The Lets Read Podcast - 324: I FOUND SOMETHING REALLY CREEPY WHILE HIKING | 7 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 309

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Summer Camping & Backwoods Outdoor encounters HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ♫ Music & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt Today's episode is sponsored by: - Betterhelp - Aura Frames https://on.auraframes.com/READ. Promo Code READ

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It came from a little old lady that I met out on a hike one day out near Cross Timbers Park here in Kansas. I was in my late 30s, and hiking had become my way of taking a break from the daily grind. I like the quiet, the way it cleared my head and kept me grounded. So, one warm afternoon and late spring, I decided to drive up to the state park to hit the trails and work off some stress. That day, the park was dead silent, and I felt like I was the only one around for miles. I've been walking for a couple of hours following a trail near the edge of the park that wound past little clearings when I stumbled onto something I wasn't expecting. In a small meadow surrounded by trees with the late afternoon sunlight poking through them, I found four graves.

The headstones were old and beat up, leaning a bit like they were worn out from standing there so long. I got closer, rushing away some tall grass to read them. The names were faded and tough to make out, but I could tell they were all from the same family, brothers and a father it looked like. There was nothing weird about family being buried right next to each other, especially back then. But the thing that really caught my eye and sent a little shiver down my spine, was how they all had the same date of death, April 7th of 1859. I remember standing there, staring at those stones, wondering what could have taken out a whole

family in just one day. Was it a sickness of some kind, maybe some kind of accident, or was it something darker? My curiosity got going, and I couldn't help but hang around trying to figure it out. Then as I was poking around the graves, I heard footsteps crunching behind me. I turned and saw a woman walking across the me she looked to be in her late 50s and without trying to sound mean she didn't look like she took care of herself too good she looked sharp though and had this serious determined look in her eyes as she approached she asked why I was trespassing on her land

and when I assured her that I didn't mean to and I was just interested in the graves she softened up on me a little I told her I was just hiking through the park and I guess I just strayed off the trail a little too far, and then I told her my name and said it was a pleasure to meet her. And that made her smile. And after telling me her name was Martha, she said she was the great-great-granddaughter of one of the men buried there. Hearing that was kind of exciting, I guess, because it meant that there was a chance that she knew what happened to them. Then when I asked, as delicately as possible, by the way, it almost seemed like she'd been waiting for someone to show some interest in them.

Without me asking too much, she launched into the story of her doomed forefathers. A tale her family had passed down for years, and let me tell you, that juice was well worth the squeeze. She started by explaining the times her great-great-grandfather lived in. They called it Bleeding Kansas back then. A messy, violent period when people were fighting over whether Kansas would be a free state or a slave state, and her great-great-grandfather, a guy named Ezekiel, found his family caught up in that. And back then, the state of Kansas was flooded with weaponry. The New

England emigrant aid company would send what appeared to be crates of Bibles to the free staters, but the crates were actually filled with Sharp's rifles or what they called Beecher's Bibles back then. The slavers got shipments too, mostly from pro-slavers. supporters from Missouri, but also from sympathizers in the wider south. It was like a practice round for the Civil War, which came a few years after, and it was also complete chaos, too. So a lot of those shipments I mentioned there didn't make it into the hands of those they were intended for, which brings me nicely to the fly-by-night firearm traders that were roaming around, selling stolen or misplaced weapons to anyone with a few

bucks to buy them. Ezekiel, I was told, had gone into the woods one day to meet one such rifle salesman. He wanted rifles and shotguns to keep his family safe from the slavers that might rate his family farm, but since he didn't have the time to ride all the way into Coyville or Toronto to visit an established gun store, he took a chance with the man in the woods. But after heading out into the trees, poor old Ezekiel never made it back home. His father and brothers started to get worried about him, so off they went into the woods to find him. But then instead of bringing home their kin alive and well, all they found was his body. Zeke wasn't just dead either. He was torn up real bad, mutilated like something unholy had been done to him. Martha said she was told that it

look like some kind of ritual, though she'd never been told the goryer details. I could picture it, though, at least in my imagination, and boy, did it give me the creeps. As you can imagine, Zeke's family didn't just let it go, and they swore a terrible and bloody revenge against the people who murdered him. They heard a guy in the next town over was selling rifles in the exact same way, as in organizing meetups in the woods. So Ezekiel's paw and brothers rode out there to track him down. They asked around, got the townsfolk to tell them where the salesman was hiding, and then headed into the woods to get revenge. But just like Ezekiel, they didn't come back. A couple of days later, someone found their horses tied to some trees near an old wooden church

that had been left to rot. A search party went out, found the falling down church, and then they searched the place to rule out the missing men being inside. But when they stepped inside, there they were, lying on the rotted wood planks with the bodies of Ezekiel's father and brothers. It appeared they'd shot each other dead, but no one could figure out why or how it happened. Martha said the county sheriff got called in who brought his bloodhounds to the church. The dog sniffed out the trails of the three dead men, but there was a fourth scent, someone they couldn't identify. The sheriff and his deputies then followed the fourth trail through the woods until it led to an old cave.

But the bloodhounds, who were usually bold as brass, wouldn't go near it. They just whimpered and backed off like they were scared of whoever or whatever was inside. The deputies checked it out anyway, but all they found were some old clothes and animal bones. There was no sign of the fourth person. I remember how when she got to that part of the story, Martha stopped talking for a few moments as her gaze wandered off. like she was seeing that cave in her mind's eye. Then she told me what she thought happened, in theory or not,

what she said sent a chill through me. When she said she believed her forefathers ran into the devil himself, she was dead serious. She believed this thing of evil tricked them into killing each other by feeding them lies. She thought about it long and hard, and she couldn't think of anything else that properly explained it. her forefathers were good men she said but that's all they were men martha then quoted a bible verse about how men were vulnerable to the devil's ways saying many a victim has he laid low in all his slain or a mighty throng i wasn't sure what to think

i asked if there could have been another explanation or if there was some kind of family feud she didn't know about she just shook her head and said that she knows the devil walks the earth looking for people who are weak or angry. Her family was both, she reckoned, grieving Ezekiel and doubt for blood, according to her, and made them easy pickings. I didn't argue with her. I could see she believed it with all her heart, and honestly, the story was heavy enough without me trying to poke holes in it. Four guys from one family, all gone in such a brutal way. Devil or no devil, it was pretty messed up. And we stood there by the graves for a while, not to be able to be. saying much of anything, just taking everything in. And then, as the sun started to go down, I thanked her for telling me the story, and she gave me this small, sad smile in response.

She said it mattered to keep their memory alive, that they didn't deserve what happened to them. I nodded in agreement, thanked her for the story, and then said my goodbyes and got back on the trail. I tried to focus my mind elsewhere, trying to figure out how long it'd take before I was back home and preparing dinner. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn't stop thinking about Martha's story, and the more I thought about it, the more the woods didn't quite feel the same anymore. Before they'd been peaceful, but then it felt like they were hiding something. And the days that followed, I thought about Ezekiel heading into the woods to buy those guns, just trying to keep his family safe in a crazy time. I also thought about his father and brothers, torn up over losing him,

and then going after the guy they thought did it. Something went very, very wrong in that church. Something bad enough for them to turn their guns on each other, but how? Was it the salesman? Did he mess with their heads somehow? Or was it something else? Something more in line with what Martha said about them dealing with the devil. That cave part nagged at me, too.

Who was that fourth person? Was the salesman working alone, or was there someone else involved? and why the hell did those dogs freak out so much? Those old clothes and the animal bones had to be a clue, too, but to what? I had no idea. Maybe the rifle salesman was a crook, luring people to rob them, or worse. And then he could have set up Ezekiel's family somehow and got them to fight each other. But that didn't explain the cave or the dogs acting spooked,

not to mention Ezekiel's body being all cut up like it was. that made it sound more like the work of some bloodthirsty lunatic than a straight-up robbery. Martha's devil idea was way out there, but I understood why she chose to believe it. Back then, with all the chaos and death, people probably saw the devil everywhere. He was an easy way to explain the unexplainable. Personally, I wasn't sold on it, but I couldn't shake that idea. And even now, I sometimes find myself picturing it in my head. Ezekiel meeting that salesman, the family finding his body, the shootout in the church and the cave with its secrets.

I didn't have answers, and maybe I never would, but that connection to the past, those lives lost in a place I'd just walk through. It hit me hard, and that was enough to keep me thinking about it for a long, long time. During the summer of 2013, when we were in our mid-20s, my friend Rachel asked if I wanted to join her, her boyfriend and a couple of his friends on a camping trip up in the Catskills. It was shaping up to be a really nice dry summer, and I knew her boyfriend and his buddies were chill, so I think anyone would have found the invitation nice. But for me personally, I was way beyond stoked for the prospect of going on my first ever camping trip, and the reason it was my first stems from a time in my life that I don't even remember anymore. I'm getting the story secondhand from my mom, who to this day is furious that my dad let this happen, but here goes.

When I was just three years old, some of my dad's old college friends asked if he wanted to join them for a few hours of barbecuing up in one of New York State parks. He did, and this resulted in toddler me accompanying him. But apparently, while Dad and his buddies were flipping rib-eyes and talking trash, yours truly went off for a little unsanctioned wander. Then when Dad and his friends realized that I'd wandered off, they went into a total panic. They went running around the park like men possessed trying to find me, and when they finally did, I was wailing so loud that they heard me long before they saw me. I didn't drop it either. I was still mad when he got me back home, which is how Mom found out that he'd almost lost me during a barbecue trip to the woods

with friends. And that was that. Mom developed this general anxiety about me being near any kind of forest or wooded area, like the whole thing had given her some irrational fear. And this meant no hiking, no camping, and most definitely no summer camp. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I was so stoked to get that invitation. Eventually, Rachel and her boyfriend decided that we'd head up to a place called Papactin Reservoir for a long weekend. Pappacton was 12 miles away from the nearest town, but with Highway 30 running all along at Southern Shore, it was nicely accessible with a couple of cabins and campgrounds,

but still secluded enough to feel wild. At least to a bunch of city people had felt wild, but to us, wild meant fun. We drove up towards the end of July, with the five of us packed into Rachel's old Honda, and we drove until we found a little peninsula with a parking lot, campground, and a boat launch. There were a couple of cabins on the opposite side of the highway, but apart from that, there was nothing but the reservoir, the highway, and would look like endless woodland beyond. We stuck to our little peninsula for a while,

unloading the car and setting up camp, and then after a campfire dinner of beans and hot dogs, we had a few beers as the sun went down and then headed to our sleeping bags. The next morning, we headed down to the shore and ones and twos to get an early morning rinse, and then as the boys occupied themselves skimming stones across the water, me and Rachel decided to explore the other side of the highway. I was excited to explore the woods. I mean, it felt like this whole other magical world to me, even being as old. as I was. But our little walk served another purpose too. As we walked up and down a short dirt road

lined with mostly empty cabins, Rachel told me all about how baby crazy she was getting. She wanted to start his family while she was still in her prime childbearing years, she said, but her boyfriend didn't seem anywhere near ready for that kind of responsibility. Apparently they'd talked it over and Rachel wanted to stop taking her birth control, but she wouldn't until her boyfriend started taking the whole thing seriously. He claimed he was, she thought he wasn't, and we just kept on talking about the whole thing as we walked away from the cabins and further into the woods. Since I had this irrational fear of getting lost in the woods or not so irrational given my

history, I had my compass with me and Rachel kept poking fun because I was almost constantly checking our direction. I made some joke about how since she was so worried about the direction her relationship was taking, then it was down to me to worry about the direction of her hike. And she just rolled her eyes as I laughed a little, but after a few more minutes of walking, I wasn't really laughing anymore. I remember stopping dead in the middle of a trail and then turning very quiet. Rachel asked what had gotten into me, but I couldn't answer. I wanted to, but the words wouldn't come out, and when I finally was able, this is what I told her. Around the time I started middle school,

I started having these reoccurring nightmares. Mom thought that they were some kind of belated trauma response to getting lost in those woods when I was still little, while Dad thought that there were some manifestation of my concerns with starting a new school. I had no idea why I was having them. I just know that it was hell waking up every night with my sheets soaked with cold sweat.

I've been walking through the woods, like dark fairy tale woods, all these twisted roots and branches with no leaves, and then I come across a small stone house. It was so small that it couldn't have been more than one room inside and the inside looked completely dark, like whatever was in there was swallowing up all the light. In that nightmare, I'd want to run away, but I couldn't. It was like my feet had grown roots and kept me glued to the spot

as something shuffled into view from the edges of my vision. It was a creature, with skin like tree bark and hair like flames. Then, as it staggered towards the little stone house, it would always smile at me before walking into the darkness inside, and it was that smile which used to scare the living hell out of me. The creature had blood all over its teeth and dripping down its chin, like it had just eaten one little girl and still had room for another. But then instead of dragging me inside, the creature just turned its back and walked into the dark, but I still had this feeling of absolute dread gripping me, because in my nightmare I knew that sooner or later, I'd walk

into the darkness all on my own, whether I wanted to or not, and the creature would be waiting for me. I'm sure a lot of you can now understand why I was so frightened by that nightmare, especially since I used to have it at least two or three times a week for almost two years. Mom ended up organizing a visit to a child psychologist, but nothing she advised seemed to help. and then one day, when I was a high school sophomore, the nightmares just kind of stopped. The psychologist said it was just the natural progression of things, and the sudden end to the nightmares was probably due to me feeling much more settled at school. I was so happy that I'd stopped having them that I didn't really care why I'd stopped having

them. Then over the years that followed, reminders of the dream became less and less frequent. Then, with the stresses of high school, it faded to the back of my mind. And that's where they stayed, too, for maybe seven or eight years, until I was walking through the woods, and it all came flooding back to me. And the reason it came flooding back was because it felt like the exact same scenery as my nightmare from all those years before. It wasn't a debilitating kind of shock I was feeling, like I didn't break down crying

or start begging to turn back. But having that sensation hit me right between the eyes, having it all looked so uncanny. It was definitely a freaky experience. Rachel, on the other hand, was looking at me like she didn't quite know what to say, and to be honest, I understood. We were both very rational, skeptical people, averse to all things woo-woo. Then there I was. Talking about an old nightmare I used to have like it was memories of a past life or something. She kept that look on her face for a moment before asking,

Is everything all right with you? I was fine. At least I thought I was. Then as we kept walking, I filled her in on the whole woodland activities band that Mom had imposed when I was a kid. I remember how Rachel laughed and said, it's all starting to make sense now. You're basically an agoraphobic. At the time, I thought she was right. I still think she was right in a sense. It's just not the same kind of right that I first figured as we were walking through those woods. As we turned back towards camp, that weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, seemed to unknot itself, and I started to enjoy myself again. I figured talking about with Rachel had helped a bunch, and it was my first

time walking through a forest in almost 20-something years, so maybe it really was just my mind playing tricks on me. But it wasn't. Something was out there, just waiting for me to find it. So we had lunch, lounged around on the shore for a couple of hours soaking up the sun, and then went for a swim to work on an appetite for dinner. Then later, while sitting around the campfire, Rachel started playfully joking about my little deja vu experience on our morning hike. It was a very good-natured attempt at humor, like she wasn't being mean or anything,

but the comments sparked a wider conversation that, thanks to her boyfriend's buddies, touched on things like past lives, remote viewing, and other seemingly illogical stuff. Or at least it seemed illogical. And so I started thinking about it. Maybe it was the alcohol that got me thinking they could be right in some way. But I had felt deja vu before, and what I felt on that hike was very, very strong.

Like if deja vu was bud wiser, then what I experienced was like straight teetos. Same ballpark, just way more intense. I woke up the next morning feeling considerably more rational, and we repeated the morning ritual of heading down to the shore with our towels, soap, and bathing suits to wash away the mental cobwebs. We then had ourselves some breakfast while we decided what to do with our Saturday, then agreed to head out into the woods on an extended hike. Since I was feeling back to my regular self again,

I was super excited to get back on the trails, and the next couple of hours were just fantastic. The weather was great, Rachel's boyfriend and his buddies were great company, and perfect gentleman, really. And the trails weren't too rough or demanding for what amounted to my first real hike. We'd packed ourselves some lunch in the form of some crackers, jerky, and granola bars, and I know I drank like a metric ton of water, too, because it wasn't long before I needed to use the bathroom.

I was a little shy about peeing outside around others, so much so that I ended up putting at least 50 or 60 yards between me and the group before I felt comfortable enough to drop my shorts. And when I finally found a nice enough spot, I did my business, pulled up my shorts, and then kind of instinctually looked over my shoulder just to make sure that I was still alone. I looked one way, then the other, and that's when I noticed something about the tree tops in the near distance, and how oddly familiar they seemed. Then the longer I looked, the more that skin-crawling feeling of deja vu came slowly creeping back. I kept telling myself I should stay put, that I was messing with some kind of mental health thing, and that I'd lived a regret not being

more cautious. But in the end, I just couldn't help myself. I had to know why I was feeling the way I did, and at the time, only the woods seemed like they had any answers. So I walked towards the oddly familiar tree tops, the trunks of which were hidden behind a low rise, and then as I crested that, I suddenly felt myself beginning to feel faint, because what I saw was impossible. It was a small concrete structure, maybe shoulder height, and just a few feet wide, with a slanted concrete roof in the shape of an inverted V. The entrance was fairly small, but it was deep enough to shroud the furthest point in a haze of darkness. I'd seen it before.

It didn't look exactly the same as I remembered, but I had seen it before. Hundreds of times, in fact, and that horrible, repetitive nightmare I'd done so much to forget. and I couldn't believe it. All those years of thinking it was something my imagination had cooked up, and it had been real the whole time. I can barely explain the feeling because the structure wasn't the exact same as the one from the nightmare. It wasn't a little stone cottage with a door and a window and whatnot, but at the same time, I just sort of knew,

like it had lit up some long, dormant synapse in my brain that said, we've seen this before. But if I'd seen it before, if I'd seen it in my nightmares, what about the monster I saw? The one with skin like bark and hair like fire. Being the skeptic that I am, and even though I was 99% certain that no such supernatural creature exists in the world, having the ultra-vivid feeling of deja vu had me so unsettled that just for a moment, I found myself terrified something was about to emerge from the structure's shadows. Obviously, that didn't happen, because unless you're counting grizzly bears and tigers and

all of that, monsters aren't real. But curiosity drew me further and further towards that structure, until finally, I was just a few feet away from its entrance. And like I said, it went back pretty deep, so deep I couldn't see all the way in without crouching down and sort of peering inside to let my eyes adjust to the dark. Then when I did, I could see the shape of something covered up by layers of dead leaves and small branches. It felt like I was at the end of some years-long journey. I couldn't just stand up and walk away, no matter how strong the feeling of dread was, burning away inside my chest. And so I leaned in further and brushed away some of the foliage covering the shape and saw a boot. It looked old, like it had been there for years. It had been there for

years, maybe even decades, and I don't know what possessed me, but I decided to reach in and just drag it out. But when I did, and I tugged it free, I saw a length of bone come with it. I knew it wasn't just an animal bone, not because I'm some expert in anatomy or anything like that, but because of the way it shifted right as I moved the boot, like I disturbed something that had been resting for a very long time. I pulled back immediately as that magnetic feeling of curiosity turned to one of overwhelming repulsion, and I got up, and I ran, all the way back to Rachel and the group where I breathlessly relayed what I had just seen. I didn't say anything about my childhood nightmares or that weird feeling that I'd seen it or been there before.

There was no time for anything like that, because there was something very real in that strange concrete structure. I asked someone to call 911, but Rachel's boyfriend and his buddies insist on seeing the bones before they called anyone, and I get it. I don't think they didn't believe me so much as they couldn't believe what I was telling them. I mean, we'd already kind of established that it was a total newbie when it came to hiking and camping and all of that, but when I said that I was sure that it wasn't an animal bone, I know they must have felt a hell of a lot of doubt and therefore wanted to see it for themselves. Well, we walked all the way out to the trees that I'd recognized and that weird concrete playhouse type thing.

Then when they looked inside, they had almost the exact same holy crap reaction I did, and then whoever's cell phone had bars ended up calling the cops. We had to wait around for an hour or so for them to arrive, but when they did, two cops pulled over to the side of the highway after we waved them down. Then we walked them out to that concrete structure and where a human skeleton was partially covered in leaf litter. They took one look at it before one of them started speaking. into his radio and saying how they needed all kinds of assistance to secure the crime scene and examine the remains. The cops asked us a bunch of questions while they waited for their

partners to show up, but obviously no one really had anything to tell them except for me. Again, I didn't say anything about my nightmares. I just told them about finding the body after wandering off to go to the bathroom. And then after that, since we obviously weren't suspects, the cops told us that we were free to leave, but that they might be in touch. As we walked back to our camp, I felt terrible for being such a buzzkill, but I was so freaked out from finding those bones that I couldn't get myself settled in again. So I asked Rachel if it was okay to just give me a ride back home. She told me it was no problem at all.

And then we kind of jointly rolled our eyes when the boys said that there was no way in hell they were leaving. They actually thought it was kind of cool that I'd found somebody and wanted to hang out to see if the media showed up. And that was whatever, I guess. boys will be boys and Rachel hadn't mentioned what I told about my dream and all they knew was that I got that creepy sense of deja vu so I don't blame them for not totally understanding why I couldn't stay but I just couldn't handle being there and as we drove away it felt like this huge weight was being lifted off my chest and I could breathe again Rachel dropped me back off at my apartment and then decided that she'd stay with me overnight before driving back to the cat skills in the morning as the boys still needed

to ride back home. She must have figured that I needed someone to talk to and I really did because I couldn't reconcile the bizarre similarities between what I'd seen in my dream and what I'd found out in those woods. I never known anything to stretch my skepticism to its absolute limits and was not a pleasant experience. I didn't know if I was going crazy or not and I clung to the hope that there was some kind of rational explanation for what was going on. Thankfully, it turned out there was some kind of rational explanation. I just inadvertently delayed hearing it by avoiding talking to the one person I needed to, my mother. And for reasons that should be pretty obvious by now, I had no intentions whatsoever telling my mom about that camping trip. I didn't want to worry

her or potentially start some kind of argument, so I kept my mouth shut about it, and I continued to keep my mouth shut about it for a whole 24 hours or so before I finally broke and called her. She wasn't mad that I'd gone to the Catskills. She wasn't mad that I hadn't told her either. She wasn't happy about it, but she appreciated that I was a grown woman who could make my own choices. I told her everything, from feeling weird to finding that body. And then when I was finished, she asked where exactly we'd visited and I told her the Catskills. And after a couple of seconds of silence, she asked where exactly.

then when I told her we were camp near that reservoir she says oh god let me call your father i'll get right back to you when i'm done she called back within minutes and then told me something along the lines of sweetie i need you to brace yourself from me but the place you went missing when you were a kid it was up near that reservoir the reason why it felt like you'd been there before it's because you have. I guess these days I kind of kick myself for not putting it together sooner, but I guess it's also a testament to just how powerful the brain is in terms of filing away memories you think you've forgotten. I ended up contacting the cops who dealt with that body just to try and fill in the gaps in the story a little. They didn't know the whole story either, and at first they weren't too

excited on sharing any details with me. But when I said that I gotten lost in the area as a child and had these sort of weird nightmarish slash memories about a monster crawling into the concrete structure, they suddenly got very interested in what I had to say. I won't go into everything that was said. It was a long and meandering conversation that touched on a lot of stuff that I've already covered, but this is the long and short of it. I'm 99% certain that I saw the person who died in that structure, which turned out to be half-finished housing for an electrical transformer or something like that, walk in there before they passed away. The cops said that they figured the guy was some hunter,

because there were scraps of camouflage clothing still clinging to that skeleton's leg bones, which was probably why the monster in my dream had skin like bark. And then, it's hair that looked like fire. Well, you guessed it. An orange hunting cover that turned to flames in my nightmare. But what about the blood all around that creature's mouth? Well, both me and the cops figure that following some kind of of severe hunting accident, the guy realized that he was dying and probably wasn't going to make

it. So rather than die out in the open where his body would almost certainly be torn apart by animals, he crawled into that half-built transformer housing and then just laid down and died in the hopes that someone would end up finding him. The only thing the cops wouldn't talk to me about, and not because they didn't know it themselves, was what exactly caused the wound which killed the hunter? They knew, I'm almost certain of it. because they told me they'd completed a forensics exam of the bones. They just wouldn't tell me if it was a gunshot which killed the man, which possibly indicated murder, or if the wound had been caused by something like a sharp branch or a deer's antler

or something, in which case it could have been nothing more than a tragic hunting accident. I'd like to be able to say that I'd helped in some way too, but nothing I had to say did anything for the investigation other than roughly confirmed the date of the man's death, which the cops already had an idea of anyways thanks to whatever they did. And I guess the only good thing that came of it for me personally was the clarity and closure I got from talking to the police. It was a relief like no other to know that I wasn't going crazy and that I had a damn good reason for feeling so off in those woods,

especially those woods, where I had been traumatized so horribly when I was still just a toddler. I can only hope that someday they figure out what happened so that poor man can finally rest in complete an everlasting peace. is sponsored by BetterHelp. Rewriting Traditions. Therapy can give you the space to create new, meaningful traditions, providing clarity amid the holiday chaos.

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I grew up in a little place called Shiprock, New Mexico, which is home to the northern Navajo Nation Fair. It rolls around every fall for a couple of days, and like most kids around there, I was taught to have a lot of pride in my people and my culture, especially when it came to the concept of our guardianship over the land. I was born back in 1957, just in time for the hippie movement to sweep the nation around the time of my 10th birthday. The long-haired day trippers over in San Francisco had declared it the summer of love and talked about peace, love, and harmony with nature. I could get down with the first two parts for sure, but it was the third part that really struck a chord and resonated with that sense of guardianship I too came to feel. I wanted to protect Dinatah, which is the Navajo word for our homeland, and by the time I got to high school, a lot of my friends were dead set on joining the military as a way of doing just that. It was good money. It invoked the warrior spirit of our ancestors, and if you were

defending the USA, then you were helping defend the Navajo too, right? I guess a lot of people thought that way, but me personally, I thought they were crazy. It was 1971 when I started high school and by then, all the bombs, blood, and body bags I'd seen in the newsreels from Vietnam meant I had no intention whatsoever of joining up. I might not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I knew that there were no Viet Cong in San Juan County. But what was in San Juan, and had been since before I was born, were a whole bunch of mining companies who didn't always play by the rules

when it came to disposing of toxic waste products. I can't put it all in the mining company, Unregulated grazing and industrial encroachment had also left scars on the land, but the mining companies had a bad reputation for a damn good reason, because the uranium mines they left abandoned had leached poison into our soil and water. They did the most damage, so to me, it was them that Dinata needed protecting from most. So instead of choosing a warrior's path, I chose a scholars. I graduated from the University of New Mexico with a bachelor's degree in environmental science in 1975,

but in between study sessions, I was volunteering with the Navajo Nation's environmental programs. Working with those programs was a work experience goldmine. Then after graduation, I heard from a professor that the EPA was hiring in Region 6, which covered my home state of New Mexico. The application process was long and tiresome. But after months of waiting, I got a call back for an interview. I wore my best bolo tie, spoke plainly about why I wanted the job, and while I leaned on my fieldwork and studies,

I also made it clear that I knew the land as a Navajo, not just as a scientist. A few weeks later, I was offered a position as an environmental scientist with the EPA's Region 6 office based in New Mexico, and it was a dream come true. I started in early 1979, and while the work was challenging, every sample I took and every report I wrote was a step toward protecting our ancestral lands. I carried the weight of my ancestors' teachings, their respect for Mother Earth, and to every meeting and every field assignment. But just five months into my job, the land that I'd sworn to protect faced a catastrophe that

shook all of us to our cores. In the morning of July 16, 1979, at around 5.30 a.m., a dam at the uranium mills up in Church Rock gave way. The breach unleashed over a thousand tons of radioactive mill tailings, which is sandy radium-laced debris from uranium processing, and 94 million gallons of radioactive wastewater into the Plurco River, which then flowed downstream by around 80 miles, through McKinley and Navajo counties. The spill was even worse than the three-mile island accident, which happened earlier that year, but to our shock, we barely made the news.

As a Region 6 employee, I was thrown into action almost right away. I joined the teams collecting water and soil samples, and we quickly determined radiation levels in the Puercco River were over 7,000 times the level we'd considered dangerous. We put signs up warning people to avoid the river. Many Navajo families either didn't get the news or had no other choice. Goat herders, for example, were some of the worst affected. Their livestock drank from the river and later died or gave birth to deformed or inviable offspring.

Then, to make matters worse, the governor refused to declare a federal disaster area which left many Navajo communities without aid they urgently required. I knew I was needed at Church Rock, and I knew I could do some good there. So within 24 hours of returning from the testing teams, I was pushing for a transfer. I pressed my supervisors, arguing that my experience with the Navajo Nation's environmental programs made me ideal for the task. And then, in September of 79, my persistence paid off. The EPA approved my reassignment to a long-term monitoring project focused on the Church Rock area, specifically targeting the spread of radioactive contamination beyond the river into surrounding ecosystems. The assignment wouldn't be a glamorous one.

There'd be long hours, limited funding, and the obvious dangers of trudging around a potentially radioactive forest all day. But it also meant an opportunity to serve Dinota directly. So without a moment's hesitation, I took it. From the fall of 79 to the winter of 81, I was based out of McGaffey, a small town in the Zuni Mountains about 20 miles south of Church Rock. My work revolved around weekly trips into the wooded area south of the spill, where its toxic plume had spread through runoff and wind. There, I'd test trees and soil for radioactive contamination,

which posed long-term risks to plants, animals, and people. Every Monday, I'd load up my truck in McGaffy with sampling equipment, Geiger counter, soil corers, and containers for plant samples, then make the 20-mile drive to church rock past warning signs faded by the sun, and drywash is still stained with a dirt yellow sediment. In the woods, I followed a grid system mapped out by my EPA colleagues, spending hours taking tree clippings and collecting soil samples to check for radioactive particles, and the results horrified me. The radiation levels in some of my soil samples were over a hundred times higher than normal, and certain trees showed elevated radioactivity in their bark and needles. I documented

everything, knowing the data I collected could make all the difference when it came to getting the cleanup right. It hurt knowing that I wasn't in a position to outright prevent things like that from happening in the first place, but helping drive the cleanup made me feel like I was really making a difference. I don't regret all the time that I spent helping out. I wouldn't change a thing, but let's just say that I had one or two encounters that made me think that there might be scarier things than radiation out in those woods. You see, in the fall of 1980, about a year into my weekly trips into the woods south of Church Rock, I had an encounter that seriously rattled me, not just as a scientist, but as a Navajo with ties to the land. I was out there working a grid near a dry wash

about a mile south of the spill site, when suddenly I saw it. A small, mutated yearling deer that stopped me in my tracks. I just stood up after coring a soil sample, my Geiger counter softly ticking away, when I heard a rustle. I looked up, expecting a rabbit or maybe a coyote, but instead, there it was, no taller than my waist, standing around 20 feet away in a rough clearing. It wasn't aggressive. It just stared at me with one cloudy eye. The other was missing and there was just a sunken socket in its place, while its head was lopsided from a bulging tumor that pushed its skull out of shape. Its legs were all wrong, with the front right so bent that it hobbled even while standing still, and its fur was patchy too with bald spots showing

scabby discolored skin and a stunted tail that was barely a nub. It didn't move toward me or flee. They just stood there with its breathing, very shallow, like it was too weak to do much of anything else. And my first thought was radiation. Chronic exposure causing mutations, especially in younger animals developing in contaminated areas. This deer's deformities, its cranial asymmetry, missing eye, and limb malformation were almost an exact match with the kinds of things folks saw Chernobyl in the years that followed. The Puercco River was still in a radiated mess, and the deer either drank from it, grazed on contaminated plants, or its mother drank from it while pregnant and passed the poison on.

I noted the location in my field book and made a note of that deer's deformities. It made for a very terrifying sight, but as in Navajo, the site hit deeper. Our ancestors teach us to live in harmony with animals, almost like their family, so seeing this fawn all twisted up and suffering like that, it felt like a violation of that harmony. I checked my Geiger counter and it spiked slightly, about 0.2 millarem per hour higher than the surrounding area. This suggested the young deer might have been exposed to contaminated sediment. I didn't approach it, partly to avoid scaring it and partly because I didn't want to risk contamination. It watched me for maybe a minute and then limped off into the trees. I didn't

follow. Instead, I marked the spot for follow-up sampling, knowing that I need to report the encounter to my EPA team as soon as possible. We'd seen sick livestock. A lot of Navajo herders had lost sheep with similar deformities, but that was my first direct encounter with a wild animal so clearly affected by the spill, and I'm not ashamed to say that it left me very, very shaken. I drove back to McGaffey that evening with a heavy heart. My data would go into a world, report and I could no doubt use it to push for more cleanup, but the feeling that poor animal gave me was something that I couldn't put into words. Sometime after, in the summer of 1981, I was still heading out on my weekly monitoring trips when a wildfire broke out in the woods

south of Church Rock. One of my co-workers, a fellow scientist named Tom, got caught in the fire's path, and what he claimed to have seen while escaping left me wrestling with both my scientific skepticism and my Navajo roots. It had been an unusually hot and dry July, and the woods were a tinderbox after weeks without rain. Tom had gone out early to collect water samples from a wash near our monitoring grid, about two miles south of the spill site. I was in McGaffey testing samples when we got word of smoke rising from the trees, and by morning, reports were coming in of a fast-spreading fire that wind was pushing southwest,

directly toward our monitoring area. I was in the office coordinating with our team when we lost contact with Tom. The fire was moving too quickly for us to send a truck and the Forest Service was already stretched thin. We just had to sit tight and pray that he'd be okay. Well, our prayers were answered and by late afternoon, firefighters found Tom staggering out of the woods near Red Rock. He was barely conscious, black with soot and,

coughing violently from the severe smoke inhalation, but he was alive. Firefighters rushed him to Gallup Indian Medical Center, where he was treated for burns and respiratory damage. When I visited him the next day, I was relieved to see him alive, but I was incredibly shaken by how close we'd come to losing him. About a week later, when Tom was stable, he gave a statement to the firefighters, and as an EPA official, I got my hands on a copy of their report.

It detailed Tom's escape, and as harrowing as it all was, one part stopped me dead cold. Tom said he'd been collecting samples when he noticed the burning smell, and assuming it was some campers that had strayed too far into the exclusion zone, he started walking towards the flame. Then by the time he realized it was a forest fire, the flame was already visible through the trees, and the smoke was thickening fast. With the fire closing in, he dropped his gear and just ran. but as he fled, he claimed that he saw something impossible. A huge sphere of flame, about six feet around, floating slowly through the woods, maybe 10 to 15 feet off the ground.

He said it moved steadily, not flickering like regular flames, but burning up tree trunks as it moved through them. And although he admitted the smoke and the panic made everything a little blurry, he swore it wasn't any kind of hallucination and that he knew what he'd seen. The firefighter's report noted that Tom's account of the sphere was likely a stress-induced misperception of either a large burning branch or debris caught in an updraft. They'd seen no evidence of anything unusual in the burn patterns, just a typical fast-moving wildfire that scorched around 100 acres before containment.

But while reading the report in my office, I wasn't so quick to dismiss it. As a Navajo, I'd grown up hearing from elders about strange lights in the woods, small orbs of flame, sometimes called witch lights, that are signs of restless spirits. My grandmother once told me of glowing balls of flames seen at night near sacred sites, and that they were sometimes tied to imbalances in the land. The woods south of church rock was now tainted by radioactive waste, and part of me wondered if Tom's sphere was a manifestation. of that unrest. But the scientist in me pushed back hard. I'd studied fire behavior in my

environmental science courses. Wildfires can create optical illusions like burning gases or superheated air distorting light. On top of that, Tom's smoke inhalation, in combination with carbon monoxide levels high enough to cause confusion, could have easily warped his perception. I checked the fire's burn data and red samples from the area showing no unusual chemical residues, just the standard combustion markers you see in any regular forest fire. Radiation levels in the soil already elevated from the spill hadn't spiked any further. In fact, the firefighters said they thought it was a freak lightning strike that started the blaze and that there was no physical evidence of anything like a floating sphere of flame.

But I still couldn't shake that sense of up. unease. I drove out to the burn site the following week and walked the charred section of the forest where Tom had been. The woods were this weird mix of ash and charred tree trunks, and my Geiger counter clicked at the expected level, nothing out of the ordinary. But standing there, I felt the weight of the land's pain, not just from the spill, but the fire too. I said a quiet prayer for balance, not to mention Tom's recovery, and when I filed my report, his words were a reminder that some things in those woods defy explanation. But as for other things, no matter how frightening they are, they often have very rational and logical explanations. In the fall of

1979, just a few months into my reassignment to the cleanup effort, I witnessed something that haunts me to this day, something far worse than any mutated animal or wildfire scare. I was out on a routine sampling trip in early September, and my grid that day took me to a rocky outcrop about a mile and a half south of the spill site near a small cave tucked into a sandstone ridge. I was testing the trees in soil for radium 226, with my Geiger counter clicking away, when I heard a low groan from inside the cave. It sounded like a wounded animal, maybe a coyote or a deer, hurt and hiding. And I froze and listened. Then the sound came again, so guttural and full of pain that it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I thought that it might be a sick animal, so I sat down my core and approached the mouth of the cave,

calling out softly as to not startle whatever was inside. Seconds after I started calling out, it crawled out into the sunlight, and my stomach dropped. It wasn't an animal. It was a man, or at least what was left of one. His skin was peeling off in patches, black, rotten, and oozing with sores that glistened in the light. His jaw was just kind of hanging slack, and his tongue lulled out of his mouth, very swollen, discolored.

While his eyes were cloudy circles, sunken in a face that looked more like a corpse than a living person. He dragged himself forward on bony arms, his legs too weak to stand, moaning with each movement. At first I thought he was another mutation, like the animals that I'd feared, but as he emerged, I saw the tattered jeans he was wearing and realized this was a person that had been ravaged by advanced radiation sickness. And my heart was pounding. Nothing I'd ever seen before it ever frightened me so much, but my training kicked in all the same. I knew acute radiation poisoning when I saw it, the skin necrosis, the lesions, the way it looked like he was wasting away.

This man had been exposed to extreme levels of radioactivity, likely from lingering in the spill zone where radium and thorium saturated the soil and water. I ran to my truck, grab my water canteen, and started begging for mechanics over my radio. I then ran back to the injured man, keeping my distance to avoid contamination, and offered him some water. He tried to drink it, but his throat was so swollen that he couldn't swallow, and he almost choked before coughing and expelling what he'd tried to drink. His groans were weaker by then, his breathing very ragged, but I stayed with him, speaking softly and trying to reassure him he'd be okay until a forest service crew arrived with a stretcher. They rushed him to

that medical center, but sadly, I learned later that he died in the hospital. My soil samples from near that cave showed radium levels a hundred times above those considered safe, enough to kill anyone who lingered there unprotected, and later I got my hands on a copy of that report. He was a hermit, a Navajo man in his 50s who was known to live off and on in the woods near Church Rock. No one knew his full story. Some said that he'd been a minor. Others said that he just preferred solitude. But what we knew for certain was he'd either ignored, or never heard the EPA's warnings to stay away from the contaminated area. The spill's toxic plume had spread through the washes and into the caves where he likely took

shelter. There was also a good chance that he'd been contaminated by drinking from tainted streams or eating tainted plants. Autopsy reports confirmed lethal radiation exposure. His bone marrow was destroyed, his organs failing, and his skin was literally rotting from the inside out. I was furious, and I wasn't the only one. The spills' radioactive tailings, left largely uncleaned by United Nuclear, had poisoned the land, and this man had paid the ultimate price. I wrote it up in my report, pushing for more aggressive cleanup and better outreach to remote communities. I'd seen sick animals and polluted rivers, but this was different.

He was one of us. Adinae, lost to the poison we were fighting. That night in McGaffey I sat outside, staring at the stars, and prayed for forgiveness for not doing enough. But the conclusions to those prayers only hardened my resolve to keep testing and keep fighting so that no one else had to crawl out of a cave, rotting from the inside out while still alive. And by the winter of 1981, my time at Church Rock had ended when the EPA reassigned me to other projects across New Mexico. resources were tight, and the spill, despite being the largest radioactive disaster in the nation's history, faded from the headlines, and the agency's focus shifted.

I had to move on to new assignments, but the memories of church rock clung to me like the red dust on my boots. The mutated fawn limping through the woods, the strange fireball my co-worker swore he saw in the wildfire, and worst of all, that hermit crawling from the cave. his skin rotting from radiation sickness. All those images have been completely tattooed onto my consciousness. The memories pushed me to keep going, to keep fighting the good fight for my people in our land,

even when the odds felt stacked against us. But above all, the spill had exposed how little the government prioritized Navajo lands. Church Rock was a hard lesson in reality. United Nuclear barely cleaned up 1% of the 1,100 times. tons of spilled waste, and the Puercco River stayed toxic with radium levels still far above safe limits. Families were still too afraid to drink from their wells, herders were losing livestock, and the deep distrust of federal promises grew even deeper. I carried the weight of what I'd seen, the hermit's groans, the fawns twisted limbs, and used it to drive my work

forward. There were no easy fixes, no heroes swooping in to save the day. The land was still contaminated and the threat to my people remained. But those two years taught me to stay in the fight and to keep pushing for our homeland's health, even when everything seems stacked against us. If you're someone who always leaves shopping to the last minute, you totally get the panic of empty shelves and dwindling ideas, which is why Aura Frames is such a fantastic choice. It offers a thoughtful, personal gift that'll really show you care.

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Andy, along with our friends Steve and Kathy, decided to go hiking in Ocala National Forest up in northern Florida. It was supposed to be a fun week, you know, just getting out in nature, away from work and all of that, but it turned into the scariest thing I've ever been through. And I'm honestly shaking right now, just thinking about it. It all started out so great. We drove up early Saturday morning excited to hit the trails. The weather was perfect, too. Sunny, warm, but not too hot. The forest was gorgeous, with these huge trees and all kinds of birds chirping away, and we got up close and personal at one point with a deer just sort of standing there staring at us, and Steve even tried to snap a picture, but it bolted before he could. And so we hiked for a few hours, not on some hardcore

trail, just a nice and easy one. We took a bunch of pictures, ate some snacks, and then by the afternoon we were ready to set up camp. And that's when we stumbled on to this spot that looked like a disused campground or maybe even a trailer park. It was kind of run down, like nobody had been there in forever. There was a clearing, some old fire pits half overgrown with weeds, and I'll be honest, it felt perfect. And we're thinking, yeah, this is it. And it made us feel very adventurous, you know.

And so we set up our tents, me and Andy in one, Stephen Kathy, and the other, and then we gathered some firewood and got ourselves settled in. That first night was so much fun. at first. We got a campfire going and the smell of wood burning just made everything feel cozy. We brought some beers, nothing too crazy, just enough to relax. Kathy and I hooked up my little portable speaker to my phone and we played some music. We even danced around the fire a bit, probably looking like total dorks, but we didn't care. It was one of those nights where you feel like nothing can go wrong, like you're in your own little bubble away from the

rest of the world. We stayed up pretty late, telling stories and joking around. and until we finally got tired and crawled into our tents. I fell asleep fast, all happy and warm next to Andy, thinking it was the best weekend ever. And then, everything went to hell. I don't even know what time it was, but I woke up suddenly. And then I smelled it. Smoke. But lots of it.

Way more than just a campfire. My eyes popped open. I looked out the tent flap and my God. There were flames everywhere, and it looked like the whole forest was on fire. It wasn't just a little campfire gone wrong. It was this huge, roaring wall of orange and red, and I could hear it too. This loud crackling and popping like the whole world was burning up around us. My heart started pounding so hard that I thought it would bust out of my chest,

and I screamed and shook Andy awake, yelling, fire! Andy wake up, there's a fire. He bolts up, sees it, and his face. goes pale. We could feel the heat already, seeping into the tent, and the smoke was stinging our eyes, and we had to move, and we had to move fast. We scrambled out, barefoot, half panicked, and ran to Steve and Kathy's tent. I was yelling their names, slapping the fabric, and Andy was shouting, get up, we got to go now. They stumbled out, looking confused and sleepy, but when they saw the flames, they freaked out too. And we looked around, and it was bad.

The fire was on three sides of us closing in fast. The only way out was this patch of woods behind us that wasn't burning yet. I grabbed my phone and wallet from the tent floor. Andy snatched his flashlight and Steve and Kathy grabbed some bare essentials too. We left everything, our bags, our food, the tents, all of it. And we ran for our lives. We ran into the woods, stumbling over roots and branches in the dark. Andy's flashlight was bouncing all over the place, barely lighting the wood.

and the smoke was thick, making it hard to breathe, and my lungs were burning. I could hear Kathy coughing behind me. Steve was yelling at us to keep going, and we could still see the glow of the fire behind us, this terrible orange light chasing us behind the trees. And I was terrified, full-on contemplating that we were going to die, terrified. My legs were shaking, but I just kept running because what else could I do? And all I could think was, we have to get out. we have to get out.

And it was complete chaos. There were branches scratching on my arms. My bare feet were getting cut up on the rocks, but I didn't care. And we had to get away from that fire at all cost. I kept looking back, and it felt like the flames were right on our heels, like some monster out of a horror movie. And my mind was racing. How did this even happen?

Did our campfire spread? Was it something else? Was it our fault? But there was no time to figure it out. We were running blind. hoping that we'd hit a road or something, anything safe. And then, just when I thought that it couldn't get worse, out of the darkness, these people appeared. I didn't even see them coming, and then they were blocking our path.

They seemed to be wearing masks that looked like they were made of cloth, only with the weird painted faces and rings around the eye holes. And they had weapons, too. some had baseball bats others had belts and one guy definitely had a chain because i remember the sound that it made when he swung it there were maybe five or six of them and they moved at us so fast that we couldn't really do anything before i could even scream they began hitting us one of them grabbed me by the hair and yanked me back so hard that i fell i hit the ground and then the sharp pain exploded in my side where he jabbed me in the ribs with his bat i screamed curling up

trying to cover myself, but he kicks me again right in the stomach. I could hear Andy yelling, but then he grunted loud, and I looked to see that the thug with the chain had whipped him across the back with it. He fell to his knees, and I thought that I was going to lose it. Steve and Kathy were getting it really bad, and I saw Steve try to shield her, but one of them cracked him in the shoulder with a bat, and he went down. Kathy, sobbing, was trying to pull him up, but they just kept coming. It wasn't just the beating that was bad enough. It was a the things that they were saying too. And oh my God, it was the most disgusting, vile stuff I've ever heard. They were yelling that we were going to die, that they do horrible things to us

first, stuff I can't even type out because it makes me sick. It was like they enjoyed it, like they wanted us to be scared as possible. Every hit hurt so bad and my arm felt like it might be broken. My legs were all cut up from the falling and getting back up. I was crying, shaking, thinking this was it, that they were going to kill us right there in the woods with a fire roaring behind us, and that's when it hit me. It was probably them that set the fire, just to corral us into their trap. I don't know how long it lasted. It felt like hours, but it was probably just minutes. We kept trying to run, dodging between trees, but they'd chase us, laughing and swinging their weapons. Annie grabbed my hand at one point and pulled me up, and we just bolted.

not even looking where we were going. Steve and Kathy were right behind us. I knew because I could hear them gasping and crying. And then all of a sudden those thugs just stopped following us. And they started to yell. I don't know why. Maybe they were just done. But I don't think so.

I think something else out there scared them. Something even scarier than weapon-wielding maniacs. Maybe a rival gang, a bear. Who knows? but we didn't stop to find out. We kept running, tripping over everything, until we couldn't hear them anymore and the trees started thinning out. We finally burst out of the woods into this little town nearby, and I don't even remember

how we got there, just that we were suddenly on a road, panting, bleeding. We were a mess, clothes torn, bruises and cuts all over, barefoot and shaking like crazy. We found the sheriff's office and practically fell through the, the door. The sheriff looked shocked when he saw us, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Gave us some water and we told him everything. The fire, the masked guys, all of it. My voice was shaky. I could barely get the words out and he wrote it all down and said that he'd send someone out to check it out. We went to the hospital and the cops went out to that location we described. And sure enough, everything was burned, all of our things and a lot of the surrounding

trees. There was no sign of that gang, obviously, and it didn't sound like any of the young troublemakers in that area. I honestly still can't believe it happened. We were just trying to have a fun weekend, and it turned into this terrible nightmare that I can't shake. I keep seeing those faces in my head and hearing their voices and feeling the pain all over again, and I haven't slept right since. Every time I close my eyes, I'm back in those woods, running from the fire and those psychos. And he's got nightmares too, and Kathy said Steve's been very quiet, like he's still kind of processing it, and we're all messed up in our own unique ways. And one thing all of us wonder was what was out there that could have scared those guys even more than they wanted to scare us?

So yeah, I just had to tell someone about this, and I guess I'm going to warn you all too. Be careful when you go out in those woods. I used to love camping, hiking, all that kind of stuff, but now I'm scared to death of it. You never know who's out there with you. Crazy people like those thugs could be anywhere, hiding and waiting, tell someone where you're going, stick to places that aren't so remote, and maybe don't camp at some creepy abandoned spot like we decided. I don't know if the sheriff ever found those guys or what started the fire, but I don't care anymore. I just want people to stay safe. This was the worst night of my life and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. About 20 years ago now, me and an old mate of mine from school decided to go camping.

We've been wanting to camp there for a while because it's one of the largest patches of ancient woodland in the whole of the UK, and since Ozzy and the boys recorded Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath at Clearwell Castle, it felt like a bit of a heavy metal pilgrimage. But while both me and my mate were fans of scary music, we most definitely didn't enjoy the little run-in that we had near the little pond we found. We used to camp out the back of my car, basically, so after driving up and down forest roads for a while, we found this little side path that ran adjacent to a large pond. They was enough room for us to park the car and still leave room for people to pass us on the path, so we thought that it'd be as good as place as any to stop over for the night.

Camping there wasn't strictly legal, but we were used to skirting a bit of bureaucracy so we could have a nicer campsite. We didn't make campfires anywhere like that, and we certainly didn't damage any trees or anything. We weren't vandals, so unless a real jobsworth came along and threatened to call the police, we were generally free to do as we pleased. Anyway, we parked just off the path, set up our tents and had some sandwiches for dinner. Then, after watching the sun go down over a few beers and some songs on a portable player, we hit the hay with the intention of staying another night there. But when we woke up the next morning, my mate found a note on his car windshield that just said,

leave. And I won't lie, we were definitely a bit creeped out knowing someone had been walking around our tents, while we'd been asleep. But to be honest, it wasn't the first time something like that had happened. You get kids playing pranks, passive-aggressive-aggressive note-levers telling you if they've informed the National Trust or whatever, and even the occasional doggar who doesn't realize you're even there on the other side of a bush. And on this occasion, we thought it was most probably kids playing a joke on us.

The note-levers are generally quite verbose, and we'll leave you a tidy little paragraph explaining why exactly you're so evil for camping on public land. But kids or teenagers trying to scare you will generally leave you a nice little D-I-E or We Are Watching or, in this case, leave. I asked my maid if he reckoned that we should relocate, even if it was just to the other side of the forest, and I sort of agreed with him when he said no. If the kids or teenagers came back, we'd chase them off and give them a scare of their own,

all in good fun, of course. but we certainly weren't going to give them the satisfaction of obeying their single-word order. After that, we were planning on having a walk into the nearby town to get some food and see what pubs they had on offer. But after suggesting that whoever left the note might still be watching us, my mate suddenly wasn't so keen on leaving all of our stuff alone, and we decided to pack away before driving into town to get some food. We found a decent pub, had some food in the swift half,

and then as we were sat at the bar, my mate starts talking about going back into the forest and camping in a new spot. It did feel massively emasculating, having moved on at the beheads of what were probably just some kids playing tricks on us, so to claw back a bit of our pride, we agreed to head back into the forest of Dean to spend our final night of camping there. So, after lunch, we drove back into the forest and repeated the process of driving up and down the little roads in an attempt. to find the camping spot.

Eventually we found one, and this time we made sure it was much more secluded than the first. We weren't exactly scared yet, apprehensive of getting our stuff damaged or stolen, but not scared. But then as we set up the tents and got our sixers of beer out of the car boot, my mate saw someone walking towards us down the track. First I'd heard of it was him going, Jay. Jay. In this whispered voice, and the second J was said immediately after the first and sounded urgent in the extreme.

I turned around fast and saw a man walking down the track towards us. He had a baseball cap on, with a jumper, jeans, and boots, but covering his face from the eyes down was a scarf. And in his hand, he carried some big wood chopping axe with a red blade. We didn't try and talk to the guy, and I'm sad to say that I left about a hundred quids worth of camping gear and my beer's behind. But we hopped into my car the second I saw him. Then since we had to drive past this guy to actually make it back to the road, I gun my car right at him, so he had to move and couldn't take a swing at us as we passed. We made an anonymous call to the police from the road, not wanting to give away that we've been breaking the law,

but also not wanting some masked psycho to get away with brandishing some axe at us. us. We assumed it was him that it left that note, too. But who he was and why'd he done it were things we were never able to work out. I suppose there are some proper weirdos out there, and we were always a bit more careful about where we camped after that. From Adams Morgan to Anacostia Park, we all want safer neighborhoods. But what does real safety mean? Real safety means preventing crime before it happens. By having police work with communities to disrupt cycles of violence,

by supporting families with stable housing, and providing more mental health and drug treatment. We know that adding more police and locking up more people doesn't make us safer. Real safety means investing in the things that help prevent crime. Learn more at Real Safety, D.C. On August 2nd of 1982, the Johnson family traveled from their home in the rural Canadian community of West Bank

to the Wells Great Provincial Park in British Columbia. The group consisted of Bob and Jackie Johnson, both in their 40s, along with their two daughters, 13-year-old Janet and 11-year-old Karen. Accompanying them were Jackie's parents, George and Edith Bentley, who joined them for a two-week camping vacation at a place called Bear Creek, near the site of an old derelict penitentiary. Intent on paddling up and down the nearby creek, the family of experienced campers brought along a small boat, along with a camper van packed with food, water, and medical supplies. The Johnsons were ready for just about anything, and it seemed like two weeks of wholesome woodland fun awaited them. Yet unbeknownst to all, they were doomed to befall a tragedy of horrifying proportions.

Two weeks later, on the morning of August 16th, employees at Gorman Brothers Lumber noticed one of their fellow workers had failed to lock in. 44-year-old Bob Johnson wasn't the kind of guy to pull a no-show, but since his boss had been informed of his recent camping trip to Wells Gray, he granted Johnson a few days' grace to account for extenuating circumstances. The next day, he tried giving Bob a call, but got no response. He tried again the next day, but once again, his call went unanswered. Finally, and following a week of slowly mounting concern, Bob's boss reported him missing

to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Search and rescue teams began scouring the area surrounding Bear Creek, the Johnson's family's last known location, yet to their confusion, now that they're, the Johnsons nor their vehicles were anywhere to be found. What followed were four weeks of fruitless searching and bitter frustration, until finally on September 13th of 1982, a mushroom picker stumbled across a burned-out car in a woodland clearing, not far from a steep logging road.

This logging road was over 13 miles away from the location of the Johnson's camp, yet the wreckage bore an eerie resemblance to the car that the family had traveled to the park in. After being alerted by the mushroom picker, RCMP officers were immediately dispatched to the scene, and when they arrived, they made a chilling discovery. Following an examination of the burned vehicle's interior, officers found a pile of charred bones in the back seat. The remains were carefully bagged and transported for analysis,

and while many had hoped they might be nothing but animal bones, their worst fears were soon confirmed. The charred skeletons, which had been unceremoned, ceremoniously shoved into the car, doused an accelerant and set alight, belonged to the missing Johnson family. In their subsequent investigation, police began interviewing local residents, one of whom claimed to have spotted the Johnson's camping much further away from Bear Creek than had originally been expected. After pinpointing the location of the second campsite, a search was organized, and it didn't take long to find some beer caps of the brand known to be drunk by Bob Johnson, along with six spent 22-calibular. bullet casings. However, the Johnson's 1981 Ford Camper, not to mention the remainder of their possessions, were still nowhere to be found. For months, the investigation into the Johnson family's

deaths failed to progress. In April of the following year, a television reenactment of the killings were filmed at the site of the murders, which was then broadcast across Canada. Police hoped the reenactment would yield fruitful leads, but despite being flooded with calls and tips, there were no breaks in the case. Police also went so far as to create a replica of the family's Ford camper down to the very finest detail, including the aluminum boat which had been strapped to its roof. Then in the late spring of 1983, they drove the trailer all the way from British Columbia to Quebec, hoping a sighting of it might prompt the right person to come forward.

It was a bold move, but once again, it yielded no tangible results, and despite receiving 1,300 alleged... sightings, all were proven to be either, at best, mistaken sightings, or at worst, malicious disinformation. Eventually, on October 18th of 1983, and a total of 14 months following the Johnson family's murders, their camper van was finally discovered by two forestry workers near Trophy Mountain. The location was just over 15 miles from the site of the murders, and around from where the Johnson's car was found. Forensic investigators determined that, much like their car, some kind of accelerant had

been used in the torching of the camper van, most likely gasoline mixed with some other variety of flammable liquid. It was also clear that someone had tried very hard to ensure the van was well hidden, and there was evidence someone had attempted to drive it into a nearby gorge, but a patch of fallen logs had blocked their path. The RCMP had the van's burned-out remains airlifted to its Vancouver Crime Lab, but although its remnants provided no clues, the location of its discovery proved of great interest to investigators. The abandoned logging road on Trophy Mountain, where the vehicle was found, was not easy to access, with one local residents saying that only someone who knew the area

would have been aware of such an isolated spot. In other words, Johnson's killer, a chillingly close by. The theory prompted officers to return to their door-to-door canvassing with renewed vigor, and it was during this new period of questioning that they finally made a break in the case. After speaking with an unnamed member of a small rural community surrounding Wells Gray, police learned that around the same time as the murders, a man named David Shearing had asked them how to repair a hole in the door of a car, as well as how to re-register one.

The 24-year-old lived three miles from the site of the murders, and on November 19th of 1983, RCMP officers found Shearing north of Camloops, where he was due to appear in court on a stolen property charge. He was taken into custody and questioned extensively. What emerged was a classic story of the familial black sheep. Despite an extensive criminal record and a reputation for wild behavior, Shearing's father made his living as a family. a prison guard, and his brother was a sheriff in the provincial police force. He had been a solid student, graduated high school, and completed a heavy mechanics course. And somewhere along

the way, something went wrong for young David. RCP detectives Mike Eastam and Ken Lebo were convinced of Shearing's guilt and gained his confidence by initially claiming his arrest was completely unrelated to the Johnson family murders. In fact, they got Shearing so relaxed that he agreed to be questioned without a lawyer, and in doing so, had walked right into the detective's trap. As it happened, David Shearing was actually one of the first individuals to have been interviewed by the RCMP following the discovery of the Johnson family's remains. The interview took place in Shearing's backyard, situated around a mile from the scene of the murders, and through one of his home's windows, an officer spotted a 22-calibre rifle hanging on the wall. The exact same kind

used in the murders. When asked why they didn't seize the firearm and tested to see if the casings fired from it matched those found at the scene, Inspector Vic Edwards cited basic rights preventing unlawful searches and seizures. I don't have any right to go into your house and examine your guns, he said, the same as I didn't have any right to go into Mr. Shearing's house. We had no reason to suspect him. Initially, Shearing was led to believe that his arrest was related to a hit-and-run incident before the detective suddenly confronted him with their theories surrounding the Johnson murders. Then, in his explanation, Shearing accidentally admitted to detectives that he had heard the murders were committed at Bear Creek, information that had not been released to the public

yet. Then, after a lot of effort and persuasive techniques, the two detectives managed to convince Shearing to confess to all six Johnson family murders. He also agreed to reenact the murders to show detectives exactly how things went down, and even promised to turn over their possessions so they could be properly returned to their loved ones. But perhaps most important to the case, Shearing agreed to give up the 22-caliber Remington pump-action rifle, which was forensically confirmed to be the murder weapon. Shearing initially confessed to shooting the four adults as they sat around their campfire. He then claimed to have shot the Johnson's two daughters as they slept in their tent, and that his only motivation for doing so was to rob them without risking any witnesses.

He told the detectives interviewing him that after loading the Johnson's bodies into their car, he drove it to the mountainside undercover of darkness and then set it on fire using five gallons of gasoline. He then claimed to have shot the Johnson's two daughters as they slept in their tent, and that his only motivation for doing so was to rob them without risking any witnesses. He told the detectives interviewing him that after loading the Johnson's body into their car, he drove it to the mountainside under cover of darkness and then set it on fire using five gallons of gasoline. He then attempted, but ultimately failed to clean the campsite as best as possible, then drove the camper back to his home before burning it after learning how difficult the re-registration process was.

On the day Shearing's trial was set to begin, he pled guilty to six counts of second. and degree murder. As part of the guilty plea, Shearing stated the following. I walked out of the bush from behind the camper and started shooting. I put the bodies in the car, four in the backseat, and the two little ones in the trunk. I poured the gasoline. It just went woof. And I stood back and watched it burn. I went to the tent. I knelt down and I shot the other two. The court had no choice but to accept Shearing's version of events, but to the detectives, his story didn't ring true. They knew he wasn't telling the whole truth, but their hunch wouldn't be confirmed until a later date. In his sentencing, Supreme Court Justice Harry McKay said,

What we have, very simply, is a cold-blooded and senseless execution of six defenseless and innocent victims for no apparent reason. The sentence I impose must express in clear terms the revulsion felt by the great majority of our citizens for this senseless and vicious mass killing. The victims were unknown to the prisoner. They did not in any way provoke him. He knew they were camped at the site and carefully scouted the situation. He went home and returned either that night or the next with a loaded 22 rifle. Why? We do not really know, but the enormity of the crimes demand the maximum sentence. On April 17, 1984, Justice McKay sentenced Shearing to six consecutive life sentences

with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years. It was the maximum possible penalty for second-degree murder, and the first time in Canadian history it had been handed out. Shearing did not appeal his sentence. His mother, Rose Shearing, was stunned at the news of her son's conviction. I hope it's a mistake or a bad dream, she said. He's always been such a good boy. Greg Shearing, David's brother said,

I have a lot of questions I'd like to ask the police. I have a hard time believing all of this. Following Shearing's conviction, Detective Mike Eastam, who'd long-harbored suspicions of Shearing's dishonesty, pleaded for a chance to re-interview him in a search of the whole truth. When he obtained it, it was just as disturbing as he'd imagined. At one point during the interview, Detective E. Eastam told Shearing, you know why I'm here? I think you abused those girls before you killed them.

You told me some time ago that you would consider telling me the rest of the story after you were sentenced. Well, now I'm here to collect. It was only then that David Sheeran revealed what really happened to the Johnson's two daughters. Shearing confessed that after first spotting the Johnson's family camped out near Bear Creek, he spent several days spying on them. He admitted to harboring deeply inappropriate thoughts towards 13-year-old Jeanette and 11-year-old Karen and became determined to abuse them, even if it meant murdering their parents. Finally, on the evening of August 10th, Shearing walked into the campsite with his rifle and then shot all four adults in cold blood.

Janet and Karen had been sleeping in their tent, and the sound of the shots woke them up. Shearing reassured them that he and their parents were protecting them, from bad men, then went about disposing of the adult's bodies. Once he was finished, he crawled into the tent with the girls and subjected them to acts of unforgivable depravity. The next morning, after ensuring their parents' bodies were covered with a blanket, Shearing transported Janet and Karen to a nearby fishing shack. It was here he intended on continuing the abuse, but, in a stunning twist of fate, the shack was approached by none other than a prison correctional officer who was out supervising a fishing

trip for well-behaved prisoners. The CEO visited the cabin to reassure Shearing regarding their presence in the area, but before he came to the door, Shearing hid the girls in another room, told them to stay quiet, then conducted a brief conversation with the correctional officer without once arousing the man's suspicion. The next day, he moved the girls to his family farm, Then on August 16th, he walked them into a patch of woodland near one of his fields and shot them both in the head. He reportedly told the girls to turn around so he could urinate, and then he shot them execution style. Shearing then took the bodies back to the Johnson's family car, put the girl's bodies in the trunk, and burn it. To confirm Shearing was now telling the truth, Detective Eastam tracked down the prison guard the killer was referring to.

The CEO remembered the meeting exactly as Shearing had described it, and when Eastam's partner, a constable Leibyl, hike through the woods to pay a personal visit to the cabin, he found two sets of initials carved into the wood, DS for David Shearing, and then JJ for Janet Johnson. The initials had been encapsulated in a crudely carved heart shape, a detail which made Lebel's skin crawl. The same detective later reflected on how close the prison guard had been

to saving Janet and Karen's lives. That's how close everyone was, he said. But for a cruel act of fate, those two precious little girls would be alive today. In 1995, Shearing married a woman from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Heather Ennis, who met her bloodthirsty pew in 1993, claimed her husband deserved a second chance. I have seen so much change in this man since we met, she said. I know the man's heart is in the right place and I'm just here to back him up. In September 2008, exactly 24 years following his conviction for the Johnson family murders, David Shearing finally came up for parole. Yet thankfully, the Canadian National Parole Board ruled that since he hadn't completed sex offender treatment and was rumored to still harbor

violent fantasies, he was not yet ready for freedom. His second application filed in 2012 was also rejected when the petition of almost 14,000 signatures was presented to the National Parole Board. Shearing applied again in 2014, but mysteriously withdrew the request a month before his hearing. Perhaps he's tired of trying to fool the parole board into thinking he's a safe, sane, and stable human being. Or maybe he's accepted he's a danger to wider society and has submitted to being sequestered from it for the remainder of his natural years. We might never know Shearing's reasons for withdrawing his appeal, and while some of us might wish to understand his thinking,

I would caution against crawling around the mind of a man who murdered two innocent couples in order to prey on their two little girls. On a chilly November morning back in 1985, a hunter was quietly plotting through the forests of Bear Brook State Park near Allentown, New Hampshire. Located around 15 miles from the state capital of Concord, the park spans over 10,000 acres of wetlands and rolling forests, making one of the state's largest areas of natural beauty. Bear Brook also offers a network of trails for hiking, biking, and horseback riding, tracks which weave through dense woods that team with wildlife. Yet the park's tranquil beauty belies a darker history, marked by a series of grim discoveries which cast a somber shadow over

the serene landscape. This is the story of the bodies, in the barrels. As the hunter walked near the charred ruins of an old burned-down general store, his eyes caught a glint of metal from some nearby underbrush. Curiosity got the better of him. Then on closer inspection, he found the glint belonged to the rusted metal of a 55-gallon oil drum. Unable to temper his burning curiosity, the man heaved the drum upright and then pried its lid from its moorings. But when he did so, he was faced with a picture of pure horror. Stuffed into the drum were the plastic wrapped bodies of two young women. The oldest was likely in her 20s or early 30s, while the much younger girl was perhaps 8 to 10 years old.

Autopsies later revealed that the cause of death for both individuals had been brutal, blunt force trauma. Yet while it was easy to determine how they'd died, discerning who they were was a far more difficult task. The older of the two victims was a young Caucasian, perhaps in her late 20s or early 30s, but with traces of Native American ancestry. Her teeth, marked by multiple fillings and three extractions, hinted at a life of personal and perhaps familial neglect. She also had curly brown hair and was somewhere between five feet two and five feet seven inches tall. Found beside her was a girl no older than 11, but possibly as young as five, and she bore signs of a hard life.

In life, she stood between 4 foot 3 and 4 foot 6 inches tall, and pneumonia had severely scarred her lungs. She had a crooked front tooth. There were noticeable gaps between her top teeth, but unlike the older females, her teeth bore no feelings. Police appealed to the public for information, but when no one came forward to claim the nameless victims, they were laid to rest in in Allens Town Cemetery under a simple tombstone bearing the following inscription. Here lies the mortal remains, known only to God, of a woman aged 23 to 33, and a girl child aged 8 to 10. Their slain bodies were found on November 10, 1985, and Bear Brook State Park.

May their souls find peace in God's loving care. For a long, long time it seemed the female's identities, forever remain a mystery. Yet 15 years later, on May 9th of the year 2000, the woods whispered another secret. Near the exact same spot the first barrel was found, investigators uncovered a second, 55-gallon drum lying just below the original crime scene's boundaries. Somehow, it had been missing during the initial search, and inside were the remains of two children. They too had been dispatched via blunt force trauma. The older child had been between the ages of two and four years old when she was murdered and had stood at a mere three feet eight inches tall. The police also

determined her pronounced overbites along with a gap between her front teeth may have given her a distinctive and easily recognizable smile. Investigators later determined she may have battled anemia during her brief existence, while DNA samples revealed she was the daughter of a man named Terry Pader Rasmussen. The youngest was between the ages of one and three years old, a toddler whose life was cut short before it could truly begin. She stood between two feet one and two feet six inches tall, had long blonde or light brown hair,

and like the others, she had a gap between her two front teeth. In the early days in the investigation, detectives cast a wide net, sharing details of the case across the United States and into parts of Canada, and what amounted to a desperate search for answers. They chased down hundreds of leads, ruling out at least ten possible identities for the victims in the process.

But even after weeks upon weeks of solid investigation, the names of the woman and three girls remained elusive. In June of 2013, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children breathed new life into the case by unveiling a series of updated facial reconstructions. These weren't just sketches. They were digitally rendered images, which included important physiological details,

such as the gaps and overbites that shaped the victim's faces. They were, however, rendered in haunting black and white, as their skin tones and eye colors were details that had not yet been determined. As science advanced, so did the clues, because in 2015, DNA profiling unlocked a key piece of the puzzle. Analysis of their mitochondrial DNA showed the oldest victim was the mother of the two youngest, and they were believed to have lived together in the northeastern United States for at least two weeks to three months prior to their deaths. They must have moved to the Bear Brook area not too long before their deaths, possibly in an attempt to escape their killer. DNA analysis also confirmed that the third child was indeed the daughter of Terry Pader Rosmussen,

a serial killer who'd passed away in prison back in 2010. He was convicted of just one murder, but was linked to at least five more in a series of crimes that stretched across the country between 1978 and 2002. Due to his use of many aliases, most notably Bob Evans, Ross Muson became known by the chilling moniker, the chameleon killer. In 1999, a young man posted a message on the website Ancestry.com hoping to find Sarah, an older half-sister he'd never met,

who was born in California during her father's time in the Marines. Nearly two decades later, in October 2018, a librarian-turned amateur detective named Rebecca Heath stumbled across the man's post while scouring the internet for clues to the identities of the Bear Brook victims. After digging deeper, Heath learned that Sarah's mother, Marlees Honeychurch, had an older daughter from a previous marriage and their ages chillingly aligned with the three related victims found in Allentown barrels.

Another breakthrough came when a relative Heath contact had revealed that Marlees had married a man named Ross Muson. Convinced that she had cracked the case, Heath shared her discovery with Detective Peter Headley, setting the stage for a long overdue reckoning. On June 6, 2019, New Hampshire Police had a press conference in which they revealed the identities, of three of the Bear Brook victims. The eldest was Marlis Elizabeth Honeychurch, born in 1954, and her daughters were Marie Elizabeth Vaughan, born in 1971, and Sarah Lynn McWaters, born in 1977.

The family had vanished from their home in La Puenta, California, around Thanksgiving of 1978, and it was deemed no coincidence that Marlisse had been dating Terry Peta-Rasmuson at the time. Following a heated argument with her mother, Marlis stormed out, taking her daughters with her and cutting all ties with her family. She then began using the alias Elizabeth Evans for legal documents in May of 1980, no doubt as an attempt to avoid being found. According to friends, Marlees' life prior to meeting Ross Muson had been a tapestry of failed relationships. She married Marie's father in June of 1971, but divorced him just a few years later.

in 1974. She then wed young Sarah's father in September of that same year, but they too separated shortly after their engagement. By the time she began dating Rasmussen, Marlisse had regained custody of both her daughters, but unfortunately, this put them right in the clutches of one of America's most elusive serial killers. In 2002, Terry Pader Rasmussen was found guilty of murdering his then-wife, Eun-Soon-June. His pattern involved forming relationships with women and their children, often living with them for months or years before killing them.

The Bearbrook victims were killed by blunt force trauma, then dismembered and disposed of in barrels, exactly the way Rasmusen disposed of Unsun June. But what sets the Bearbrook murders apart from his other works of malice is that in this case, Rasmusen chose to murder his own daughter, his own flesh and blood. Over the years, many have asked why, but unfortunately, it seems his motivation will forever remain a mystery. In November 2019, a funeral was held in Allen's town to honor Marlees and Marie. Their names were etched on a new headstone to replace the one that had mourned them as unknowns. While family members, including some of Marlees' relatives and Ross Muson's daughter from his first marriage, gathered to say goodbye. Little Sarah, on the other hand, was laid to rest in Connecticut, closer to her father's family at the beheads of her elderly paternal grandparents. Marley's Honey Church, Marie Vaughn, and Sarah McWaters

each had their lives cut short before being buried in rusted oil drums, but they were lucky enough to have their names restored. The same cannot be said for the fourth child's identity. known only as Ross Mousson's daughter, through advanced DNA testing, the identity of the young girl found in the second drum remains a mystery. Her mother is believed to be one of Rasmussen's victims, but much like her daughter, her exact identity remains unknown. In 2021, forensic investigators traced the fourth girl's lineage to relatives in Pearl River County, Mississippi. While around the same time, Ross Mousson's daughter from his first marriage shared a haunting. memory. Andrea Steers believes she met this girl, whom she calls Jane Doe, when they were both very young and recalls her quite possibly being half Asian. Yet even with so many pieces of

the puzzle having already fallen into place, the full story of this child still lingers in the shadows, waiting to be told. The Bearbrook murders, having been shrouded in mystery for decades, paint a haunting picture of loss and resilience, where the persistent pursuit of truth reclaimed lost identities from the clutches of a serial killer. In one case, the investigation was taken up by an unpaid member of the general public, a librarian who dedicated her spare time to delivering answers to those who needed them most. Ross Muson might have forced his own personal darkness on the world, but it seems for every one monster who sews pain and death, there are hundreds of good-natured citizens lighting candles to guide the way. May they be commended, and may they

continue their fight against evil until, God willing, there is no more evil to fight. listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you.