Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. A couple years ago, in early spring,
my cousin Cal invited me on a camping trip with
her and two of her friends, Des and Mirror. Just
a quick we kent out in the Appalachian footholes, nearer
the edge of Kentucky where it borders West Virginia. I'd
been out that way before, but never diss deep. We
were way past the usual trails, up near the old
ridge lines, where everything feels older and quieter. Karl had
found the spot for someone she worked with. It apparently
some half forgotten clearing with an old fire ring left
over from the days when forest crews used to be
of woke out there. We packed light tents, a couple coolers,
a speaker, and whatever gimme or her borer from her
dad's basement. It was all mismatched and smelled faintly of
motor oil, but it worked. We hiked in late Friday morning,
picking our way up a faded trail, passed an abandoned
feeder road that was more ditch than path. By then
took us around four iOS to reach the spot. Nothing dramatic,
just a flat clearing scattered with pine needles, mossy stones,
and a collapsed or two. But it had that feeling
like we were standing somewhere nobody had touched in a
long time. You could tell the trees hadn't been cut
in decades. The air felt still in a way that
made your voice sound louder than it should. That first
night was exactly what we wanted. Hale got a fire going,
We cooked acken of chili and passed round this horrendous
apple moonshine, she deliberated from her uncle's pantry. We all
pretended it didn't taste like regret on lighter fluid. Stupid jokes,
dumb stories. One of those nights where the firelight makes
you feel safe without really knowing why. I crawled into
my tent just after midnight, cold but manageable. I remember
thinking how love the crickets were, constant, like static on
an tuned TV. What woke me up was the silence,
not just quite dead still, no wind, no bugs, no
crunch of settling branches. It was like the whole forest
hit mute. I kept my eyes shut for a second,
thinking maybe it was just my brain readisting after sleep.
Then I heard it, a dragging sound, long and slow,
something scraping across her. No rhythm, just this irregular polet
then stop, then pull again, stop right outside my tent.
I didn't move, not even a breath. I just lay there,
heart panding so hot I thought it might give me away.
I didn't undepth the flap. I didn't call up. I
just waited listening. But the sound never came back. Eventually
I must have passed out, because the next thing I
remember is morning light leaking through the tent moles. I
did mention it at breakfast, just figured it was an animal,
or maybe one of the others had gotten up and
accidentally kicked something. When we were packing up later though,
I saw the mark in the dirt, just one, a long,
shallow gouge, like something had been pulled through the clearing.
They started by the old fir ring and ended maybe
four feet from where my tent had been. No boot prints,
no tracks, just a single broken line in the dirt.
The second night felt different. Before it even got dark,
Kaile kept saying she felt weird, kind of light headed.
Mirror was shivering, even though it wasn't cold like the
night before. We didn't drink that night, didn't really joke
around much either, just sat round the fire, talking low,
like we were trying not to wake something. At some
point around ten, the speaker started acting up, not just
cutting in and out, skipping like someone was hitting plate
and palls over and over. It sat and touched on
the ground, blinking. We all just stared at it until
Kle reached over and shut it off without saying anything.
Miro went a bit early, and Kle followed not long after.
I stayed up, poking at the coals and trying to
talk myself out of being on edge. The crickets were back,
but they didn't sound right. Too many sudden pauses, and
then these weird synchronized stops, like someone was flipping switch
off and on. I stood up, stretched and had just
turned toward my tent when I heard it ark off.
It came from just past the tree line, maybe fifteen
feet beyond the edge of the fire's glow. Not deep,
more like someone clearing their throat. It wasn't loud, but
it was sharp. Heu men. Then I called out hello,
no response. I goro out the flashlight, stepped up to
the edge of the clearing and scanned the trees. The
beam hit nothing but bark in empty branches. I didn't
go past the perimeter, just stood there a bit, then
turned and sipped myself into the tent like a kid
hiding under the blankets. Next morning, I casually asked Cale
if she'd heard anything weird during the night. She gave
me this look and said she thought she'd heard low voices,
like a muffled conversation somewhere near by. Figured it was
me and Mere talking, but Mires wore she'd been asleep
the whole time. We all just kind of sat there
after that quiet. No one said what we were thinking,
but it was clear none of us were comfortable staying
another night. We decided to hike out that evening. Yeah
it'd be rough in the dark, but nobody wanted to
wake up there again. We packed everything, dashed the fire,
and waited for the last coals to cope before scattering
the ring. Cale went to grab her last bag from
near the trees. That's when it happened again. The draging,
not behind us this time, but across the clearing from
the far side. Loud, deliberate scrape. Post scrape, we all
turned toward the sound. Instantly, there was nothing to see,
just the usual trees and dirt. What the sound was real?
They felt too close and too slow to mistake. Mira
grabbed her pack without a word and started walking Fastkle
and I fell in behind her, not bothering to scatter
the fire stones or double check the sight. We didn't stop.
We were maybe half way back to the feeder road
like sore and boots covered in mud when we saw it,
something up ahead, just off the trail. At first, it
looked like a person standing there with their back to us,
but as we got closer we realized it wasn't upwet
at all. It was something long, kind of folded up
in a brush stretch between two trees, and this weird
slumped angle, like it had been dragged and left there.
Hale lifted her phone and flicked on the flashlight. The
beam caught something pale and smooth. It was a top, old,
stained and bunched up like some one had tried to
pull it further but gave up. The end of it
was tangled in low branches for a second. None of
us said anything, None of us touched it. We gave
it a wide berth, staying in each other's line of
sight the whole way back, no more talking until we
hit the truck. Once the gravel wroard came into view,
I felt my jaw unclenched for the first time, and
I was. It wasn't until we were half free back
to town that mir finally said what we'd all been thinking.
I don't think we were supposed to be there. A
week later, Kle sent me a screenshot someone in a
local missing person's group had posted a photo of something
a hunter found near the same stretch of woods. It
looked like a mix of campsite, probably used in the
last few days. There were scraps of food wrappers, a hoodie,
and this ole portable radio sitting in the dirt. But
behind it, almost out of frame, was a blurry blue tint.
It looked just like the one Mirry used. That was it.
We swear we never talked about it any more. My
cousin Nate had been bugging me for years to join
him on one of his real backpacking trips. I'd spent
too many weekends sinking into the same old online rabbit holes,
crawling through dead message boards, half reading weeds of vival
stories and so cold true encounters with things people couldn't explain.
Nate picked the spot, said it was one of his favorites.
Deep in the Appalachian back country, not even on most maps.
We had to drive about three hours past anything resembling
a town, then another iro down a dirt road. They
got steadily more suspicious the farther we went. We loaded
up our packs and started hiking around mid day. The trail,
if you could call it that was barely visible, just
a narrow impression, weaving through brush and roots, mostly climbing.
Nate was in his element, moving confidently like he knew
every bend, while I trailed behind, trying not to tiss
my ankle. We passed a couple of those old metal
trail markers nailed trees, but most were rusted or barely visible,
covered and moss was split by bark. After about five
miles we came to a clearing, a decent spot, quiet,
ringed with tall hemlocks that blocked some of the wind.
There was a black and fire ring in the center
and a small rotting pile of firewood nearby. Some one
had definitely camped there recently. You could see where pine
needles had been brushed aside, and bits of burn foil
were still caught in the ashes, but there was no
sign of whoever it was. We sat up under the
trees and got a small fire going, net cooked beans
and rice on his camp stove while I tried to
get warm. It dropped fast once the Sunday behind the
ridge line. That first night was uneventful. A couple all calls,
maybe a foxy upen somewhere out in the dark, but
nothing that set off in alarms. I think we were
both asleep by ten. I woke up before dawn, probably
five in the morning, to the sound of movement outside.
At first I thought it was Nate getting up to pee,
but then I realized the sound wasn't close. It wasn't
a person shuffling around near the tent. It was more
like something pacing, not heavy, not crashing around, just slow
measure crunching. I sat up and listened. Nate was still
slipped into his sleeping bag next to me, breathing slow
and steady, definitely asleep. And sipped the tent just enough
to peek out. It was still doric and I couldn't
see anything, but the sound stopped like it knew I
was listening, and then I heard something else, A dragging sound, slow, steady,
like something heavy was being pulled through the leaves. It
moved in a wide, dark just one big leop around
the camp, and then silence. No wrestling, no footsteps, just
dead quiet. I lay back down and stayed still. I
don't know why I didn't wake Nay. Maybe it was pride,
or maybe it was that word part of your brain
that tells you not to overreact, specially when you're out
in the woods and you're supposed to act like everything's normal.
I just told myself it was a deer or something.
I tried to believe that. Later that morning, we packed
up our bags and hiked up to a nearby rage.
Nate wanted to show me the views, great tree covertails
rolling out in every direction like waves, But the whole
time I kept thinking about the dragging. I didn't bring
it up. It felt dumb to say out loud. On
the way back to camp, I spotted something maybe thirty
feet off the trail, an old trail marker, half buried
and bark the paint almost gone faded red, not like
the ones we'd passed earlier. It looked older, forgotten. I
pointed it out, thinking maybe Nate would find it interesting.
He just glanced at it and said, yeah, there are
a thousand dead trails out here. People used to log
all through this range. That was it. No curiosity, no hesitation.
Back at camp, something was off. Our fruit bags had
been taken down from the bell line and placed in
the ground. Not torn open, not rummaged through, just moved
said there carefully. They were still tight closed, no missing items,
no teeth marks, were scratches, just sitting there like some
one had looked inside and decided to leave it all.
Nate assumed they had hummed them wrong and they fell,
but I know they didn't. I double checked the knots.
That's not something a screw up. That night, the temperature
dropped again and we built the fire high. We sat close,
not talking much. Around ten, I saw something flicker out
in the trees, like a flashlight beam, just a quick
flash between two trunks, maybe twenty yards out. I looked
at Nate. He'd seen it too. Think someone's out there,
I asked. He didn't answer, just kept looking into the trees.
A few minutes passed then we heard a voice. It
was sopped, almost too quiet to catch, just a few
syllables at a time, repeating over and over. Female maybe,
but the tone was strange, flat, no emotion, no urgency,
like someone practicing a word they didn't understand. Nate stood
up and shouted hullo. No response. Then the dragging sound again,
much closer this time I could feel the weight of it,
like whatever it was, it wasn't in a hurry. We
didn't wait. We threw dirt over the fire and crawled
into the tent. No lights, no talking, just both of
us sitting there, not even bothering with the sleeping bags.
We each had a knife out and a kin of
bare spray. I held mine so tight my hand when numb.
The dragon came right behind the tent. I could hear
the individual leave shifting, the slow scrape of weight moving
through the brush. Then footsteps, clear human like footsteps, one, two, three,
all the way around us, in a wide circle, and
then it stopped. We didn't sleep at all, every small
noise outside of me holding my breath. The air in
the tent felt heavy, like we were waiting for something
to come through the wall. At first light, we tore
everything down in minutes, no breakfast, no coffee, just packed
and left. About a mile down the trail, Nate stopped suddenly, shit,
he said, my hatchet. I told him to leave it.
He wouldn't, so he dropped his pack and jogged back.
I ten minutes, then twenty. I started walking back toward camp,
calling his name. Nothing. Then I saw him. He was
walking fast, eyes wide, no pack, no hatchet, just him
breathing hard. When I asked what happened, he didn't say
a word, just walked past me like I was even there.
It was until we were almost back to the car
that he finally spoke. We don't talk about this, he said.
I asked him again, what he saw, what happened? He hesitated,
then said the camp look the same as we'd left it,
except for two things. The fire pit had been misstacked
perfectly freshwood, dry kindling, like some one had prepared it
to light again. And inside the tent carved into the
nile on wall was his full name underneath it, One
Word's Day. We got in the car and drove in silence.
We didn't talk until we hit pavement. That was three
years ago. Nate hasn't been camping since he sold all
his gear the following week, tent, stove, boots, everything won't
even go near the woods. Last month I stumbled across
a thread on a backwards hiking forum. People were talking
about strange encounters and the Apalachians. One post mentioned a
dead z owe near a ridge. Sadgear gets reorganized campus
here movement at night, someone circling their tent a voice
repeating itself in the dark. No one had replied the
person who posted it there. We used a nameless tapewenty tree.
I was nineteen when it happened. That summer, three of
my friends and I decided to go off gray for
a while. We planned out five days of backpacking in
this barely documented patch of forest near Ashbourne, Virginia. Lyle
was the gear guy. He brought the tent, the stove,
and most of the tools. Marcus had this old printed
topo map and handled the rut planning. Niko, the last
in our group, packed the med kit, an emergency gear.
I was in charge of the food. It worked. We
liked to joke that we were a disaster waiting to happen,
but somehow a group dynamics balanced out. We parked at
the end of this dirt road that of more grass
and gravel, locked our phones in the glove box, and
double checked everything before heading out. It felt good, in
a weirdly pure way, walking into the woods with everything
we needed strap to our backs, no service, no schedule,
just trees and thyme. First couple of days were honestly
kind of perfect. The weather held up one in the day,
cool at night. The forest was thick but not hard
to move through. We followed the stream most of the way,
making it easy to refill our bottles and stay on course.
No one taught much about it, but I think we
were all relieved. It didn't feel like a survival show episode.
It felt almost easy. On the second day, late afternoon,
we stumbled across a stretch that looked like something out
of a postcard. The land dipped into this little slope
clearing with big mossy rocks and flat patches of pine needles.
A narrow creek ran through it, just deep enough to
soak your feet. It fell untouched, like no one had
walked through in years. Lyle took one look and said
we should stay there two nights, rest up abe fish.
Everyone agreed. We got camps set up, cooked dinner, and
sat around the fire until it got dark matter At
some point, I grabbed the pot and headed down to
the creek to wash off the last bits of our postomes.
It was maybe thirty odds from camp, just far enough
to feel alone. I was croched by the water, scrubbing
at the edges when I heard something behind me, just
a small crunch, like a foot pressing lightly into dry leaves.
I turned fast, thinking Nico had followed me down, but
there was no one there, just trees and shadows. I
stood still for a bit, listening nothing, no footsteps, no breeding,
not even birds. It was like the forest had paused.
When I turned back to the creek, the pot was gone.
Fun I blinked a few times, trying to convince myself
I was just tired and looking in the wrong spot.
I even patted the ground around me, like it had
fallen into a weird crack between the rocks. But it
hadn't clattered, hadn't rolled. It was just not there any more.
I climbed back up to camp, trying to stay calm,
figuring I probably left it further up the slope without realizing.
Lyle and Marcus were still by the fire roasting the
lost marshmallows. I asked if feeder of them had come
down to the creek. They both looked at me like
I was nuts, you see, as Lyle l asked, why
would we I told them the pot was gone, not misplaced,
not lost, just disappeared. It laughed at first, then stop
when I didn't laugh back. Nico came out of the tent,
rubbing his eyes and joined the search. We spent maybe
forty minutes looking. We checked every spot, under logs, around
the rocks, even in the trees in case some animal
had dragged it. Nothing. Eventually we gave up. I was frustrated,
but it was late and the fire was dying. We
figured we'd deal with it in the morning, maybe fashion
something out of foiliff. We had to. That night, I
woke up cold, not the usual slipped off the sleeping
pat kind of cold, but boned deep freezing. My bag
was zipped all the way up, but I was still shaking.
I sat up slowly, thinking maybe the tent had torn
or shifted. Something felt wrong. The tent didn't feel like
it was in the same position. That was the first thing.
I unzipped the flap and stuck my head out. It
was dark, pitch black, no firelight, no moon, just the
thick kind of darkness wallows your depth perception. But I
knew immediately the tent had turned. We'd set it up
facing the creek. Now the flap opened toward the opposite direction,
toward the woods, and it hadn't just ben in place,
everything around it had shifted. My boots were sitting a
few feet away from where I had left them. Lyle's
backpack had been flipped upside down, one of the straps
torn loose. The bare back, the one we'd hung between
two trees ten feet off the ground, was missing, just gone.
The rope was still hanging that like nothing had touched it.
I woke the others. Lyle came out first, groggy and annoyed,
but once he looked around, his mood changed. Niko looked
at the gear, then at us, and didn't say anything.
We talked through the possibilities a person maybe, but none
of us had heard anything. No voices, no lights, no
breaking branches, just silence. We packed up at first light
and hiked out fast. No one said much, but you
could feel the tension. We moved until we found a
rocky ridge that opened up a bit less streek cover,
more sky. It felt safer in a way. That night
it started to rain. We cooked on a flat stone
under the top, trying to get back to normal. The
moon lightened for a bit until Marcus looked up and said,
didn't we hang four bags? They were omni tree. Mine
was gone as time weiss trill mixed jerky, all of it.
Marcus tried to play it off, said, I probably left
as at the last camp in the rush. I knew
I hadn't. I remember clipping it in myself. No one
wanted to argue, but we all knew what it meant.
That night I barely slept. Every time a branch creaked
or the top shifted in the wind, I found myself
holding my breath. At one point I heard something circling
the edge of our camp. Not fast, just slow, deliberate
steps through the brush. By the fourth night, Lyle suggested
with start keeping watch one iro shifts. Marcus took first.
I had second. He woke me up around one, his
face pale and drawn. He said he'd heard a voice
somewhere down the slope, which just out of sight. It
only said one word, whispered real slow closer. He didn't joke.
He didn't smile. He just handed me the flashlight and
went straight into his sleeping back. I sat there, back
against a rock, watching the woods. Everything was quiet again still.
At some point I caught a shape out of the
corner of my eye, standing between two trees, tall, still
still not moving. I blinked and it was gone. I
didn't say anything in the morning, just told them the
night was quiet. We broke camp early and decided to
head back a day ahead of schedule. No one protested.
About two eyos from the trail, ed Lyles stopped suddenly
as for frozen midstep. He was staring off to the
right where a narrow tree stood just off the path.
There was something nail to it. The pot hung yet
eye level, dead center, polished plain, not a speck of
souit like it had been scrubbed with steel wall. No
one walked closer, no one touched it. We just kept
walking Back At the car, all four doors were unlocked,
but nothing was missing, not the phones, not the walllet's
not even the loose change in a cup holder. And
that was the last time I ever went camping. We
picked spot down near a narrow bend of deep hollow
Creek out past the gravel service roads in the Shale
Creek Beserve. We were a good twelve or thirty miles
from the nearest ranger station, way beyond Cell Range. There
were three of us, me, my cousin Bailey and her fiance, Matt.
Bailey and I grew up hiking those mountains. We done
this stretch before, different loops over the years, but always
the same general Earlier wee bush rocks, slept in how
extering thunderstorms got and turned around and figured it out.
This stuff never rattled us. Matt, though this was his
first time out in real back country. No amenities, no
camp ground. He dunde hikes, sure, and I think he
stayed in a cabin once with his friends, but nothing
like this. No trail markers beyond the entry, no bathrooms,
chess rocks, trees, and the sound of whatever was nearby.
He asked a lot of uestions, made jokes about bears,
kept triple checking his gear, even though Bailey had packed
half the stuff. The first night felt normal. Honestly, it
was one of the smoother set ups we've done. We
paced tents close to a flat patch just above the
creek's bend, maybe twenty yards from the water line. The
trees around there grow close but not dense, so you
get decent visibility without feeling exposed. We made a good fire,
cook some instant noodles, pass around a flask, and just
let the night settle. Matt kept remarking how quiet it was,
not in a scared way, just kind of impressed. It's weird,
he said, how once the fire dies down, it's like
the whole place exhils. That stuck with me, not in
a dramatic way, just the phrasing. By the second night,
I noticed he kept bringing it up, the quiet, but
this time he didn't sound impressed anymore. At more puzzle.
Still no bugs, he said, looking up from the fire. Seriously,
I haven't heard a single buzz, No mosquitoes, no moss
hitting the tent. Nothing. Bailey rolled her eyes and said,
complain when you do get bit. But I got what
he meant. The quiet wasn't peaceful any more. It was flat, hollow.
Even out there, you should hear something, especially by water
frogs Croquett's owls, but there was nothing, not even the wind.
We laughed it off again, but there was a sunder
current now, like a thin wire pulling tider at night.
Something woke me up. I don't know what time. It
was late, definitely after midnight. I didn't hear anything, didn't
dream anything weird. I just came awake, like a switch flipped.
I lay there a while, eyes opened in the dark,
waiting for something to tell me why I was up.
That's when I noticed the sound water, not the creek,
not the low gurgle would fallen asleep to. This was different,
sharper or closer. It sounded like a trickle at first,
then steadier, like some one had turned on a falset,
not a loud gush, just this controlled, clean stream, way
too close. It had a rhythm to it, too exact
to be part of the landscape. I sat up and
peeked through the tent flap. The vire had burned down
to the dull red ash ring bailey, and Matt's tent
was zipped up. His boots were still up by the
fire pit. Nothing looked off, but the water noise was louder, now,
almost deliberate, like it was being poured just behind me.
I stepped out, didn't see anything. The creek was still
twenty yards down. Now I crouched near the tent and
held my breath. The sound didn't stop, it didn't change.
It was like it didn't care I was listening. Eventually
I gave up trying to find it. I crawled back
in and pulled the sleeping bag tighter. The noise followed
me for a while into sleep. I think I stayed
in my head like tinnatus, just sleeping. The next morning,
nobody said much. I didn't bring it up, neddo did Matt.
But around lunch, while we were boiling water, he casually
said I think I saw something last night, like out
in the trees. He didn't push it, didn't make it
a big moment, just said it, then stared at the
steam coming off the pot. Bailey just rolled her eyes again,
probably a dear were one of your imaginary owls. His
smiled sort of. But that was it. No more jokes
about the quiet, no more observations patience. That night, he
built the far higher than we usually did, kept feeding it.
I told him we didn't need that much heat, and
he just said, yeah, but I want the light. He
kept glancing down toward the creek like something might be
walking back up. It was after midnight when I heard
the first sipper his tent. I figured bathroom breck, but
a few seconds later I heard another zipper of mine
from outside. A froze. My hands were under the blanket,
but I could feel my palm sweating. I whispered, Mat, nothing.
I sat up and looked out through the mesh. He
was near my tent, not anywhere in the camp circle.
But then I saw him standing about ten feet away,
right at the edge of the clearing, facing the trees,
buck straight, arms at his sides, just staring. I unzipped
a little more and whispered again, Mat, what are you doing.
He didn't move, just lifted one hand slowly, like he
was motioning me to stop. Not in a friendly way,
just a slow, firm signal like I wasn't supposed to follow.
Then he took a step forward. DayLA's voice cracked, threw
the sands behind me. Matt, what the hell? She came out, barefoot,
hay messy, clearly half asleep and paste. He didn't react,
just kept walking one foot a time, like he wasn't
the one moving, like something was walking through him. She
ran to him and groubd his arm. That's when he
turned fast, too fast, too fast. I still don't know
how to describe his face. It was his, but it was.
His mouth was hanging open, not surprised, just slack, like
his jaw didn't belong there. His eyes were wide, too wide,
and they didn't focus, not on her, not on anything.
He mumbled something, a low white syllable, no words, just noise.
Bailey shook him hard for a second. He blinked, and
then he dropped, like a puppet with the strings cut.
We dragged him back into the tent. He didn't resist,
He just sort of melted into the sleeping bag, didn't
say anything, didn't move how cold. He slept through the
rest of the night. In the morning, he acted light,
nothing had happened, thought we were joking, said we must
have dreamed it or misunderstood. Bailey didn't argue. She just
handed him her phone. She had taken few pictures trying
to light the way with her screen when she'd run
after him. One of them showed him Clearer's Day from behind,
and just over his shoulder, half invisible behind the trees.
There was something else. It looked like skin, human shape,
but all wrong, stretched between two trunks, thin and vain,
like it had been peeled off and hunt dry, no head,
no face, just folds like it had collapsed in on
itself and was trying to whole form. We didn't pack slowly,
no breakfast, no idle talk. By ten, we were hiking out,
but something was wrong with the trail. Landmarks were out
of order. First we passed that split boulder we saw
on the first day, Then the crooked birch with the
rope's wing, which we should have hit hours ago. Bailly
checked the tope on Matt three times before saying, this
doesn't make sense. We've been here already. We weren't just lost.
We were looping on a mark trail. Matt stopped walking,
didn't say anything at first. Then he looked up the
hill and whispered, I think we're being followed. I asked
him why he thought that, but he just kept staring
toward the tree line. We sit still listening. That's when
I saw it. A hand, a hand, just the fingers
slowly cuting round a tree trunk, maybe thirty feet up
the slope. Not normal fingers too long, too many joints.
Each one moved like it had his own weight, like
it wasn't using bones. Matt didn't even look at me.
Just said it's copying us. We didn't speak again, just ran.
We cut straight through the trees, pushing past limbs, climbing
over rocks, smashing through undergrowth. I don't remember how long
we ran. It felt endless. Then suddenly gravel the sound
of a car. We burst out of the woods like animals, breathless,
covered in burrows and mud. Bailey flagged down the first
pick of that passed. The guide. Didn't ask many questions,
just drove. They moved out of state within the month.
Matt barely slept for weeks. Told Bailey he kept hearing
water dripping in the walls. As for me, I went
back once, only to the edge, just a look. The
creek was there, same bend, same moss covered rocks, same trees,
But the trail done. My fern Jaise came up with
this plan for we can't hike a lawn the stretch
of the Appalachian Trail. His uncle on some property way
out in the woods, three rows from where we lived
in Tennessee, and the line back right up to the forest.
We could park the truck on his uncle's land and
hike in from there. It sounded like a decent way
to get out of town in a plover for a
couple days. I'd done my fair share of camping. My
dad hunts, so I grew up tagging along on drips.
I was new to tents, fire starting, or hearing cowdies
in the distance. That this would be my first time
at that far with the other people nearby, no camp ground,
bathrooms or mark plots, just us in the trail. There
were three of us going, me, Jase, and our friendly
We packed like just enough to get by, sleeping back
x trail, food, water filters, a campstove. Jase had an
old map his uncle gave him, with some hand drawn
trails and landmarks. We left Dully Friday morning, aiming to
cover about six miles before nightfall. Nothing too intense. The
weather looked good, and while cells service dropped in and out,
we had backup battery packs and a compass if we
really needed it. That first day was fine, lawn sweaty,
full blisters, and swatting at bugs, but overall fine. We
made decent time. Around three in the afternoon, we hit
the five mile marker and started looking for a place
to set up. Jace remembered a spot from a hike
he did once with his uncle a clearing with an
old stone chimney standing by itself, no house or anything,
just the chimney left behind. It sounded cool, and he
said it was much further. We found it after another
half ire. There it was this hole, crumbling stone chimney,
just sitting alone in a clearing, like it was waiting
for someone to finish building the house around it. It
looked like it had been there forever. Moss along the side,
cracks running through the stone, nothing around it but trees
and wheat. The strangest part was how intact it was else,
the structure, the foundation completely gone. We pitched our tents
a little ways back and got a fire going before
it got too dark. It was quiet out there, not
in the spooky way, just in that deep woods kind
of way. No cows, no people, just birds and the
occasional square rustling around. By eight we were sitting around
the fire, passing a bag of trail mix and talking
about school in summer plans. We weren't even trying to
be tough guys, just felt relaxed, like the kind of
night where nothing could go wrong. Then we heard something
in the woods, crunching leaves. Maybe twenty minutes thirty feet
off to the side, Lily went quiet and sentence and
turned his head. We all sat still. The sun stopped
almost immediately. We kind of laughed it off, dear. Maybe
could have been a raccoon or something bigger normal four suns,
but we were all just a little more aware after that.
An hour or so later, we heard it again, this
time from behind us. Some type of sound, slow, steady
footsteps crunching the underbrush, not the quick cops of a
rabbit or the skittering of a raccoon, just deliberate, careful steps.
Just stood up and called out, hey, we're camping here
not Then we listened for a while. The forests stayed quiet.
After a bit, we all pretended it didn't bother us
and climbed into our tents. Nobody said anything about it,
but I think we were all running through the same thoughts.
Maybe a hack nearby, some kind of animal just passing through.
I woke up some time around three in the morning.
My bladder was screaming at me, but I really didn't
want to leave the tent. I lay there for a
while trying to pull myself back to sleep, but it
wasn't happening. Eventually, I unzipped the tent as quietly as
I could and stepped outside. The fire had burned out,
the clearing was pitch black. I didn't bother with the
head on, just tearned on my phone light and shuffled
about ten feet away. That's when I heard it, this soft,
rhythmic scraping sound coming from over by the chimney. I
froze midstream. It was faint, but steady, like something being
dragged across the stone. Not fast, not loud, just as slow,
repetitive scrape over and over. I aimed my light toward it,
but couldn't see much, just the outline of the chimney
and a few twisted branches in the way. The sound stopped,
and then there was something else, A whisper, not words exactly,
more like someone exhaling, trying to get my attention, just
one lawn drawn out breath, coming from just beyond the chimney,
where the trees grew thick. My body reacted before my
brain caught up. I turned around, sipped back into my tent,
and laid it, staring at the fabric inches from my face.
I didn't sleep again that night. In the morning, nobody
said anything she senly acted normal. I didn't bring it
up eater. We just had our breakfast bars, packed our
gear and started up the ridge trail. We didn't see
a single other person all day, just trees stirred in silence.
By early evening we were back near the sand clearing.
It made sense to camp there again. We knew it.
We had food dashed. I didn't like the idea, but
I kept my mouth shut. That second night was worse.
Sometime after one in the morning, I heard someone whispering
my name through the tent wall. Hey, you're wake. It
was Ullie. Yeah, I whispered back, something's out there. I
sat up where no response. I unslipped the flap and
poked my head out. His tent was five feet away empty.
I scanned the clearing with my head lamp found him
standing near the chimney, just standing there facing the trees.
Still's a statue. When the light hit him, he turned
his head. Thought I heard someone talking, he said. I
told him to come back to the tents. He did
it slowly. Neither of us really slept after that. Next morning,
Jase looked terrible. He said he'd spent the entire night
dreaming about walking not even walking anywhere, just the sensation
of walking endlessly. Said his legs were sore, like he'd
be moving the whole time. We joked he was sleep hicking,
but the look on his face didn't match the joke.
He looked like someone who hadn't rested it at all.
We packed up and decided to head back early. No
one argued. About half a mile down the trail, I
realized I didn't have my pocket knife. Thought I must
have dropped it near the fire pit. Told them I
jogged back and grabbed it real quick. They didn't love
the idea, but I said, ten minutes stops. I cut
back through the trail, slipped into the clearing, and walked
toward the fire pit. No knife. I turned toward the
chimney and froze. There were footprints around it there, long
narrow way, too long for any of us, and they
didn't go anywhere, just circled the chimney in a perfect ring,
over and over. Then I saw the knife. It was
stuck into the chimney wall half way out, blade first
wedged right between two stones, like someone had driven it
in there. I hadn't been near the chimney the night before.
I hadn't touched it. I backed away slowly and walked
out of the clearing. I scanning the trees the hallway,
called up to jasonily, didn't say anything. We made it
back to the truck by early afternoon and drove home
without stopping. That night, I had a dream I was
back in the woods walking, but I wasn't choosing to.
My legs were just moving on their own, pulling me
toward the chimney. When I woke up, my cowsak to,
my boots were muddy. I haven't gone camping since I
was twenty one when we decided to hike the Raccoon
Ridge Trails, six days out in the Appellations, in a
patch of wilderness people mostly forget about unless they grew
up near it. No resorts, no overlooks, no casual Sunday hikers,
just trees, creeks, and a whole lot of quiet. There
were five of us, me, my older brother Lee, his
girlfriend Brenna, and two of his college but his Webs
and Jonah. We'd done smaller trips together before, but this
one was supposed to be our real backpacking experience, test
all limits, get away from everything. We had decent gear, tents, food,
solar chargers, GPS units. We weren't exactly surviving on moss
and bugs, but once we crossed the first ridge into
Old Jack's Fall, that's what the locals called that stretched.
Phones died completely, no signal, no stray bars, just a
map a compass, and was swearing. He remembered the wrap
from a camping blog. By the third day, we've covered
about fourteen miles. We were tired, but not jointstaff feet
blistered in spots, everyone moving slower, but still joking around.
That night we started looking for a place to camp
earlier than usual. Jonah wandered off the main path for
a bit and came back saying he'd found a good
spot near a bend in a creek. Said it looked
flat and dry, plus it was quiet. That pot stuck
with me. How quiet it was. No buzzing, no frogs,
not even the usual russell from squares or birds hopping
through underbrush. The water moved, but even thus sounded off muted,
like the whole place was wrapped in insulation. They'll laughed
and said it was like someone had hit mute in
the woods. We all chuckled, but no one really followed
upon it. We set up our tents in a little
horses shape with the fire pit in the center, ate
some salty trail fruit, boiled water for tea, and sat
around the fire talking. Every one but Jona. He sat
hunched a little forward, hands on his knees, just staring
into the flames. He hadn't been himself all day, slow
to answer, barely touched his foot, But now he just
looked blackt loight. The fire had taken him somewhere and
he hadn't come back yet. Brennoline over and asked, kind
of gently you good luck to your wordin you the
adidjournal didn't look at her, just said just thinking in
this strange under what a kind of voice. It sounded
like him technically, but if you closed your eyes you
might have thought someone was doing a slow motion impression
of him. It wasn't just what he said, it was
how he said it, like each word was being selected,
one at a time from a list, like he didn't
trust the sound of his own voice. We figured maybe
he was dehydrated or just fried from hiking. They offered
him water, but he weaved off. He went to his
tandorily didn't even say good night. The rest of us
stayed up a little longer, talking about college stories, old
inside jokes, stuff like that. But I kept glancing over
at Jonah's tent. Something about it made me uneasy, the silence, maybe,
or how quickly he gone Still Round midnight, we heard something.
It wasn't a crunch or a snap or any of
the usual nighttime noises. It was movement, smooth, slow, like
something big was sliding along the brush, not crashing through it, gliding.
Lee turned on his head lamp, did a slow sweep nothing,
just free his shadows and the white blur of his
beam bouncing off leaves. Then came the smell, dick, sire,
like rotting leaves and meat left out in the rain.
It rolled in, low and heavy like fog. You couldn't
see was Groud's flashlight circled around back where we thought
the noise came from. He was gone for maty three minutes.
When he came back, he looked pale Joe in his tent.
He said, it's open. We all stood up, fast, walked over.
Flap was unzipped all the way and pinned back neatly,
like some one had tied it at way on purpose.
Inside his sleeping bag was empty, his pack was still there,
head lump, water bottle, even his coat. The only thing
missing were his boots. We called his name, nothing, walked
to the edge of the creek, checked the nearby game trail.
No sign of him, no footprints, no splashes. If he'd
gone out to pee, we would have heard something, seen something,
but there was nothing. We didn't want panic, told ourselves
maybe he wandered off to clear his head and got
turned round. We left a lantern on. Wait it slept
in shifts, if you could call it that. Just before dawn,
I heard something crunch. Real footsteps, this time from the
wrong direction, not the trail, not the creek, from the
victories behind us, the direction no one had gone. It
was Jonah. He walked straight into camp, shirt torn down
one side, arm scratched up like he'd called for bramble.
His face was smudged with dirt, but his expression was calm,
too calm. He didn't say a word. He rushed over
and said, where the hell did you go? Jonah didn't answer.
He walked past all of us and sat back down
by the dead fire pit like we were still mid conversation,
was crouched beside him and said, man, what happened? Trying
not to sound scared. Joonah blink once, then said flat
his paper. I wasn't supposed to come back. None of
us knew what to say. The us come back from
where Joe looked up at him real slow and said,
she's still out there. That was it. He lay down
right there on the dirt, didn't explain, didn't move, didn't
even pull his coat. On the next morning, he acted
like nothing had happened, No memory of leaving the tent,
no memory of the scratches. Laughed when we asked, thought
we were messing with him. But I checked his boots
while he was eating. Caked and dried mud, dark and
packed and deep, but the insides brah. No signs he'd
been near the creek or stepped in anything wet. That night,
we camped two miles east, closer to the trailhead, still
in the woods, but somewhere that felt a little less watched.
Just after sunset, we heard the voice, a woman, not yelling,
not whispering, just calling Jonah's name, slow, measured over and over.
It didn't echo, it didn't move around. It was just there,
hanging in the trees every direction. At once Brenna started crying.
They shouted back, thinking maybe someone was injured, but the
voice didn't answer, just kept saying Jonah's name. Sim were
them same tone. Jomiferro's didn't blink, didn't turn his head
like his body was still, but his ears were tuned
to every syllable. After ten minutes, the voice stopped, like
a record being lifted off the turntable. We packed everything
in silence, didn't even argue. Jes started moving. We hiked
through the dock, made it five miles before our legs
gave out. Sat in a cold circle, packs against trees.
No one slept. By mid morning, we ran into a
park ranger name Taxad Maddock's first thing he asked was
if we were the group camp down river. Said some
one report a distant yelling the night before. We gave
him the bissocks. Didn't dramatize, just facts. He didn't look surprised,
just nodded slowly and said, you camp near Old Bend.
We nodded. He sighed and said that trail used to
run through burial land stores, go back a long way,
folks hearing voices coming back rom Then he said they
call her the Crooked Eye woman. He didn't say much more,
just told us to stay on mark trails, avoid enlisted bends,
and don't follow game past no matter how flat they look.
We ended the trip earily, packed up and drove home
without a word. Jonah let the entire drive mumbling in
his sleep. We were four days into this week long
hiking loop for a quiet, out of the way patch
of forest, down in northern Halward County. There were six
of us, all in our mid twenties, give or take
a year. None of us were pros or wilderness survival experts.
We just liked camping, hiking, getting out of Down. This time,
we wanted something different, off gride, real isolation. The trail
we picked run through a patch of land technically listed
as a preserve, though I don't think it had been
maintained in decades. The ranger who signed off our permit
didn't even look up from her desk, just asked if
we had our own gear, and a beacon told us
we wouldn't get sel service past a second mile, said
we'd likely be the only ones out there. That sounded
good at the time. The trail loop for Pine Forest
all dirt roads, that were probably used for mining fifty
years ago, and two fire towers so restied you couldn't
get more than three steps up before the metal screened
under your weight. I felt like stepping back in time.
There weren't markers or signage passed the first day, just
a warren path barely visible through ferns and underg We
were tired about a fifth day, mussels, sore feet, blistered, clothed,
and crusted with dried sweat and trail dust. But we
were still in it, the kind of tired that feels earned.
That night, we made camp down by a narrow creek,
just under a low rich The water barely moved. You
could hear it trickle if he stood still. The air
had a strange weight to it, like the silence was
thicker than it should have been. No birds, no rustling,
just stillness. I remember standing there brushing my teeth and
realizing I hadn't seen a single animal all day, not
even a square. After we ate, we sat around a
small fire. Every one was too drained for real conversation.
It was just the flick of flames and the occasional
clink of metal cups. Then Will decided to tell one
of his appollation. Ghost stories, as he called them, stuff
his grandfather used to tell him when he was a kid.
He told us a few before half folk or half
camp oire, nonsense, But that night they hid different. He
talked about these old warnings from the area, not just
ghostal monsters, things that went supposed to have names, creatures
that mimic forces, Places had shifted if you walked through
them twice. He said names had power out here, and
that if he said the rum one out loud, it
would find you. We all kind of laughed, but not
too hard. There was a weird tension in the air
that made everything stick a little harder than usual. He
must have noticed, because then he said we should each
make up our own scary story. Said it would confuse
the spirits like a joke, spell a reverse curse. Typical world,
joking around but half believing it. So we went around
the circle one by one, making stuff up. Stories about
hikers who vanished, shrells that looped back to the beginning
no matter how far you walked. Weird backwards speaking people,
ye know the type. When it got to me, I
was already in my sleeping back, kind of drifting off
near the fire. I heard someone say your turn, Riven,
and I sat up just enough to talk. I remember
starting something about a guy who finds a cabin deep
in the woods, one that shouldn't exist. That's it. That's
the last thing I remember clearly. Next thing I knew,
I was on my back, staring through the mesh of
my tent a stars. I was still mid sentence, my
mouth was open. The fire had burned low. I could
hear myself talking, but I didn't know what I was saying.
The words sounded like mine, but they didn't feel like mine. Then,
without thinking, I said, they all died. That's the end,
and everything just stopped. Nobody moved, nobody reacted. They were
all just sitting there, completely still, like statues caught mid blink.
I sat up all the way. Jamie had tears silently
running down her face, not crying, just leaking. Her hands
were shaking a little. Noah was curled and on herself,
this clutched in her lap, knuckles like truck. Even Will
look sick like he was about to throw up or
pass up. I asked what was wrong? Nobody answered. Later,
after we'd all gone to our tents, I whispered to Jamie.
She was sharing with me that night. I told her
I didn't remember what I'd said. She looked at me
for a long time, then said, very quietly, he never
opened your eyes. I asked again what I said. She
didn't answer, just turned her back. In the morning, Nora
and Elly were gone. They left a note on the
back of a torn trail map. It said, heading back,
don't follow, That's all. They didn't take food, they didn't
take the radio, just their packs and barely enough water
for a day. We stood around that note like it
might explain something else if we stared long enough. Nobody
had a good idea what to do. It was two
full days back to the trail head, no matter which
direction you walked. We decided to keep going forward. We
figured they'd stick to the trail and make it out
ahead of us, or some one would find them. We
hit the emergency beacon once, just in case no signal.
The next two days felt wrong, not scary, not dangerous,
just from No one said much, No one joked any more.
We'll barely looked at anyone. At night, we didn't build
another fire. We just ate cold food in the dark
and went to bed early, like we were afraid of
drawing attention. When we finally got back to the lot,
Nora and Ellie's cars were still there. Dad kicked off
the real search rangers, helicopters, dogs, dogs. They found the
girl six days later, twenty miles southeast of where they
should have been, way off trail, no shoes, dehydrated, cut
all over their legs, silent. They didn't talk, not to
the rangers, not to their parents, not to each other.
We waited weeks. I half expected some one to send
a group text to try to piece it together, but
nothing happened until Jamie ran into Ellie through a mutual friend.
She asked her what happened out there. Ellie didn't say much,
just one thing. She said, when I told that story
by the fire, it wasn't random, it was like it
knew her, like I was describing things only she would
have known, childhood, nightmares, places from her pass things. She
never told any one, specific names, and she said the
worst part wasn't the details, it was the feeling that
I wasn't telling the story, that the story was telling me.
I never remembered a word of it. We tried to
get together once to talk. Jamie left early well didn't
show it all. I think we were all hoping someone
else would be brave enough to say what we were
all thinking. I was twenty seven when I decided to
go camping alone for the first time, not car camping,
not a short hike from a trail had really out
there deep woods. I just quit a job I couldn't stand,
and I hadn't lined up anything new yet, so I
figured I'd try to shake it off in the mountains.
I'd hiked in the sudden appellations before. Usually we ken stuff,
nothing serious, But this time I picked a spot i'd
marked a few weeks all lay using my guy app
No trail near by, just a clearing i'd found on
satellite view about eight miles from the road northwest of
Otan cold Elbridge, middle of nowhere, basically a tackle light
but small tent, compact sleeping back at, small stove, water
filter or head lamp, knife, book, and a few meals.
I knew there wouldn't be any cell service once I
got a few miles in. That was part of the point.
It took me most of the afternoon to reach the spot.
The hike in was tough in parts, some downtrees, faint
game trails, nothing marked, but I felt good to move quiet.
I didn't see anyone else the hallway, no footprints, no voices, nothing,
just leaves and the occasional square crashing through brush like
it owed somebody money. The clearing itself was almost too perfect.
Flat ground, soft pine beds, small firing some one must
have built a long time ago. Most cover brocks in
a half circle round the edge. It felt like nobody
had touched it in years. That first night was easy.
I built a tiny fire, heated up one of those
foiled dinners, and watched the sky get darker between the
tree branches. No word sounds, no animals, creeping clothes. I
turned in early, lay in my tent, listening to the
wind pushed through the trees. I think I was asleep
before nine. I woke with the sun and nzet the
tent of the soft golden spilling through the trees. It
was dead quite except for the occasional woodpecker hammering somewhere
off to the left. My legs were a little sore
from the hike, but in a good way. I made
coffee with the little camp stove, stretched out on a
rock and watched steam rise from the mug, But around
mid morning I decided to hike out to a ridge
I had noticed on the tope. It was another couple
of miles from Camp, steep at rain, but I faged
I had time. It ended up being worth it. Narrow trail,
but it opened up to a view straight down to
the river below. No houses, no boats, no roads, just
trees and water and sky. I stayed there for maybe
two hours, read a little road in my journal, mostly
dumb stuff. I remember thinking I hadn't seen a single
person since leaving the car, not even far off. Not
a voice, not a distant echo. It felt like the
whole forest was holding its breath. It was mid afternoon
when I headed back, and that's when things started feeling off.
When I stepped into the clearing, I stopped. My tent.
Flap was open, not all the way, just halfway, like
some one had started to unzip it, then decided against it.
The fop was rolled slightly, like some one had touched it.
I stood there for a long second, just looking at it,
trying to remember if I'd left it that way, but
I know I didn't. I'm not careless with that stuff,
especially not in tick country, and it hadn't been windy.
I checked the inside, nothing was missing, My gear was
exactly how I'd left it. My sleeping bag was still zipped,
my food was sealed. But it didn't feel right. It
felt like someone had been there. I didn't start a
fire that night, didn't want the light. Instead, I got
into the tentorily and read by head lamp, my knife
within reach. I kept pausing to listen. Every little shift
outside made my chest tighten. But there was nothing, no animals,
no wind, just stillness. Then around nine I heard something
one footstep, just one. It wasn't an animal. I've heard
plenty of deer and roccoans crashing around in the woods there, loud, erratic.
This was clean. One deliberate step on hind needles, maybe
fifteen feet from the tent. That's soft crunch, I'm mistakable.
And then nothing. I didn't move. I barely breathed, just
lay the straining to hear something else. A second step,
a cough, and then but there was only silence. Eventually
I convinced myself it could have been a branch falling
or my own mind. I must have stayed awake another
hour before I finally fell asleep. Next morning, I opened
the tent and there was a stone, flat, smooth like gray,
placed right at the entrance where I would have stepped
on it getting out. It hadn't been there before. It
was two centered, too clean. I stared at it for
a long time. Then I picked it up and threw
it as far as I could into the woods. I
packed up fasts, no breakfast, no second thoughts. I was
supposed to stay another night, but my gut had already decided.
I wandered out of those woods. About a mile into
the hike back, I saw something I couldn't explain. Off
to the side of the trail, maybe thirty feet in
was the structure, just a lean to made of thin branches, leaves,
bark slaps, built low against a bull dough, like a
crude little hut, not large enough to stand in. And
here's what shook me. It hadn't been there on my
way in. I was certain of that a trail passed
close enough that I would have seen it. Thisis no
way I missed it. I stepped off the path and
crept closer. Right in front of the lean to you,
on a square of moss was a pattern made of bones,
tiny ones maybe rabbit or square, clean arranged in careful
lines and angles, some kind of symbol or maybe just decoration.
I don't know, but they weren't scattered, they were placed.
My stomach dropped. I didn't get any closer, just turn
and walked fast back to the trail, my pulse tacking up.
The rest of the hike was dead quiet, no birds, now, breeze,
nothing moving. When I finally reached the car, I practically
threw my gear into the trunk and slammed it shut.
I stood there for a second, scanning the woods, expecting
some one to step out. No one did, but I
couldn't shake the feeling that some one had been watching
me walk away back home. I tried to brush it off.
I told myself some one else had been camping nearby,
maybe a hunter or someone doing weird survivalist stuff. The
bones could have been a prank. My cousin Adam had
been trying to get me into back country camping for
a while. I'd always dodged it. Said I was too
busy or didn't have the right gear, which was partly true.
But mo moly, it was just that the idea of
being miles away from everything never really appealed to me
the way it did to him. I liked the idea
of nature more than I like the reality of it.
But that year, I don't know. I guess I just
gave in. Life was alloud, work was draining. I figured
a few quiet days off grid might help be set
my head. We picked a weekend in early October, right
after the last wave of leaf peepers and before the
hunters really started showing up. Adam knew a place out
in Shova Hollow, deep in George, Washington National Forest. No
mark trails, no shelters, just pure off the map wilderness.
He'd been out there once before, years ago, but only
for a day hike. The plan this time was two nights,
three days, totally off trail. We popped at the end
of the road that barely counted as drivable and set
off with our packs, boots, and a print out of
the topographic map. The first day was mostly hiking. We
moved slow, cutting through the brush, stopping every hour or
so to a just gear or drink water. We passed
over two ridges, one stream, and what looked like an
over rock wall, maybe from some long abandoned property line.
Around late afternoon we found a decent clear near a
shallow creek. It was maybe twenty feet across, mostly flat,
with enough space between the trees for our tents. No
sign anyone else had camped there recently, no trash, no firing,
no mockings, just a clean, empty spot tucked out of sight.
That first night was inventful in a good way. The
sound of the creek made it easy to relax. I
fell asleep eerily. Actually didn't even stay up for the stars.
The next morning, after breakfast, Adam decided he wanted to
try fishing up the stream. I wasn't in the mood
to sit still, so I figured i'd explore a bit.
There was a ridge line to the west that looked
like it might offer a view, so I grabbed my
water bottle and headed out solo, just to stretch my legs.
It took maybe an hour to reach the top. Nothing
too strenuous, but the terrain got messy, thick under brush
and even rock spots where it felt like the ground
it without warning. I followed a deer trail for a while,
but even that vanish eventually just trees and more trees.
That's when I saw the first cairn, just off the path,
if you could call it that, Right in the middle
of a half clear patch, six stones stacked with real care,
allance perfectly too. At first I didn't think much of it.
Hiker's leave though, sometimes to mark the way. But this
one was odd. The rocks were wrong for the area,
hail gray, almost white, worn, smooth like river stones. We
were on a slope, far from any water that would
have shaped them like that. They didn't belong. Still, I
didn't touch it, just noted it and moved on. Then
ten minutes later I saw another one, small, aert leaning slightly,
but the same type of stones. This one was sitting
in a little hollow, surrounded by pine needles and half
rotted locks. I started feeling uneasy. I told myself maybe
Adam had built them on his last trip, just messing around,
but he would have said something, And even if he had,
what were the odds I'd find them that easily that
far apart, I kept going for another few minutes found
a third one, This one collapsed, with two of the
stones cracked, a moss covered tuck beside a tree that
looked like it had been struck by lightning years ago.
Its trunk had split in this jagged, unatural away, like
something had forced it apart. I stood there for a
long time, not really thinking about anything, just staring at it.
That's when I realized how quiet the woods had gotten.
No birds, no wind, not even the distant trickle of
the creek. I hadn't even noticed it fade out. It
just wasn't there any more. It was like the whole
forest was holding its breath. I turned around and started
heading back. When I got back to camp, Adam was
crouched by the fire pit, poking at it with a stick.
He asked how the ridge was, and I said it
was fine. I didn't bring up the cairns. I don't
know why. Maybe I didn't want to spook him, or
maybe I just wanted to believe it wasn't weird. We
made dinner and settled in for the evening. That's when
we noticed things weren't the same. The fire ring we
built with slightly off stones, shifted like someone had taken
it apart and rebuilt it without really understanding the layout.
Adam's fishing rod, which he left leaned against a tree,
was lying on the fast side of camp, facing downhill
and may top one of those lightweight nilon covers. I
tied between trees for rain, had along ragged teared down
the middle. It wasn't clean. It looked like it had
caught on something sharp and been pulled. We both stood
staring at it. Adam asked if maybe it was a bear.
I said maybe, but we both knew it didn't make sense.
Bears don't move their round, they don't stack stones, and
they don't do it all without leaving Prince. We talked
about hiking out, but it was already getting dark. We
decided to stay one more night, stick together, keep our
knave's clothes. We had a flare gun. We figured whoever
or whatever was out there probably wasn't coming back. We
were wrong. I crawled into my ten round nine, lay
there for a while, listening not then I must have
dozed off, because the next thing I remember is waking
up with the strange awareness that something was off. I
wasn't sure or why at first. Then I heard it,
leaves cronching slowly, one step, pause, another step. They were
moving in a wide ock around our camp. Not fast,
not quiet either, just casual, like some one walking deliberately,
not caring if they were heard. My heart started panting
I didn't move, just lay there, eyes wide open, hand
gripping the handle of my knife inside the bag. I
kept waiting for a flask, light beam, uk off voice
not then. Then something touched my tent right near my head,
just a light pressure, like a hand pressing gently against
the nhalon, not pushing in, just resting there fingers maybe.
I stopped breeding, stayed like that for what felt like forever.
Then the pressure moved, slid downward across the wall of
the tent. Then it was gone. I didn't sleep the
rest of the night. I just laid the frozen until
the sky started getting light. When I finally and slipped
my tent, Adam was already up. He looked pale. He
was talking, just rolling up his sleeping bag, stuffing things
into his pack like it was a fire drill. His
tent had a long slash down one side, some kind
of tear mine had, but lower, nearer where his torsa
would have been while sleeping. He said he hadn't heard anything.
We didn't eat, didn't even boil water. We just packed
up and left. But and I were into the hike
we saw something hanging from a branch over the trail.
It was my boot lace when I used to secure
my top. Some one had taken it and braided it
into this strange little knot three loops, one lawn tail,
all pultite and left dangling like a charm. It wasn't
just weird, it felt deliberate, like a message. Adam saw
it too. We didn't stop, didn't touch it. We just
kept walking. By the time we got to the gravel
axis road, my legs felt like rubber. We sat in
the car for a few minutes, not saying anything. Then
Adam started the engine and we drove back to his
place in total silence. I didn't sleep well for the
next couple nights. That was three years ago. I haven't
camped since I was twenty two, when I went camping
with my cousin Mitchell in the eastern part of the Appalachians.
He was twenty three, lived a couple counties over and
had grown up with these hills practically in his back yard,
out of nowhere. He texted me one evening with this idea,
but getting away for a few days so back and
try camping had helped him when things got heavy in
his own life. Told me the solitude might clear my head.
I didn't have a better plan, so I said yes.
We met up just after sunrise through our gear into
his beat up a CV and drove for I was
on back roads. Eventually we ditched pavement for gravel, and
then gravel for dirt. He kept saying things like almost there,
and you're going to love the spot. But I noticed
there wasn't a trail head a parking lot in sight.
We left the car behind a row of trees and
started hiking. Mitchell led the way, cutting through brush and
docking and a branch is like he done it a
hundred times. I just followed, hoping I wouldn't twist an ankle.
He said the place we were going wasn't marked on
any park maps. He and a buddy had found it
ears back while trying to escape some crowded trail. AADs
you had to go past a dryed creek bed, then
keep left after a collapsed section of logging road. It
felt less like a hiking route and more like following
some one's memory. But I didn't question it. The way
he talked about the place, like it was a secret
he only shared with people he trusted. It felt wrong
to interrupt. By late afternoon, we set up camp at
the edge of this stone rage, surrounded by dense trees
and an even forest floor. Was beautiful in that wild,
untouched kind of way. No old campfire rings, no beer cans,
no bootprints. If anyone had stayed there before, it had
been a long time ago. Mitchell got fire going well
and packed. I remember sitting on a log, looking around
and realizing how quiet it was. No distant traffic, no
planes overhead, even the birds weren't making much noise. It
should have felt peaceful. Instead, something about it made my
skin growl. That night, I couldn't sleep. Mitchell was out
called as soon as he hid his sleeping bag, but
I laid a staring at the roof of the tent, listening.
Around two or three in the morning, I heard of footsteps,
not the random noises he get in the woods, like
branches settling or leaves shifting, actual steps, slow, measured circling
out a tent in a deliberate pat and I held
my breath and listened. How or whatever it was wasn't
heavy like a bearer, It wasn't stumping around. The steps
were light, but careful, like someone trying to stay quiet
and just failing. By a little. Mitchell didn't stirre. I
remember glancing over and seeing his silhouette motionless, breathing steady.
I didn't move eitherough it didn't even reach for the flashlight.
I just lay there, listening every muscle log I kept
waiting for the sand to start again or to stop completely.
Eventually it faded and the forest went quiet again. I
must have dozed off after that, because the next thing
I remember, it was morning and a tent was glowing
the sunlight. Mitchell was already up, boiling water over the fire,
like nothing had happened. I thought about telling him what
I'd heard, but stop myself. Maybe I'd imagined it. Maybe
it had just been a tear or when shifting something around.
I didn't want to sound paranoid, so I kept quiet.
That day, we went deeper into the forest, following a
rage that dipped into this overgrown basin. The trail was
barely there, and most of the time we were just
moving through thick brush. There were these weird ferns everywhere,
darker than normal, almost black in the shadows. The trees
were tall and gnaulled, and nothing looked like it had
grown in the right direction. It was dead quiet again.
No birds, no rustling, not even bugs. Then we found
the structure. It was this short, rounded stone building tucked
against the slope, about ten feet tall, partially collapsed, completely
overgrown with moss. Definitely man made. She's small to live in,
maybe a root seller or an old smoke house. Mitchell's
eyes lit up when he saw it. He wanted to
check it out right away. I said, no, Something about
it just felt wrong. The air around it was colder,
like we walked into a refrigerator, and there was this
smell shop and metallic like wire coin's mix with rot,
not the kind of rot you get from a dead animal.
Something else. He went in any way, told me to
stay put, which I was more than happy to do.
I stood back and watched the doorway, counting the seconds
he was inside for maybe twenty. When he came out,
he looked pale, shaken, like he'd seen something he couldn't explain.
I asked, what was ne'er and at first he just
said bones. I thought he meant animal bones, but then
he added they were big, too big to be deer,
flat teeth, and one of the skulls some one board
a hole right through the center. We didn't talk much
after that hight back to camp, mostly in silence. Mitchell
wasn't joking around like her Laier. He didn't poke at
the fire a mess with his gale like he usually did.
That night, he he barely touched his food. I asked
him again what else he saw in the stone hut.
He looked at me for a long second, then just said,
I don't think we should have come out here. That night,
I heard footsteps again. This time they didn't just circle
the tent, they stopped right outside. Then the zipper started
to move slowly, eat just a few inches, not enough
to open the flap fully, but enough that I could
hear the nylon shifting. I reached out toward my flashlight,
and that's when Mitchell grabbed my wrist hard. He was awake,
breeding fast, shallow. We didn't speak, We didn't move, We
just listened. The zipper closed again, and then everything went quiet.
We didn't wait for some light. As soon as it
was bright enough to see, we started packing. No fire,
no breakfast. We left behind anything that wasn't absolutely necessary.
Mitchell didn't speak the whole time, just kept looking over
his shoulder, like he expected something to be standing there.
On the way out, I asked him again what he
saw in that stone building. He said there were carvings,
cymbals burned into the wooden beams, letters or shapes he
didn't recognize. In something on the wall a photo water damaged,
curling from moisture, but still visible faces, and one of them,
he swore, looked like our grandmother when she was young.
We kept walking, hoping to make it out before dark,
but something was wrong. The trail didn't line up the
way it should have. The dry creek bait come or
maybe we passed another one that looked exactly like it.
Landmarks started to blur together. It didn't feel like we
were tracing our steps. It felt like the forest was shifting.
We had to stop and set up camp again. That
night was worse. Sometime around midnight I woke up to
this sound, low rhythmic chanting, coming from deep in the trees,
A voice steady and fast, saying something I couldn't understand.
It wasn't English, it wasn't any language I'd ever heard,
just syllables looping over and over, too fast a process.
Mitchell sat Bouldepright, we're leaving, he whispered, Now we didn't argue,
didn't plan, just grabbed our packs, flipped on the head lamps,
and started walking for errors. We moved through the dark.
The chanting got quieter, but it didn't stop until we
were almost back to the logging road. By the time
we hit the highway, the sun was coming up. That
was the last time I saw Mitchell. Three days later,
he drove his truck off a ravine a long route seventeen.
The official report said he'd been drinking and fell asleep
at the wheel, but Mitchell didn't drink, not even at
family parties, and he wasn't heading Hume. He was miles
off his usual route, heading back toward the forest. After
the funeral, I started getting calls from his number. No voice,
just silence. Sometimes there was a sound, soft shuffling, like
someone adjusting in a tight space. I blocked the number.
Then the voicemail started, three in total. The first two
were just empty. The third had breathing, slow, deep, right
up against him, Mike. I changed my number, I tacked
a back and left town. I'm writing this from a
motel two states over. I'm not sure where I'm going next,
but it won't be anywhere with walls that close me
in and I haven't camped since, and that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.