Spooked - Northern Frights

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

As an engineer, Forrest is used to being able to solve problems and find solutions. But while working in the remote North Slope of Alaska, he learns that there are things in this world that just can��t be explained.A big thanks to Forrest for sharing his story with the Spooked!Produced by Zoë Ferrigno, original score by Doug Stuart, artwork by Teo Ducot. HAPPY FRIDAY THE 13th SPOOKSTERS!!! Today kicks off a ritual as old as our treachery: Season of the Wolf. Brand new episodes will drop each and every week until All Hallows' Eve. Cross over and listen on podcast platforms everywhere.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We played a terrible trick on our dearest companions, the race of wolves once, masking our smell with the hide of freshly slain deer, moving under cover of shadow quickly. Suddenly, while the greatest of them hunted food for their family, we crept to their lair and stole away their newborn children. Before they had even learned to howl the alarm, we raised them. not as equals, but as slaves. We taught them not to fear us, not to hunt us, but to love us. For these broken offspring as gods, they do not forgive. Instead in revenge, the wolves worked the magic of their own.

Previously, our guides through the spirit lands, now they bar our access to the shadow, cleaving us from our spirit selves, jailers, betraying their betrayers, delighting in our slow descent to madness. Still, once a year, for a price of their choosing, we are allowed passage to the twilight world during the twilight time. From the harvest moon to all hallows Eve, a ritual as old as our treachery, The season, we marked this unholy bargain with eight separate brand new spooked episodes, eight separate journeys into the void, eight separate reminders of what we lost. Magical, monstrous, mystical, spooked, season of the wolf, episode one. I've avoided it for a long time, for years, but finally, one chilly Saturday.

hoodie clutched tight over my head, I take the ferry. Over the water to this fortress-like building set against the San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz Prison, commanding its own island. Once the flag-shed prison of the federal incarceration system now decommissioned, and stepping off the boat, my guide, Mary, she leads me past the plaque, three-foot-thick concrete walls into shadow. Up this metal staircase. Through the imagined screams of thousands of angry men

past one tier, then to another until finally, return. Turn again. Walk past lines of iron bars where she directs me into this tiny, tiny cell that I do not wish to enter. Five feet by nine feet tiny. just a metal bed, a sink, and a toilet. Not enough room for the two of us.

No window. You can't see the bay that is just outside, but somehow you can feel the wind whipping over the winter waters we sit in this gloom. Cold. Cold from the walls, cold from the bars, from the floor. And Mary tells me that in the not too distant past, when this was an active men's prison

because of some peculiar trick of sound and acoustics a person caged right here at night can hear across the water can hear voices from very different circumstances men chatting up the beautiful daughters of high society

cocktail parties, music, the tinkling of wine glasses. And when Mary leaves here, leaves me alone, when her footsteps finally vanish and listen. For the creek, for the shift, the rattle of this rotting building. I imagine the cheery voices, sensuous whispers. Just over there, salation. from our familiar, it changes us. We adapt, we transform.

We understand this. What we may be less aware of is that isolation forces us to see, to really see and experience our environments in wholly new ways, sometimes giving us a chance to finally witness what's always been out there. We meet Forrest. He's the engineer for a gas company on the North of Slash Company on the North Slashleigh. of Alaska, and the north slope is remote. Hundreds of miles away from any city, just tundra and mountains for as far as the eye can see.

Forest travels between Seattle and Alaska for work, and when our story begins, he's just arrived back on the north slope. It's a huge facility that houses about 5,000 workers at any one time, and they have dormitimate. They have gyms, movie theaters, cafeterias. They have everything to kind of make you feel like you're at home, even though you're, you know, thousands of miles away and in the middle of nowhere. I'm getting settled into my room. I'm getting things unpacked. I turn on my work computer. I'm checking emails and there's an email alert for a phase three, storm alert. So a phase one is it's just a regular snowstorm. A phase two. is a little bit more severe. But a phase three is a total shutdown of the north slope. You have winds above 60 miles an hour. You have temperatures below, you know, negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit. It's complete whiteout.

You can't see your hand in front of your face. Most of the work that we do is always outside. It's always on well-site. So we can't work. It basically shuts us down completely. So they call a phase three and I kind of grumble and settle down because I know it's going to be it's going to be a while. We're just trapped inside for however long the storm lasts. The storm just did not let up.

We'd been up there for about five days at that point. Just sitting in a little bunk room watching TV, sitting on the internet, going to the gym. it gets old. I'm getting ready to go out and get some breakfast and then probably go to the gym and hang out. And I hear this tapping on my window. I just think it was, you know, I just leave it up to the storm. Maybe it's ice hitting the windows

or maybe something that's hanging off the roof and smacking against the window. And so, you know, I open up my blinds, but looking out there, I don't see anything that could possibly explain it. I just get dressed and I go down to the gym. After I get back to my room after working out, I hear that tapping again,

and I open up the blinds. From my window looking down, I can see into the facility parking lots where we usually park our equipment. And the only illumination is from a pair of street lights or yard lights. I can see a person standing under one of these yard lights. It's dark, I can't make out any details other than a head and some shoulders and some legs,

but there's just somebody out there. What the hell? It is incredibly cold. It is, with the wind chill, I believe it was around negative 60. That's instant frostbite if you have exposed skin. you don't survive cold like that for very long. So I need to get this person help. The guy dorming next to me, I knock on his door and I'm like, hey, you need to take a look at this.

And we go out to his window, he opens up his blinds, and he's like, what the hell is this guy doing out there? So now I feel confirmed. It's not just me hallucinating or, you know, my mind playing tricks on me. there's somebody else that has actually seen this guy out there. So we get a hold of our supervisor. We're on speakerphone and we're telling what we're seeing. There's a guy out there. Do you mind looking out your window and seeing if you can see him?

And sure enough, he can see this guy under this lamp. But he's like, you guys didn't tell me that there was a second guy out there. And we're like, what are you talking about? He's like, well, there's two people under the street light. So we go back to the window and look out, and now there is a second guy. Not only am I worried for these guys, I'm also weirded out by the fact that now there are two people out there. My supervisor says, I got a whole of security. They're going to head out there and see if they can find these guys.

The only problem is they have to dig out of the door because we're snowed in. All of the doors leaving the building are covered in. waste deep snow. How could these guys get outside if the security force is to go rescue them have to dig their way out? I go down and try to help the security guards move away the snow from the door and try to get the doors open. And as we're working on this, we're all realizing that the storm is way too severe for us to even think about trying to get out there. You take a shovel full of snow and move it, the wind just brings it right back in. I go up to my room to look back out there down into the parking lot, and I don't see anybody out there. I don't see anything going on.

The next day, the security team was able to get some snowshoes, and they were able to pair up and go out there on top of the snow. I ran into one of the security guards at the mess hall, and I was asking him about it, and I'm like, you know, did you guys find anything out there? Did you guys see anything? And he's, he just says, no, no, there was no tracks. There were no marks in the snow. There was just nothing, no trace of anybody. You guys were, you know, probably just hallucinating.

And I'm like, all of us were hallucinating. Some people up there think if you get trapped or snowed into the building for long enough, you start to just get so bored that your brain starts to play, tricks on you to keep you entertained. But it's just not possible because it was seen by not only me, but several co-workers and my supervisor from different angles. I'm an engineer. My whole life is based on hypothesis, testing, theories, you know, proof of execution, things

like that. And to have something make totally no sense, it's just really unnerving. Later that day, I end up going down to the mess hall for dinner, and I see my friend John. He's a local Inuit. He's a good friend of mine. So I sit down with him to have dinner. And we start talking just about what's been going on, how being locked up in the man camp for a few days has been. And I relay him the story of seeing these guys out in the snow and several other people seeing it.

And he just laughs. And I'm like, well, what's so funny? And he goes, you guys saw a tuniate. And I said, a what? And he said, a tuniate. He goes on to explain that before the Inuit came to Alaska, before they crossed the Bering Sea, when they got here, there were already people here in what is now the North slope. And they called them the Tunit. He's telling us the Inuit and the Tunit lived together for

generations. And he goes into this legend of one of the Inuit ended up killing one of the Tunit over a canoe. And at that point on, the Tunit were worried that they would become targets of the Inuit so they disappeared off the face of the earth. He goes, some people think that they went to the ocean. Some people think that they went into the earth and they live in the permafrost. And he says, some people think they just went to the other world.

To me, this is a totally captivating, you know, I'm like, what? I've never heard of any of this before. He says that after they left and they went wherever they did go, they will periodically come back and pull pranks on the local Inuit. sometimes you'll even have people disappear from the villages. They're not necessarily friendly.

He was telling me, when he was a kid, his grandfather saw a tuniate out on the tundra, and they went inside, and when they came back out the next day, all of their hunting equipment was destroyed. I'm thinking that's a really cool legend, but I don't think that I saw a tuniate out there. He's just telling us ghost stories, trying to freak us out. We're on, like, day 13 of the storm going on.

It was like somebody snapped their fingers in this. Storm just stopped. And the sky's cleared up. You could see stars and auroras. It was really pretty. Like, it was kind of like a, like a fireworks show after the show is going on. Then the work began. We get out.

to the parking lot and we start the long process of digging out our trucks, which are under probably about 20 feet of snow at this point. There's about seven or eight of us out there. We've all just got hand shovels and we're digging through this snow. The first thing we notice is we're digging the front of the truck out is the radiator has been like crushed. It looks almost like a fist went through it. Like somebody was sitting there and punching it. It's totally confusing. There's no way to really rationalize how the radiator ended up like that. We keep digging everything out. We find several of the tires have been. Not slashed. There were chunks of rubber missing from these tires. They almost look like a wild animal had chewed on them. But there's

no tracks out there anywhere. There's no signs of any kind of animal. And we get to the back of the truck, and that's where the cabin is. Me being the engineer, I've got to jump up there and start. Turning things on and seeing if everything's working properly. I open this door, and what I'm seeing doesn't just send shivers down my back, but it just basically stops my heart. It looks like a complete disaster zone. All the electrical panels have been shorted.

like you can see actual burn marks and scorch marks on the electrical panels. The joystick that we use to move the winch up and down has been snapped off. The chairs that we sit on are all torn up. I don't even know what to make of this. It looked almost like you'd let a polar bear loose in the cabin for an hour or two, just totally destroyed. But that door was locked. Nobody should have been able to get into that.

and do the kind of damage that they did. My blood's kind of running cold. The hair on the back of my neck is standing up because none of this is making any sense. We come back after a long day of digging out snow and trying to fix this truck and we're talking with several other people from different divisions at dinner

and we're talking to them about what we saw. Like, hey, man, our truck is totally destroyed and they're like, oh, you two? Yeah, our tires were all slashed up. Somebody broke out the front windshunds. shield of our truck. It seemed like somebody bent the frame on this one truck and moved it over here. Everybody in the camp had something affecting their equipment. Like, what is going on? There's no way that it could have been vandals with the white out conditions and the snow and

how deep it was. It would be impossible for anybody to drive. Animals don't make sense. Ice flying around or rocks flying around. Nothing's making sense. It's, slowly kind of coming over me that maybe John's right. Maybe it was something supernatural actually happening. It's creepy. It's unsettling. But I can't come to any other conclusion other than the legend of the tunie it actually is real. It's April. It's only a few months after this snowing in event.

We go out to a well site and we have to have a bulldozer go with us because he needs to clear the site of snow. Nobody's been on that site since the blizzard happened. The bulldozer goes out before us about two hours. I'm getting my equipment ready with my crew three other guys.

Bulldozer operator gets on the radio and he's like, hey, I just want to let you guys know that I've cleared the site. Everything looks good. I just wanted to give you guys a heads up that I saw what I think is a wolf out on the pad. And we're like, well, that's unusual. Wolves are not on the north slope.

The closest wolves live up there is on the Brooks Range, which is like a hundred, 150 miles to the south. And it's very rare for a wolf to get separated from their pack and end up way out on the tundra. The bulldozer operator lets us know, hey, just keep an eye out for him, just in case. I drive out there with my crew. We set up our equipment. We get cranes in the air. We're getting the equipment onto the wellhead. We're working on the oil well just to make sure everything is good to go. I need to use the bathroom. So I go out behind the well house and I do my business. While I'm out there, I get a call over the radio. It's one of my workers, Eric. And he's like, hey, I just saw that wolf that guy was talking about

and my heart stops. And I don't have time to think about whether this is a prank or not. I just need to get out of there as fast as possible because I'm completely vulnerable. I'm completely helpless out there. I'm running back to the truck as fast as I can.

My heart is racing. I feel like I am on like five cans of Red Bull. I throw the door open. I jump in the cab. Once I'm safe inside, I look back and there's this giant wolf just trotting along right where I was, just right behind me coming towards the truck. His fur is jet black.

He's missing his right eye and he's missing the skin on his mouth. So he's got this great big almost like smile, a toothy smile on the right side of his face. His left eye is bright red and he's massive. he's probably about six or seven feet long so we get on the main radio to call for the bear police they keep a lot of the more dangerous wildlife away from the work sites and away from the people

it's not unusual to see polar bears we have grizzly bears the caribou and the musk oxen aren't really what i would say vicious but they do get honorary, so they do need to be shoot away from time to time. Bear police are like, yeah, we'll get out there as soon as we can, and we have to wait about 40 minutes for them to make it all the way out to our location. And this whole time we're waiting, this wolf is just watching it. He never leaves our line of sight the whole time. He just kind of paces back and forth, and he never lets his eye off of the truck.

as he's pacing. The bear police show up. It's two men. They honk their horn. He doesn't even acknowledge that the truck is there. He just keeps his eyesight right on us. They try to kind of push the truck towards him, and he does not move.

So they move on to the beanbag gun. And they take a shot, and they hit this wolf. right in the ribs. And he lets out a yelp, and he trots off into the tundra. Before they left, they told us, hey, if you see him again,

just give us a call. The bear police leave, and I'm right back to work. The sun is starting to go down. Our equipment starts acting up. It starts not giving us the right data. It's almost like it's recording things. backwards, it's just not making any sense.

I tell Eric, I was like, hey, can you walk out to the wellhead and just see if all the cables are hooked up, like see if there's anything that's going on out there, maybe the cables are loose, maybe that's why it's giving us these weird readings. And he goes, yeah, yeah, no problem. He walks

out there, I'm still trying to figure out the problems, troubleshooting in the cab. And we hear this blood-curdling scream followed by the deepest howl

you have ever heard and I see this giant dark figure on two legs running out of this wellhouse seven, eight feet tall it's huge and just like a flash it's just gone into the dark and I'm like, wait, is that Eric?

And then I see Eric running out immediately afterwards, and I'm like, well, no, then who was that? Eric's running at full speed right to the cab, and he jumps in, and he's, he's as white as the snow. Like, he's just sheet white. He's out of breath. He's panicking. Like, he's having a full-blown panic attack. We're like, what happened? And he can just get out wolf. You know, we're like, just drink some water, just breathe. You're fine. Nothing got you.

We get him to calm down, and he finally gets to the point where he can kind of talk a little bit. And he says, I went out to the well house, and I noticed some of the cables were loose on the wellhead. So I start tightening them up, and I hear somebody walk up behind me. And I think it's one of you guys. I say, hey, hand me that wrench. And there's no response. Eric's like, what? Why is nobody talking to me?

And he turns around and there's this great big wolf. And he's standing on two legs and he's got this big toothy half grin and a big blazing red eye right behind him. Eric's like he had to have been seven feet tall. He was gigantic. And he said, the only thing I could do. I took my wrench and I threw it at him and I hit him square in the nose and he just let out this loud howl and ran off. Everything Eric's telling me is it's kind of cutting me to the core.

Like I can feel it in the pit of my stomach. I don't want to believe what he's saying, but also I can't deny what my eyes have seen. I am totally sure that I saw something on two legs run out of that well house. The Bear Police get there. They're driving around the well site, flashing their lights, just looking around, scanning the whole area. It takes them about 10 minutes to scan the entire well pad. They were like, well, we found these hind tracks, but they don't really go anywhere.

They just circle the well house for a little bit. and then they just kind of disappear. Eric was feeling better, and he's like, yeah, you only found hind tracks because it was walking around like a person. But the bear police, like, well, wolves don't do that. And they just, they leave at that point and go on their way. I did not want us out there in the night any longer. I don't know if this thing's going to come back. We're just on our own.

So I'm hurrying with my crew to pack up as fast as I can, and we're constantly looking over our shoulders. I'm totally on alert, checking my surroundings every chance I get. As soon as we got in the truck and started to leave location, it was kind of like a wave of relief. When we got back to camp, that was when we really felt like we were safe again. After this event, I'm trying to replay over my head what I actually saw. I clearly saw something big, upright on two legs walking out of there, but that doesn't make any sense. I try to rationalize why we might have been targeted. It's entirely possible that, you know, they were not happy with the operations that were going on up there with the oil and gas exploration.

They could have been trying to warn us off or, in their own way, tell us that we were not welcome there. I've always considered myself a huge skeptic, but the things that I've seen on the North Slope have opened me up to the possibility that there are things that we just can't explain in this universe. I'm still a skeptic on most things, but I now have a little bit more of an open mind on what could possibly be out there. Thanks to Forrest for sharing his story with the spooked. The original score for this piece was by Doug Stewart. It was produced by Zoe Frignau. In 1846, a schoolteacher, Emily Sagie. What is now Latvia, she was fired from her position at an exclusive girl's school.

The reason? Well, apparently, she appeared to be two places at the same time, which caused such disturbance with the administration. felt they had no choice but to remove her. At one instance, 42 students all observed Sagi's doppelganger, standing behind her and mimicking her movements as she worked in the garden.

Several students and teachers corroborated this sighting. Another time, Sagi wrote on the blackboard and students and administrators reported seeing her doppelginger standing beside her, mimicking her movements but with no chalk in their hand. Some said when they tried to interact with this doppelganger, it felt like passing through a thick substance. Others experience a cold, clammy, sensation, an eye, what this is about. My experience is that if things happen, they don't just happen in 1846 Latvia.

They can happen anywhere. So I'm asking, have personal, direct experience with some aspect. by location, team spooked would love to know about it. Spooked at stepjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener.

Spooked is brought to you by the team that will go absolutely anywhere in the world to track down a story except for Mark Rischichu. According to these travel receipts right here spends most of his paranormal seeking time around beach resorts. There's Dave Kim, Zoe Frigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yannes, Teo de Kott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creaky, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Adity Amato, theme song is by Pat Massini Miller. My name is from Washington. I'm one of the reasons. We so desperately cling to words to descriptions because somewhere, deep down, we believe that if we can name the thing, we can name the thing, we can.

understand or control the thing. And that's why we so desperately fear that which we cannot name. Well, good news. Our little labels that we affixed the stuff, it's meaningless, especially to the stuff we're putting the labels on. So if you're going to be afraid of the unknown, understand that it's all unknown. when our best scientist, our most lauded physicists,

can't explain water, can't explain gravity, the basic force that sticks us to the earth, they have no idea what it is. How can they begin to explain the shadow? Now, little words and our concepts are useless here. Forget labels. If you have to cling,

cling to something more primal, more basic, more elemental than a word. As for me, but do I hold on to? Simple. Never, ever, never, never, never, ever.