If you ever find a rock stacked neatly on your sleeping bag in
the middle of the woods, just one, perfectly centred, with
tiny, deliberate claw marks carved along its base, don't
pick it up. Don't touch it, don't kick it.
Just leave your pack, your tent, your friends and go.
I didn't. I picked it up.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm Jake, and if you know me
from my channel, The Unexplained Northwest, then yeah, this was
supposed to be my big breakout series, Ape Canyon.
The Truth. 100 years later, we were supposed to hike in, find
the spot where the old miners said they were attacked in 1924,
film some eerie B roll, throw in a few creepy ambient noises and
rack up a couple 100,000 views. But what happened out there
wasn't content. It was a trap, one we walked
into willingly. We left the Marble Mountain Snow
Park at 7:42 AM August 18th. Clear skies, spirits were high.
Molly, my girlfriend, had that look she always gets before a
backpacking trip. Calm, laser focused, ready for
anything. Aaron had his drone kit and
thermal camera strapped to his back.
Jess, his little sister, was dragging behind with an energy
drink and a bag of trail mix she'd mostly spilled in the car.
And David, well, David was along because we needed a fifth and he
had a forerunner. The trail started, normal dusty
switchbacks, old Douglas firs crowding in patches of ash where
the forest hadn't fully recovered from the last fire.
But even an hour in, I felt it. That off feeling.
Not fear, not yet, just too quiet, No birdsong, no wind,
just the crunch of our boots and the occasional can't quite place
it echo that followed a little too long after we spoke.
Jess joked that the forest felt judgy.
David rolled his eyes. It's just a hike, guys.
Bigfoot isn't real, and even if it was, the dude would be dead
of Lyme disease by now. We laughed.
I didn't tell them that the first time I came out here a
year ago to scout, I found nails.
Rusty square cut ones, buried in the Moss near an overgrown
Ridge, and next to them a crossbeam split in half, burnt
on one side like lightning had struck it.
I marked the location on my GPS and planned our return.
When we reached the Ridge that afternoon, everything felt
wrong. Not dangerous, just too still.
Like the woods had decided to watch this.
The spot? Molly asked, brushing sweat off
her neck. Yep.
I said, trying to sound casual. This is where Fred Beck and his
crew built the cabin, or what's left of it.
We found the nails again, the charred beam.
Aaron scanned with the thermal but didn't catch anything
unusual. Still, we all agreed the air
felt thicker here, like walking into a room where someone had
just been yelling. We set up camp on the flattest
ground we could find. Trees surrounded us on all
sides. Pine needles blanketed
everything. Our fire pit crackled to life as
the sun dipped low. Dinner was freeze dried chili
and cheap whiskey. The mood was light at first.
Aaron cracked jokes, just pulled out tarot cards.
David wandered off for a smoke, saying we were all nuts.
But around 9:30 PM, things shifted.
The wind died. Not slowly, not gradually, just
stopped. No breeze, no rustling leaves.
Even the smoke from our fire started rising straight up, like
a pillar. Then came the tapping. 3 knocks,
faint like someone tapping a rock against a tree trunk.
We all froze. Woodpecker.
David said, too quickly. Jess shook her head.
Not that rhythm, that was deliberate.
We sat in silence, listening. 10 minutes passed.
Nothing. Then three more taps closer.
I turned on the parabolic mic and scanned the tree line.
Nothing obvious, but there was a sound under the white noise, a
kind of slow, labored breathing, guttural, low, like someone
exhaling through a cavern. Then silence.
At 11 O 4, Molly screamed. I ran to her tent, hard in my
throat. She was sitting upright,
drenched in sweat, eyes wide. They were inside.
She whispered, watching me. I wasn't dreaming, Jake.
I saw them. Not faces, just eyes, silver
eyes. So many.
We didn't sleep. At some point, Jess threw up
behind a log. Aaron sat up with the drone
tablet in his lap, scanning thermal feeds, muttering.
Something moved. I swear it moved.
At 3:27 AM. The first rock hit.
It smashed into our solar panel with a sharp crack.
Everyone jumped. I unzipped my tent and scanned
the darkness with my headlamp. Nothing.
Then another rock landed near Jess's tent.
Then another, and another. The pattern wasn't random.
Three pause 4, pause 3 again. Aaron activated the drone, and
for a split second we saw something tall, upright, just at
the edge of the tree line. Then static.
The drone dropped like a stone, like it had been swatted out of
the sky. Dawn couldn't come fast enough.
When the sun finally rose, the woods looked unchanged, but the
feeling that pressure in the air, it hadn't left.
Jess stepped out of her tent and screamed.
At the foot of her sleeping bag was a single stone, small and
smooth with three tiny claw marks etched into its side.
And that was the last time any of us felt safe.
By the time the sun came up, none of us really believed we
were in control anymore. We packed fast, barely speaking.
Aaron had that wired, half manic look he gets when something
rattles him, eyes darting, jaw clenched like he was chewing on
glass. Jess wouldn't go near the stone
that was left beside her tent. She just stood there, shaking,
arms crossed, whispering over and over.
That wasn't here last night. It wasn't.
Molly looked like she hadn't slept at all.
Her eyes were bloodshot and she kept flinching whenever a twig
snapped. She'd barely touched her
breakfast. None of us had.
We were ready to leave, but the trail was gone.
I don't mean we missed a turn or wandered a few 100 feet off
path. I mean it wasn't there anymore.
The switch back we'd taken down to the Ridge, the dead tree with
the hollow trunk we passed on the way in.
Gone. Not just moved.
Erased. Everything looked the same in
every direction. Perfect symmetry, pine spaced
just far enough apart to keep you second guessing.
Same Moss, same lichen. No footprints, no trash, no sign
we'd ever arrived. At first I thought I'd made AGPS
error, maybe the fire pit had just disoriented us, But Aaron's
topo map glitched to coordinates, shifting in real
time. He pulled up the last drone
footage and started swiping through the thermal captures.
That's when he stopped talking. What is that?
He asked, pointing to a blurry corner frame.
We all leaned in. On the edge of the thermal
display was a silhouette. Tall, upright, longer limbs than
a person should have. Its heat signature barely
registered. Just cold enough to be real,
just warm enough to not be dead. It was standing still too.
Still, we watched in silence as Aaron cycled through the
footage. The shape was in frame in three
different clips, always from a new angle.
It had been circling us. We should have left everything
and bolted right then. But we didn't, because something
bigger than fear kept us there. It wasn't curiosity anymore.
It was this pole, like the woods were reeling us in.
We tried moving W, hoping to reconnect with a logging road or
a Ranger marker, but after 30 minutes of hiking, we found
ourselves back at the Ridge, back at camp.
Only now it was different. The fire pit was gone, covered
in a thick, unnatural carpet of Moss that hadn't been there 5
minutes earlier. Our footprints were gone too.
In their place were five sets of much larger prints.
Barefoot, human like, but impossibly wide, toes long and
splayed like claws. That's when Jess started crying.
I saw it, she said. Last night.
I thought it was a nightmare, but it leaned over my tent.
I saw its hand. It had fingers, but they bent
backward. We didn't know what to say.
Molly hugged her, but it didn't help.
Nothing was helping. Then Aaron's mic picked up
something. He'd left the parabolic dish
running and stepped away from it.
Earlier, when we listened back, the recording was faint, buried
under static, but unmistakable. A voice, a whisper.
And it was Molly's, repeating the same phrase over and over.
Let them through, let them through, let them through.
We all looked at her. She looked right back, her face
pale. I didn't say that, she
whispered. The air went still again.
That's when Jess screamed. She'd wandered a few steps off
to throw up, and when we rushed over, we found her standing at
the edge of a Creek, one we hadn't crossed before.
Her boots were gone. She was ankle deep in the ice
cold water, staring down like she was in a trance.
When I touched her shoulder, she flinched like I'd burned her.
There are faces, she muttered in the water.
They're watching. They're underneath us.
I wanted to believe she was hallucinating, dehydrated, But
when I looked down into that stream, I swear, I swear I saw
something shift beneath the current.
Long and pale. Not a fish, not a fish.
We got her back to camp. She was shaking, wouldn't stop
muttering. It's like they're learning us,
like they're studying. Then Aaron disappeared, just
like that. One second he was filming the
tree line, the next his camera lay sideways on the forest
floor, lens cracked, still recording.
The audio went haywire. We found no drag marks, no
broken branches, no blood. Just his boots, perfectly placed
side by side and one of those stacked rock formations beside
them. This one had three tooth like
bones on top, small, human sized.
That's when David snapped. He shouted at the trees,
threatened to burn the whole forest down.
I tried to stop him, but he shoved me and took off into the
trees with the drone controller clutched to his chest.
We never saw him again. The drone signal cut out five
minutes later. We thought about running, but
where would we go? The sun was already low, every
path looked the same, and we were down to three.
Molly, Jess, me. That night we didn't sleep.
Jess sat upright against her pack, rocking, nails chewed to
the quick. Molly was dead silent, staring
into the fire. I sat with the parabolic mic
aimed into the trees, listening to something.
Low vibrations, breathing. Once I heard laughter, but not
the kind that sounded human. At some point past midnight I
stepped away to clear my head and I found something in the
dirt. A notebook.
Old weather stained leather, bound and wrapped in brittle
rope. Inside were pages covered in
frantic handwriting. Fred Beck's name was inside the
front cover. The last few entries chilled me.
They don't speak, but they understand.
They watch from the trees and below the roots.
They hate the sun. The miners broke the covenant.
They killed one. The wrong one.
Now they come in threes. The final entry was scrawled
with what looked like blood. First the watcher, then the
shepherd, then the mouth. I didn't sleep, I just watched
the tree line and I counted every sound.
There were three distinct knocks, then 4, then three
again, just like the first night, and I finally understood.
They weren't trying to scare us, they were counting us.
It's hard to explain what it feels like when the forest stops
pretending to be a forest. By morning, the woods weren't
just quiet, they were dead. No birds, no insects, no light
breeze rustling the canopy. Even the temperature didn't
change. It just held, like the whole
place was stuck in the same second of time, looping over and
over. We didn't eat, we didn't speak.
Jess hadn't said a word since Aaron vanished.
Her lips were cracked and her fingers trembled constantly,
like she was listening to something the rest of us
couldn't hear. Molly was worse.
Her expression had flattened, not fear, not shock, just
vacant, like she wasn't in her body anymore.
She kept looking W toward the Canyon.
I'd catch her whispering under her breath things I couldn't
quite hear. I only caught one sentence
clearly, and I'll never forget it.
It's hungry, but it's patient. We decided to move again.
We had to. I didn't care if the trail was
gone. I didn't care if we wandered in
circles. I just needed motion.
Stillness out here felt like death.
We headed down the Ridge, following an animal trail that
shouldn't have existed. I say that because the Prince in
the dirt weren't from deer or elk.
They were too deep, too wide, and the gate was off.
The stride was wrong. Whatever made them wasn't
running. It was walking slowly, like it
had all the time in the world. That trail LED us straight into
the Canyon. At first it looked like any
other ravine. Steep sides, fallen timber,
Moss, choked stones. But then we started seeing the
cymbals carved deep into trees, scratched into rock, symmetrical
spirals, triangle clusters, 6 fingered handprints.
Some were filled with a black resin like SAP, but colder.
We passed a tree where the bark had been stripped in a perfect
spiral up its trunk, 10 feet high.
Bones had been jammed into the spiral like teeth, small ones,
human shaped. That's when I realized we
weren't walking through the woods anymore.
We were walking through a graveyard.
Molly walked ahead like she was being guided, like she knew
where to go. I tried to grab her arm, but she
pulled away and whispered. He's underneath us.
He who? I snapped, finally cracking.
Who the hell are you talking about?
She looked at me then, just briefly, and in that second I
knew she wasn't coming back. The mouth.
We reached a wall of stone. She stopped, laid her hand
against it, and just like that, a section of rock shifted.
Not crumbled, not cracked, shifted like a door.
Behind it was a narrow slit, just wide enough for a person.
Beyond it, pitch black. A stench hit me then, like rot,
like centuries of decay sealed in stone.
My stomach turned. I tried to pull her away, but
she stepped inside and vanished, like the dark had swallowed her.
I screamed her name over and over.
Nothing, just collapsed behind me, sobbing.
I turned and froze. They were everywhere, not
moving, not breathing, just standing.
All around us, dozens of them, tall, thin, black as ash, their
faces hidden beneath thick matted hair.
Their arms hung down to their knees.
Their chests rose and fell with slow, quiet precision.
Their eyes glowed silver, not like headlights, more like wet
stone and moonlight. One stepped forward.
It didn't make a sound. It knelt beside me and reached
out, not to strike, not to grab, to touch.
Its hand pressed against my chest, and I swear to you,
everything went silent. Not just sound, My heartbeat, my
breath, my thoughts gone. In that moment, I didn't see
memories. I didn't see light.
I saw roots. Miles of them.
Thick, black, pulsing with a slow, oily rhythm, wrapping
around bones, skulls, rib cages, femurs, all buried beneath us.
And deeper still, I saw something else.
A mouth. Not a face, not a head, just a
mouth wider than a cave, ringed with teeth carved from stone and
bone and something still moving. It was asleep, but it was
dreaming, and in that dream it had already swallowed us whole.
I don't remember what happened after that.
I woke up three weeks later on the side of a rural Rd. near
Cougar, Washington, covered in mud, half naked, 30 lbs lighter.
No gear, no camera, just Fred Beck's notebook stuffed in my
jacket pocket. I don't talk about what happened
to authorities. What could I say?
They never found Molly or Jess or David or Aaron.
They found no trace, my YouTube channel wiped, every file gone,
every backup corrupted. But the worst part?
Sometimes, late at night, when everything's quiet, I hear 3
knocks on my bedroom window. Always three, never four.
And sometimes, when I'm dreaming, I'm back in that
Canyon. I see Molly standing in front of
the stone slit. She turns, smiles and says we
never needed the sun. My name is Sarah Branch.
A few years ago, when I was 24 years old, I had left my home
state of Utah and moved abroad to work as an English language
teacher in Vietnam. Having just graduated from BYU
and earned my degree in teaching, I suddenly realized I
needed so much more from my life.
I always wanted to travel, embrace other cultures, and most
of all have memorable and life changing experiences.
Feeling trapped in my normal everyday life outside of Salt
Lake City where winters are cold and summers always far away, I
decided I was no longer going to live the life that others had
chosen for me and instead choose my own path in life.
A life of fulfillment and few regrets.
Already attaining my degree in teaching, I realized that if I
gained a further ESL certification teaching English
as a second language, I could finally achieve my lifelong
dream of traveling the world to faraway and exotic places, all
the while working for a reasonable income.
There were so many places I dreamed of going, maybe
somewhere in South America or Far East Asia.
As long as the weather was warm and there were beautiful beaches
for me to soak up the sun. I honestly did not mind scanning
my finger over a map of the world rotating from 1 hemisphere
to the other. I eventually put my finger down
on a narrow little country called Vietnam.
This was by no means a random choice.
I had always wanted to travel to Vietnam because I'm actually 1/4
Vietnamese. Not that you can tell or
anything. My hair is brown and my skin is
rather fair, but I figured if I wanted to go where the sun was
always shining and there was an endless supply of tropical
beaches, Vietnam would be the perfect destination.
Furthermore, I'd finally get the chance to explore MyHeritage.
Fortunately enough for me, it turned out Vietnam had a huge
demand for English language teachers.
They did prefer it if you were teaching in the country already,
but after a few online interviews and some visa
complications later, I packed up my things in Utah and moved
across the world to the land of the Blue Dragon.
I was relocated to a beautiful beach town in central Vietnam,
right along the coast of the South China Sea.
English teachers don't really get to choose where in the
country they end up, but if I did have that option, I could
not have picked a more perfect place because of the horrific
turn this story will take. I can't say where exactly it was
in Central Vietnam I lived, or even the name of the beach town
I resided in, just because I don't want anyone to get the
wrong idea. This part of Vietnam is a truly
beautiful place and I don't want to discourage anyone from going
there. So for the continuation of this
story, I'm just going to refer to where I was as Central
Vietnam. And As for the beach town where
I made my living, I'm going to give it the pseudonym Bien Hua
Hen, which in Vietnamese roughly but rather fittingly translates
to Sea of Promise. Sea of Promise truly was the
perfect destination. It was a modest sized coastal
town nestled inside of a tropical Bay with the whitest
sands and clearest blue waters you could possibly dream of.
The town itself is also spectacular.
Most of the houses and buildings are painted a vibrant sunny
yellow, not only to look more inviting to tourists, but also
to reflect the sun during the hottest months.
For this reason, I originally wanted to give the town the
nickname Tran Mau Vang Yellowtown, but I quickly
realized how insensitive that pseudonym would have been.
So Sea of Promise it is. Alongside its bright, sunny
buildings, Sea of Promise has the most stunning Oriental and
French colonial architecture, interspersed with many quality
restaurants and coffee shops. The local cuisine is to die for.
Not only is it healthy and delicious, but it's also
surprisingly cheap. Like we're only talking $0.90.
You wouldn't believe how many different flavors of coffee
Vietnam has. I mean I went a whole 24 years
without even trying coffee and since I've been here I must have
tried around two dozen flavors. Another whimsical little aspect
of this town is the many multi colored little plastic chairs
that are dispersed everywhere. So whether it was dining on the
local cuisine or trying my 22nd flavor of coffee, I would always
find one of these chairs a different color every time, sit
down in the shade, and just watch the world go by.
I haven't even mentioned how much I loved my teaching job.
My classes were the most adorable 7 and 8 year olds and
my colleagues were so nice and welcoming.
They never called me by my first name.
Instead, my colleagues would always say Chowam or Chowam Guy,
which basically means hello little sister.
When I wasn't teaching or grading papers, I spent most of
my leisure time by the town's beach.
And being the boring vanilla person I am, I didn't really do
much. Feeling the sun upon my skin
while I observed the breathtaking scenery was more
than enough. Either that or I was curled up
in a good book. I was never the only foreigner
on this beach. Sea of Promise is a popular
tourist destination, mostly western backpackers and surfers,
so if I wasn't turning pink beneath the sun or memorizing
every little detail of the bays geography, I would enviously
spectate fellow travellers ride the waves.
As much as I love Vietnam, as much as I love Sea of Promise,
what really spoils this place from being the perfect paradise
is all the garbage pollution. I mean, it's just everywhere.
There is garbage in the town, on the beach and even in the ocean.
And if it isn't the garbage that spoils everything, it certainly
is all the rats, cockroaches and other vermin brought with it.
Sea of Promise is such a unique place and it honestly makes me
so mad that no one does anything about it.
Nevertheless, I still love it here.
It will always be a paradise to me.
And if America was the promised land for Lehigh and his
descendants, then this was going to be my promised land.
I had now been living in Sea of Promise for four months, and
although I had only three months left in my teaching contract, I
still planned on staying in Vietnam, even if that meant
leaving this region I'd fallen in love with and relocating to
another part of the country. Since I was going to stay, I
decided I really needed to learn Vietnamese, as you'd be
surprised how few people there are in Vietnam who can speak any
to no English. Although most English teachers
in Southeast Asia use their leisure time to travel, I rather
boringly decided to spend most of my days at the same beach
sitting amongst the sand while I studied and practiced what would
hopefully become my second language.
On one of those days I must have been completely occupied in my
own world because when I looked up I suddenly saw someone
standing over me, talking down to me.
I take off my headphones and shading the sun from my eyes, I
see a tall late 20 something tourist wearing only swim shorts
and cradling A surfboard beneath his arm.
Having come in from the surf. He thought I said something to
him as he passed by, where I then told him I was speaking
Vietnamese to myself and didn't realize anyone could hear me.
We both had a good laugh about it and the guy introduced
himself as Tyler. Like me, Tyler was American and
unsurprisingly he was from California.
He came to Vietnam for no other reason than to surf.
Like I said, Tyler was this tall, very tanned guy.
Like he was the tannest guy I had ever seen.
He had all these different tattoos he acquired from his
travels and long brown hair which he regularly wore in a man
bun. When I first saw him standing
there, I was taken aback a little because I almost mistook
him for Jesus Christ. That's what he looked like.
Tyler asks what I'm doing in Vietnam and later in the
conversation he invites me to have a drink with him and his
surfer buddies at the Beach Town bar.
I was a little hesitant to say yes, only because I don't really
drink alcohol, but Tyler seemed like a nice guy and so I agreed.
Later that day, I met Tyler at the bar and he introduced me to
his three surfer friends. The first of Tyler's friends was
Chris, whom he knew from back home.
Chris was kind of loud and a little obnoxious, but I suppose
he was also funny. The other two friends were Brody
and Haley, a couple from New Zealand.
Tyler and Chris met them while surfing in Australia, and ever
since, the four of them have been traveling, or more
accurately, surfing the world together.
Over a few drinks. We all get to know each other a
little better, and I told them what it's like to teach English
in Vietnam. Curious as to how they're able
to travel so much, I asked them what they all do for a living.
Tyler says they work as vloggers, bloggers and general
content creators, all the while traveling to a different country
every other month. You wouldn't believe the number
of places they've been to, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka,
Bali, everywhere. They didn't see the value of
staying in just one place and working a menial job when they
could be living their best lives, all the while being their
own bosses. It did make a lot of sense to me
and was not that dissimilar to my reasoning for being in
Vietnam. The four of them were only going
to be in Sea of Promise for a couple more days, but when I
told them I hadn't yet explored the rest of the country, they
insisted that I tag along with them.
I did come to Vietnam to travel, not just stay in one place.
The only problem was, I didn't have anyone to do it with, but I
guess now I did. They even invited me to go
surfing with them the next day. Having never surfed a day in my
life, I very nearly declined the offer.
But coming all this way from cold and boring Utah, I knew I
had to embrace new and exciting opportunities whenever they
arrived. By early next morning and
pushing through my first hangover, I had officially
surfed my first ever wave. I was a little afraid I'd
embarrass myself, especially in front of Tyler, but after a few
trials and errors, I thankfully gained the hang of it.
Even though I was a newbie at surfing, I could not have been
that bad because as soon as I surfed my first successful wave,
Chris would not stop calling me Johnny Utah.
Not that I knew what that meant. If I wasn't embarrassing myself
on a board, I definitely was in my ignorance of the guy's casual
movie quotes. For instance, whenever someone
yelled out Charlie don't surf, all I could think was who the
heck is Charlie? By that afternoon we were all
back at the bar and I got to spend some girl time with Haley.
She was so kind to me and seemed to take a genuine interest in my
life. Or maybe she was just grateful
not to be the only girl in the group anymore.
She did tell me she thought Chris was extremely annoying no
matter where they were in the world, and even though Brody was
the quiet, sensible type for the most part, she hated how he
acted when he was around the guys. 5 beers later and Brody
was suddenly on his feet doing some kind of native New Zealand
war dance while Chris or Tyler vlogged.
Although I was having such a wonderful time with the four of
them, anticipating all the places in Vietnam Haley said we
were going, in the corner of my eye I kept seeing the same
strange man staring over at us. I thought maybe we were being
too loud and he wanted to say something, but the man was
instead looking at all of us with intrigue.
Well, 10 minutes later, this very same man comes up to us
with three strangers behind him. Very casually, he asks if we're
all having a good time. We kind of awkwardly obliged.
The man, a fellow traveller like us who, although he was probably
in his early 30s, looked more like a middle-aged dad on
vacation in an overly large Hawaiian shirt, as though to
hide his stomach and looking down at us through a pair of
brainiac glasses. The strangers behind him were
two other men and a young woman. One of the men was extremely
hairy, with a beard almost as long as his own hair, while the
other was very cleanly presented, short in height and
holding a notepad. The young woman with them, who
was not much older than I, had a cool combination of dyed maroon
hair and sleeve tattoos, although rather oddly, she was
wearing way too much clothing for this climate.
After some brief pleasantries, the man in the Hawaiian shirt
then says. I'm sorry to bother you folks,
but I was wondering if we could ask you a few questions.
Introducing himself as Aaron, the man tells us that he and his
friends are documentary film makers and we're wanting to know
what we knew of the local disappearances.
Clueless as to what he was talking about, Aaron then sits
down without invitation at our rather small table and starts
explaining to us that for the past 30 years, tourists in the
area have been mysteriously going missing without a trace.
First time they were hearing of this, Tyler tells Aaron they
have only been in the Sea of Promise for a couple of days
since I was the one who lived and worked in the town.
Haley asks me if I knew anything about the missing tourists, and
when she does, Aaron turns his full attention on me, answering
his many questions. I told Aaron I only heard in
passing that tourists have allegedly gone missing, but I
wasn't sure what to make of it. But while I'm telling him this,
I noticed the short guy behind him is writing everything I say
down word for word before Aaron then asks me with desperation in
his voice. Well, have you at least heard of
the local legends? Suddenly gaining an interest in
what Aaron's telling us, Tyler, Chris, and Brody drunkenly
inquire. Legends.
What local legends? Taking another sip from his
light beer, Aaron tells us that according to these legends,
there are creatures lurking deep within the jungles and cave
systems of the region, and for centuries, local farmers or
fishermen have only seen glimpses of them.
Feeling as though we're being told a scary bedtime story,
Chris rather excitedly asks, Well, what do these creatures
look like? Aaron says the legends
abbreviate and there are many claims to their appearance, but
that they're always described as being humanoid.
Whatever these creatures were. Paranormal communities and
investigators have linked these legends to the disappearances of
the tourists. All five of us realized just how
silly this all sounded, which Brody highlighted by saying you
don't actually believe that crap, do you?
Without saying neither yes or no, Aaron smirks at us before
revealing that there are actually similar legends and
sightings all around Central Vietnam, even by American
soldiers as far back as the Vietnam War.
You really don't know about the cryptids of the Vietnam War?
Aaron asks us as though surprised we didn't further
educating us on this whole mystery.
Aaron claims that during the war, several platoons and
individual soldiers who were deployed in the jungles came in
contact with more than one type of creature.
You never heard of the Rock Apes, the devil creatures of
Kwang Bin, the big Yellows if you were like us and never heard
of these creatures either. Apparently what the American
soldiers encountered in the jungles was a group of small
Bigfoot like creatures that like to throw rocks and some sort of
lizard people that glowed A luminous yellow and live deep
within The Cave systems. Feeling somewhat ridiculous just
listening to this? Tyler rather mockingly comments.
So you're saying you believe the reason for all the tourists
going missing is because of Vietnamese Bigfoot and lizard
people? Aaron and his friends must have
received this ridicule a lot, because rather than being
insulted, they looked somewhat amused.
Well, that's why we're here, he says.
We're paranormal investigators and film makers, and as far as
we know, no one has tried to solve the mystery of the Vietnam
Triangle. We're in sea of promise to
interview locals on what they know of the disappearances, and
we'll follow any leads from there.
Although I thought this all to be a little kooky, I tried to
show a little respect and interest in what these guys did
for a living, but not Tyler, Chris or Brody.
They were clearly trying to have fun at Aaron's expense.
So what did the locals say? Is there a Vietnamese Loch Ness
Monster we haven't heard of? Like I said, Aaron was well
acquainted with this kind of ridicule.
Because rather spontaneously, he replies glad you asked before
gulping down the rest of his low carb beer.
According to a group of fishermen we interviewed
yesterday, there's an unmapped trail that runs through the
nearby jungles. Apparently no one knows where
this trail leads to, not even the locals do, and anyone who
tries to find out for themselves are never seen or heard from
again. As amusing as we found these
legends of ape creatures and lizard men hearing, there was a
secret trail somewhere in the nearby jungles where tourists
are said to vanish. Even if this was just a local
legend, it was enough to unsettle all of us.
Maybe there weren't creatures abducting tourists in the
jungles, but on an unmarked wilderness trail, anyone not
familiar with the terrain could easily lose their way.
Neither Tyler, Chris, Brody nor Haley had a comment for this.
After all, they were fellow travellers.
As fun as their lifestyle was, they knew the dangers of
venturing into the more untamed corners of the world.
The five of us just sat there silently, not really knowing
what to say as Aaron very contentedly mused over us.
We're actually heading out tomorrow in search of the trail.
We have directions and everything.
Aaron then pauses on us before he says.
If you guys don't have any plans, why don't you come along?
After all, what's the point of traveling if there ain't a
little danger involved? Expecting someone in the group
to tell him we already had plans.
Tyler, Chris and Brody share a look with one another, and to
mine and Haley's surprise, they then agreed.
Haley obviously protested. She didn't want to go
gallivanting around the jungle where tourists supposedly
vanished. Oh, come on, Hale, it'll be fun.
Sarah, you'll come, won't you? Yeah, Johnny, Utah wants to
come, right? Haley stared at me, clearly
desperate for me to take her side.
I then glanced around the table to see that so too was everyone
else, neither wanting to take sides nor accept the invitation.
All I could say was that I didn't know what I wanted to do.
Although Haley and the guys were divided on whether or not to
accompany Aaron's expedition, it was ultimately left to a
majority vote and being too sheepish to protest.
It now appeared our plans of traveling the country had
changed to exploring the jungles of central Vietnam.
Even though I really didn't want to go on this expedition, it
could have been dangerous after all.
I then reminded myself why I came to Vietnam in the 1st
place, to have memorable and life changing experiences, and I
wasn't going to have any of that if I just said no when the
opportunity arrived. Besides, tourists may well have
gone missing in the region, but the supposed legends of jungle
dwelling creatures were probably nothing more than just stories.
I spent my whole life believing in stories that turned out not
to be true, and I wasn't going to let that continue now.
Later that night, while Brody and Haley spent some alone time
and Chris was with Aaron's friends smoking, you know what?
Tyler invited me for a walk on the beach under the moonlight,
strolling barefoot along the beach trying not to step on any
garbage. Tyler asks me if I'm really OK
with tomorrow's plans and that I shouldn't feel peer pressured
into doing anything I didn't really want to do.
I told him I was OK with it and that it should be fun.
Don't worry, he said. I'll keep an eye on you.
I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I kind of had a
crush on Tyler. He was tall, handsome, and
adventurous. If anything, he was the sort of
person I wanted to be, traveling the world and meeting all kinds
of people from all kinds of places.
I was a little worried he'd find me boring.
A small city girl whose only other travel story was a
premature mission to Florida. Well, soon enough I was going to
have a whole new travel story. This travel story.
We get up early the next morning and meeting Aaron with his
documentary crew, we each take separate taxis out of the Sea of
Promise. Following the cab in front of
us, we weren't even sure where we were going exactly.
Curving along a highway that cuts through a dense valley,
Aaron's taxi suddenly pulls up on the curve where he and his
team jump out to the beeping of angry motorcycle drivers.
Flagging our taxi down, Aaron tells us that according to his
directions, we have to cut through the valley here and head
into the jungle. Although we didn't really know
what was going to happen on this trip, we were just along for the
ride. After all.
Aaron's plan was to hike through the jungle to find the
mysterious trail, document whatever they could, and then
move on to a group of cave systems where these creatures
were supposed to lurk. Reaching our way down the slope
of the valley, we follow along a narrow stream which acted as our
temporary trail. Although this was Aaron's
expedition, as soon as we start our hike through the jungle,
Chris rather mockingly calls out, All right, everyone keep a
lookout for lizard people, Bigfoot, and Charlie.
Where? Again I thought to myself, who
the heck is Charlie? It was a fun little adventure
exploring through the trees, hearing all kinds of birds and
insect life. One big problem with Vietnam is
that there are always mosquitoes everywhere and surprise
surprise, the jungle was no different.
I still had a hard time getting acquainted with the Vietnamese
heat, but luckily the hottest days of the year had come and
gone. It was a rather cloudy day, but
I figured if I got too hot in the jungle I could potentially
look forward to some much welcomed rain.
Although I was very much enjoying myself, even with the
heat and biting critters, Aaron's crew insisted on
stopping every 10 minutes to document our journey.
This was their expedition after all, so I guess we couldn't
complain. I got to know Aaron's colleagues
a little better. The two guys were Steve the
hairy guy, and Miles the cameraman.
They were nice enough guys I guess, but what was kind of
annoying was that Miles would occasionally film me in the
group even though we weren't supposed to be in the
documentary. The maroon haired girl in their
group was Sophie. The two of us got along really
great and we talked about what it was like for each of us back
home. Sophie was actually raised in
the Appalachians in a family of all boys and already knew how to
use a firearm by the time she was 10.
Even though we were completely different people, I really cared
for her because like me, she clearly didn't have the easiest
of upbringings as I noticed under her tattoos were a number
of scars. A creepy little quirk she had
was whenever we heard an unusual noise, she would rather casually
say the same thing. If you see something, no you
didn't. If you hear something, no you
didn't. We had been hiking through the
jungle for a few hours now and there was still no sign of the
mysterious trail. Aaron did say all we needed to
do was continue heading northwest and we would
eventually stumble upon it. But it was by now that our group
was beginning to complain as it appeared we were making our way
through just a regular jungle that wasn't even unique enough
to be put on a tourist map. What were we doing here?
Why weren't we on our way to Hugh City or how Long Bay?
These were the questions our group was beginning to ask, and
although I didn't say it out loud, it was now what I was
asking. But as it turned out, we were
wrong to complain so quickly, because less than an hour later,
ready to give up and turn around, we finally discovered
something. In the middle of the jungle,
cutting through a dispersal of sparse trees, was a very thin
and narrow outline of sorts. It was some kind of pathway, a
trail. We had found it covered in thick
vegetation. Our group had almost walked
completely by it, and if it wasn't for Haley stopping to tie
her shoelaces, we may still have been searching.
Clearly no one had walked this pathway for a very long time,
and for what reason we did not know.
But we did it. We had found the trail, and all
we needed to do now was follow wherever it LED us.
I'm not even sure who was the happier to have found the trail,
Aaron and his colleagues who reacted as though they made an
archaeological discovery, or us, just relieved this entire day
was not for nothing. Anxious to continue along the
trail before it got dark, we still had to wait patiently for
Aaron's team, but because they were so busy filming their
documentary, it quickly became too late in the day to continue.
The sun in Vietnam usually sets around 6:00 PM, but in the
interior of the forest it sets a lot sooner.
Making camp that night, we all pitched our separate tents.
I actually didn't own a tent, but Haley suggested we bunk
together like we were having our very own sleepover.
Which meant Brody rather unwillingly had to sleep with
Chris. Although the night brought a
boatload of bugs and strange noises, Tyler sparked up a
campfire for us to make some s'mores and tell a few scary
stories. I never really liked scary
stories, and that night, although I was having a lot of
fun, I really didn't care for the stories Aaron had to tell.
Knowing I was from Utah, Aaron intentionally told the story of
Skinwalker Ranch. And now I had more than one
reason not to go back home. There were some stories shared
that night I enjoyed, particularly the ones told by
Tyler. Having travelled all over the
world, Tyler acquired many adventures he was just itching
to tell. For instance, when he was
backpacking through the Bolivian Amazon a few years ago, a boat
pulled up by the side of the river. 5 rather shady men jump
out and one of them walks right up to Tyler holding a jar
containing some kind of drink and a dozen dead snakes inside.
This man offered the drink to Tyler and when he asked what the
drink was, the man replied it was only vodka and that the dead
snakes were just for flavor. Rather foolishly Tyler accepted
the drink and only half an hour later he was spitting up white
foam from his mouth thinking he had just been poisoned and was
on the verge of death. The local guide in his group
tells him no worry senor, it's just snake poison.
You probably drink too much. Well, the reason this stranger
offered the drink to Tyler was because funnily enough, if you
drink vodka containing a little bit of snake venom, your body
will eventually become immune to snake bites over time.
Of all the stories Tyler told me, both the funny and idiotic,
that 1 was definitely my favorite.
Feeling exhausted from a long day of tropical hiking, I called
it an early night. That and most of the group were
smoking. You know what?
Isn't the middle of the jungle the last place you should be
doing that? Maybe that's how all those
soldiers saw what they saw. There were no creatures here,
they were just stoned and not from rock throwing apes. 1 minor
criticism I have with Vietnam, aside from all the garbage,
mosquitoes and other vermin, was that the nights were so hot I
always found it incredibly hard to sleep.
The heat was very intense that night, and even though I didn't
believe there were any monsters in this jungle, when you sleep
in the jungle in complete darkness, hearing all kinds of
sounds, it's definitely enough to keep you awake.
Early that next morning, I get out of my and Haley's tent to
stretch my legs. I was the only one up for the
time being, and in the early hours of the jungle's dim
daylight, I felt completely relaxed and at peace.
Very Zen as some may say. Since I was the only one up, I
thought it would be nice to make breakfast for everyone.
And so going over to find what food I could rummage out from
one of the backpacks, I suddenly get this strange feeling I'm
being watched. Listening to my instincts, I
turn up from the backpack and what I see in my line of sight,
standing as clear as day in the middle of the jungle, I see
another person. It was a young man, no older
than I. He was wearing pieces of torn
olive green jungle clothing, camouflaged as green as the
forest around him. Although he was too far away for
me to make out his face, I saw on his left side some kind of
black charcoal substance trickling down his left
shoulder. Once my tired eyes better adjust
to this stranger standing only 50 feet away from me, I realize
what the dark substance is. It was a horrific burn mark,
like he'd been badly scorched. What's worse, I then noticed on
the scorched side of his head where his ear should have been,
it was. It was hollow.
Although I hadn't picked up on it at first, I then realized his
tattered green clothes. They were not just jungle
clothes, the clothes he was wearing, It was the same color
of green that American soldiers wore in Vietnam all the way back
in the 60s. Telling myself I must be seeing
things, I try and snap myself out of it.
I rub my eyes extremely hard and I even look away and back at
him, assuming he would just disappear.
But there he still was, staring at me and not knowing what to do
or even what to say, I just continued to stare back at him
before he says to me words I will never forget.
The young man says to me in clear audible words.
Careful miss. Charlie's everywhere.
Only seconds after he said these words to me.
In the blink of an eye, almost as soon as he appeared, the
young man was gone. What just happened?
What did I hallucinate? Was I just dreaming?
There was no possible way I could have seen what I saw.
He was like a ghost. Once it happened, I remember
feeling completely numb all over my body.
I couldn't feel my legs or the ends of my fingers.
I felt like I wanted to cry, but not because I was scared, but
because I suddenly felt sad and I didn't really know why.
For the last few years I learned not to believe something unless
I see it with my own eyes, but I didn't even know what it was I
saw. Although my first instinct was
to tell someone once the others were out of their tents, I chose
to keep what happened to myself. I just didn't want to face the
ridicule for the others to look at me like I was insane.
I didn't even tell Aaron or Sophie, and they believed every
fairy tale under the sun. But I think everyone knew
something was up with me. I mean, I was shaking.
I couldn't even finish my breakfast, Haley said.
I looked extremely pale and wondered if I was sick, although
I was in good health physically anyway.
Haley and the others were worried I really mustn't have
looked good because fearing I may have contracted something
from a mosquito bite, they were willing to ditch the expedition
and take me back to Sea of Promise.
Touched by how much they were looking out for me, I insisted I
was fine and that it wasn't anything more than a stomach
bug. After breakfast that morning, we
pack up our tents and continue to follow along the trail.
Everything was the same as the day before.
We kept following the trail and occasionally stopped to document
and film. Even though I convinced myself
that what I saw must have been a hallucination, I could not stop
replaying the words in my head. Careful, Miss.
Charlie's everywhere. There it was again.
Charlie. Who is Charlie?
Feeling like I needed to know, I asked Chris what he meant by
keep a lookout for Charlie. Chris said in the Vietnam War
movies he'd watched, that's what the American soldiers always
called the enemy. What if I wasn't hallucinating
after all? Maybe what I saw really was a
ghost, the ghost of an American soldier who died in the war and
believing the enemy was still lurking in the jungle somewhere.
He was trying to warn me, but what if he wasn't?
What if tourists really were vanishing here and there was
some truth to the legends? What if it wasn't Charlie the
young man was warning me of? Maybe what he meant by Charlie
was something entirely different.
Even as I contemplated all this, there was still a part of me
that chose not to believe it, that somehow the jungle was
playing tricks on me. I had always been a
superstitious person. That's what happens when you
grow up in the church. But why was it so hard for me to
believe I saw a ghost? I finally had evidence of the
supernatural right in front of me, and I was choosing not to
believe it. What was it Sophie said?
If you see something, no, you didn't.
If you hear something, no, you didn't.
Even so, the event that morning was still enough to spook me,
spooked me enough that I was willing to heed the figment of
my imaginations. Warning, keeping in mind that
tourists may well have gone missing here, I made sure to
stay directly on the trail at all times, as though if I
wandered out into the forest I would be taken in an instant.
What didn't help with this anxiety was that Tyler, Chris
and Brody, quickly becoming bored of all the stopping and
starting, suddenly pull out a football and start throwing it
around amongst the jungle, zigzagging through the trees as
though the trees were linebackers.
They asked me and Haley to play with them, but with the words of
caution given to me that morning still fresh in my mind, I
politely decline the offer and remain firmly on the trail.
Although I still wasn't over what happened, constantly
replaying the words like a broken record in my head.
Thankfully it seemed as though for the rest of the day nothing
remotely as exciting was going to happen, but unfortunately, or
more tragically, something did. By mid afternoon we had made
further progress along the trail.
The heat during the day was intense, but luckily by now the
skies above had blessed us. With momentous rain seeping
through the trees. We were spared from being soaked
and instead given a light shower to keep us cool yet again.
Aaron and his crew stopped to film and while they did, Tyler
brought out the very same football and the three guys were
back to playing their games. I cannot tell you how many times
someone hurled the ball through the forest only to hit a tree
linebacker where after they had to go forage for it amongst the
tropical floor. Now finding a clearing off trail
in which to play, Chris runs far ahead in anticipation of
receiving the ball. I can still remember him
shouting Brody hit me up, hit me.
Brody hurls the ball long and hard in Chris's direction and
facing the ball, all the while running further along the
clearing. Chris stretches, catches the
ball and he just vanishes. One minute he was there, then
the other he was gone. Tyler and Brody call out to him,
but Chris doesn't answer. Haley and I leave the trail
towards them to see what's happened when suddenly we hear
Tyler scream. Chris.
The sound of that initial scream still haunts me, because when we
catch up to Brody and Tyler standing over something down in
the clearing, we realize what has happened.
What Tyler and Brody were standing over was a hole, a six
feet deep hole in the ground. And in that hole was Chris.
But we didn't just find Chris trapped inside the hole, because
it wasn't just a hole. It wasn't just a trap.
It was a death trap. Chris was dead.
In the hole with him was what had to be at least a dozen long
and sharp, rust eaten metal spikes.
We didn't even know if he was still alive at first because he
had landed face down, face down on the spikes.
They were protruding from different parts of him.
One had gone straight through his wrist, another out of his
leg, and one straight through the right of his rib cage.
Honestly, he Chris looked like he was crucified.
Crucified face down. Once the initial shock had worn
off, Tyler and Brody climbed very quickly but carefully down
into the hole, trying to push their way through the metal
spikes that repelled them from getting to Chris.
But by the time they did, it didn't take long for them or us
to realize Chris wasn't breathing.
One of the spikes had gone through his throat.
For as long as I live, I will never be able to forget that
image of looking down into the hole and seeing Chris's
lifeless, impaled body just lying there on top of those
spikes. It looked like someone had
toppled over an idol, An idol of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
when He was on the cross. What made this whole situation
far worse was that when Aaron, Sophie, Steve, and Miles catch
up to us, instead of being grieved or even shocked, Miles
leans over the trap hole and instantly begins to film.
Tyler and Brody, upon seeing this, were furious.
Carelessly clawing their way out of the hole, they yell and
scream after him. What the hell do you think
you're doing? Put the damn camera away.
That's our friend. Climbing back onto the surface,
Tyler and Brody try to grab Miles's camera from him, and
when he wouldn't let go, Tyler aggressively rips it from his
hands. Coming to Miles's aid, Aaron
shouts back at them. Leave him alone, this is a
documentary. Without even a second thought,
Brody hits Aaron square in the face, breaking his glasses and
knocking him down. Even though we were both still
in extreme shock, hyperventilating over what just
happened minutes earlier, Haley and I tried our best to keep the
peace, Haley dragging Brody away while I basically threw myself
in front of Tyler. Once all of the commotion had
died down, Tyler announced to everyone.
That's it, we're getting out of here.
And by we he meant the four of us.
Grabbing me protectively by the arm, Tyler pulls me away with
him while Brody takes Haley and we all head back towards the
trail in the direction we came. Thinking I would never see
Sophie or the others again, I then hear behind us.
If you insist on going back, just watch out for mines.
Mines. Stopping in our tracks, Brody
and Tyler turn to ask what the heck Aaron is talking about. 16%
of Vietnam is still contaminated by land mines and other
explosives. 600,000 at least. They could literally be
anywhere. Even with a potentially broken
nose, Aaron could not help himself when it came to
educating and patronizing others.
And you're only telling us this now?
Said Tyler. We're in the middle of the damn
jungle. Why the hell didn't you say
something before? Would you have come with us if
we did? Besides, who comes to Vietnam
and doesn't Fact Check all the dangers?
I thought you were travellers. It goes without saying, but we
headed back without them for Tyler, Brody and even Haley.
Their feeling was that if those 4 maniacs wanted to keep risking
their lives for a stupid documentary, they could.
We were getting out of here and once we did, we would go
straight to the authorities so they could find and retrieve
Chris's body. We had to leave him there, we
had to leave him inside the trap, but we made sure he was
fully covered and no scavengers could get to him.
Once we did that, we were out of there.
As much as we regretted this whole journey, we knew the worst
of everything was probably behind us and that we couldn't
take any responsibility for anything that happened to
Aaron's team. But I regret not asking Sophie
to come with us, not making her come with us.
Sophie was a good person. She didn't deserve to be caught
up in all of this. None of us did.
Hurriedly making our way back along the trail, I couldn't help
but put the pieces together. On the same day an apparition
warned me of the jungles surrounding dangers, Chris
tragically and unexpectedly fell to his death.
Is that what the soldiers ghost was trying to tell me?
Is that what he meant by Charlie?
He wasn't warning me of the enemy, he was trying to warn me
of the relics they had left. Aaron said there were still
600,000 explosives left in Vietnam from the war.
Was it possible there were still traps left here too?
I didn't know. But what I did know was,
although I chose not to believe what I saw that morning, that it
was just a hallucination, I still heeded the apparitions
warning, never once straying off the trail, and it more than
likely saved my life. Then I remembered why we came
here. We came here to find what
happened to the missing tourists.
Did they meet the same fate as Chris?
Is that what really happened? They either stepped on a hidden
landmine or fell to their deaths?
Was that the cause of the whole mystery?
The following day we finally made our way out of the jungle
and back to the sea of promise. We told the authorities what
happened and a full search and rescue was undertaken to find
Aaron's team. A bomb disposal unit was also
sent out to find any further traps or explosives.
Although they did find at least a dozen land mines and one
further trap. What they didn't find was any
evidence whatsoever for the missing tourists.
No bodies, no clothing or any other personal items.
As far as they were concerned, we were the first people to trek
through that jungle for a very long time.
But there's something else. The rescue team who went out to
save Aaron, Sophie, Steve and Miles from an awful fate.
They never found them. They never found anything.
Whatever the Vietnam triangle was, it had claimed them.
To this day, I still can't help but feel an overwhelming guilt
that we safely found our way out of there and they never did.
I don't know what happened to the missing tourists.
I don't know what happened to Sophie, Aaron, and the others,
and I don't know if there really are creatures lurking deep
within the jungles of Vietnam. And although I was left
traumatized, forever, haunted by the experience, whatever it was
I saw in that jungle, I choose to believe it saved my life.
And for that reason, I have fully renewed my faith.
To this day, I'm still teaching English as a second language.
I'm still traveling the world, making my way through one
continent before moving on to the next.
But for as long as I live, I will forever keep this
testimony. Never again will I ever step
inside a jungle. Never again.