Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - My Job Solving Park Disappearances Uncovered Rituals, Secrets, and a Hidden Cave Society #3

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales #disappearances #ritualhorror #secretsociety #cavesociety #investigationhorror  This dark and thrilling horror story follows a determined investigator who uncovers a terrifying conspiracy behind a series of mysterious disappearances in a park. Digging deeper, they discover ancient rituals, hidden societies living in secret caves, and sinister secrets that threaten anyone who dares to expose them. A gripping tale of mystery, horror, and dark underground worlds.  horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, disappearances, ritual, secretsociety, cavesociety, investigation, darkrituals, mystery, thriller, underground, horrorfiction, suspense, sinister, chilling, forbidden

I was a burnt-out detective on the NYPD. For every case I solved, there were ten more that remained unsolved. The constant barrage by family members who wanted to know who murdered their loved ones started to eat away at me. One day I was perusing federal jobs and I came across a job at the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, which was a newly created position titled Director of Parks Investigator. The new position was developed related to the scrutiny the park had developed for not having trained personnel in dealing with fatalities and missing people in the park. I convinced my wife

that we needed to make a change so after the telephone interview my wife, two kids, and myself moved to Estes Park which is right outside the eastern entrance to the park. The superintendent of the park hired me because he was looking for someone with no affiliation with the area and someone who wasn't afraid to make waves. The park has hundreds of employees that fall under different divisions to include administration, facility management, interpretation and education, and resource stewardship. I didn't fit into any of those divisions and I was hired to directly report to the superintendent. The park had four entries which included two major entrances that were connected by a 48-mile highway referred to as the Trail Ridge Road or Highway 34. My first day I was

handed a file of all the missing people and fatalities that had occurred in the park. I had done online research prior to starting the position on missing people and fatalities, but I was amazed on the amount of incidents that didn't hit the media. The superintendent explained that nothing good had come about receiving negative press about fatalities and missing people, so why go out of the way and alert the media if the media had little interest to begin with, so I already knew that the actual number of fatalities and missing people were underreported. One third of the park rangers were temporary employees. One third of the park rangers were full-time employees who had less than 10 years of experience, and the last third were seasoned rangers who some had been employed

for 40 years. The first missing person case I took was from a 33-year-old male who never returned from a solo hiking slash camping trip. He did the old Fall River Road Trail which isn't as popular as some of the other trails. The hardest part of this investigation was that I knew that there must have been people who had seen him, but the majority of people are tourists that don't realize that the innocuous man they saw actually vanished, while they're 1,000 miles away in their hometowns. Since the search teams found no trace of him besides his abandoned car, I asked the superintendent if we could send out a mass email to the National Park season pass holders. He explained to me that doing something like that required 10 levels of

approval which would ultimately get rejected because it would advertise that the national parks weren't safe and the tourist wouldn't renew their annual passes. I took a look at the rangers who were assigned to patrol that Old Fall River Road. There were four rangers where two of them were temporary staff and one of them named Mike was a three-year FT veteran and there was a guy named Floyd who was a 35-year veteran. The temporary rangers mostly patrolled the parking lot and the foot of the mountain where the trail started. The full-time employees Mike and Floyd actually patrolled the trail itself. The missing hikers family had called the Park Rangers office when he didn't call or return home from his three-day camping trip. I had actually called the

missing man's wife to try to get a little more information. She told me that she couldn't go that weekend because of her job. She told me everything about her husband to include that he wore the same outfit and the same Eddie Bauer boots for the past two years. The four rangers who were assigned the trail really had no insight or leads into the missing hiker. I had asked Floyd the 35-year veteran to take me along with him during one of his patrols of the trail. During the four-hour hike I got to know more about him and the park itself. He said that he knew every trail in the park like the back of his hand. Floyd was completely different than anyone I knew in NYC. He was pretty much a yes or no type of guy who would occasionally throw jabs at me because I was an outsider whose physical

activity consisted of jogging the streets of NYC before my shift and here I am now looking at these magnificent snow-capped mountains. Floyd told me that most of the times the campers don't pay the necessary fees and camp in the designated places so it's difficult to know exactly where the missing camper went. The one thing that struck me odd when talking to Floyd was when we were talking about the possibility that the hiker fell of the cliff. I remember saying, the trail really gets narrow in some spots so potentially he could have just fallen off the cliff. Floyd responded anything's possible especially if someone was wearing inadequate hiking boots. But Eddie's are sufficient and we hadn't seen any evidence of him.

As he said that, I quickly jogged my memory. I didn't see anywhere on any report the type of hiking boots the missing person was wearing. The only person who had mentioned it was the missing guy's wife when I talked to her on the phone. Eventually, I regained my thoughts and I responded to Floyd and said, By the way, have you spoken to any of the missing hikers family members? He said, no, but I would imagine they're going through a real hard time right now. I didn't want to question him about the hiking boots. I didn't want him to think I was suspicious in any ways of him.

I decided to keep an eye on Floyd. I learned that he would associate with a group of other park rangers every Saturday at a bar in Estes Park, which was near the east entrance to the park. I just happened to show up to the bar with my wife on the following Saturday. There was a group of about nine other long-time park ranger veterans. They all gathered around a table. I made it a point for Floyd to see me while he was getting a drink at the bar and I said, Hey, Floyd, how's it going?

He responded, oh, the guy from New York, how are you doing? I said, oh, my wife and I decided to check out this bar. Then he just went back to his table with the other point. Park Rangers. I got the impression that he didn't want to talk with me. I thought to myself at least I know who he associates with now. The following Monday I went through the personnel files of all ten of the Park Rangers at the bar. The only odd thing I found buried deep in their files was that about 20 years prior all 10 of them were discovered deep in the park on a Sunday afternoon, where they supposedly had called off sick. There was no mention what they were doing other

than a previous superintendent got an anonymous tip that the ten of the Rangers were out there. That superintendent since has passed away and I had no other information regarding that incident. I continued to look through other incidents of missing people and I felt an eerie feeling on how all of them just had vanished with no trace. Some of the cases were over 50 years old with absolutely no clues. I thought to myself it's virtually impossible that nothing had ever turned up. I remembered a famous expression from the NYPD that people just don't vanish. Either they're intentionally hiding or someone is hiding them either dead or alive. I didn't tell the superintendent of my suspicions on Floyd or the other Rangers at the bar. I just did my own surveillance.

I utilized the park's cameras to track them. I came across something peculiar that each one of ten Rangers requests off Sundays about every three months apart. The Sundays' all corresponded with the change of the season. I knew that this Sunday corresponded with the start of the summer season. Early on Sunday morning, I parked up the road from where Floyd lived and waited for him to leave to see where he was going. At 6 a.m. he exited his driveway and proceeded to drive towards the park. I tried staying as far back from possible from him. About an hour later he parked at a portion of the park that was only open to authorized personnel. The other nine guys were already parked and were waiting in their cars. I parked further up the road,

so I wouldn't be seen. I had brought binoculars and I wanted to stay as far back as possible. I knew these rangers were real outdoors men and they would sense me from a mile away, so I had to be really careful for them not to see me. About two hours into the walk they stopped at an area that might have been used by Indians during some long-gone ceremonies. There was one large flat, rectangular rock that resembled a table. Then there was a group of boulders about two feet high that surrounded the table. All ten of the men got completely naked and put on these red togas with red masks that fit their heads like paper bags. Then each of the ten men got on their knees and bent forward in a praying position which looked extremely uncomfortable. Then someone completely

dressed in bare fur emerged from the woods carrying a handmade satchel made from bare skin. The bear man stopped at the rock altar and put the satchel down. The bear man put both his hands up towards the sky, then picked up the satchel with both hands and raised it to the sky. The bear man put the satchel down and reached in with both hands and pulled out a bunch of intestines and guts and raised them to the sky. He held it there for approximately five minutes, then returned the guts to the satchel. Then the bear man disappeared into the woods and all ten of the men got up. The men disrobed and put their clothes back on. I didn't want to get lost so I followed them from a safe distance. I was completely perplexed.

I'm not sure if I just watched a crime. I thought were those animal guts or were those human guts. I tried to look online for any type of help trying to decipher what I just observed. I thought those kind of ceremonies only occurred in low-budget horror movies. Eventually looking online, I came across a 16th-century pagan ritual book. The book had an identical illustration, where ten men dressed in red bowed to their master who was dund in animal skin. The ritual paid homage to the pagan gods for a prosperous season. I was still clueless to the reason why the rangers were performing rituals in the middle of the woods. At this point, I'm afraid to go to work. I don't have the protection or support from anyone like I did in the police force.

I have no real evidence of what I observed in the woods. I was too far away to get any meaningful pictures from my phone. I was really second-guessing taking this job. I was working with at least ten lunatics and I didn't know who the bare man was. While I was at work on the following Monday, I received a frantic message from my wife. Someone had placed a package of intestines and guts on our front porch. I told my wife to call the police and she did. The local coroner came and identified the remains as non-human and most likely elk or deer meat. Now I know the rangers observed me following them and worst of all they're trying to intimidate me. I really know no one in this town and I'm not sure to what extent others are involved in these rituals.

I decided to confront Floyd. I met him on the same trail that we had previously walked. He pretended that nothing happened regarding the package being at my house. I said to Floyd, don't ever fucking send anything to my house again. He responded, you're barking up the wrong tree. You shouldn't go around blaming peoples for something that you don't know they were responsible for. I said, I saw you and your fucking disturbed buddies in the middle of the woods doing God knows what. He responded, should I follow you on your days off to see what you're doing? The last time I checked I have the right to practice whatever religion I want without your approvals. Then I said, I know you know more about the last hiker that vanished.

You slipped up when you said what type of boots he was wearing. Come clean and tell me what you know. He said, once again you're accusing me of something with your preconceived notions. Your head is so fixated on trying to solve a crime, but maybe you need to go back and read a person's rights in this country and what the actual laws say. He then abruptly ended the conversation and I was left pondering what the fuck he just told me. I decided to retrace my steps back into the woods where I observed the ritual occur. I told my wife before I left on the approximate area to look for me in case I didn't return.

For the most part the Rangers followed a dear trail to where the ritualistic area existed. It took me a little bit longer than I anticipated, but eventually I found the boulders with ceremonial rock table. I looked all around to try to find some additional clues. The Bear Man didn't follow the Rangers out, so I had. I thought to myself where did he go? About a quarter mile away, I started to smell the familiar smell of burnt wood. I knew there were no legal camping areas anywhere close to here. I took out my handgun that I wasn't supposed to be carrying. I followed the scent which eventually brought me to a large cave opening. I said, come out with your hands up.

Then something completely unexpected happened. About 20 unkempt men and women came out of the cave ranging in ages from their early 20s to well into their 80s. I said, who the fuck are you people and why are you here? One of the old guys says, we are here because of the same reason why you're here. I said, I'm here to investigate missing people and figure out what the fuck is going on in these woods. The guy responded, I know in your mind you're telling yourself why you're here, but I want you to really think about it. Why are you really here in Colorado? You're doing the same thing we're doing. As you got tired of your previous life, so did we. Some of us have been living in this cave for more than 40 years. Then it dawned on me. These are the people who vanished. I recognized

the most recent missing hiker based on the pictures four-e scene and the attire he was wearing to include his boots. I stood there with my mouth wide open and then I put my gun away. I realized what Floyd meant in that it's not a crime to disappear. They invited me into the same. They invited me into the cave and it was one of the most peaceful, tranquil experiences that I ever had. That day I decided to stay in the woods. I thought to myself that my family would eventually receive a $2 million insurance policy. The end.