have our tent set up and we're laying there. And suddenly a car comes up and they're just like outside of our tent. And Al starts getting really weirded out by it. I didn't think anything of it.

It didn't bother me until I saw how freaked out he was. He's like, what are they doing? Why are they still here? I'm like, they're probably just turning their car around. Like, it's fine. And looking for directions or something. You know, like, I was rationalizing it. He's like on alert.

He's like up and like nervous. So I naturally start getting nervous just feeding off of his energy. The car drives away, leaves. Like, okay, everything's fine. Like, go to bed. Our nerves calm down. We go back to. bed in the morning, I hear something. And it's outside of our tent and it's walking around. And there's

no one else around us. Like it's just us. I'm like, what is that? And it's just like, I keep hearing these steps right outside of our tent. And immediately my thought goes back to that car that was just staring at our tent for a while the night before. So I'm terrified. Al starts getting a little freaked out. And I'm like whispering, I'm not going out there. Like, can you check what it is? Can you check what it is? And he's like, okay, so he gets up, he ends up to the tent and he opens it. And I fully expect a person to be there. There's three chickens walking outside of our tent. Actual chickens.

Actual chickens. I have a photo afterwards of Al in the tent and he's like lacing up his boot and there's a chicken right next to it. So I too have fell to the chickens. Why was their chicken? I have no idea. There were no houses around. I have no idea why there were chickens to this day. But there were three of them.

That is too funny. Oh, my God. I don't have a chicken story. Definitely not. But yeah, especially because like even if they truly were just like turning around or just pulled over to like get their bearings or whatever, there's something so creepy about when you're sitting in a tent and somebody rolls up and it's dark and you can't see them. But they can see you. Yeah. And they just sit there.

And then they pull away. You're like, what the what was that? Are you scoping me out? Are you coming back? Are you murdering me? Yeah, what's happening? Wow. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad it was just chickens, and I really hope that you post that picture along with whatever we post for this. I'll add it to the Trail Tales photos on Instagram. Okay, cool. All right. Well, thanks for ending us on a high chicken note. Yeah. And we actually decided last minute just right before we started recording this that because

we have so many good trail tales, it's really, really hard to choose them every single time we do one of these. So we each have one additional story that we couldn't decide on if we wanted to wait or not or what we wanted to do. So we're just going to record one story each and put it on Patreon. So if you're interested. Yeah. So what we do for people who aren't a part of Patreon is every single episode that we upload, we upload to Patreon ad-free. But this time around, we'll upload this version ad-free, but it'll be like a little bit extended. We'll have a couple other stories in there. So that's what we decided.

That's what we're doing. Yeah. So if you're not on our Patreon, you can go join that. But anyway, if you're not on Patreon, we will see you next week. Either way, we'll see you on Monday. But for our Patreon members, we'll see them in a few days, three days for a Moment House. join our Moment House. You don't even have to wait that long for another episode. It's coming out. So yeah. Oh, cool. We have so much stuff going on now. And we're going to do a little bonus

trail tales for Patreon. So if you want to head over to that, you can go join us. Otherwise, we'll see you at our live show. And if you're not there, then we'll see you on Monday. And anyway, in the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Go bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale you'd like to share, send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Become an outsider by joining our Patreon

where you'll gain access to monthly bonus stories and exclusive content. And remember, when you support our partners, you're supporting our show. To access our special discount codes along with source information from today's episode, check out the show notes. For information on the show to shop our merch store, sign up for our newsletter and more, visit npaddpodcast.com.

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