I've been living out here in the Appalachian Mountains for most
of my life, and I always thought I knew what to expect once the
sun went down. Coyotes yipping in the distance,
maybe a black bear rustling around, nothing much shakes me.
But on this night, everything changed.
Let me start by saying my evening had been uneventful,
just chores and a quick dinner before midnight rolled around.
Jax, my retriever, was curled up by the fireplace like he always
is. He's the most relaxed dog on the
planet, rarely even barks unless the mailman shows up.
That's why I nearly dropped my coffee when I heard this growl
coming from him, deep and raw, unlike anything I'd heard
before. I glanced at him and saw he was
standing rigid, hackles raised, eyes fixed on the window.
I couldn't see anything but my own reflection in the glass, and
I tried to shrug it off, mumbling something like easy,
buddy, but inside I was rattled. I've never seen Jax look that
tense, tail stiff, nose practically glued to the window.
It was enough to get my heart pounding.
Soon I realized I still had to lock up my workshop down the
slope behind the house. Normally this isn't a big deal,
just a quick trip in the dark with a flashlight.
But the way Jax was acting, let's just say I was on edge.
Still, I convinced myself it was no big deal.
I grabbed my coat, clicked on the flashlight, and headed out.
Jax insisted on coming, practically pressing against my
leg with every step. Outside, the air felt strange.
I couldn't place why. Maybe it was too still.
No crickets, no wind through the branches, Just a heavy quiet.
Halfway to the workshop, Jax let out another warning growl that
made my stomach tighten. Before I could turn on my heel,
I noticed the workshop door was slightly open, even though I was
sure I'd closed it earlier. My chest felt tight, but I
forced myself to keep going. I tugged the door shut and
locked it. And that's when this insane
commotion erupted in the woods behind me.
I can't fully do the sound justice, but it was like a
sudden surge of noise tearing through the undergrowth,
Branches snapping, leaves crunching, almost like a crowd
sprinting among the trees. I froze, and Jax just pressed
against me, teeth bared. Whatever caused that ruckus had
to be larger than a raccoon or fox.
It sounded massive. My hands were shaking so badly
that I fumble with the flashlight, nearly dropping it.
I backed up toward the house, trying not to break into a
Sprint, though my legs were begging me to run.
The closer we got to the porch, the more frantic everything
felt. I got inside, practically shoved
the door shut and slid the dead bolt into place.
My brain was racing, trying to explain what I just heard.
A bunch of deer. A bear with Cubs.
But it was so loud, so widespread, like multiple
creatures. I stood in the hallway, breath
hitching, jacks at my feet, staring at the door.
I realized I'd left my pistol upstairs.
Adrenaline was making my hands tremble, my pulse hammered as I
rushed to my bedroom, grabbed the gun, and made sure it was
loaded. I've never felt so desperate to
be armed in my own home. Just as I debated whether to
investigate or hide, Jax let out a bark.
That bark. He only does that when
something's seriously wrong. So against every instinct, I
headed back out onto the porch with my flashlight and pistol.
My chest was tight, my breathing uneven, but I needed to know if
there was an intruder or some animal messing around.
I scanned the tree line with the beam.
Nothing moved. Silence reigned almost
unnaturally, as though nature itself took a step back, waiting
to see what I'd do next. Then, just as I was about to
turn and go inside, I heard this low murmur, more like a swarm of
hushed voices than a single sound.
It came from the very edge of my property, out near where the
trees thickened. My stomach dropped.
It didn't sound like English, but it was disturbingly close to
speech. Jax whimpered, tail tucked as if
he wanted to drag me inside. I couldn't see anything, but it
felt like eyes were on me, a presence both everywhere and
nowhere. The murmurs seemed to shift
direction, echoing out from multiple spots at once.
My light swept across the yard, revealing not one silhouette,
not one flicker of movement. Yet the voices, if that's what
they were, didn't stop. A wave of nausea hit me so hard
I thought I might collapse right there on the porch.
I forced myself to breathe through it, whispering Jax's
name for a shred of comfort. After what felt like ages, I
managed to pull myself back inside.
That door had never felt so flimsy.
I latched it and checked the windows, too spooked to turn on
any indoor lights, hoping that darkness would hide me.
The night wasn't over, though. I had a terrible feeling this
was only the beginning. Like whatever was out there
wasn't done with me. That was the moment I realized I
wasn't just dealing with some random animal.
This felt orchestrated, purposeful, and it was
tightening around me step by step.
I didn't have a clue what was causing it, but I knew one thing
for sure. My home, my safe space, was no
longer secure. Jax's instincts had been right
from the start, and I dreaded what might be next.
I had barely closed my eyes for a second, couldn't rest even if
I tried. With every nerve in my body on
high alert, Jax was tense, pacing the living room and
refusing to leave the front door.
I kept the lights off, thinking somehow it would make me less of
a target. My phone sat on the table, but
out here in the middle of nowhere, good luck trying to
call for help. Even if I did get a signal, what
could I possibly say to emergency services?
Hello. Yes, there are voices
surrounding my house and I don't see anyone, but my dog is
freaking out. That weird muttering from
outside seemed to vibrate through the walls, like a low
chorus of whispers just behind the wooden panels.
It was madding because I couldn't single out a phrase or
identify if it was even human speech.
It rose and fell in waves, and every so often it almost sounded
like chanting. I guess I was too rattled to be
sure. All I knew was that my gut told
me there were multiple presences out there.
More than one set of footsteps had circled the house after I
first came inside. After another minute of pacing,
I finally thought, screw it, I need to see what's happening.
I edged over to the window beside my front door, careful
not to rustle the curtains. The instant I leaned forward,
the noise outside cut off like someone hit a switch.
In its place was the deepest, most all consuming silence.
Not a single insect chirping, no rustle of leaves, just my own
ragged breathing. I can't express how unsettling
it is to realize that whatever's out there knows when you move.
The second I froze, I heard a slight shuffle near the corner
of the house. Then that quiet murmuring
started back up again. More agitated than before, I
grabbed my pistol from the coffee table and quietly
approached another window that looked out toward the gravel
driveway. Jax followed, ears down and tail
stiff, as if he expected an attack.
When I shifted the curtain a millimeter, the Mumbles faded
out again. Something was definitely keyed
into every movement I made, and that realization caused my
stomach to churn. Time dragged on.
I checked my phone. 1:47 AM. It had only been an hour since
I'd first heard that thunderous crashing in the woods, but it
felt like half the night had passed.
I decided to kill the darkness with a chance at visibility, so
I clicked on the porch light. Nothing in the yard, No bodies,
no shapes, not even a stray raccoon.
My flashlight remained on the table, but I felt no urge to go
out there again. A part of me sensed if I opened
that door, I'd be swallowed whole.
Jax's eyes stayed locked on the windows.
Now and then a single footstep crunched the gravel outside,
slow and deliberate. One step, pause.
Another step, pause. It was unbearable not to open a
window and yell, but I couldn't bring myself to be that
reckless. My mind kept thinking back on
old stories from my grandparents about things in the hills that
weren't exactly animal and not quite human either, tales I'd
once dismissed as pure folklore. But here I was, feeling cornered
by something I couldn't see. To keep myself sane, I jotted
notes on a pad what times I heard the footsteps, what they
sounded like, how the whispering seemed to move around the
property in a clockwise pattern. Once or twice I considered
switching on music or the TV just to drown it out, but a
voice in my head told me to stay alert, not to mask the sounds.
After all, if something crashed through the door, I needed to
know instantly. Hours crawled by this way.
My nerves were shot, my hands clammy, and every muscle ached
with tension. I found myself drifting off,
only to jolt awake seconds later whenever Jax twitched.
It was like living on a fault line, expecting the earth to
quake at any moment. Meanwhile, the murmurs persisted
outside, underscored by that dead silent hush whenever I
tried to move. It was a twisted game.
They made sure I knew they were there, but not once did I see a
face or a form. Sometime around 4:30, or maybe
closer to 5:00 AM, the tone of the murmuring changed.
Hard to explain, but the pitch went lower, almost guttural.
Then, slowly, the sounds started drifting away, deeper into the
woods. I caught faint rustling through
the thick brush, then a final few snaps of branches in their
wake. Frogs croaked and a couple of
birds called. It was as if the natural world
had been stifled all night and finally breathed again.
Relief washed over me, but it wasn't that comforting.
I still felt like I might vomit from the stress.
I checked each window for any sign of movement.
Nothing. The gravel driveway looked
untouched aside from my own footprints.
Jax gradually relaxed, though he wouldn't lie down until the 1st
pale light of dawn crept across the horizon.
Once I was fairly certain the immediate threat had
disappeared, I stepped outside onto the porch for a breath of
air, pistol clutched tight in my hand.
The yard was a mess of broken branches and the lingering smell
of disturbed soil clung to the morning breeze.
Yet bizarrely, there were no footprints, no trace of a crowd
or gang of animals. The only proof was in my shaking
limbs and Jax's raw edge stare. I spent sunrise going back and
forth, mentally replaying each horrifying moment.
My place still felt uneasy, like the echoes of those voices might
start up again any second. I didn't dare pack up and leave,
part of me needed to know if this was a one time nightmare or
an ongoing threat. I downed 2 cups of coffee,
watched the brightening sky and told myself I'd figure out what
to do next. For now, daylight was my only
shield and I was not about to let my guard down.
Jax and I sat there in a haunted silence, expecting something to
re emerge, hoping that it wouldn't.
Sunrise brought the faintest sense of relief, yet my nerves
still buzzed with every stray sound.
I locked the doors, sealed every window, and tried to make sense
of what had just happened, but nothing about it fit neatly into
the realm of normal. Part of me wanted to believe
that it was some freak incident, maybe a collective hallucination
brought on by stress. Still, the unease in my chest
whispered that whatever took up residence in the darkness that
night is out there, lurking beyond the edges of reason,
waiting for another moment to slip back into my world.
For now, I've recounted every detail here, hoping to warn
others. Sometimes the eerie stories we
dismiss might be truer than we're willing to admit.
I've been drawn to the Appalachian region for as long
as I can remember. Something about those towering
slopes and shadowy hollows always felt like a gateway into
a different world. Beautiful, yet laced with an
unsettling aura that's tough to articulate.
A few friends and I decided to head out to Holly River State
Park in West Virginia, Lured by rumors of an old family cemetery
hidden up on a Ridge, we had only a vague idea of where it
might be. All we knew was that we needed
to follow a winding trail that cut through dense undergrowth
before climbing up toward this rumored graveyard.
So the three of us piled into my car early that morning, excited
by the prospect of a day hike. The drive itself was so quiet
that we began making offhand jokes, like something was
waiting out there just beyond view.
Maybe it was nerves talking, or maybe I'd had too much coffee.
Either way, my stomach churned in that weird way it does when
you're both excited and half spooked.
When we arrived, the parking lot near the main trailhead had a
few vehicles, but we didn't cross paths with any actual
people. The entire place seemed
deserted. We shrugged, figuring everyone
must have already started their morning treks.
After all, Holly River is a decently sized park.
Folks could be scattered across countless trails.
I tried to keep my mind on the gorgeous landscape, Moss covered
stones, towering hardwoods, and the occasional chirp of a
distant bird. Yet there was this hush
underneath it all, like nature had dialed itself down a notch.
We kicked off our hike around midday.
The sky was overcast, so the light filtering through the
branches came in muted, silvery patches.
The trail was pretty well worn at first, so we made quick
progress. The chatter between us died off
once we noticed how oddly calm the forest felt.
Everything about the place demanded our attention, from the
tangled roots under foot to the looming canopy overhead.
Occasionally we'd catch snatches of movement in our peripheral
vision. Maybe squirrels, but the
scuttling always stopped the moment we tried to look closer.
My friend commented that it seemed like the place was sizing
us up, and nobody argued. We pressed on, climbing
steadily. Eventually we left the official
trail in search of that old graveyard.
The path we followed was more of a half remembered rumor than a
marked route. A fallen tree forced us to
detour through thick brush, and my arms got scratched up enough
that I started wishing we'd picked an easier day hike.
Still, I couldn't help feeling compelled to keep going.
There was a raw, ancient feel to the land that I couldn't let go
of. A couple hours in, the terrain
turned steep. Loose stones threatened to send
us sliding if we weren't careful, and we had to cling to
exposed roots for stability. We nearly missed the cemetery
altogether, spotting it only because of a warped iron gate
that caught the corner of my friend's eye.
A row of leaning tombstone stood beyond the lettering on them,
faded and chipped. If I didn't know any better, I'd
say they'd been here for centuries.
Up close, the graveyard gave off an atmosphere that bordered on
oppressive. The headstones bore names we
could barely read, and the ground was covered in tangled
weeds. The three of us wandered, taking
pictures and gingerly brushing aside overgrown vines.
Every so often, a subtle breeze would move past us, bringing
with it a musty odor that reminded me of damp soil and
decaying leaves. My pulse was hammering in my
ears for reasons I couldn't explain, but I tried to play it
cool. We stayed longer than we
intended, mostly because we were fascinated and maybe a little
horrified by the idea that entire families could be buried
out here, forgotten by time. Each time the wind picked up, we
paused, half expecting something or someone to step out from
behind those looming trees. It was all in my head, I told
myself. Probably just a side effect of
being in a graveyard at sunset. By the time we left, the sun had
started sliding down the sky, painting the Ridge in murky
oranges and purples. We hadn't planned on night
hiking, but it was creeping up on us fast.
The idea of navigating a dark forest trail made our nerves
spike, so we decided the park's main road would be safer.
Even if it was a bit out of the way, we figured it couldn't be
more than a few miles to loop around and reach the campground
parking lot. Leaving that cemetery felt like
stepping away from a forgotten realm.
Once we hit a semblance of a trail again, a fragile sense of
relief settled over us, but it was short lived.
The path to the road was riddled with roots, slippery patches,
and random branches that snagged at our clothes.
Little cracks and snaps echoed in the brush, just enough to
keep us on edge. We hurried along, willing
ourselves not to think about the dark shapes dancing in our
peripherals. Finally, we broke free of the
tree line and spotted the asphalt up ahead.
The sense of relief was almost overwhelming, like stumbling
onto a lifeline in the middle of nowhere.
But an uneasy vibe still trailed behind us, no matter how hard we
tried to shake it. The light was fading fast, and
the road itself looked empty in both directions.
No cars, no people, nothing. Just a hush that felt downright
eerie. That's where the first leg of
our journey ended, with us stepping onto that road and
peering into the early twilight. Looking back, I realized we had
no clue how unsettling the next stretch would be.
In the moment, though, we were just grateful to be out of the
thick woods. Little did we know that relief
was about to dissolve quicker than we could have imagined.
After stumbling out of the tree line, we reached this narrow
asphalt Rd. that was supposed to lead us back to the campground.
And for a few fleeting moments, we were relieved.
No more tripping over roots or scraping our arms on
undergrowth. The wind seemed calmer too,
though I swear the air felt heavier than it had in the
woods. With dusk rolling in, we figured
we had maybe 3 miles to cover tops, but it was eerily quiet.
I mean, you'd expect at least a car or two to pass by in a park
this size, even late in the day. Instead, we had this winding
stretch of Rd. all to ourselves. I remember my friend joking
we're basically the only people left on earth, and none of us
cracked a real smile. We picked a direction based on a
ragged sign pointing toward the campground and started walking,
the sun melting into the horizon behind us.
As we hiked along, the darkness deepened.
The trees on either side of us stood like silent onlookers.
Every so often something would stir in the brush, maybe a small
critter or a bird, but we never saw anything.
That emptiness felt unnatural, like the park itself was waiting
for something to happen. We'd covered about half the
distance when we spotted the silhouettes.
Up ahead, illuminated by the faint remnants of twilight, were
at least five figures. They were just standing there in
the middle of the road, as if they were waiting for us.
Relief surged through me for a second, thankful that we weren't
the only ones out there. My friend even waved, though
none of them waved back. We moved closer, calling out a
timid hey or two, hoping for some response.
Nothing. They were close enough now that
I should have been able to make out features, faces, hair color,
clothing details, but it was like I could only see the
general shape of them, as if the light was playing tricks.
The weirdest part was that they didn't make a sound.
No conversation, no footsteps, shuffling on asphalt.
They were just there, like placeholders.
Then, without warning, they started to fade.
One by one they flickered in and out until all that remained was
a vacant stretch of Rd. The three of us were rooted in
place, trying to process what was happening.
We weren't imagining this. There had to be a rational
explanation. Maybe our eyes were messing with
us after the dim forest, or maybe they just slipped away
into the dark. But as we reached the exact spot
where we'd seen them, it was clear there was nowhere to go.
On one side, a sheer drop fell away into a valley.
The other side was a jagged slope of rock that would have
been nearly impossible to climb quietly even in broad daylight.
The asphalt itself looked undisturbed.
No footprints, no sign of scuffling, not even a stray
candy wrapper. Just empty roads stretching off
into the shadows. A cold sense of dread settled
over us. We hung around for a minute,
shining phone flashlights and calling out, but nobody
answered. The idea of those figures just
evaporating forced our tension up several notches.
I couldn't tell if we'd witnessed something supernatural
or if my eyes were conspiring against me in the low light.
Either way, it triggered a kind of primal fear I haven't felt
too often in my life. We finally decided to press on,
hearts thumping from the sudden shift in atmosphere.
Every step from then on felt like it echoed a little too
loudly. We kept glancing back, convinced
we'd see the group again, trailing behind us or maybe
popping up ahead, but there was nothing.
At one point I caught a whiff of a faint odor, sort of earthy and
decayed, but it was gone as soon as I noticed it.
By then, we were moving faster than I'd ever hiked in my life.
The final stretch to the campground felt like a fever
dream, each of us expecting something horrible to lurch out
of the darkness. When we finally caught sight of
the campground sign, it was like stepping into another world,
only there weren't any people there either.
The entire place was disturbingly quiet, save for the
distant rustle of trees. Usually a State Park campground
has some buzz. Campfires, crackling, murmured
conversations, maybe a dog barking.
We got nothing. Our car was right where we left
it, sitting in a patch of moonlit gravel.
I can't describe how relieved I was to see it.
We clambered inside, locking the doors more out of instinct than
necessity. Who locks up in a lonely
campground? But something about that night
made every protective move feel justified.
My friend gunned the ignition and we peeled out headlights,
pushing back the darkness a little.
That entire drive out of the park, I kept expecting those
figures to emerge from the trees or appear in the rearview
mirror. Only once we hit the main
highway did we dare speak about it.
In more than whispers, we tossed around ideas.
Mass hallucination, illusions caused by the fading light, or
maybe some group of locals messing with us.
Still, none of those explanations explained the
silent disappearance act. Days later, every time I closed
my eyes, I'd see those silhouettes flicker and vanish
like they'd never existed at all.
I've heard plenty of stories about weird sightings in the
Appalachians, ghostly hikers, phantom Lantern lights bobbing
through the trees. But until that night, I brushed
them off as campfire tales. Now, I'm not so sure.
All I know is that something happened on that silent road,
and I can't shake the idea that it was a glimpse into the
unknown. That's the story of how a simple
day trip to Holly River spiraled into a haunting mystery that
continues to gnaw at me. Was it some lost echo of the
park's past? Or did we stumble into something
far stranger than we were prepared to handle?
Honestly, I still don't have an answer, but there's one thing I
can say for sure. The image of those five figures
dissolving in the twilight is going to stay with me, I guess.
Not every twist in these old mountains needs a tidy
explanation. Sometimes it's enough to know
that the darkness holds more secrets than we can ever hope to
understand. I'm writing this because every
time I look back on my experiences out there, I end up
pacing around my apartment, uneasy and restless.
People love talking about the Appalachian Trail as if it's
just scenic overlooks and friendly hikers, but I learned
there's a lot more than meets the eye.
Before I ever set foot on that route, I was the type of person
who devoured paranormal stories. Something about the unknown
always grabbed my attention. Maybe it's just human nature to
chase mysteries. By the time I started planning
my extended trek, I'd convince myself that I was more prepared
than most for whatever I'd find in those ancient mountains.
The reality Completely different.
I remember my first stretch near Blood Mountain.
History loomed around every bend, not just from the Civil
War sites, but from the remnants of tribal conflicts that went on
long before European settlers showed up.
The ground felt worn in a way that's tough to put into words,
like it had absorbed centuries of voices.
A couple of nights in, I decided to camp alone in a spot where
the trees formed a thick canopy, letting in only patches of
moonlight. The moment I unrolled my
sleeping gear I noticed that the usual night chorus, crickets,
distant owls had faded. There was an odd sensation of
being watched from multiple angles.
My mind started to wander and I ended up lying awake far longer
than I wanted. The strange part is, I was
positive I spotted movements where there shouldn't have been
any silhouettes flitting at the periphery of my headlamps glow.
Once or twice I had the distinct impression of a figure standing
behind a distant trunk, dressed in something that didn't fit
modern times. I never got a clear look, but
that sense of stepping across some invisible threshold kept me
wired until sunrise. A few weeks later, I ventured
closer to Harpers Ferry, where you can literally walk among the
traces of the Civil War trenches.
One late afternoon, as the light shifted from gold to a dull
Gray, I saw a person in old style military gear drifting
along a sunken path. My brain tried to rationalize.
Maybe it's a re enactor, maybe I was exhausted, But the person,
or whatever it was, vanished almost instantly.
The spot fell silent, like everything around had decided to
pause for a second. I questioned if I was alone in
that corridor of battered earth. It left me on edge for the next
several days, scanning every ridgeline in case something else
appeared. But nothing compares to the
night a bear and I had our awkward confrontation.
I'd rigged up a hammock between two sturdy trunks and dozed off,
lulled by the distant rustling. At some unknown hour, a firm
prod against my back startled me awake.
I reacted without thinking, twisting around and striking
with my hand. I connected with fur and
realized in horror it was a bear's muzzle.
Adrenaline shot through me as I waited for it to decide if I was
more trouble than I was worth. Instead, it crashed off through
the brush, leaving me stunned and trying to slow my breathing
The rest of that evening. Every single noise made me tense
up, braced for a second round that thankfully never came.
Funny thing is, when I mention this to people, they usually
fixate on the bear encounter. They don't realize that animals,
wild as they might be, don't compare to the unsettling
presence that seems embedded in parts of this trail.
That feeling of history refusing to let go.
Those fleeting glimpses of things wearing outdated clothes,
the heavy atmosphere around certain places.
It's all there, woven into the land.
I'd tell myself these experiences were just the
product of fatigue. Maybe I'd just been reading too
many ghost stories. Yet something nagged at me, like
I'd stumbled onto a realm where the past occasionally slips
through the cracks. Later, in Pennsylvania, I'd
discover what true dread can feel like.
That, however, is a story for another post, one that still
keeps me alert at odd hours. Replaying every step I took
through that long, dark night, I thought I'd seen the worst of
the trail run. Insurance with spooky
silhouettes and a half asleep confrontation with a bear had me
convinced I was prepared for anything.
Turns out, Pennsylvania wanted to prove me wrong.
After crossing the state line, I remember feeling oddly
optimistic. The weather was pleasant enough
and I decided to sleep under the stars rather than set up any
shelter. The sky was so clear earlier
that evening and I wanted to experience the open air for
once. I laid out my sleeping pad and
got comfy in my bag, surrounded by trees and that faint hum of
night time insects. Eventually, I drifted off.
Sometime past midnight, I woke up with my heart thumping.
The night had gone dead silent, which rattled me.
Normally, you'd at least hear a hooting owl or wind rustling the
branches. Instead, a thin, eerie whine
reverberated all around. It was so soft, like it was
trying not to exist, but it also seemed inescapable.
Every instinct told me I shouldn't remain there.
My breathing felt tight and the air felt heavier than usual, as
if some invisible presence had crept in and settled on top of
me. I tried to tell myself I was
overreacting, that it might just be the wind through the leaves
or some small animal. Yet the wine didn't change
pitch, didn't shift direction, didn't do anything I'd label as
normal. The dread in the pit of my
stomach wasn't something I could shrug off.
Within minutes I was shoving gear back into my pack, fumbling
for my headlamp. It took every ounce of willpower
not to panic and run blindly through the dark.
The moment I found the trail markers and started moving, the
heaviness slowly eased. After maybe half a mile, the
sensation broke. Like stepping out of a dense
fog. The noise faded into nothingness
and I stood there, leaning on a tree, my mind racing.
Part of me wanted to turn back, search for some logical
explanation. The rest of me argued that I
should get as far from that spot as possible.
In the end, I kept going. Even now I haven't made sense of
what happened or what was possibly lurking in that empty
patch of forest. A few days later a storm caught
me and a group of through hikers near Mount Rogers.
Rain hammered the metal roof of a simple shelter, Thunder
rolling across the sky. We were soaked, shivering and
half starved. Someone remembered that a local
pizza place would deliver to the parking lot if you sweet talked
them enough. The idea of hot food and maybe a
six pack had us pooling whatever money we had left.
After a tense wait, lightning flickering in the distance, we
spotted headlights. Naturally, we figured our food
had arrived. Several of us shuffled out into
the downpour, layered and soaked clothes, boots caked in mud,
hair plastered to our faces. We must have looked like a
nightmare. The driver saw us coming and
slammed on the high beams. Tires screeched, reverse lights
glowed bright red, and the van spun around so fast we all stood
there in confusion. We watched the vehicle vanish
back down the road, fishtailing like it was desperate to escape.
We exchanged baffled looks, water dripping down our faces,
and laughed nervously. Some of the group started
joking. Maybe we seemed like forest
ghouls or something. 5 minutes later, like clockwork, a
different car pulled up and this time the driver hopped out,
completely unfazed. Apparently he was the real pizza
guy, used to hikers in all their rain soaked glory.
He handed over hot pizza boxes, a few cans of cheap beer, and
chuckled about us looking like zombies.
I can only guess what the first driver's story would be
afterward, how a band of unholy creatures approached his van in
the middle of nowhere at night. In those moments, I realized
that the Appalachian Trail doesn't just feed on spooky
legends. Sometimes genuine comedy and
confusion over shadow the fear. Yet for all the laughs we shared
over that botched pizza delivery, I still had the memory
of that unsettling wine in Pennsylvania fresh in my head.
I couldn't help but wonder if I'd only scratched the surface.
The trail has this way of revealing its secrets when you
least expect it. One minute you're joking around,
dripping wet, begging for food. The next you're bolting from an
unexplainable force in the dead of night.
Even now, I look back at Pennsylvania and feel a pang of
discomfort. Whatever I sensed out there,
whatever generated that unearthly noise, made me think
there are places along the trail better left alone, maybe
forever. And yet part of me can't resist
the pole to keep exploring, half expecting to stumble onto some
ancient mystery that refuses to stay buried.
Guess that's the real paradox of the Appalachian Trail.
It draws you in with beauty, then leaves you with questions
that linger night after night. I was closing in on Duncannon,
feeling that mix of exhaustion and excitement that comes when
you're too far gone to turn around, but not quite close
enough to celebrate. About 10 miles out, I spotted a
small group of older women huddled around a couple of
picnic tables near the trail. They waved me over with warm
smiles, so I joined them to rest my legs a bit.
They asked if I was a through hiker and seemed genuinely
thrilled about my progress. We traded a few stories.
I told them where I started, how many states I'd already trudged
through. It felt like your average
friendly chatter until they asked where I was sleeping that
night. Soon as I mentioned some older
shelter a few miles shy of town, their energy shifted.
One of them said you should really head into Duncannon
tonight, while another repeated the advice, adding nothing else,
just the same warning. None of them spelled out why,
and I remember thinking, are they worried about the weather
or something? But their eyes had this urgency,
like they knew something I didn't.
I tried to press them for details but they brushed it off,
insisting it'd be better if I pushed on to town.
My pack was heavy and my feet were screaming at me, so heading
all the way in felt like an extra challenge.
Their unease was contagious, though as I said my goodbyes,
that tension they carried clung to me like a damp chill.
By late afternoon, I found myself turning off the main
stretch of the Appalachian Trail, following a steep side
path toward the shelter. The slope was trickier than I
expected, with old roots and loose stones that had me
stumbling more than once. Overhead, the light was already
starting to fade behind thick branches.
Normally I'd be OK with a few hours of dusk hiking, but
something about that place just felt heavy.
Eventually I reached 2 battered structures that I knew from my
guidebook were built by Earl Schaffer.
He was basically AT royalty, having been the first person to
ever hike the entire trail in one go.
The shelters looked ancient, sagging in spots, and the musty
boards gave off a whiff of age and rot.
Nearby was a new shelter under construction, and even from a
distance I noticed carved faces on the beam ends.
They peered out in a way I couldn't quite describe, like
silent observers in the dying light.
I could have stayed in the half finished shelter, but it seemed
even more unsettling with those carved heads, so I stuck to one
of the old ones. Inside, the shelter's floor was
just round logs placed side by side, barely lifted off the
ground. It made for a pretty uneven
sleeping surface. I figured I'd seen worse.
This was the AT, after all. But something about that rickety
setup gave me an odd sense of discomfort.
I tried to focus on other things, next day's mileage where
I'd get water. A possible zero day in
Duncannon. But whenever I paused, that
prickly awareness returned. Like I wasn't alone.
I kept glancing around, seeing nothing but old wood leaves and
a few spiders skittering in the corners.
I made dinner quickly, more to keep my hands busy than
anything. Every so often a gust of wind
would whistle through the beams and the shelter groaned like it
had a voice of its own. My mind flicked back to the
women at the picnic tables. Why were they so insistent I
shouldn't be here? The question nagged at me, but
without a concrete reason, I brushed it off as local
superstition or overprotection. Night fell harder than usual, it
seemed. The woods beyond the shelter
entrance looked like a solid wall of black.
My headlamp beam danced around, catching the edges of rocks and
roots outside, but I couldn't shake the weirdness.
I tried to sleep, but my senses stayed on high alert.
Sometimes a crack of a branch snapped me awake, or a rustle of
movement made me think there was someone or something lurking
beyond the circle of light. When morning finally arrived,
the relief I felt was intense. Packing up, I almost sprinted up
that trail, my body protesting the sudden climb, but my mind
demanding we get moving. With each step, the weight of
the place seemed to lessen, replaced by fresh air and the
promise of Dunk Cannon's comforts.
Still, I couldn't completely shake a lingering unease, like
I'd just crawled out from under a dark cloud.
It wasn't until I reached town, found a phone, and updated my
mail drop contact that I got slapped in the face with the
real story. I mentioned that shelter
offhandedly, describing it as seriously creepy.
That's when she told me about the two hikers.
They'd been southbounders, having a friendly chat with a
random bar patron in Duncannon. Later that night, this same
patron had followed them to that very shelter, waited until they
were asleep, and murdered them. Hearing it made my stomach
twist, replaying every odd vibe I'd felt, every unsettling sound
during the night. Those women at the picnic tables
had tried to warn me, but they couldn't bring themselves to say
why out loud. I felt a hollow ache in my
chest, knowing now what happened in those walls.
It was more than just an old shelter.
It was a crime scene, a place stained by something monstrous.
If I had known, would I still have slept there?
Maybe not, but the thought of it being so close to where two
people lost their lives shifted the trail in my mind.
The wilderness wasn't just bears and storms, it could hold human
darkness too, and I had just walked right into it.
I came back to that stretch of the trail a few years later.
I hadn't really planned on returning.
There was a part of me that wanted to avoid that entire area
after learning what had gone down at the old shelters.
But life and my hiking routes had a funny way of circling back
on themselves. Before I knew it, I was standing
at the same cut off from the main trail, peering down the
slope with this knot in my stomach.
The trees here looked familiar, yet different, maybe older or
scarred by storms. Sunlight trickled through the
canopy and thin beams and a low breeze made the branches sway.
I swear it felt like the forest was reminding me we remember
what happened here. Going down that path, I half
expected to see the 2 old shelters just as they've been.
My memory was vivid. Those ramshackle logs, the musty
smell, the new shelter mid construction with the carved
faces. But when I reached the bottom, I
was greeted by an entirely changed scene.
The two ancient structures had been torn out, no trace but a
few piles of splintered wood near the edge of the clearing.
Instead, the new shelter stood proudly in their place, fully
completed. The carved faces I'd glimpsed
years ago. We're still there, only now
smooth by weather, or maybe by countless hikers running their
hands along them. They seemed less like art and
more like watchful eyes. I hesitated, feeling a swirl of
relief that the murderous old shelters were gone, mixed with a
weird nostalgia for the original version of the place, even if it
had been dangerously creepy. As I moved closer, I noticed
someone sitting on the newly built porch, sipping from a
battered canteen. He wore a bandana and looked
like he'd seen a lot of trail miles.
When he looked up, I nodded a greeting and he waved me over.
We got to talking, as hikers do. Turns out he'd through hiked the
trail a few years back and had come out for a weekend getaway.
It wasn't long before we drifted into the subject of the area's
grim history. Apparently there was a formal
dedication ceremony once the new shelter was finished, and from
what he'd heard, Earl Schaffer himself had been there only to
be brushed off or overshadowed by certain officials, folks who
didn't get the depth of his contribution or maybe just
didn't care. Hearing that made me bristle.
Earl had literally shaped part of the trails legacy, these
shelters, the story of the first thru hike, and it hurt to
imagine him being sidelined. The conversation took a darker
turn when we ventured into the topic of those murders.
My companion knew about them, too, of course.
Everyone who's hiked this area for long enough picks up the
rumors, if not the exact details.
But he also mentioned how, despite the tragedy, folks in
town tried to move on. The new shelter was supposed to
symbolize a fresh start, a safe space for hikers passing through
Only, he said, some people believe the land itself still
felt tainted, as though the violence of that night hadn't
just vanished when the old shelters got ripped out.
Have you felt it? He asked me, eyes locked on to
mine. That heavy quiet.
I gave a slow nod, remembering the sensation of dread from my
own first night here. We both fell into silence,
broken only by the rustle of wind and the distant Babble of a
Creek. Eventually, he packed up and
left, heading back toward town. I hung around a bit, taking in
the new shelter. It looked perfectly ordinary
from the outside, just sturdy beams, a proper roof, and enough
space to fit a handful of hikers.
But those carved faces unnerved me.
Maybe it was just my imagination, but I could have
sworn they were almost aware, as if they'd seen more than they
led on, listening for footsteps in the night.
Later on, I found myself walking north again.
The trail was peaceful, the kind of gentle climb that usually
empties my mind of worries. Only this time, my thoughts kept
drifting back to what had happened there.
I wondered if a fresh coat of wood in a brand new name could
really erase the memory of two hikers who'd never made it out.
A piece of me doubted it. A few weeks down the line, I
came across Pierce Pond Shelter in Maine.
Beautiful spot, picturesque pond, vibrant autumn colors.
But the instant I got there, I felt a pang of that same uneasy
tension I'd experienced in Pennsylvania.
It wasn't rational. There was no recorded tragedy.
I knew of no creeping murderer lurking behind a pine tree.
Still, the place had this hush, like it was waiting for
something. I tried shaking it off, chalking
it up to hiker paranoia or lingering trauma from that other
shelter. Yet as the sun dipped below the
Pines, the atmosphere felt suffocating.
Every rustle outside set my nerves on edge.
That's when I started to wonder if it was me, if I was carrying
this darkness from shelter to shelter, replaying it in every
unfamiliar corner of the trail. The thought alone was enough to
keep me wide awake, scanning for silhouettes in the dark.
Eventually, Exhaustion 1 and I drifted off, but not peacefully.
In the morning, the chill still clung to me.
I realized it's not as simple as a single terrible event in one
place or some new construction replacing old bones.
The trail might be full of kind souls and breathtaking sights,
but it can also trap echoes of the worst moments experienced by
those who walked it. The deeper truth is that no
matter how many signs we put up or improvements we make, history
has a nasty habit of haunting whatever ground it clings to.
I left Pierce Pond Shelter feeling a little more shaken, a
little more aware of how quickly these woods can go from
comforting to unnerving. And as I hiked on, the thought
kept circling in my head. The real danger out here isn't
always the wildlife or the elements.
Sometimes it's the people you cross paths with and the echoes
they leave behind long after they're gone.
Be careful out there. I'd planned on taking it easy
that evening. Maybe practice a few fishing
knots or help Grandpa Morley tidy up the workshop instead.
A couple of friends, Ray and Kelsey, coaxed me into one last
round of our favorite hide and seek style game.
It was something we'd concocted years ago, chasing each other
through every nook and cranny of the Appalachians behind
Grandpa's homestead. Funny how you can grow up around
these hills and still feel like you've barely scratched the
surface of what's out there. The house sits at the base of a
Ridge that rises into dense hardwood forests.
Grandpa always said the land has its own memory, that every gust
of wind and snap of twigs might be a signal if you listen
closely enough. I laughed it off whenever he got
too mystical, but tonight I was starting to see where he might
have been coming from. The three of us were in the
yard, the western sky burning orange where the sun dropped
behind the ridgeline. Kelsey decided she'd be it this
time, so Ray and I scampered toward the slope.
We both had camouflage jackets, more fashion statement than
functional gear, but I like to think it helped us blend in.
The plan was to outsmart Kelsey by moving uphill.
She'd never guess we'd take the steeper path, or so we thought.
We crested that slope, and the first thing I noticed was how
quiet the forest had become. Usually this time of evening,
you can hear crickets winding up for their nighttime chorus,
maybe an owl calling in the distance.
That night, it felt like everything paused, waiting.
Ray and I tucked ourselves into a shallow dip in the ground,
just behind a line of scraggly bushes.
We had a clearview of the yard, though it was getting dim.
Kelsey's flashlight beam danced across the grass below, and we
congratulated ourselves on the perfect hiding spot.
All we had to do was lie low until she gave up.
Easy enough. A moment later, a low rhythmic
pulse reached us, like a drum beat echoing from far off.
Ray's head jerked up. I glanced at him, wondering if
he felt it too, that buzzing in the pit of my stomach.
Drums in this part of the mountains, maybe a local
gathering, though it made zero sense for it to suddenly start
after dusk. The sound grew.
The beat became something more than a lone drum, chanting or
singing, weaving in and accompanying everything, a
melody that shouldn't fit any of it, A high, keening note
reminiscent of bagpipes. That unexpected note stirred
something protective in me, like I needed to stand up and figure
out who was out there. Except stepping forward was the
last thing I wanted to do. The music peaked, reverberating
through the trees, each note rippling across the slope.
Ray and I, we just stared at each other, neither wanting to
speak out loud. Even whispering felt too risky,
as if we draw unwanted attention.
My lungs begged for a deep breath, but I tried not to make
a sound. Then it died away, gone in half
a heartbeat. The sudden lack of noise rang in
my ears more than the drum beat did.
I couldn't bear another second of stillness.
Ray must have felt the same, because he jerked his head
downhill, eyes wide, We both sprang up, stumbling over that
Ridge. Gravity did half the work,
sending us skidding down faster than we intended.
A root snagged Ray's foot, nearly toppling him.
I grabbed his sleeve, and we both regained balance long
enough to lurch down into the yard.
Kelsey didn't need an explanation.
She stood frozen near the house's floodlight, face pale
with confusion. Grandpa stepped onto the porch,
an old Lantern in one hand, eyebrows knit.
We didn't offer much beyond a frantic we heard something
weird. Even saying that felt like an
understatement. Inside the house, we slammed the
door behind us, hearts hammering.
Grandpa told us to sit, voice firm but calm, and started
asking questions. Ray tried to describe the
chanting and the bagpipes while I stared out the window, half
expecting more noise to erupt from the hills.
But everything beyond the flood lit yard was black, mute.
Eventually Grandpa checked his radio to see if there were any
announcements. Some festival, A big group.
Camping, a local event that might explain away the noise.
Nothing came through. He frowned, as if something he'd
worried about was stepping into reality.
He suggested we all stick close, even though part of me wanted to
bolt for my truck and drive into the nearest town.
We ended up huddling in the living room, not saying much.
Each time the house creaked with night settling in, we jerked our
heads toward the windows. Part of me thought I was
overreacting, the other part said I couldn't be too careful.
At one point, Kelsey started describing how it sounded almost
ceremonial. Ray kept mentioning the
bagpipes, how out of place they felt in these mountains.
Grandpa just listened in silence, like he was adding up
bits of a puzzle we couldn't see.
And so we waited for dawn, adrenaline coursing so hard that
sleep didn't stand a chance. Whatever we heard out there, it
didn't feel like an accidental jam session.
It had the determined rhythm of something bigger, something we
weren't meant to stumble upon. I glanced through the window one
more time, across that slope where the silhouette of bare
branches seemed to watch us back.
The night had only just begun, and I was afraid it wasn't done
revealing whatever secrets lay in those woods.
Morning light had a way of making the previous night feel
like a fever dream, but when I opened my eyes, the knot in my
gut told me it wasn't just an overactive imagination.
Ray was already awake, pacing in front of the fireplace.
Kelsey sipped coffee at the window, staring off at the slope
where we'd heard that eerie music.
The house felt tense, like we were all braced for whatever
might come next. Grandpa Morley was digging
through his old field notebooks, scattering them across the
kitchen table. He murmured to himself as he
flipped pages, sometimes tapping a map he'd pinned down with an
empty coffee cup. Finally, he called us over this
area right here. He pointed at a forested patch
just beyond the Ridge. I've heard stories about folks
finding strange footprints, hearing unexplainable sounds.
Never had solid proof, but no shortage of rumors.
Ray wanted answers. He kept talking about how that
chanting still echoed in his ears.
Kelsey looked as though she wanted to crawl under a blanket
and forget everything. But Grandpa said if we wanted
Peace of Mind, we had to see what was out there in the
daylight. I wasn't exactly thrilled, but
curiosity gnawed at me. The only way to settle my nerves
was to confront whatever was lurking in those trees.
We followed the same path as the night before, only this time
sunbeams cut through the canopy. The forest felt awake now, birds
calling overhead, the smell of wet leaves under foot.
My boots squelched in the soft soil.
About 20 minutes in, we spotted footprints in the mud near an
old game trail. More than one set 2.
Some were big enough that I wondered if a whole group had
come through. Kelsey knelt down, tracing the
edges with her fingertips. She didn't say a word, but her
expression told me she was unsettled.
As we pressed deeper, a low clearing opened up.
In the center were stones stacked in a wide circle.
The ground was littered with scorched branches, as if a fire
had burned there recently. I kicked at a pile of ash,
uncovering what might have been animal bones.
Nearby, Ray found shredded fabric snagged on a sharp
branch, checkered like tartan. The breath caught in my throat.
Bagpipes, a Scottish pattern, and those drum rhythms.
None of it added up, but it sure felt connected.
Before we could piece things together, that same beat
thrummed in the distance. All three of us froze, and every
nerve I had went on high alert. The chanting returned and with
it came a deeper resonating drum beat that rattled through the
trees. We ducked behind an uprooted
trunk, peering over as shadows flickered beyond the bushes.
I saw multiple figures moving, at least 5 or 6, too many to
count accurately. 1 carried what looked like a bagpipe under an
arm. Another brandished a tall staff
decorated with dangling bits of cloth or feathers.
It felt like we'd trespassed on a hidden ceremony.
My pulse roared in my head, urging me to get moving.
Ray tugged my jacket and we bolted.
Adrenaline drove us as we crashed through the undergrowth.
The chanting didn't fade right away.
In fact, for a moment it seemed to chase us, echoing in all
directions. We burst out onto the slope
behind the homestead, nearly stumbling over each other.
Grandpa was there, a rifle propped against his hip.
He took one look at our faces and told us to get inside.
Over the next hour, we told him about the footprints, the circle
of stones, the scrap of tartan, and the silhouettes with
bagpipes in hand. He listened, and at the end he
nodded, like it confirmed a rumor he'd once heard that
generations ago. Certain families who settled
these hills, mixed cultures, Scottish and Native American,
keeping old traditions alive in the most secluded spots.
There was no telling if they meant harm.
Grandpa planned to notify a Ranger station, see if they'd
heard of any suspicious gatherings.
But I think we all sense the same foreboding truth.
Whatever goes on in these woods after dark might not welcome
outsiders. We'd seen enough to know we
didn't belong out there. At night.
When dusk rolled around, we stayed close to the house, porch
lights blazing. Kelsey kept her eyes on the
Ridge, looking for any flicker of fire, light or movement among
the trees. Ray sat with me in the living
room, occasionally glancing at the window every so often.
I half expected those drums to sound again.
Even if they stayed silent, I knew they were only a heartbeat
away, tucked in the deep pockets of the Appalachians.
We had a name for the fear now, but it didn't make it any less
real, and it didn't keep me from wondering if next time we might
not get away so easily. I've always said these
Appalachian Mountains were in my bloodstream, a legacy from my
grandfather in Boone County, West Virginia.
Every time I roll down the highway and see those steep
ridges rising in the distance, something inside me sparks to
life like part of me recognizes home.
This time, though, that welcome feeling came bundled with an
unsettling undercurrent I couldn't quite explain.
The plan was simple enough. Drive from Michigan to New York
City, pick up my friend who needed extra help traveling, and
head back to Detroit. I'd done cross country treks
before, so I didn't expect anything beyond the usual long
haul hassle. The first few hours were
honestly too quiet. I got pulled over in Ohio for a
busted headlight, and even though the trooper was polite,
my nerves still buzzed the rest of the night.
The idea of sleeping in my car at a rest stop sounded OK at
first, but every shuffle of footsteps outside made me sit up
and peer into the dark. Eventually I dozed off, but it
was 1/2 baked sort of sleep that left me feeling ragged.
By mid morning, I was back on the road, cutting through
Pennsylvania and drinking in the misty peaks off in the distance.
Something about those valleys always puts me on edge and at
ease all at once, like I belong there.
But I also know the land can turn dangerous without warning.
The hours ticked by, traffic thickened, and soon I was in the
sprawling chaos of New York City.
After a painful search for parking, I finally spotted my
friend. She hopped into my cramped PT
Cruiser and I was eager to leave the city behind.
There's a hyper awareness that creeps in when I'm stuck in that
much congestion. Too many headlights, too many
people, and not enough personal space.
We were both relieved to point the car W again.
Darkness wasn't far off by the time we made decent progress.
We'd agreed to pull into a large store parking lot somewhere in
western Pennsylvania for the night, Somewhere bright enough
and busy enough that we wouldn't feel vulnerable.
That's where things started getting weird.
I rolled into a Walmart lot that was mostly empty except for a
handful of cars clustered near the entrance.
But parked a little too far out were two vehicles that gave me a
sour feeling. Dark tinted windows, engines
idling like they were waiting on something.
I tried to wave off my own paranoia, but every time I
glanced over, one of the cars seemed to shift closer.
My friend noticed it too. She nudged my arm and whispered.
Is it just me or are they edging toward us?
Her voice was shaky, and it confirmed I wasn't imagining
things. I felt tension coil in my gut.
We decided to bail. No point in testing our luck.
Neither of us wanted to be cornered by strangers in the
middle of the night. Pulling out of that lot, I could
feel my hands clenching the steering wheel.
Driving away eased the pressure only slightly.
The next rest stop we aimed for was tucked between shadowy
ridges, nearly deserted. My headlights swept over
scattered parking spots and there in the corner was a white
Jeep, newish model, tinted windows, Not a soul insight
around it. In the back of my head I was
screaming at myself that I was just being jittery, but I
couldn't shake the thought. What if it followed us from the
lot? It seemed too coincidental.
My friend leaned forward, trying to see if anyone was inside and
that quiet question hung in the air.
Could it be the same one? We didn't linger long enough to
find out. I swung the car around and got
back on the highway, half expecting the Jeep's headlights
to pop up in my mirror. For a while it was just darkness
and winding roads, the trees crowding in on either side.
My friend and I didn't talk much.
We were both in our own heads. Every distant glimmer of lights
behind us made my muscles tighten.
A few times I caught myself speeding, pushing my old PT
Cruiser harder than I should have, just wanting to be around
other people, bright lights, safety.
Maybe it was overblown fear, or maybe not.
Eventually, we spotted another big box store off the highway, a
place that was open all night. We drifted into the lot, found a
spot neither too hidden nor too exposed, and tried to settle in.
My friend reclined her seat, fiddling with her phone, and I
leaned against the door, letting my eyes close.
The adrenaline buzz was fading, replaced by sheer exhaustion.
The plan was simple. Get some rest, wake up and push
on at dawn. That's all we needed, right?
But a nagging alarm kept sounding in the back of my mind.
I couldn't help imagining a set of headlights rolling in beside
us again. I'd always prided myself on
having good instincts, especially on the road, and
something was shouting at me to stay alert.
Maybe the night was messing with my head.
Maybe it was the mountain air, but I couldn't settle.
I just kept checking the rear view mirror and scanning the
corners of the lot, half conscious, waiting for a sign
that everything was about to unravel.
Looking back, I should have known I wasn't going to get a
peaceful rest. The real trouble was just around
the corner, and a part of me sensed it even then.
The mountains have a way of holding secrets close, and that
night it felt like I was driving straight into one.
I'd been through my fair share of late night drives, but none
that left me quite this tense. We'd found another big parking
lot, a large store glowing in the distance like some lifeline,
and I figured we could finally try to rest.
My friend was nodding off in the passenger seat, leaning her head
against the window. My eyes felt heavy, but every
time I let them close, I'd jolt awake at the faintest hint of
movement in my mirrors. At first, the lot seemed almost
peaceful. Only a smattering of cars,
plenty of overhead lights, and the steady hum of night shift
employees hauling carts around. I tried to tell myself we'd been
imagining things earlier, that those suspicious vehicles were
just random folks passing through.
Then I spotted headlights drifting in from the far side of
the lot, and my grip on the steering wheel tightened again.
A white Jeep Compass glided across the asphalt and parked
right next to us. There were at least a dozen
other open spaces, so why pick the one so close?
I glanced to my left, and there he was, the same driver who'd
been lingering in my memory like a fleeting shadow I couldn't
quite get rid of. He was young, but warned
somehow, his gaze heavy and unflinching.
A cold energy rolled off him, making my nerves flare.
Part of me wanted to brush it off, assume I was just stuck in
my own fears, but the longer we locked eyes, the more certain I
became that this wasn't random. My friend must have sensed it
too. She snapped awake, following my
stare. I heard her mutter something
like not again, and that was all the push I needed.
I cranked the ignition, yanked the gear shift into drive, and
tore out of there. The wheels squealed, echoing
across the mostly empty lot. I almost expected the Jeep to
remain behind, some bizarre coincidence put to rest.
Instead, the headlights came to life and stuck to our bumper.
I felt a jolt of adrenaline rush through my limbs as I realized
we were being followed yet again.
The highway ramp was up ahead and I gunned it, hoping I could
leave him behind in the open stretches of Rd.
But once I merged, those lights were still there, unwavering
mile after mile. I tried to ignore the tightness
in my chest, the nagging thought that I'd let this go too far.
Yet I couldn't slow down, not with that Jeep trailing me like
it was locked on. Ahead, the mountains rose
against the sky, dark silhouettes capped by faint
moonlight. We thundered onto an exit,
hoping to lose him in the twists and turns of back roads.
My friend pulled out her phone, trying to chart a route that
might confuse any pursuer. We zigzagged through narrow
highways, winding through steep valleys and lonely clusters of
trees, the path weaving in a dizzying snake like pattern.
Each time I dared glance back, those headlights burned in the
darkness, unshaken by the hairpin curves.
Exhaustion gnawed at me, and I wondered how long we could keep
this up without making a critical mistake.
The roads were almost deserted, lined with battered guard rails
and the endless silhouettes of sloping ridges.
Everything in me wanted to stop, to catch a moment's calm, but my
instincts hollered. That would be a terrible idea
with this creep hanging on our tail.
Then, in a flash of brilliance or desperation, I'm still not
sure which, I yanked the wheel onto a hidden side route.
The Jeep speed past our turn, its tail lights flaring red as
it tried to break. Too late.
A wave of relief washed over me when I realized we might have
slipped his grasp. I continued down this narrow Rd.
until we reached an aging wooden sign pointing to a smaller town.
Streetlights became more frequent, the black outline of
the mountains gave way to a dimly lit Main Street, and for
the first time in hours I let myself breathe.
A fast food place may be the only one open that early, glowed
at the edge of the road. We pulled in, found a spot
between work trucks and local cars.
The safety of other humans moving around was enough to let
the tension in my muscles ease a bit.
My friend and I were so drained we just collapsed against the
seats, windows still rolled up tight.
After so many panicked miles, the distant hum of a drive
through speaker and the smell of stale French fries felt like a
blessing. When the sun finally started
creeping over the ragged skyline of mountains, I stirred.
My neck ached from sleeping at a weird angle.
Outside, life was picking up people stepping in and out.
An elderly couple walking their dog along the sidewalk.
No white Jeep Insight. You'd think I would have been
relieved, but an odd sense of dread tugged at me.
Had we really lost him? Or was he just bidding his time?
I checked my phone, half expecting messages from family
asking where I was, but it stayed eerily silent.
The air felt thick with unresolved tension.
My friend and I ordered some breakfast, greasy but hot, just
to ground ourselves in something normal.
Every so often we glanced out the windows, scanning each
vehicle that pulled through. Nothing suspicious, yet neither
of us could fully shake the lingering paranoia.
It felt like we'd gone through some twisted rite of passage in
those mountains. By the time we climbed back into
the car, the morning sunlight was streaming in, almost too
bright against the tiredness in our faces.
A part of me wished we could head straight home without
another break, but I knew I had to keep an eye out for that Jeep
as though it might materialize again.
The realization was chilling. A simple trip to help a friend
had morphed into this frantic late night chase.
Sure, maybe we were both wound too tight, maybe the stranger
was just some random jerk on a power trip, but I couldn't shake
a deeper suspicion that he was dangerous and that under the
vast sky of Appalachia, anything could happen.
We buckled up and drove off, leaving that small town in the
rear view mirror. Each mile of Hwy. felt both
relieving and nerve racking, as if something could pop out any
second. By the time we found a route
that led back toward Detroit, the mountains were starting to
fade behind us. I couldn't help thinking about
how, despite my deep respect for those old ridges, I was leaving
with a new grim awareness of the shadows they can hide.
I took a final look at the looming outlines in the mirror,
imagining that white Jeep hidden somewhere in the valleys, lying
in wait. Even if I never found out who
was behind the wheel, that night changed me.
I used to think of these roads like a second home, a place of
comfort and belonging. Now a nod of tension insisted
that some things are better left alone, and that wandering too
far into unknown territory can lead to horrors you can't always
outrun. I've never posted anything like
this before, but I can't get it out of my head.
Maybe writing it down will help. I don't care if you believe me.
Hell, part of me still doesn't believe it myself.
But something followed us in the woods last weekend and whatever
it was, it wasn't human and it damn sure wasn't an animal
either. I'm a senior in college, pre
Med. I grew up in western North
Carolina, about 40 minutes from the Tennessee border.
My parents still live in a small house tucked off a gravel Rd.
about 15 minutes from the Appalachian Trail.
We're used to isolation, spotty power, no Internet unless you're
lucky enough to park near the library, no neighbors for miles.
It's the kind of place people think is peaceful until the sun
goes down. Anyway, between school and work
and stress, I hadn't been home in months.
When I saw a break in my schedule, I jumped on it.
And when my girlfriend Anna said she was free that same weekend,
I figured why not take her somewhere real, Somewhere
without traffic or phone notifications.
Just quiet. Anna grew up in Atlanta.
She's the kind of person who's never had to check for ticks or
hang a bear bag. But she's adventurous.
I told her I wanted to take her on a backpacking trip.
Just a short 2 nighter on an old loop that connects to a
forgotten spur of the Appalachian Trail through this
place my granddad always warned me to avoid called Walker's
Hollow. She thought the name was creepy
in a fun way. I figured it'd make the trip
more memorable. We parked at a barely marked
pull off late Friday afternoon. There was one other car there,
older model with dust all over the windows.
No people insight. I double checked the tapo map,
shouldered my pack, and we headed in.
The trail was overgrown in parts, like it hadn't been
maintained in years. Oak and Poplar trees pressed in
tight from either side, and thick patches of rhododendron
arched over the path like tunnels.
The further we walked, the quieter it got.
Not in the peaceful way either. More like the woods were
listening. I didn't say anything.
I didn't want to freak Anna out. We passed a couple weird markers
nailed to trees, planks of faded wood with what looked like white
paint or maybe old chalk markings.
Most were too worn down to read. One had what looked like a
symbol carved into it, a triangle with a circle in the
middle. Someone had scratched it out
with a knife. I told myself it was just an old
forestry mark, nothing unusual. After about 5 miles we reached a
decent campsite near a little Creek.
There was a fire ring someone had built years ago, half
collapsed and full of soggy leaves.
I cleaned it out while Anna unpacked and we managed to get a
small fire going before dark. Dinner was basic dehydrated
chili Mac and two lukewarm granola bars, but the air was
clean and the forest smelled like wet leaves and wood smoke
for a little while. It felt good to be out there
again. Anna said the woods were way
quieter than she expected. She asked if there were coyotes
out here and I laughed. Then I showed her my old party
trick. When I was younger, I used to
mimic coyote howls to see if I could get them to respond.
Not exactly useful, but I was good at it.
So I stood up, cupped my hands, and let out a long, shrill howl
across the Creek bed. She rolled her eyes.
That was loud as hell. I grinned.
Wait for it. We stood in silence, listening.
Nothing. Just the hiss of the Creek and a
breeze shaking the branches overhead.
I tried again, this time throwing in some yips at the end
for good measure. Still nothing.
Maybe they're all curled up in a den somewhere.
I said, shrugging. And then it came.
A sound echoed back to us, but it wasn't a coyote.
It started low, like a whistle caught in the wind, and then
climbed into this piercing, unnatural screech that seemed to
stretch too long, like it didn't need to breathe.
It came from up the Ridge behind us, not far, and a stiffened.
What the hell was that? I froze.
Bobcat, maybe, I said, but I knew that wasn't right.
I've heard Bobcats. This sounded higher, like metal
tearing, like a scream that didn't know how to stop.
Anna backed closer to the fire. That was not a bobcat.
I didn't answer. I just scanned the trees.
That part of the Ridge is dense with undergrowth, especially in
fall. The fog had started to roll in,
heavy thickening between the trunks like smoke.
My skin prickled and I could feel the warmth of the fire.
Only in theory, we didn't stay up much longer.
We doused the fire, zipped into the tent, and lay there,
listening. I kept my headlamp and my knife
by my side. Anna fell asleep eventually.
I didn't because I kept hearing something moving just past the
tree line, something that clicked when it walked,
something that stopped moving every time I held my breath.
And sometime after midnight, I swear to God I saw two pale eyes
watching from just beyond the trees.
They didn't glow, they just reflected.
I don't know when I fell asleep. Must have been sometime after
three when the movement outside finally stopped.
Or maybe it didn't. Maybe I just passed out from
pure exhaustion, adrenaline finally giving up on me.
Either way, I woke up with a start just before dawn.
That hazy blue light was barely bleeding through the nylon of
our tent, and my mouth felt dry, like I'd been grinding my teeth
all night. Anna was still asleep beside me,
but she was twitching, her legs jerking under the sleeping bag
like she was dreaming of running.
And then I heard it again, That clicking.
It was faint this time, slower than the night before, like
hooves gently tapping against stone or wood.
I held my breath. It was circling us.
I didn't dare look through the mesh this time.
I just lay there, paralyzed, trying to convince myself it was
a deer, maybe a curious buck, maybe something explainable.
Then I heard a voice. It sounded like Anna, but it was
coming from outside the tent. It was soft, almost whispering.
Hey, come out here. Her exact cadence, her exact
tone. But Anna was still asleep next
to me. I watched her breathing, her
lips slack and pale in the cold. I didn't move, I didn't make a
sound. I just waited.
The voice repeated, same words, same softness.
Come out here. And then everything went quiet
again. No birds, no wind, not even the
Creek. I don't know how long I lay
there, but when Anna finally woke up she said she had the
worst dream of her life, that she saw me standing over her in
the woods, asking her to follow me into the trees.
Only I wasn't wearing a shirt and my chest was covered in
blood. We broke camp in silence, no
jokes, no breakfast. We didn't even talk about going
home. We just knew this wasn't just a
creepy night in the woods. Something was wrong here, wrong
in a way I can't fully explain. We started hiking fast, packs
bouncing, barely checking the map, but the trail felt off.
Places I remembered weren't where they should have been.
A footbridge that should have crossed the Creek was gone.
We found stone piles, Cairns stacked neatly in rows beside
the trail. Dozens of them, some small, some
tall. Some had bones placed carefully
in the center, little ones. And then we saw the tree.
It was maybe 50 yards off trail, a big Poplar, gnarled and dead.
Nailed into the side of it was an old iron horseshoe.
Hanging from the horseshoe was a rope, and tied to the rope, no
BS, was a deer skull. But the skull had carvings in
it, weird symbols like spirals and claw marks etched into the
bone. Anna wanted to turn around right
there, but I was too stubborn. I kept thinking if we just kept
going, we'd hit the old trail shelter I remembered from years
ago, a small A-frame near the ridgeline where we could get our
bearings. So we pushed on.
The fog got thicker. The trail got thinner.
At one point, I swear we passed the same tree three different
times, one with a split trunk and a slash of orange lichen
across the side. That's when I started to think
maybe we weren't just lost. Maybe something was leading us,
or worse, circling us. When we finally stumbled into
the clearing, I almost cried from relief.
The old trail shelter was still standing.
Barely roof, half caved, Moss all over the N wall and some
raccoon poop in the corner. But it was shelter.
It was a place. We huddled up inside, ate some
protein bars with shaking hands and tried to get warm.
I told Anna to rest while I checked the area.
Didn't want to admit I was looking for signs of whatever
that thing was, tracks, fur, anything.
But there was nothing. Just the quiet again.
I climbed back into the shelter and must have drifted off
because the next thing I remember is Anna screaming.
She was standing outside the shelter, staring at the ground.
No, no, no. What is that?
At her feet was a perfect circle
of stones. We hadn't made it.
It hadn't been there when we arrived.
Inside the circle was her boot, one of the ones she was wearing
the night before. It was dry clean, the laces
perfectly tied. She checked her feet, both boots
were on. I've never seen her that pale in
my life. She couldn't stop crying.
She kept asking me how did it get that?
How did it know? I had no answers, I just knew we
couldn't stay. We packed and left that shelter
without looking back. But even then I had the feeling
we were still being watched. Not haunted exactly, more like
studied. Like something out there was
learning us. By the time we left that
shelter, I'd given up on the map.
Nothing made sense anymore. The landscape felt like it had
folded in on itself. Trees were repeating.
I'd walk 30 feet and swear we were back where we started.
Even Anna noticed it. She stopped asking if we were
going the right way. We both knew we weren't.
I don't think there was a right way anymore.
The fog was thicker than ever, rolling low across the forest
floor, coiling around the trees like it was alive.
The light never changed. Morning never really became day.
There was just this dull Gray half light filtering through
bare branches that looked wrong, like we were trapped inside a
dream where the sun never quite rose.
We didn't speak much, just walked fast, packs bouncing.
Every few steps I'd check over my shoulder and eventually I saw
them. Figures.
Not close, not even fully visible, just dark shapes
slipping between trees up on the Ridge, always just out of sight.
Too thin to be human, moving too fast, but always upright, always
2 legged. The air started to smell like
wet fur and decay, like something had died days ago and
never cooled. At one point Anna gagged and
dropped to her knees. Her nose started bleeding.
I pulled her up and we kept moving.
Somewhere around late afternoon, if that even means anything in
that place, we reached a small rocky clearing.
It looked like a dried up Creek bed, maybe 20 feet wide.
There was a tree in the center, completely stripped of bark.
Around it were piles of bones. Big bones.
Some looked like deer, but others others looked human.
Long pale femurs, rib cages, jaws, but not fresh.
These had been picked clean, arranged, even laid in spirals,
patterns. Some were buried upright in the
dirt like markers. Anna whispered.
This isn't random. And she was right.
Something had put them here, something had made this.
That's when we heard it again. The clicking, not from One
Direction, from all around us. Then the shriek.
Only this time it was louder, closer, and it didn't echo.
It just hit us like a pressure wave that made our ears ring and
our stomachs flip. Anna clutched my arm and
screamed, and I grabbed her and ran.
We didn't look back. We just bolted.
Branches clawed at our faces. Mud sucked at our shoes.
Somewhere behind us, I heard another shriek, then another,
and another, higher and higher, all overlapping.
They were calling to each other. We tore through the woods until
the fog broke and the trees thinned, and suddenly we were
standing on a rocky overlook. Below us, winding like a ribbon
through the valley, was the trail.
The real trail, switchbacks and all.
And far down near the base of the Ridge was the goddamn
parking lot. We didn't even stop to breathe.
We just scrambled down, sliding, grabbing branches, half falling
the whole way. At the last switchback, I looked
back, and there it was, standing alone at the edge of the tree
line. Tall, gaunt, its limbs too long
for its frame, legs bent backward, hooves sunk into the
dirt. Its torso heaved slowly, like it
was panting. The skin was so thin I could see
its ribs rising and falling, and its face still twisted into that
horrific, almost human snarl. Look straight at me.
The eyes were clouded like cataracts, but I felt them lock
with mine. Then it opened its mouth, and in
my voice it said don't leave me. Anna heard it too.
I felt her grip my hand tighter. Then more of them stepped out
from the trees. 5-6, maybe more. All identical yet slightly off,
wrong in different ways. One with a crooked neck, one
with broken antlers, 1 missing a jaw entirely.
All of them watching. We ran.
We reached the car, shaking and filthy, and I barely got the
keys in the ignition. As we drove away, I glanced in
the rear view mirror. They were still standing there,
just watching. We didn't stop driving until we
hit Asheville. I didn't sleep for two days.
Anna hasn't spoken about it since she dropped the class we
shared and hasn't returned my texts.
I tried reporting it. The Ranger I spoke to looked at
me like I was insane. Said that section of trail had
been closed years ago after a wildfire.
No maintained shelters up there, no known campsites.
I asked him if he'd heard of Walker's Hollow.
He paused, said that name hadn't been used in decades.
Then he told me quietly that the last time someone reported going
up there, it was a rescue mission.
A couple of hikers had gone missing.
Their gear was found. Their boots were found, but not
them. No bodies.
It just bones arranged in spirals.
I'm not saying you have to believe me, but if you're ever
on the Appalachian Trail and you see a tree marked with a
triangle and a circle inside, turn around.
Don't answer the call, and if you hear your own voice echoing
from the woods, it's already too late.
This happened in the fall of 2021, somewhere between Max
Patch and Hot Springs on the Appalachian Trail.
I haven't told many people about it, partly because I still don't
understand it myself, and partly because I know how insane it
sounds. There were five of us, me, Liam,
Caroline, Josh and Ray. We were all experienced hikers,
not just weekend warriors. We'd planned a 10 day section
hike aimed for early October to avoid the crowds.
In the worst of the bugs, no one brought GPS.
We were trying to keep it old school.
Paper maps, compasses and instinct.
We were about 3 days in when this happened.
We camped on a flat shelf just off the trail.
It had rained the night before, so we expected a bit of morning
mist. What we woke up to was something
else entirely. The fog was thick, but it wasn't
moving. It didn't roll or lift with the
sun. It just sat there, still and
dense, like it was pinned in place.
I couldn't see more than 15, maybe 20 feet in any direction.
No birds, no bugs, no wind. Just the damp and the silence.
Even when I called out to Liam, who was only 10 feet away, my
voice sounded muffled, like we were talking through insulation.
He was poking at the fire pit, trying to get a flame going.
Caroline stood near the edge of camp, watching the trees like
they might start moving. We all tried to play it cool.
Mist happens, right? We packed up slow, hoping it
would clear. That's when we heard it.
Laughter, high pitched, definitely.
Kids. At first just one giggle, then a
few more, like a group playing tag just out of sight.
We froze. I mean, we were deep in the
woods, miles from any road or shelter.
There shouldn't have been anyone else, let alone children.
Ray said. Maybe it was a scout group.
Josh shrugged. Weird but not impossible, he
said, but even he sounded uncertain.
Then the kids appeared, 8 of them pale, silent, walking in a
line with one tall figure behind them that I assumed was an
adult. They didn't say anything at
first, just moved past us, right through our camp, like they
didn't see us or didn't care. Their clothes were old
fashioned, muted Grays and Browns buttoned up all the way
to the neck. No bags, no water, no gear.
They didn't look dirty, just off.
One of the girls stopped and turned to us, her head tilted a
little too far, like she wasn't used to how necks were supposed
to work. Where are you going?
She asked Liam. Always.
The smart ass said, heading north through hiking the AT.
The girl blinked, her lips twitched like she was trying to
smile but didn't remember how. This isn't the Appalachian
Trail. She said, then she turned and
kept walking. The rest followed, the tall
figure, hooded face hidden brought up the rear and then
they were gone, back into the fog.
We just stood there. No one said anything for a long
time. Eventually Ray muttered OK, that
was messed up. Caroline wanted to pack up and
go back. S Liam said we should keep
going. I didn't know what to think.
Part of me figured it had to be some kind of elaborate prank, or
we'd stumbled into a film crew or a live action thing, but deep
down something didn't feel right.
We voted 3:00 to 2:00 to push ahead.
So we did. We hadn't gone a mile before we
started seeing strange stuff. First it was the trees.
Some of them had markings, white stick figures scratched into the
bark, not like trail blazes. These were crude.
One tree had a spiral, another had a row of slashes, 8 vertical
lines, 1 long, one crossing them all out.
Then we found the dates. One tree had a series of
carvings spaced about a foot apart, 194119511961.
It kept going. The last one was 2021, our year.
I don't scare easy, but that made my stomach drop.
No one talked much after that. We kept moving, but the air felt
heavier, like the forest was holding its breath.
It never got brighter. The fog stayed with us the whole
day. And the worst part?
Every so often, faint and distant but unmistakable.
We kept hearing that laughter just behind the trees, never
ahead of us, always behind. By late afternoon, none of us
were talking. The fog hadn't let up at all.
We kept waiting for it to burn off like normal, but it just
hung there, thick, still, and cold.
The kind of cold that settles into your clothes and never
leaves. We hadn't seen another blaze in
ours. No mileage markers, no trail
junctions, nothing. It felt like we were walking in
circles, even though we stuck to a straight line as best we
could. We tried checking our compasses,
but they were all giving slightly different bearings.
Josh said it was probably a mineral deposit, but even he
didn't sound confident. Around dusk, we heard the kids
again. Laughter.
Same pitch, same cadence, too close.
It was different this time, closer and sharper.
It would pop up to the left of us, then to the right, then
straight ahead. Like they were circling us,
following us, not playing anymore.
Josh stopped and pointed at a tree ahead.
Carved into the bark was a spiral, not a normal one.
It was jagged and uneven, almost like it was scratched in with
something sharp. Inside the spiral were eight
small stick figures. Liam leaned in close, then
backed away fast. They're all missing eyes.
He muttered. We were losing it.
Caroline wanted to set up camp before dark.
Ray agreed, said hiking blind and fog was a bad idea.
We found a spot near a Rockwall. Not ideal, but at least we had
our backs covered. We set up quickly and agreed to
keep watch in pairs. That night I barely slept.
I was on 2nd watch with Ray. Around 1:00 in the morning we
realized we hadn't heard Josh in a while.
His tent was zipped but empty. No gear, no pack, no sign of him
walking off. He didn't snore like usual,
wasn't even rustling around. We started calling for him,
first quietly, then louder. No response.
Caroline joined us, barefoot, flashlight in one hand, knife in
the other. We didn't go far, just 20 yards
from camp. When we saw him.
He was standing perfectly still, in the middle of a small
clearing, surrounded by 8 tiny piles of rocks.
Each pile was stacked exactly the same, 3 stones on the
bottom, one small flat stone on top, the same ape pattern from
before. Josh wasn't moving, eyes open
but blank, pale. He looked right through us.
When I called his name, he finally spoke.
They showed me the real path. That's all he said.
Then our flashlights all cut out at once.
No flicker, no warning, just dead.
Everything went pitch black and the fog got thicker.
I swear to God I heard something exhale.
Not a person, not an animal. It was low and long and sounded
wrong, like it didn't come from lungs.
Branches snapped all around us. Ray grabbed Josh and we dragged
him back to camp, stumbling the whole way.
Liam was standing by the fire pit, holding a flare he hadn't
lit yet. We got the tent zipped, huddled
up, knives out. No one slept.
When the light started coming back the next morning, I
unzipped the tent. We were right back in that same
clearing, same piles of rocks, but now one of them had a small
rotted child's shoe placed neatly on top.
That's when Caroline lost it. She sat down, shaking, muttering
that we needed to get off this trail immediately.
Liam said we should retrace our steps, but that was impossible.
We had no idea where we were. Josh didn't say a word, he just
stared at the shoe. We tried to move fast that
morning, no breakfast, just slammed energy bars and started
hiking downhill. We figured if we kept going
down, we'd hit a road or a stream, something.
We didn't say it out loud, but we all knew the truth.
We weren't on the Appalachian Trail anymore, and whatever
trail we were on, someone had put us there.
We didn't talk much that morning, not because we were
tired, none of us had slept, but because we were scared.
Josh still hadn't said another word.
He just followed us, eyes down, like he was being LED.
We moved fast, choosing the steepest downhill we could find,
hoping it would lead us to water, a forest, Rd. anything.
We tore through brush, tripped over roots, didn't care.
Compass needles kept twitching. Phones were still dead.
Fog pressed in tighter the lower we went.
And that feeling like we were being watched, It hadn't left.
About an hour in, Ray spotted something ahead.
A structure. We thought maybe it was a trail
shelter or a Ranger outpost. Turned out it was an old half
rotted lean to with a collapsed roof and Moss covering half the
frame. We stepped inside anyway, just
to breathe. Inside were drawings, dozens of
them nailed to the wooden walls. Crayon, charcoal, blood colored
paint. All of them were the same stick
figures walking in a line into a spiral.
In one drawing, 5 stick figures were colored red, the rest were
black. There was also a Polaroid tack
to the back wall. It was us standing at Springer
Mountain two weeks earlier. Same clothes, same gear, same
smiles. None of us remembered anyone
taking that photo. The moment I saw it, the nausea
hit me. Not the kind you can walk off.
The kind that comes from deep, like your body knows something
before your mind does. Then we heard the dragging
sound. Metal scraping over stone, slow,
heavy, right outside. Liam whispered for everyone to
shut up. We backed into the far corner,
behind a stack of old crates. Through the cracks in the wall
we saw them. The children.
Same 8 kids, same dead expressions, same clothes.
They weren't walking this time. They were standing still in a
semi circle, humming something tuneless.
Their mouths didn't move. Behind them was the tall figure,
the adult, still hooded, still silent.
He stepped forward and unrolled a massive piece of paper.
A map. Our map.
Same trail route, same campsites.
But now there were new marks, symbols we didn't recognize,
loops and slashes and spirals. The trail didn't lead to Hot
Springs anymore. It LED right back to that
clearing with the stone piles at the center of the spiral.
Written in black ink was one word.
Return. Josh stepped forward like he was
about to walk out and join them. Caroline grabbed him.
Ray flicked a lighter. That tiny flame felt like our
last defense. We ran.
Didn't look back, just booked it through the trees, slicing
through thornbush and undergrowth.
I don't know how long we ran, maybe an hour, maybe 3.
At some point the fog started thinning.
The air felt lighter. Sound returned.
Birds, leaves rustling, distant water.
Then the trees opened up and we hit gravel, a fire road. 5
minutes later a green US Forest Service truck pulled around the
bend. The Ranger inside gave us a
weird look when he saw our condition.
Torn clothes, dried blood, no packs, but didn't ask many
questions. Just radioed for backup and
drove us to the station near Hot Springs.
We told them we got turned around and lost our gear.
That's all we said. No one mentioned the kids, no
one mentioned the map. A few days later I went back
online and looked up missing persons reports.
Found 8 cases from the last 40 years, all from that same
stretch of trail. All unsolved ages ranged from 6
to 12. A few were listed as runaways,
most weren't. I also checked the lean to not
on any map. Rangers said no such structure
existed there. Josh still won't talk about it.
He barely talks at all now. The rest of us don't hike
together anymore. But sometimes when I can't
sleep, I think about that girl's voice, the way she said it.
Calm. Sure.
This isn't the Appalachian Trail.
I believe her now. And if you ever find yourself
lost in the fog on that section of trail and you hear laughter,
don't look for where it's coming from.
Just keep moving. And whatever you do, don't
answer them back. The trail register at Massey Gap
felt colder than the air. The metal box beaded with a dawn
frost so fine it looked like powdered glass.
I signed my name, Evan Mallory, Asheville, NC, then scribbled a
note for my fiance. 7 days of quiet, 10 miles a day back with
a clearer head and better stories.
I shut the lid. The clang echoed through the
high meadows where wild ponies pawed at frosted grass, their
breath foggy plumes in the dim blue light.
If there was a more peaceful place to put a restless mind
right, I hadn't found it. For the 1st 2 miles, the world
felt brand new. Hooves clipped stone behind me,
and a chestnut pony trotted close enough that I could stroke
its shaggy mane. Beyond the bald summit of
Wilburn Ridge, spruce needles glittered under a rising sun,
and somewhere to the east, a pileated woodpecker hammered out
a rhythm that matched my heartbeat.
I breathe deep, tasting wood smoke on the wind.
Odd because campfires were banned until winter rains
returned, I told myself. A hunter down in the lowlands
was burning crop stubble and pushed on.
By late afternoon, I reached a sheltered saddle below Buzzard
Rock and pitched my tent on ground padded with needles.
While the Jetboil hissed, I filmed a quick GoPro diary.
Day one. Easy Miles.
Strange hint of smoke all day. Probably nothing missing you
already, Jules. The stove clicked off.
Silence reclaimed the forest, save for an occasional pop hiss,
like damp logs flashing to steam inside a distant blaze.
I lay there afterward, headlamp off, letting darkness settle.
But as night thickened, that firecrackle seemed closer,
drifting between Ridge Pines and slow pulses, as though someone
were coaxing reluctant coals back to life.
Cold pulled me from sleep just after midnight.
My breath floated white in the tent.
Then a soft scrape, fabric brushing against something
rough, and my vestibule wall flexed inward, pressed by an
unseen hand. I froze.
Another pop. Hiss sounded inches from my ear,
the unmistakable snap of SAP boiling.
I fumble for the zipper, yanked it open, and shone my headlamp
into the trees. Nothing except a faint orange
glow hovering 20 yards away. A single ember, brightening,
dimming, brightening again like a Firefly trapped in a bell jar.
I tried to fix my eyes on it, but the light winked out the
moment I focused. Wind eased through spruce
crowns, yet the air smelled sharper, the smoke thicker.
With no courage to investigate, I zipped the door and lay stiff
until dawn washed the Ridge in Gray.
Morning revealed something I couldn't explain.
The rain fly, once Moss green, bore a streak of soot the width
of a hand that smeared down from the apex to the stake loop.
I touched the mark and the residue blackened my fingertip.
Somehow, a burning ember had brushed the fabric without
melting it. I packed quickly, eager to leave
Buzzard Rock. The trail climbed toward Mount
Rogers under a sky thin as milk, and every switch back delivered
the same scent, wood smoke, but layered now with the sour note
of singed hair. At Wilburn Ridge, I paused to
drink and spotted hoof prints. Yet several were scorched black
edges, crisp as cookie cutters burned into the turf.
Steam curled from one as though it had cooled only moments
earlier. A pony herd grazed 100 yards
off. None limped or seemed hurt.
Still, unease crawled up my spine like cold drizzle under a
collar. Late light slanted gold between
rhododendron thickets. When I found a level spot
beneath 2 hemlocks, their trunks lean together like conspirators,
shielding me from bitter wind. I gathered dead twigs, careful
not to break the fire ban, and settled into my sleeping bag.
Twilight painted the tent walls amber, then Violet.
Sometime in the black hours, a shape loomed against the fly,
kneeling, shoulders hunched. Lightning, silent and distant,
flashed on the horizon, illuminating A silhouette whose
head was cocked as though listening to my heartbeat.
I slapped the knife clipped to my ridgeline, unzip the door,
and jabbed my light forward. The figure was gone, but on the
ground lay a neat pile of cedar shavings.
They formed an arrow, it's barbed point aimed S deeper into
the wilderness. The shavings smoldered at their
tips, tiny curls collapsing into Gray dust without flame.
I scooped A handful, still warm, and scattered them in the wind.
Sleep deserted me. With each hour the air grew
warmer, my breath no longer visible.
Condensation beaded on the map inside my journal, and when I
turned the page to tomorrow's date, the ink bubbled and ran,
the paper itself curling as if held above a candle.
I wanted to believe dawn would make sense of it, that daylight
would blow away childish dread. Instead, sunrise lit the forest
in bruised purple, and every step S felt like descending into
a kiln. My pulse drummed in my ears.
Sweat traced icy rivulets down my ribs.
Though the thermometer read 42. Around me, SAP bled from spruce
knots and sizzled on the bark. I quickened my pace, repeating a
quiet litany. 7 days, 10 miles. Clear head.
But behind that mantra, another thought clawed for attention.
Something out here is burning and it wants me to follow the
smoke. The fallen hemlock looked as if
a colossal hand had twisted it from the soil and slammed it
across the white blazed corridor.
It's shattered crown blocked the trail so completely I could not
even snake under the branches. I studied my map and spotted a
faint dotted line. Devil's Ladder, an unofficial
connector said to shave a mile off the Ridge if you were
willing to endure knee busting grades.
At that moment the main trail felt like a chimney spewing
smoke straight at me, so I chose the detour and plunged into the
understory. Almost at once the forest
temperature leapt. My breath no longer steamed,
instead a damp heat pressed against my skin, warm enough
that sweat pooled under my pack straps even though the
thermometer on my watch still insisted it was 45°.
SAP blistered from spruce trunks and dripped to the Duff with a
hiss, as though the trees themselves were cooking from
within. I checked my phone to mark the
side trail, but the bars dropped to 0 before the screen faded to
black. Battery dead, I told myself I
could navigate by compass just fine.
Yet something about the phones abrupt silence felt like a door
closing behind me. Devil's Ladder earned its name
with every step. The path pitched downwards so
steeply I have skied on loose needles.
Around me, the air grew thicker, shimmering in waves that made
the nearest boulders wobble like mirages.
Then I smelled it again. Burning hair mixed with scorched
cedar and my pulse pounded high in my throat.
I rounded a switch back and halted. 5 paces ahead, half
concealed by rhododendron leaves, stood the man from last
night. He faced away, shoulders
hunched. Blackened skin cracked in flakes
that revealed depths of glowing red, as if he were forged iron
left too long in the coals. His clothes had melted to his
flesh. Tatters fluttered in wind that I
could not feel. Smoke curled from his scalp in
thin blue threads. He turned, and those ember eyes
fixed on mine without blinking. I wanted to scream, but the air
in my lungs tasted of ash. The figure stepped forward.
Every branch he brushed ignited in a brief tongue of flame that
vanished the instant he passed, leaving needles intact yet
smouldering at the tips. Their green turned ghost white.
He extended a hand. Sparks pinwheeled off his
fingertips and died before touching the ground, as if the
fire existed only for him. Reflex broke the trance.
I stumbled backward, boots skidding on gravel, and the
sudden movement seemed to startle the thing.
Its head tilted, cracking skin along its neck that glowed
brighter, hotter. Without warning, the image
fragmented. My vision wavered in ripples of
heat distortion, and the GoPro strapped to my pack beeped in
error tone, its display filling with static bands.
Even though it was powered off, my nostrils flooded with the
chemical Tang of melting circuitry.
I turned and ran. The grade was so steep I barely
controlled each stride, careening off trunks, branches
whipping my arms. Behind me came slow, deliberate
footsteps, charcoal crunching under burned feet.
No matter how wildly I zigzagged, the cadence never
quickened, but it never paused either.
It sounded patient, inevitable, like the tick of a metronome
marking the moment the forest would ignite.
By the time dusk bled through the canopy, I had lost the tread
of Devil's Ladder and found myself in a narrow hollow choked
with hemlock. Skeletons.
Dead man's draw, if the locals warnings were right.
Even here the ground sweated heat.
I slashed at vines to clear a flat patch no bigger than a
coffin and threw up my tent, hands trembling so badly the
poles clicked like chattering teeth.
Night sealed the hollow, and at once the forest began to
breathe. A low, rasping inhale, then a
bellow, soft exhale, again and again, each breath exuding A
faint red glow that rolled over the hillsides like banked coals
stirred by wind. Inside the tent, darkness
pressed against the nylon. My watch read 92°, though
outside it had to be near freezing.
Sweat soaked my base layers. Then the footsteps returned,
shuffling in a widening spiral, circling.
I heard skin crackle with every step, like ice shifting on a
thawing lake. The thing whispered my name,
drawn out syllables stretched thin as if exhaling through
shredded vocal cords. Even each time it spoke, the
temperature spiked and my water bladder ballooned with expanding
air until seams creaked. Hours dragged past.
I held my multi tool like a charm that could fend off fire.
Just before dawn, the footsteps stopped.
Silence settled so suddenly my ears rang.
Then something pressed against the tent wall, directly over my
heart. A hard, irregular shape, smaller
than a fist yet impossibly hot. Nylon sizzled.
I jerked away, stuffing my sleeping bag into the corner.
The object slid down the outside and thumped to the ground with a
sound like wet ash falling through the thin fabric.
A faint red glow pulsed. I forced myself to unzip the
door. Outside lay a child's sneaker,
or what remained of one canvas, mostly burned away.
Rubber warped and cracked. The toe melted into a bleak
grin. Inside, the blackened sole,
numbers blistered through the char 1986.
As I stared, a single ember flared in the hollow toe, then
winked out, leaving the shoe cold and silent.
The sun crested the Ridge, but dead men's draw stayed dim, as
if light itself feared to linger.
I packed in minutes, every motion punctuated by the thought
hammering in my skull. The fire was following me, and
it had just shown me the year it first learned my name.
I ran until my lungs tasted like copper and the heat behind me
faded to the faint rustle of cooling ash.
At a bend in the hollow, the trees gave way to a rutted
service Rd. slick with last night's rain.
Dawn had not truly broken. Only a dim pewter glow seeped
through the clouds, but steam already curled from the gravel
in lazy spirals. The farther I hiked, the more
the air smelled of wet cinders and something sweeter, like pine
pitch boiling on a stove. An hour later I saw it.
A farmhouse crouched at the road's end, nothing left but
black ribs of framing and a stubborn stone chimney that
leaked Gray vapor. The porch roof had collapsed.
Charred rafters lay like snapped wings across the stoop.
Heat still bled from the wreckage, shimmering in waves
that bent the world behind it out of shape.
I wanted to skirt the place entirely, but my legs buckled at
the sight of a black and white cruiser nosed into the weeds,
county emblem flaking from the door.
Emergency lights cold. I staggered closer With a hiss,
the driver's window rolled down and a woman in a tan uniform
leaned out, exhaustion etched in the creases around her eyes.
You all right, Sir? Her badge read Riddle.
The name fit The morning words tangled in my throat, but I
managed. Something's after me.
It's. It's on fire, and it walks.
Sheriff Ada Riddle studied me for a heartbeat too long, then
popped the passenger door. Get in, we'll talk where there's
water between US and the ruins. The vinyl seats scorched my
palms with residual heat, too hot for fabric untouched by
flame. We rolled forward 30 yards and
stopped beside a rusted stock through half full of rainwater.
Steam coiled from the hood where my gloves had landed.
House went up four nights ago, she said, watching the ruins in
her side mirror. Neighbors smelled burning bacon
at 3:00 AM, and fire brigade found the family huddled near
that back door. Father, mother, teenage boy.
No accelerant, no wiring fault. Just combustion.
Her gaze flicked to the blistered streak across my pack.
You saw someone saw him, heard him.
He followed me down Devil's Ladder.
I described the ember eyes, the skin like cracked porcelain over
embers. The shoe stamped 1986 With each
detail. Her face drained a shade paler.
86. She rubbed the bridge of her
nose. I was 12 that year. 3 hikers
burned to death in a cabin off Green Cove Rd.
Volunteer rescue found only footprints burned into the
floor. Case went cold, folks.
Blame a vagrant who died in his own chimney fire that winter.
Swear his spirit brands anyone intruding on these ridges.
She laughed once brittle. I never put stock in ghost
stories until this week. She flicked the dash Cam on,
just in case, and handed me a lukewarm canteen.
I drank in ragged gulps the instant metal touched my lips.
A hot wind whooshed across the field, curling smoke skyward
from the tree line Beyond the house, a shape unfolded taller
than before, every joint glowing deeper as if stoked to white
heat. The temperature inside the
cruiser jumped. Plastic on the steering wheel
softened. The entity stepped onto the
lane. Grass beneath its feet withered
to Gray stalks that burst into wisps of flame and died.
It's gaze locked on me. Through the windshield.
The cruiser's engine ticked, metal expanding Sheriff Riddle
through the vehicle into reverse, but the tires only
hissed on melting tar. She cursed, then bolted out,
grabbed a canvas fire blanket from the trunk, and hurled it at
the apparition. The fabric unfurled mid air like
a sail, striking the creature's shoulders.
For an instant, the flames dimmed.
The form flickered, edges swimming.
I staggered after her, yanked 1/2 barrel off its stand and
tipped a torrent of cold rainwater across the lane.
Steam roared upward, enveloping us in scalding fog.
Through the cloud I heard the entity howl, wood exploding in a
kiln, and felt the wash of heat surge, then ebb as if something
vital had been banked. When the steam cleared, the
blanket lay smoldering atop a dark man shaped smear on the
asphalt. No figure, only a circle of char
so black at 8 the morning light. The sheriff exhaled A shaky
breath. Let's hope that buys us some
time. We drove 2 miles, felt like 20.
Engine knocking from overheated oil at Sparrow Gap Ranger
Station, she guided the cruiser beneath A corrugated overhang
and killed the ignition. Rangers emerged, radios already
alive with chatter about flare ups on the Ridge, grass fires
that vanished. Ada ordered them to fetch
extinguishers and wet sheets. Inside the cramped office, I
scrubbed soot off my hands. Skin slopped away in tender pink
sheets, and beneath it new blisters rose, perfect ovals
mirroring the burned fingerprints left on my tent.
I wrapped them in gauze, but heat seeped through a pulse that
matched my own heart. Through the window, I saw Ada
lean against her cruiser's hood. Where my palms had braced
earlier. A black handprint still glowed,
faint threads of smoke curling upward like incense.
A Ranger aimed the hose, but water broke around an invisible
shield. Droplets hissed and slid off,
unable to touch the scorch mark. The sheriff met my eyes across
the lot, and in her expression was the hollow certainty that
what we'd faced had not been defeated, only delayed.
A gust of wind carried the smell of fresh smoke from somewhere
higher on the mountain. The radio crackled.
Control. We've got a new hotspot flaring
above Buzzard Rock. Looks like a column.
Ada's shoulders sagged. I felt the heat blooming under
my bandages, traveling cheek to collarbone, as if mapping the
path of fire yet to come. Somewhere out in the timber, a
slow, deliberate footstep crunched across charcoal, and I
realized the entity was already moving again.
Patient, methodical, unhurried, taking the long way down the
mountain to find me. Seven days, I had promised
jewels, 10 miles a day and back with a clearer head.
But some journeys, once lit, burn far longer than planned,
and some trails once followed never truly let you leave their
smoke behind. I caught the first glint of
sunrise off the Wolf Creek trailhead sign and felt my
nerves twitch. Someone had hammered A
splintered board across the kiosk.
Keep quiet after dark. Then half ripped it away as if
they changed their mind mid warning.
I pried it loose and slipped it into my pack, telling Jenna I
wanted it as a souvenir. Truth was, I hated leaving omens
behind me. The air smelled of wet stones
and cold pine SAP. Fog lay so thick across the
switchbacks that each exhale bounced back against my cheeks.
Jenna's trekking poles clicked a steady rhythm beside me.
But everything else, wind, birds, distant Rd. noise had
been muffled to nothing. We climbed in silence until the
damp reached through my shirt and tightened across my
shoulders. Just past the first saddle, the
fog thinned enough to show the trails dirt spine, and that was
when I noticed the boot prints, one set deep and alone in the
mud, Size 13 at least. They stretched maybe 50 yards,
veered to the left, then vanished where the path cut
across bare rock. I searched for the next print in
the leaf litter beyond, but the earth there looked untouched.
No crushed twigs, no skid marks, nothing.
My stomach nodded. Whoever made those tracks walked
off trail into brush so dense even deer left obvious tunnels.
Yet he or it left no trace. I told myself a hunter and
lightweight boots might manage that, But I kept glancing over
my shoulder for the next half mile.
By early afternoon the sun punched holes through the
whiteout and we stopped by an unnamed seep the guidebook
promised was year round. Water trickled out of Moss
cloaked limestone, clear as glass, but when Jenna knelt to
fill the filter bag she froze. Alex, look.
A latticework of sharpened twigs lay wedged beneath the surface,
each stick shaved to twin points.
Crisscrossed like an amateur catcher's trap, they stank of
sweetness gone rotten, fermented fruit and wet mulch.
I lifted one with my knife tip. The bark sloughed off, slick as
eelskin, exposing pale wood riddled with pin holes the size
of sewing needles. I dropped it and tasted copper
in my mouth. We camped a little uphill where
the ground leveled off a narrow bench just wide enough for the
two person tent. I forced a laugh while tying the
last guy line. Bare cans 30 yards that way.
Exits over here no problem. Jenna nodded and squeezed my
hand, but I felt the pulse in her fingers racing faster than
mine. Night sealed the forest by 9.
Fog drifted back in, thicker than before, and moonlight
flickered like a dying bulb behind the clouds.
I woke with a start to a sound that did not belong.
Crunch, pause, crunch, not leaves.
Rustling footfalls, deliberate and measured, circling my watch
read 2O3 in the morning. Jenna's eyes shone in the dim as
I unzipped the tent halfway and slid the headlamp strap around
my wrist. The beam pierced maybe 20 feet
before the vapor swallowed it. But in that cone of light, 3
shapes crouched among the laurels.
Scarecrow, thin limbs wrapped in what looked like burlap ribbon
clotted with Moss. Their heads turned flatly, No
bobbing like people adjusting balance, just a single fluid
pivot toward me. Eye sockets reflected nothing,
matte and dull, as if someone had sculpted faces from river
stones. I stepped forward, instinct
scream to drive them off. Hey.
My voice cracked and the figures flinched. 1 uncoiled to its full
height, at least 7 feet, and raised 2 dead branches in each
hand. Click, click.
The sticks met perfectly, mimicking Jenna's laugh from
dinner, brittle and bright in the stillness.
My skin crawled so hard it almost tore.
Leave. I shouted, taking another step,
but the headlamp trembled in my fist and the beam jittered
across tree trunks. In that strobe, the figures
scattered. No stumbling, no snapping brush,
only a blur of Gray limbs melting up slope.
Then absolute silence. Even the creak we'd heard all
evening had gone mute. I backed inside, zipped the flap
and pressed my shoulder against Jenna's.
We sat like that until dawn turned the fog a dingy silver.
Outside, the dew heavy ground around the tent was pocked with
prints, bare, narrow, each foot 6 toes wide and ending in tiny
claw points. They formed a perfect circle,
toes aimed inward, as though the three had stood equidistant all
night, simply watching the nylon walls breathe.
Jenna whispered. We're leaving now.
I nodded, unable to answer. As I shouldered my pack, the
souvenir board shifted against my spine.
I almost hurled it into the woods, but I couldn't bring
myself to let it go. We hiked out without breakfast.
The forest gave nothing but the hollow echo of our own
footsteps, and every so often I swore I heard sticks tapping
together. Click, click.
Deep in the fog behind us. The fog never quite lifted, only
stretched itself thinner as we hustled South by what I guessed
was late morning. My watch kept skipping minutes.
We had chewed through nearly 20 miles of switchbacks.
The pack straps sawed at my collarbones, but I refused to
slow. Every birdsong perched above us
in the canopy, as if the warblers were escorting our
flight but wouldn't dare land on the trail itself.
Whenever I stopped to sip water, the woods went pin drop still,
then resumed the moment I moved again, like a show restarting
after the critic leaves the room.
We gained the spine below Chestnut Knob just before noon.
Gray clouds stacked like stone blocks overhead, and the forest
floor bled a sour metallic scent.
Wet pennies baked in sun that never reached the ground.
Along a mossy Cut Bank we found pine trunks skinned of bark.
The strips had been trimmed into human shapes and nailed head
high, all of them facing the Cliff wall, as if some deranged
sculptor wanted the effigies to watch the rock instead of the
trail. Rust streaked under every nail,
but when I touched the streaks, my fingers came away clean.
The red was embedded in the wood grain itself dark as dried
liver. Jenna's breath started a quick
cadence between her teeth. I tucked an arm around her pack
and guided her forward, promising that two more ridges
would drop us onto the service Rd.
I no longer believed my own words.
By deep afternoon we found a sliver of level ground pressed
tight against a shale Cliff, no approach possible from behind
and only a 5 foot mouth for entry.
We pitched the tent there, doors out, rain fly cinched low.
I loaded both pistols and placed them within an easy reach.
Jenna threaded our last length of paracord across the only
entrance, hitching it to her titanium stakes and dangling my
titanium mug so it would clang if anything brushed the line.
Sunset never brightened, the clouds merely thickened until
day and night became the same dark slate sometime past
midnight. I know because my phone pinged
once, then died. We both jerked awake to the
faintest tink of metal, my mug shivering against itself.
I rolled onto 1 elbow, pistol in hand, listening.
Something crouched just outside the fly, breathing slow as a
diver, conserving air. The paracord twanged again,
quieter, as though fingertips traced its length.
Then a voice spoke, inches from the nylon.
Why'd you bring the gun? My own voice tone timber the
hitch on the word gun I'd made earlier that day when coaxing
Jenna downhill. A perfect mimic whispered with
the warmth leeched out of it. The same sentence repeated, but
now in Jenna's tone, fragile and cracking.
She clamped a hand over her mouth.
I felt her heartbeat banging through her wrist.
I cleared my throat. We're armed, I said, voice low
but steady. Step away now, or I will shoot.
The forest exhaled. Cicadas, crickets.
Everything that had been humming went dead.
A2 count later. Footsteps retreated. 2 measured
paces. Pause 2 paces, like a drill
squad marching in felt slippers. The cadence faded, but the hush
remained, an oppressive vacuum that pressed against my eardrums
until they rang. We lay awake until dawn seeped
through the fly in a colorless smear.
When I crawled out, my boots slid on damp shale.
The paracord was gone, every inch of it, yet the stakes still
stood. My mug lay on its side, handle
threaded by a braided loop that hadn't existed the night before.
Boot laces. Our boot laces had been sliced
from both pairs of boots while we slept and woven into an
elegant hangman's noose. A Gray clay fingerprint smeared
the tent zipper, flecked with grit that glittered like bone
dust. Jenna stared, then turned the
color of paste. We didn't speak.
We broke camp in 6 minutes flat. No coffee, no filter.
Stop. As we shouldered our packs, the
clouds above the Cliff tilted, and for the briefest heartbeat I
thought I saw a thin figure perched on the rock face itself,
limbs folded like a mantis. A blink later, only wet shale
remained. We started downhill, the trail
slick and narrow. Behind us.
Far up the Ridge, 2 sticks clacked together.
Talk, talk. In perfect imitation of Jenna's
laugh, I tightened my grip on the pistol and kept walking,
counting each breath until I lost track of the number
entirely. Wind scratched the Ridge like
sandpaper, but Thunder refused to crack, just a low, endless
growl that chased us down slope. GPS bars winked on and off even
though the sky stayed open. Every time the screen froze, the
mileage ticked backward, chewing away our progress toward Burke's
Garden. My watch claimed mid morning,
yet the air tasted of approaching night.
We power walked the narrow spine until the forest thinned into
scrubby grass. That was where we saw it, the
silhouette waiting on the next rise.
Tall, too thin, shoulders draped in something that fluttered
without wind, its head listed to one side like a dog trying to
puzzle a strange sound. Then, with brutal deliberation,
it raised one impossibly long arm, no bend at the elbow, and
pointed downhill, the same direction we were already
moving. Jenna whispered.
It's hurting us. I could not disagree.
We cut left onto the faint connector trail, racing the
slope. Minutes later, a sharp digital
click broke the hush behind a Maple trunk, followed by another
farther uphill. When I searched the bark, I
found a black cube, an old Bluetooth speaker wedged in a
knothole red light blinking. A delayed echo of our own
footfalls spilled from it. 3 seconds behind.
The tiny cadence ricocheted through the hollows, multiplying
until it felt like dozens of boots closing in.
I smashed the speaker with a rock.
The moment the plastic cracked. A whistle erupted from somewhere
beyond sight. An elk bugle pitched far too
low, vibrato so deep my ribs hummed.
Birds pinwheeled from the canopy, some dropping stunned,
onto the Duff. We had two trails left on the
map, both through Dead Oaks Hollow.
The first dissolved beneath a landslide, so we plunged into
the second. A drainage choked with limestone
and slick leaves halfway down the ground, opened under Jenna's
boot. She yelped, flailing, and I
grabbed her pack just in time, pulling her back from the lip of
a sinkhole, maybe 15 feet across and twice that deep.
Its floor looked like a trophy dump.
Deer mandibles, bare jaws, a Mountain Lion skull bleached
white human teeth, molars. Incisors glinted among the bones
like seashells on dark sand. A fresh pair of upper incisors
rested on a Flat Rock, the roots still pink.
I gagged. Above us, voices began to chant
in unison, neither loud nor hurried.
Coordinates read out in monotone, descending numbers.
Between each line, 131211 figures ringed the sinkhole rim.
A full circle of pale watchers crouched so low their wrists
dangled past their knees. They rocked together,
synchronized, until their joints popped like breaking sticks.
Lightning finally tore open the clouds.
In the flash, every watcher stood at full height, arms
spread ragged bark, capes snapping like cloth.
Thunder hammered the basin. A slab of limestone sheared off
the lip and crashed into the sinkhole, tilting high enough to
form a rough ramp. Move.
I shoved Jenna up the rock and scrambled behind her.
Limestone rang beneath our boots.
Something, someone, slid after us, bare feet slapping in
counter rhythm. But the next lightning strike
blinded my night vision and all I saw were after images.
We broke into a downhill Sprint, branches clawing our packs, the
slope steep enough to tumble if we missed a step.
Behind us, the coordinated stomp of many feet burst into a run.
No shouts, no barking dogs, only that same precise cadence,
driving faster. At the service Rd., a Hunter's
truck idled, tailgate open, decoys rattling in the bed.
I waved both arms, gun still in my hand.
The man's eyes went wide. He thumbed the safety off his
shotgun but didn't raise it. Jenna collapsed beside the
bumper, sobbing. Gravel dust rose behind us, but
nothing emerged from the tree line.
Forest Ranger Hal Teague arrived 10 minutes later in a green
pickup. He listened in silence while I
poured out the story, leaving out nothing this time.
When I finished, he rubbed the brim of his hat and asked only
one question. You 2 crossed Dead Oaks Hollow.
We nodded. Locals call them Ridge watchers.
He said, voice soft enough I almost missed it.
They follow noise. Don't let a thing go that
rattles the Ridge after dark. He offered hot coffee in a paper
cup. I wrapped trembling fingers
around it, then froze. The cups handle was looped by a
neat braided string, my boot lace, though I had replaced the
laces with paracord that morning.
Three weeks later, back home in Richmond, a padded envelope
arrived with no return address. Inside lay the splintered
warning board from the kiosk and a micro SD card labeled 2 O 3:00
AM. In cramped graphite, I slid the
card into my laptop. A single audio file played.
My own voice whispered, Why'd you bring the gun?
13 times? Flawless and cold, each
repetition tailed by a wet exhale that fogged the laptop
microphone. Somehow, on the recording
itself. When the loop ended, a faint
click click echoed like sticks tapping out Jenna's laughter.
I keep the board locked in the attic.
Some nights, quiet nights after dark, I swear I hear that
distant whistle, impossibly low, threading through the rafters
while the house holds its breath.
It was Drew's idea, like it usually was when we ended up
doing something dumb but well-intentioned.
He called me after 8 months of silence.
No texts, no memes, not even a Merry Christmas.
Just a one line message at 2O four in the morning.
You still hike? I didn't respond right away.
Truth was, I hadn't hit a trail in over a year.
Work, a breakup, and the kind of creeping exhaustion that settles
in your bones had kept me firmly planted indoors.
But something about the timing, about the way Drew asked, made
me say yes without even asking where.
We met up in Asheville three days later.
He looked rough, pale, gaunt around the eyes, like he hadn't
slept properly in weeks. But when I asked about it, he
shrugged it off, said he just needed to get out of the city,
clear his head, breathe real air again.
And I didn't push because, frankly, I needed the same.
Drew had picked the spot, an isolated stretch of the
Appalachian Trail near the Tennessee, North Carolina,
border. We'd hike for four days, circle
back using a fire road and crash in the truck.
No service, no noise, just miles of nothing.
It sounded perfect. I should have asked him why he
picked that spot. Should have asked a lot of
things really. We parked his rust bitten Tacoma
on an overgrown shoulder near an old mile marker.
The trailhead wasn't labeled on any map I had drew, just said
trust me, it connects in and pointed uphill to a faded break
in the trees. The path was narrow, overgrown
in places and I could feel the wetness of the Moss through the
sides of my boots. Within the 1st 20 minutes the
air was heavy, damp, like the woods had just finished raining.
Even though the sky was clear, it smelled old, earthy, but not
the good kind, more like mildew and forgotten things.
Every step kicked up the scent of rotting leaves and mud.
Still, we laughed a lot that first day, talked about the
usual exes, jobs, dumb crap from high school.
Drew seemed like himself again that night.
We set up camp in a shallow basin next to a dry Creek bed,
just a flat enough patch to drop our gear.
We cooked some ramen on my jet boil and passed a tiny flask
back and forth until the stars came out in full.
Around midnight, the forest got too quiet.
It wasn't gradual. One second we could hear the
rustle of squirrels, the buzz of insects, the occasional flap of
something big in the trees. The next it was like someone had
hit mute on the whole world. The fire still crackled.
Drew's breathing was steady. But beyond that, nothing.
I sat up, suddenly alert. Do you hear that?
He didn't say anything, just nodded, eyes fixed on the dark
tree line beyond the fire. That's when we heard it, this
low grinding noise. Not footsteps, not a growl.
It sounded like someone dragging a bag of rocks through wet
gravel. Long, slow, pausing every few
seconds. It moved just beyond the trees,
where the fire light faded to black.
We didn't speak, didn't move, just listened.
It circled slowly, like it was checking us out.
When it stopped, Drew whispered. Don't move, it's circling.
I nodded, even though he couldn't see me.
My skin felt electric, my body coiled tight like a spring.
I grabbed the hatchet near my sleeping bag and held it low.
Minutes passed, maybe hours, I don't know.
At some point I must have dozed off, because when I opened my
eyes again, the sky was turning Gray and the fire had burned to
ash. The woods were noisy again,
birds chirping, a squirrel scampering up a trunk like
nothing had happened. Drew was already awake, standing
at the edge of camp with his arms folded.
I walked up next to him and followed his gaze.
Boot prints, Deep ones, not ours.
They circled the camp in a wide arc, maybe 15 feet out, where
the brush was just thick enough that you wouldn't see someone
unless you were looking for them.
Drew didn't say anything, just turned and started packing up.
We hit the trail again around 7:00 AM.
Both of us were quieter, not as quick with the jokes.
There was this shared understanding between us now,
unspoken but heavy. Something had been watching us
last night, and it wasn't a bear or a deer or anything that
belonged out here. We hiked most of the day without
seeing anyone. No other hikers, no trail
markers, not even the occasional candy wrapper left behind by an
amateur. It felt like we were the last
two people on the trail. At one point I checked my phone
just to see the time and noticed something weird.
The time was wrong, off by two hours.
I laughed at first, thought I must have hit daylight savings
or messed with the settings, but Drew checked his watch and went
pale. Same thing.
We both had different brands, mine digital, his analog, but
both were off exactly 2 hours behind.
No way both of them are busted. I said.
Drew didn't answer, just looked back over his shoulder, scanning
the trees like he was expecting something to step out of them.
The rest of the day passed in a fog.
At some point we found an old overhang, looked like it used to
be a trail shelter before it collapsed in on itself.
The beams were weather worn and splintered, roof caved in like
it had given up fighting gravity.
We didn't stop, just moved past it and kept walking.
And that's when we saw him. A man walking the opposite
direction, maybe 50 yards ahead, just stepping slowly down the
trail like he had nowhere to be. At first I was relieved, another
person, proof we weren't alone out here.
But something felt off immediately.
He was barefoot, filthy, his shirt was torn hanging off 1
shoulder, and he was carrying a bundle of sticks in one hand.
Like carrying them. Not in a pack, just bundled in
his arms like a toddler holding toys.
We stepped aside to let him pass.
He didn't look at us, didn't say a word, just walked straight
down the trail, eyes locked on the dirt like he was afraid to
look up. Drew muttered under his breath.
What the hell was that? I didn't answer.
My mouth was dry, tongue stuck to the roof like I hadn't drunk
in days. I watched the man disappear
around a bend and felt this pressure in my chest, like the
woods were holding their breath again.
We made camp early that night, just before sunset.
Drew didn't speak much while we set up, just went through the
motions, tent food fire like a man on autopilot.
When it got dark, we didn't tell stories or pull out the flask.
We just sat there, watching the woods, listening.
And that's when we heard it again. 3 short whistles, sharp,
deliberate. We both froze.
Then the sound of something stepping just beyond the trees.
One step, pause, another pause, closer.
Drew whispered. That's not the same thing from
last night. I didn't answer.
I just gripped the hatchet and prayed it would leave us alone.
But deep down, I knew something had followed us.
Something was out there, and it knew we were here.
The morning after the whistles, neither of us said a word about
what we'd heard. Maybe we were too afraid to put
it into words. Maybe it felt safer to pretend
it didn't happen. But the silence between us
wasn't normal. It was sharp, tense, like a wire
pulled tight between two people. Trying not to panic, We broke
camp faster than usual. No coffee, no breakfast, just
packed our gear with stiff fingers and got moving before
the sun had fully cleared the trees.
The trail was wrong, I don't know how else to put it.
The path looked the same, but the woods felt off.
The spacing of the trees was too even, like they've been planted
and I swear they were closer together than they'd been
yesterday. The light filtered through the
branches and thin pale streaks that didn't feel like sunlight.
It looked like the glow off ATV screen in a dark room, cold and
artificial. An hour in, we found the first
marker. It was carved into a tree trunk,
deep gouges in the bark. Done recently.
At first I thought it was trail graffiti, until I got closer and
saw the shape. Three straight vertical slashes,
evenly spaced. Not letters, not a hiker's
initials. It looked more like tally marks,
but there were only three. Like someone or something was
keeping track. We pushed on, trying to stay
calm, but the deeper we went, the more signs we saw.
Not just carvings. Stones stacked into little
pyramids beside the trail, with Tufts of fir wedged between
them, twine hanging from branches and haphazard knots.
Once we passed a log covered in dozens of dead moths, wings
splayed like they've been arranged there.
Drew didn't say much, but I caught him looking over his
shoulder constantly, and he started mumbling just little
things under his breath. Don't look at it or keep walking
over and over like a mantra. I finally stopped him.
What's going on, man? He looked at me, eyes glassy.
I've been here before. My stomach dropped.
What I I don't mean literally, not like I remember hiking this
part, but I know this place. I've seen it in dreams.
That tree. He pointed to a crooked cedar
split down the middle by lightning.
I've seen that tree a dozen times.
You didn't tell me you'd been dreaming about this.
He didn't answer, just started walking again.
By midday, it felt like we were the only people left in the
world. No birds, no bugs, just the
sound of our own breathing and the crunch of boots on damp
leaves. And that's when we saw the
footprints. Not ours.
Not from boots. Bare feet, one set deep heel
impressions, long toes wide apart, like someone or something
had been running barefoot along the trail, and they were fresh.
We stopped dead. The Prince curved off the path
and into the woods. I could see the trail they left
behind in the undergrowth. Bent grass, disturbed leaves.
It wasn't random. It was like it wanted us to see
where it had gone. We should turn around, I said.
Drew shook his head slowly. We won't get out that way.
You don't know that. He looked at me, and there was
something behind his eyes that made my stomach twist, like he
wasn't sure if we'd ever get out.
We followed the trail for another hour, then came upon a
structure. It wasn't on any map, just a
single rotting shelter buried deep in the woods.
Old Ranger station, maybe. The roof sagged like a broken
spine. Windows boarded, the door
hanging off its hinges. I didn't want to go in.
Every part of me screamed not to, but Drew was already
stepping through the threshold. Inside, it was worse.
The air was thick, foul, like old meat and mold.
The walls were covered in claw marks, not scratches, gouges
deep enough that flakes of wood curled at the edges.
Something had torn through here recently.
In the corner was a pile of bones.
Small ones, animal probably, but they were laid out in a pattern,
symmetrical, deliberate skulls stacked on top of each other
like a totem. And next to it, a pile of
clothes, folded clean to clean. A faded hoodie, hiking pants, a
baseball cap with a tiny patch that said WANDER more.
There was a name stitched into the jacket collar.
Ryan S Drew said nothing, just stared at the clothes like they
were radioactive. Then we heard it again.
The whistle. 3 notes this time. Closer, right outside.
Drew turned to me slowly. It's hunting.
No, I said, backing away. It's toying with us.
We bolted out of the station and ran, full Sprint, packs
bouncing, lungs on fire. We didn't stop until we were
halfway down a ravine, gasping and soaked in sweat.
That's when I realized my GPS wasn't in my pocket anymore.
Gone. Just gone.
I'd checked it maybe 10 minutes earlier.
No way it fell out. It was taken.
Mine's dead, Drew said, holding up his screen.
It was cracked straight down the middle.
The display flickered once and shut off for good.
We sat there in silence for a while, listening to the forest
breathe. The sun was going down behind
the Ridge. We didn't have long.
We need to make camp, I said. Set a fire, keep watch.
Drew nodded but didn't move. And then he whispered something
that chilled me more than anything that day.
I don't think we're on the trail anymore.
I looked around. He was right.
The path we'd been following wasn't a trail, not really.
No markers, no blazes, just a worn line through the trees that
we'd been blindly following, thinking it would lead somewhere
safe. But it didn't.
It was a path meant for something else.
We didn't sleep that night. We built a fire and took turns
watching it, listening for the whistle.
It didn't come. That somehow made it worse, at
least before we knew where it was now it could have been
anywhere, all around us. Or maybe it was just waiting.
The woods didn't feel like woods anymore.
They felt like a maze, like we'd cross some invisible line and
the rules no longer applied. When the sun came up, if you
could even call it that, we packed up and tried to
backtrack. We figured if we could retrace
our steps to the Ranger station, maybe we'd find something that
pointed us toward a real trail. But the ravine we'd scrambled
down? Gone just a flat stretch of Moss
and deadfall. The Ranger station nowhere.
Maybe we missed it, I said, even though I knew we didn't.
Drew didn't respond. His face had gone pale again,
and his left eye had started twitching every couple of
minutes. He looked like he was falling
apart from the inside out. I don't think it wants us to
leave, he finally whispered. We kept walking.
After a few hours, we hit a clearing, a wide circular
opening in the trees. No sound, no birds.
Just a field of stones. Big flat slabs laid out in
tight, unnatural rows. Some were cracked, others looked
like they'd been burned. And in the center, a tree, dead,
blackened, split right down the middle.
At its base, something had been carved into the wood.
Come closer. Drew just stared at it like it
was calling his name. I grabbed his arm.
We're not going near that thing. He didn't argue, just let me
pull him away. That's when we heard it.
Not the whistle this time. It was our voices, my voice,
Drew's voice coming from the woods.
It said this way, then help, and then laughing, mocking, like it
was trying to remember how to be human but got the tone wrong.
Off just enough to make your skin crawl.
We ran. The path was uneven, roots
rising to grab our boots, branches clawing at our arms.
I lost track of how long we moved like that, ducking,
stumbling, shoving through brush like we were being chased even
when nothing was behind us. Eventually, we hit another
trail. A real one.
I recognized the markers. White rectangles on the trees.
Appalachian Trailblaze. I nearly cried, but Drew wasn't
celebrating. He just stood there, staring
into the woods. It let us find it, he said.
It wants something. What the hell are you talking
about? He looked at me, expression
flat. We're not both getting out.
No, I said, backing away. Don't do this.
But he was already taking off his pack, dropping it in the
middle of the trail. You've got a wife, a real life
back home. I don't this thing.
It followed me first. I grabbed him by the jacket.
I'm not leaving you out here. And that's when we heard it.
Footsteps. Not shuffling, not creeping,
running fast, heavy, right toward us.
We turned and bolted. Whatever it was, it was behind
us. close. I could hear the snap of
branches, feel the vibration in the ground.
I didn't look back. I couldn't.
We ran until my lungs felt like they were filled with glass.
My legs barely worked. Drew was falling behind.
He stumbled once, hard, rolled down a slope and hit a tree with
a sickening crunch. I stopped, turned back.
He wasn't moving. The thing was close now, too
close. I could hear it breathing wet,
rattling breaths. I had to make a choice.
I turned and ran. I ran until I saw a clearing in
the glint of metal, a trail sign, bent, rusted, half covered
in vines, but real. I followed it, crashing through
the underbrush until I saw a gravel Rd. a Ranger truck, a man
in uniform. I don't remember what I said, I
think I screamed. He grabbed me, hauled me into
the truck and drove. He didn't ask questions, didn't
talk, just kept his eyes on the road.
We drove for maybe 20 minutes before I caught my breath enough
to speak. My friend Drew, he's still out
there. The Ranger didn't look at me, he
just muttered. You're lucky it let you go.
What are you talking about? What is that thing?
He finally turned his head, just enough for me to see the deep
lines in his face. We get a few like you every
couple years. Pairs mostly.
One gets out, one doesn't. I stared at him.
So what, you just leave them? We've tried, he said.
Sent teams in dogs, drones. Sometimes we find pieces,
sometimes we don't. It's not our land, not really.
We rode in silence after that. Back at the station, they gave
me water, took a statement I barely remember giving, told me
someone would look into it, but I could see it in their eyes.
They already knew how this ended.
But Drew? Drew made it. 3 days later, a
rescue team found him wandering down a game trail 6 miles from
where I'd left him, Shirt shredded, shoes gone, blood
crusted down one side of his face.
He was muttering something about names and mirrors.
They sedated him on the spot. He doesn't talk anymore, not to
me, not to anyone. He moved to New Mexico, changed
his name, deleted every trace of his old life.
Sometimes I text him just to see if he's still there.
He never replies. As for me, I moved out of the
city, don't hike anymore. I stay away from wooded areas.
I don't go near parks. Sometimes I catch myself
listening too closely at night, waiting for the wind to shift.
And once, just once, I swear I heard it again. 3 sharp whistles
and my voice calling from the trees.
I didn't grow up with ghost stories.
I didn't grow up believing in curses, forest spirits, or
anything that couldn't be measured or explained.
My family wasn't superstitious. We were practical.
We believed in what we could see, touch, quantify.
That's probably why I didn't take Everett seriously when he
grabbed my arm that night, his nails digging into my skin, eyes
glassy and wide. If the woods go quiet, you stop.
Don't talk, don't run, don't turn around.
That's what he told me. I should have listened.
Everett lived out past Blue Ridge, in this patch of the
Georgia mountains where the trees felt older than time.
His cabin was one of those places that never had good cell
reception, never got mail delivered directly, and somehow
always smelled like damp stone. I'd driven in that afternoon to
grab the Will paperwork he'd finally gotten around to
finalizing. He wasn't dying, but he looked
like he was getting there. Thin, pale, like something had
hollowed him out from the inside.
He wasn't eating. Said the woods had been too loud
lately, then too quiet, whatever the hell that meant.
His windows were covered in newspaper and black duct tape.
He'd unplugged his fridge, covered all the mirrors, and
kept bundles of sage hanging above every door frame.
It looked less like a house and more like a bunker for someone
who thought the trees were conspiring against him.
When I asked about the blackout curtains, he just said they
don't like to be watched. I laughed.
He didn't. When I stood up to leave,
Everett didn't follow me to the door.
He jumped ahead of me and blocked it, clutching the frame
like he thought it might vanish if he let go.
Just stay the night, he said. I'll drive you back at first
light. It's safer that way.
It's a mile and a half, I said. I know the trail.
I've done it 100 times. I'll be home in less than an
hour. Everett stepped aside, but not
before pulling something from his pocket, a small cloth pouch
tied shut with a knot of red twine.
Take this, he said. Don't open it, don't lose it.
What is it? Salt, bones, a few teeth, stuff
it doesn't like. I shoved it in my jacket just to
make him feel better, and promised to text when I made it
back to the trailhead. He didn't smile, didn't even
wave, just stood there on his porch as I walked off, eyes
locked on the tree line like he expected it to move.
And for a while, everything was fine.
The trail was familiar, narrow, winding, but clearly marked.
Light bled through the trees and thin golden strands, and the air
was crisp, still clinging to that late autumn chill.
I kept a steady pace, earbuds in, just wanting to get home
before my mom started blowing up my phone.
I was about 1/4 mile in when I noticed it, The silence.
Not the peaceful kind, either, the kind that makes your stomach
tighten before your brain even catches up.
No wind, no crunch under foot. Even my own footsteps sounded
muted. I paused, pulled out one earbud,
and realized the forest wasn't just quiet, it was dead.
No birds, no insects, nothing. I don't know how long I stood
there before I realized I was holding my breath.
I took a step forward. Something shifted in the corner
of my vision. Just trees.
Another step. A low, creaking noise echoed
from behind me, like a tree groaning under its own weight.
I kept walking. That's when I smelled it.
Something foul, heavy and sweet, like meat left in a plastic bag
on a hot day. It hit my nose like a slap and
lingered in the back of my throat.
I covered my mouth with my sleeve, eyes watering.
I don't know why I looked left. Maybe instinct, maybe stupidity.
But through the thick brush, just past the slope of the
Ridge, I saw something standing between 2 trees.
At first I thought it was a person, just a man watching me
from a distance. But it didn't move.
It didn't breathe. Its arms were too long, hands
drooping low enough to brush the tops of its knees.
The legs were bent like a deer's, and its skin, what I
could see of it, looked leathery, like it had been
stretched too tight over the bones.
And its face, God, its face. It had a mouth, a human one,
full of teeth, too many teeth, and eyes, like open coals,
glowing just faintly in the dimming light, like they weren't
reflecting light but making it. I blinked.
It was gone. I laughed, mostly out of panic,
and forced myself to keep walking.
I told myself I'd imagined it, some illusion from the shadows,
my brain playing tricks. That's what I told myself.
That's what I needed to believe. Because if I didn't, I'd have to
accept that Everett wasn't crazy, that he was right, that
there's something in those woods that watches you when the air
goes still. My shoe came united about
halfway through. I bent down to fix it, hands
shaking more than I'd like to admit.
As I did, something snapped in the trees ahead.
Not a twig, a crack, like something heavy had stepped on a
branch. Without caring how much noise it
made, I froze. Another snap, this time closer.
I stood up fast, tied or knot, and started walking.
Not running, just walking. That's what Everett said, right?
Don't run, don't talk, don't look back.
I tried to hum, keep myself calm, but even my voice sounded
swallowed up, like the trees were listening.
Then I heard it. Singing.
Low, feminine, no words, just a tune carried by a voice that
sounded human, almost, but there was something off.
Notes held too long, vibrato where there shouldn't be any.
A voice that sounded practiced, like it had learned the song by
watching people sing but never tried it until now.
It came from behind me. I didn't turn around.
The sound moved, circling to my right, then to my left, then
above. I told myself it was an echo,
just sound, bouncing off rocks or cliffs or whatever, but the
air was too flat, too thick. That's when I felt the breath,
hot and rancid, hitting the back of my neck, like someone was
standing an inch behind me. I closed my eyes, took one step
forward, then another. The singing stopped.
Everything stopped. I heard my own heartbeat
pounding in my ears, heard the crunch of gravel beneath me
again. Finally, like the trail had come
back online, I opened my eyes and nearly cried from relief
when I saw the old mile marker nailed to a tree ahead.
I was halfway there. Just keep walking.
There's a weird kind of silence that comes after something
terrifying. Not peaceful, not even still,
just hollow, like the world is holding its breath.
That's what the trail felt like as I passed that old mile marker
and stepped deeper into the trees.
I kept thinking, just a little farther, but my legs were tight
with tension and my back felt like it was being watched,
scanned. I hadn't seen that thing again,
but the memory of it was burned into me.
That mouth, those eyes, the way it just vanished.
I kept my pace steady. No running, no talking.
Just walking, like Everett said. I even kept my eyes down,
watching the dirt, the scattered leaves, the faint depressions in
the path. That's probably why I almost
missed it. The second mile marker.
I blinked at it, confused. It looked exactly the same as
the one I'd already passed. Same angle, same faded white
numbers, same nail poking out just a little too far.
I reached out, hesitating, and ran my fingers along the cracked
wood. It was the same.
Not just a copy, the same one. I hadn't gone in a circle, the
trail didn't loop. There were no offshoots.
I knew this part of the AT like the back of my hand, but somehow
I was back where I started. That was the first time I really
started to panic. I turned slowly, trying not to
make any sudden moves. Nothing but trees, nothing but
mist in the far off Pines. The sun had dipped below the
horizon completely now, and the forest was cast in that final
blue haze just before full dark. And then I heard the laughter.
Children not happy, Laughter not innocent.
This laughter was dry and mean, like kids daring each other to
poke a dead animal with a stick. It echoed weirdly, bouncing
between the trees in short bursts, rising and falling like
waves. I froze.
Then it got louder. One voice, then two, then more.
It sounded like they were running around me, fast.
Their footsteps were impossible, light but quick, circling,
weaving, closing in. I turned in a slow circle, heart
thudding, and still saw nothing. That's when one of them
whispered my name. Not screamed, not called,
whispered right into my ear. I spun, swinging wildly behind
me, but nothing was there. My flashlight nearly slipped
from my hand. Another whisper, this time from
the other side. Then a giggle, and another
voice, my own voice, mimicking the way I'd said I know the
trail back at Everett's house. Word for word, Same tone, but it
was wrong. A fraction too slow, the cadence
just slightly off, like it was trying to understand the way I
spoke but hadn't figured it out completely.
I started moving again, fast, not running, but not calm
either. Every shadow looked like it was
about to reach out and grab me. The trees leaned a little too
far into the trail, like they were listening, watching.
I pulled out my phone. No service, no signal, just a
blinking red battery icon. Figures.
Then, for a split second, I saw myself.
At first I thought it was a reflection, a trick of the
light, but it was me. My clothes, my face, everything.
Standing just off the trail to my right, head tilted, arms
limp. A mirror image.
Except it was smiling. A big, toothy, unblinking smile
that felt like a mask stretched too tight.
I didn't scream. I couldn't.
My throat locked up. I just stared, heart frozen in
my chest as it raised one hand and slowly mimicked a wave.
Then it walked backward into the woods.
Not turned, walked backward. Its knees bent the wrong way.
I couldn't help it. I ran.
I know Everett said not to, but every instinct in my body took
over. I tore down the trail, branches
slicing at my arms, my jacket snagging on thorns.
I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think.
I just ran. And then the trail disappeared.
It didn't end, it didn't split. It just vanished.
One moment it was beneath my feet, the next I was standing in
thick undergrowth, surrounded by trees that didn't look familiar.
My flashlight flickered. I turned in every direction.
No trail markers, no path. Just woods.
Endless swallowing woods. The stench returned, coppery,
rotting, thick in the air. It clung to the inside of my
nostrils. My flashlight flickered again,
then died. And that's when I heard it
again. The song.
Same voice, same lullaby. Only this time it was closer,
directly in front of me. And something moved.
I don't mean a shadow or a blur. I mean the space in front of me
shifted, like the air had folded inward and something stepped
through. A tall, spindly shape emerged
from between the trees, its body so thin it looked like it had
been starved for years. It walked with this slow,
graceful bend, like it was sniffing the air.
I didn't breathe. I didn't move.
Its head snapped toward me. It had no eyes, just sockets
filled with that same burning red glow.
The grin widened. Then it started humming.
I turned and bolted. I didn't care if I was making
noise. I didn't care if it was a
mistake. I needed out.
The thing didn't chase me with footsteps.
It chased me with sound. Every time I thought I'd gotten
some distance, it was there again, closer, louder, humming
in that same terrible tone that somehow knew every nerve to
twist. I stumbled, fell hard, slammed
my shoulder into a rock. My flashlight hit the ground and
cracked open, the batteries popping loose.
My vision swam. And then I felt it.
Of fingers, long, ice cold, wrapping around my ankle.
I kicked, screamed. My boot caught something solid,
and whatever it was let go. I scrambled to my feet and ran.
I don't remember the next part clearly, just flashes, trees
rushing past, blood running down my leg, a noise behind me like
someone breathing through a throat full of water.
Then pavement. Just like that, I was on
asphalt. The trailhead parking lot.
My car was there, empty, waiting.
I collapsed against the hood, crying, shaking.
I don't remember unlocking the door, don't remember driving
home. The next thing I remember
clearly is my bedroom, my bed, my ceiling fan slowly spinning
above me, my clothes still damp with sweat and dirt and
something else, something worse. A strip of dirty fabric in my
jacket pocket, red and frayed, soaked in something dark.
When I touched it, the humming started again, this time from
inside my closet. But that wasn't what woke me.
It was the humming, Low, barely audible, like it was coming
through the walls. I sat there for a full minute,
clutching my sheets, staring at the closet.
The door was cracked open, just an inch, just enough for
darkness to spill out. I got up slowly and crossed the
room. Every step felt like walking
into a minefield. I couldn't shake the feeling
that something was behind the door, crouched, waiting.
When I finally yanked it open, there was nothing.
Just clothes, shoes, the usual clutter.
But that smell, the rot, the wet copper, the scent of it still
hung in the air like fog. I slammed the door shut and
didn't open it again. Later that morning, I noticed
something else. My backpack was still zipped and
untouched from the night before, but when I opened it, there was
something tucked inside the main compartment.
A folded piece of old fabric flannel, torn, faded red Everett
shirt. I didn't pack that, and stitched
crudely into the corner, just barely visible in the light was
my name. Not written, not labeled.
Stitched. The thread was dark and stiff,
like it had been soaked in something thick.
Blood, maybe, or worse. I dropped it immediately and
backed away like it was a live grenade.
That was the moment I realized whatever I saw out there didn't
stay out there. It followed me.
The humming returned that night. Closer now.
Inside the house, I tried everything.
Lights on, windows locked, sage smudging, even salt across the
thresholds. It didn't matter.
The lights would flicker and dim, the salt lines would smear
on their own, and no matter how loud I played music or the tvi
could still hear it right underneath the same lullaby,
looping endlessly. And the laughter.
The children, they giggled from under my bed.
They whispered from inside the walls.
Once I walked into the bathroom and saw handprints on the fogged
up mirror. Child sized smudged moving.
I stopped looking in mirrors after that.
Then Everett showed up unannounced just after sunset.
I don't know how he got there. His truck wasn't outside.
One second I was checking the window and the next he was
knocking at my door. When I opened it I almost
slammed it shut again. He looked off, not just tired,
not just sick. Wrong.
His skin was almost Gray, his eyes sunken deep in their
sockets but somehow glowing faintly beneath the surface.
And he was smiling. Not a normal smile, one that
looked glued in place, like it was stretched too far, too wide.
I forgot to give you the final page, he said, holding up a
crumpled envelope. I didn't take it.
He tilted his head slightly. You saw it, didn't you?
I didn't respond. Couldn't.
My throat felt like it had been stapled shut.
Everett leaned in closer. I told you not to run.
His eyes flashed red. Then he turned, stepped off my
porch, and walked straight into the woods behind my house.
No flashlight, no hesitation, and vanished.
I didn't move for hours. I just sat on the couch with
every light in the house on, clutching a fire poker like it
would do any good. When I finally stood up to check
the yard, there were no footprints, no sign he'd ever
been there. And then I saw it.
In the backyard. Something was standing just
beyond the tree line, Tall, Bony, silhouetted against the
night. It waved slowly, like it was
learning. I shut the blinds that night.
I dreamed of it, of me. But it wasn't me.
It was my body. Yes, my face, my voice.
But inside it was something hollow, smiling, hungry.
It walked through my house, opened my drawers, touched my
things, practiced my laugh, and when it looked in the mirror it
seemed to shudder with joy. Then I woke up to find my closet
open again. The next few days were a blur.
Time stopped making sense. I'd lose hours at a time, black
out while brushing my teeth, only to come to with the water
running and the room dark. I'd hear myself talking in the
other room, but I'd be alone. Once I woke up outside, just
lying on the grass in my backyard, barefoot, my door
still locked. And always, always that feeling
of being watched. Like I wasn't just being
followed, like I was being replaced.
The final straw came three nights ago.
I caught it. Not clearly, not in full, but in
the hallway mirror. I turned the corner and for a
split second it didn't move the way I did.
It was just slightly off, the head tilted too late, the smile
too quick. Its eyes glowed faintly before
vanishing. I smashed the mirror with a
chair. I've smashed every mirror in the
house since, covered the TV with a blanket.
I don't take photos. I don't go near reflective
glass. I don't even look in puddles.
When it rains, it's still here somewhere.
Sometimes I hear it pacing upstairs.
Sometimes I hear me humming in the next room when I know I'm
alone. Once I swear I saw my own face
staring back at me through the window from the outside.
I don't sleep much anymore. I don't leave either.
Something tells me if I try, it'll take that as an
invitation. Everett warned me not just about
the rules, but what happens if you break them, if you speak, if
you run, if you bring it back. Tonight I found something in my
drawer, a piece of old flannel stitched into the edge.
Everett's name. I think it's learning to switch
hosts. So if you're reading this and
you're thinking about hiking the Appalachian Trail, do yourself a
favor. If the woods go quiet, stop.
If you hear singing, don't answer.
And whatever you do, don't look into the trees.
Because if it sees you, it won't forget your face and it always
finds its way home. I moved into the cabin on a
cloudy Thursday, the kind of overcast that turns everything
dull and flat, like someone drained the color out of the
sky. No fanfare, no welcome basket
from the town. Just me, two duffel bags and a
rusted U-Haul trailer that barely made it through the
switchbacks. The real estate agent ghosted
after the final payment cleared and the previous owner hadn't
left so much as a note. Just dust, mold, and the
weirdest goddamn feeling every time I looked out the back
windows into the trees. But still, I liked it.
It was quiet. The property backed right up
against an old section of the Appalachian Trail.
Not an official part anymore, from what I gathered, but the
ridgeline snaked through dense old forest just past the fence.
No neighbors, no noise, no cops. I figured it was perfect.
A place to disconnect, reset. Turns out there was a reason it
was so cheap. I didn't meet anyone in town
until the weekend. Place was called Stag Hollow.
Population maybe 200. Mostly older folks, a handful of
younger ones who look like they've been trying to leave
since high school. It was one of those towns that
had a single Rd. a gas station with a beer cooler, and a cafe
that doubled as a post office. Most people didn't say much to
me, they just stared. Except for Nolan.
He ran the bait shop that also passed for a general store.
I was grabbing a few basics, eggs, ramen, batteries when he
finally spoke up from behind the counter.
You the one bought that cabin up by mile seven.
I nodded. Yeah, moved in a few days ago,
you know it. He grunted.
Everyone knows it. Something about the way he said
it made my skin itch. You planning on hiking that
trail behind it? He asked, voice low and even.
Yeah, I said that's kind of why I picked the place.
Figured it'd be nice to have it right in my backyard.
Nolan stopped bagging my groceries and met my eyes.
If you go past mile marker 7, don't stop.
And if you see bones, skulls especially, you go around them,
don't touch them. Don't even look too long.
I laughed, just a little. He didn't.
The hell does that mean? I asked, trying to keep it
light. He didn't answer, just handed me
the bag and said good luck out there.
The first week was uneventful. The house creaked like it was
alive, Pipes groaned when I ran the water, and there was a spot
near the fridge where the floor dipped just enough to trip me
every time. But the forest.
The forest was beautiful. Thick trees, big mossy stones,
and the kind of quiet that settles in your chest like a
long exhale. I started hiking every morning,
just an hour or two, following the trail behind the property,
deeper into the woods. The blazes were faded and half
the trees were overgrown, but the path was still there,
pressed into the earth like a vein.
I passed mile marker 5 on the second day, a slab of old wood
nailed into a tree, barely legible.
By the end of the week, I reached marker 7.
That's when things started to feel different.
There was nothing obvious at first, no jump scares, no sudden
storm clouds. Just stillness, the kind that
feels heavy, like the whole forest is waiting for something.
That's also when I saw the first bones.
It was a squirrel, I think. Hard to tell.
The skull was small, teeth still intact.
The body was gone, but the bones had been arranged into a little
circle. Skull right in the center,
deliberate, precise. I stopped, bent over, stared at
it for a moment. Then I remembered what Nolan
said. I stood, walked around it.
It rattled in my head for the rest of the day.
Who the hell stacks animal bones in the middle of the trail like
that? Kids.
Hunters. Something about it felt wrong,
like it was meant to be there. I didn't sleep great that night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I'd see that little skull staring
back at me. By the following week, they were
everywhere. Bird bones strung up in little
stick cradle nests hanging from tree branches, a row of raccoon
skulls lined up along a log like they were on display, and always
at or just beyond mile 7. The deeper I went, the more
intricate the displays became. Bones stacked like Cairns,
arranged in spirals. Sometimes there were symbols
carved into the dirt, circular, jagged, impossible to make out
unless you were looking right at them.
I told myself it was some weird forest art thing, that I was
being paranoid, but I kept walking around them.
Then came the deer skull. Big, clean, no blood.
It was resting in the exact center of the path, perfectly
positioned, antlers intact, both eye sockets pointed directly up
the trail toward me. I stopped cold.
Something about it chilled me. My gut screamed.
Don't touch it. I thought about Nolan's voice,
the way it dropped an octave when he warned me, but I was
tired, sweaty, annoyed. I grabbed a long stick, hooked
it through one of the antler holes, and shoved it off the
trail into the brush. Not today, I muttered, like I
was doing a chore. And that's when the forest got
quiet. I didn't notice it right away.
I was already walking again, maybe 20 or 30 yards down the
trail, when I realized there were no birds, no crickets, no
breeze. The only sound was my boots
crunching dead leaves. Everything else had vanished.
I turned around and stared back at the path.
I couldn't see the skull anymore, but I felt it, like
something was still looking at me.
That night the house groaned louder than usual, the kind of
creaks that sound like footsteps, floorboards flexing,
underweight. At first I chalked it up to
wind. Then I heard it, breathing slow,
wet, coming from directly beneath my bed.
I froze, didn't even breathe, just laid there in the dark,
muscles locked, ears straining. The breathing stopped, then the
laughter started, high, raspy, like a man pretending to laugh.
3 short bursts, then silence. I didn't move until morning.
I tried to pretend it was a dream, tried to shake it off,
told myself I'd imagined it. Stress, isolation.
Maybe the house had mice or raccoons or something.
Happens in old cabins all the time.
But when I opened the front door the next morning, there were
muddy footprints on the porch. Bare, human shaped, each toe too
long and curved. They led straight up to the door
and stopped. The porch light burned out two
nights after the deer skull. I hadn't even touched it, just
opened the door after sunset to check on a noise and pop gone.
The bulb was brand new. That wasn't what got to me,
though. It was what I found underneath
it. A handprint.
It wasn't mine. Too big, too long, smudged into
the dust on the door like it had pressed hard, slow.
The fingers dragged downward before pulling away.
That night I locked every window and slept with the kitchen knife
under my pillow. At 312, AMI woke up, choking on
the smell of wet dog and copper. Something was breathing at the
bedroom window. Slow animal breaths with the
occasional hitch, like it was trying to remember how I didn't
dare look. My curtain was thin enough to
see movement through, and I could already make out the
silhouette. Too tall, hunched shoulders like
Spears. It stayed there for 20 minutes,
just breathing. Then it tapped the glass once
and laughed. I was already losing it, and I
knew it. I didn't go back into the woods
for days. I stayed inside, paced circles
around the house, and kept a hammer next to me.
When I showered on the 4th day, I convinced myself it was over,
that maybe it had just been some, I don't know, wild dog
drifter messing with me. Rationalizing was easier than
thinking about the alternative. So I went back on the trail.
Mid afternoon, sunny, birds chirping.
Normal enough. I even remember feeling silly,
like maybe I'd overreacted. The woods look just like they
always did, Still quiet, peaceful.
But then I got to the spot the deer skull was back, exactly
where it had been the first time.
Clean, dry, antlers perfectly intact, like I'd never moved it,
like it never left. I stared at it for a long time.
I didn't touch it this time, just stood there, heart thudding
that pressure again, like the trees were leaning in, holding
their breath, watching to see what I'd do.
I walked around it, didn't say a word, didn't even curse under my
breath, just got off the trail and stepped wide into the
undergrowth, ignoring the briars, and got back home fast.
That night, it followed me. It started with the scratching.
Not at the windows, not under the bed, inside the walls.
Soft at first, like a mouse, then deeper, wet like something
was digging with claws. By midnight, the scratching
turned into thuds, something slamming itself against the
drywall. I called the sheriff.
They sent Deputy Roach. Guy couldn't have been older
than 25. Showed up with a flashlight and
an empty notepad, Asked if I'd been drinking.
I showed him the muddy handprint still smudged on the front door.
He squinted at it, said it looked like just some smudge.
I asked if it looked like a raccoon.
He said I should get a dog. He left.
After that, I didn't sleep. I stayed on the couch with a
flashlight and my hammer twitching at every groan and
creak of the house. Sometime around 3:00 AM, the
power flickered and my flashlight dimmed.
Not died, just dimmed, like the batteries were being slowly
drained. Then I saw it through the back
window. It was standing at the edge of
the woods in full moonlight, arms dangling.
Its shoulders reached higher than its head.
The face was long, too long, a stretched mask of skin pulled
taut over something that wasn't a skull, not anymore.
Its mouth hung open like it had never learned how to close it.
It lifted a finger, 1 long black claw, and pointed at me.
I didn't move. I couldn't.
Then it smiled. Not like a human, not even like
a dog. Just something that had seen a
smile once and tried to mimic it.
That's when the howling started again.
High, twisting. A chorus.
Not just one. A dozen voices layered over each
other, echoing through the forest like a siren made of
teeth. I dropped the hammer.
I ran to the bathroom, locked the door, crawled into the tub
and cried. When morning came, I walked
outside. The porch was covered in skulls,
not just animal ones. A mix.
Squirrels, foxes, a fawn. Some of them were still wet. 1
was charred, another still had a chunk of fur clinging to it.
They'd been arranged in a spiral leading to the front step, like
a message, a countdown. I called.
Nolan didn't even wait to say hello, just it came back.
I think I made it mad. There was a pause on the other
end, then he sighed. You move the bones.
I nodded, like he could see me. Once with a stick.
The second time, I Yeah, I tossed it.
Another pause. You need to feed it.
I didn't know what that meant, not at first.
You owe it something now. He said you disturbed the path,
broke the order. That means it sees you.
And when they see you, they want you.
What is it? He didn't answer, just said come
to the shop, I'll tell you what to do.
The drive to town felt like years.
Trees blurred by and I kept catching movement in the
rearview mirror. Not cars, not animals.
Something running alongside me, just out of frame.
When I pulled into the gravel lot behind Nolan's store, he was
already outside, smoking, pacing.
He handed me a grocery bag, slick and wet.
Inside were raw steaks, bloody, reeking.
You're going to walk 10 minutes up the trail at sunset.
Lay these down on the dirt. Don't say a word.
Don't look back. No matter what you hear, feel or
think you see, you walk home. You lock your doors and you
wait. That's it?
I asked, clutching the bag like it might bite me.
That's your apology, he said. Won't fix what you did, but it
might buy you a little time. I waited until sundown.
The woods were colder than usual, dead quiet, no insects,
no birds. Even the wind felt muffled.
I walked past Marker 7 and kept going. 10 minutes in, I stopped
at a clearing just off the trail, laid the stakes on the
ground, backed up slowly. Then I heard it.
Breathing fast, hungry, wet, followed by something heavy
crashing through the undergrowth.
Then a laugh. It started right behind me, then
it multiplied. Laughter from every direction,
high pitched croaking, giggles and gurgling chuckles that made
my teeth ache. I walked faster, then ran.
The sounds followed. Something thumped through the
brush beside me, matching pace. I could feel it.
Hot breath on the back of my neck, twigs snapping inches from
my heels. But I didn't look, not once.
When I burst through the tree line and reached the porch, I
turned the handle, slammed the door, and locked it.
Something slammed into the wood hard enough to knock the
pictures off my walls. It didn't stop for hours.
I didn't sleep that night. I sat by the front window with
my hammer again, watching, waiting.
Sometime near dawn, the forest quieted, and then it stepped
onto the porch. Not the creature, a skull, just
one placed neatly at the center of the welcome mat.
But this one. This one had a name carved into
it. Mine.
The skull with my name carved into it didn't bleed, but I
swear I could still smell the iron.
It was fresh, not boneyard dry like the others.
The letters were carved deep, John rough and jagged, like
whatever did it had claws instead of fingers.
I left it on the porch and drove straight to town, running 2 red
lights and nearly skidding out on the gravel at the bottom of
the hill. I didn't stop at my usual spots.
I didn't even glance at the gas station.
I went straight to Nolan. When he opened the door and saw
me, he didn't look surprised. He didn't even ask.
They gave you a name, Skull, didn't they?
I nodded, jaw locked, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
That means they're keeping track.
You're marked now. That's not a warning anymore,
that's a countdown. There's a term the locals use.
Hollow ones. They don't call them skinwalkers
or wendigos or demons. Just hollow ones.
Because that's what they are. Empty vessels for something that
doesn't belong in this world. Things that slip through when
the Veil thins, old forest spirits turned feral, or maybe
something older than spirits. Whatever they are, they collect.
Not for food, not for trophies, just to collect skulls, bones,
names, souls maybe. Nolan told me they've been
showing up for centuries. Usually when someone breaks the
rule. Sometimes it's a hiker,
sometimes it's a hunter. Sometimes, like this time, it's
a dumb city transplant who thinks he's found peace in a
place that doesn't want him. The Hollow Ones don't always
come in numbers, but when they do, it means they're preparing
for a harvest. And I kicked the damn door open
for them. The town held a meeting that
night at the diner. It wasn't advertised.
No one posted Flyers. People just knew to come.
There were maybe two dozen of us in total, men with rifles, women
with revolvers tucked into their coats.
Even the priest was there, holding a box of shotgun shells
and a bottle of holy water, like they were equally sacred.
Nolan stood at the head of the room.
Last time this happened, he said, we lost four people.
Three never came back. One did, but not all of him.
No one laughed. No one asked for details.
He pointed at me. He opened the door.
But we're all going to pay for it.
The room didn't argue. They started handing out
weapons. I got a sawed off 12 gauge and a
bandolier of shells with carvings on each slug.
Crosses, runes, symbols I didn't recognize.
One woman, Ruth, handed me a flask and told me to drink.
It tasted like ash and burned all the way down.
For protection, she said, and to make you smell wrong to them.
What happens if it doesn't work? I asked.
Then you'll scream less when they drag you.
We headed out before sunset. The forest didn't wait.
Halfway up the trail, the birds stopped.
Then the wind died, and then the trees began to groan.
Not from wind, but from pressure.
Like something massive was pressing down on the whole
mountain. We set up a perimeter near the
clearing, past mile marker 7. Six men and women to a ring, the
priest in the center murmuring over a makeshift altar made of
stone and bone. And then we heard it.
Laughter. Not from One Direction, from all
of them. High pitched.
Too human to be animal, too wrong to be human.
Some laughed in gasps. Others mimicked cries for help.
Then the lights died. Flashlights blinked out,
lanterns guttered, the fire pit blew cold.
In a split second, they were here.
The first one we saw was tall, 8 feet, easy, thin as a scarecrow,
arms dangling to the knees, skin like ash bark.
A skull for a face, but not worn like a mask fused to it.
Bone where cheeks should be empty, sockets leaking black.
Ruth shot first. The blast shredded the thing's
chest, but it didn't fall, just screamed, the sound like a train
screeching against metal, and charged.
It took four people to bring it down to shotgun blasts, A
hatchet to the neck and Nolan emptying A revolver into its
back. It melted.
Not like flesh, like candle wax dripping into the dirt and
hissing as it vanished. The others came after that,
fast, loud hundreds of footsteps pounding through the underbrush,
shapes flashing between trees, crawling, leaping, dragging
twisted limbs behind them. Some ran on all fours, some
walked like humans. One slithered.
All of them had faces like cracked porcelain and jaws too
wide. We fought.
It wasn't war, it was survival. Bullets tore through the trees.
The priest screamed until something dragged him away.
Mid prayer. Someone else got taken up into
the trees so fast they didn't even get to fire a shot.
I saw Nolan go down. One of the creatures leapt onto
him, tore into his shoulder with a mouthful of glass like teeth.
I got there just in time to shoot it off him.
He was bleeding bad. Don't stop, he said.
Don't let them get behind you. I dragged him toward the center
of the clearing where the altar had been, but it was gone now,
just shattered stone and blood all around us.
The hollow ones laughed. It wasn't just a hunt.
It was a game to them. They pushed us back, herded us,
cornered us like cattle, 1 by 1. The others fell.
Some vanished in a blink. Some didn't even scream.
I fired until I ran out of shells.
Nolan handed me his last one. This won't kill them, he
whispered, but it'll make them think twice.
Then he shoved me into the trees, down the slope.
I tumbled through brush and blood and mud until I hit a
ditch. When I looked back, Nolan was
standing alone, hands raised, staring down three of them as
they circled. He never cried out, just stood
there, silent, until they swallowed him whole.
I ran through the forest, past the skulls, past mile marker 7,
past my own porch. I didn't stop until I hit the
road, until I reached my car. I didn't drive home.
I went back to town, back to the diner.
There were five of us left, Just five.
All of us silent, bleeding, staring at our hands like they
belong to someone else. Someone laid out a map.
Another grabbed salt. Someone else began carving fresh
rounds. We're going back out tonight.
We have to, because the forest didn't just whisper this time.
It screamed. I haven't seen Nolan since that
night, but sometimes when I wake up with the taste of ash in my
mouth and blood on the soles of my feet, I wonder if he made it,
if maybe somehow he struck a deal or became something worse.
The town is quieter now. Fewer people walk the trail, and
those who do they know the rule, don't touch the skulls because
the hollow ones are still out there and they're still
collecting. It had been a long weekend at my
sister's place, and though I'd cherished every moment,
exhaustion had finally settled into my bones.
Emma and Mason, my 2 little bundles of restless energy, had
been bouncing off the walls all day.
Now trapped in our cramped sedan, their bickering had
reached a boiling point. Emma, stop touching me.
Mason shrieked, his voice shrill enough to make my temples throb.
I'm not even touching you. Emma shot back, her tone equally
indignant. Guys, enough.
My voice cracked slightly, betraying my frayed nerves.
Taking a deep breath, I reluctantly signaled and pulled
off to the gravel shoulder of the isolated Hwy. nestled deep
within the Appalachian countryside.
The fading daylight cast a murky glow over the dense forests that
line the road, trees standing like dark Sentinels guarding
ancient secrets. Twisting around, I fixed them
with my sternest mom stare. If you 2 don't settle down right
now, there won't be any screens for a week, do you understand
me? They fell into sullen silence
and I closed my eyes, briefly pinching the bridge of my nose
to ease the building headache. That was when I noticed it.
A soft, distant hum of an approaching engine.
My eyes flickered to the rear view mirror, catching
headlights, weaving slowly through the dusk, drawing nearer
at an oddly cautious pace. Instinctively, I straightened
up, alertness prickling down my spine.
The car, an old sedan with a faded blue paint job, slowed to
a stop alongside ours, passenger window lowering with a tired
mechanical whine. Inside sat a middle-aged couple,
their faces illuminated by the dim glow from the dash.
The woman leaned slightly toward the open window, her pale face
bearing an amiable smile beneath eyes that were oddly vacant,
distant even. Evening.
She called out, her voice cheerful but hollow, like
rehearsed friendliness. Thought we should warn you
there's a nasty accident just ahead over the hill.
Traffic's completely backed up beside her.
The man stared forward silently, barely blinking, his thin lips
slightly parted. He hadn't moved or glanced in my
direction since they stopped, and his unnatural stillness sent
goosebumps skittering across my arms.
Oh. I managed, trying not to reveal
my unease. Thank you.
The woman's smile widened slightly, becoming almost
forced. There's a little road right up
here. She continued, pointing vaguely
toward the shadowy woods behind her.
It'll take you right around the wreck.
You'll get home faster that way. Something about her overly
helpful tone twisted my gut. That's very kind.
I said, masking hesitation. I appreciate the warning.
For the briefest moment, her eyes hardened, an icy glint
replacing the forced warmth. Then, almost immediately, she
returned to her two friendly demeanor.
Just trying to help drive safely.
They pulled away slowly, gravel crunching softly beneath their
tires. My breath came shakily as their
tail lights vanished down the road, leaving me sitting in
unnerving silence. Emma and Mason had fallen
unusually quiet, their small faces pale in the dim interior.
Mommy. Emma whispered uncertainly.
Those people were weird. I forced a reassuring smile.
Just trying to be helpful, sweetie.
But as I pulled back onto the main road, doubt gnawed at my
mind. The suggested detour appeared
just up ahead, a narrow, unpaved Rd. diving sharply into the
dense forest, its entrance swallowed by thickening shadows.
My pulse quickened as I neared it, eyes involuntarily drawn to
the looming, darkened woods. Then I saw them again.
Their car sat idly by the roadside, awkwardly parked, half
hidden among tall, blackened trees.
Both occupants stood silently beside the vehicle, shoulders
rigid, eyes locked unblinkingly onto something unseen deep
within the tangled forest. Their postures were unsettlingly
stiff, almost unnatural. Neither acknowledged my slow
passage. It was as if I didn't exist.
My stomach twisted sharply, panic fluttering up my throat as
I quickly pressed harder on the gas pedal.
The road unfolded silently beneath me, trees blurring past.
Only when miles stretched between us did I release my
breath, realizing I'd been holding it all this time.
That night, safe at home, sleep eluded me.
Every shadow reminded me of those strange, lifeless stairs,
the unnatural stillness and the way they'd waited silently,
expectantly, at the mouth of that forgotten Rd. a road that
seemed to lead nowhere but darkness.
Morning sunlight painted a deceptive warmth over the
countryside, pushing back the terrors of the night before.
Yet a lingering unease refused to fade.
After dropping Emma and Mason at school, kissing them a bit too
long, holding them a bit too tightly, I found myself drawn
inexplicably back toward that isolated stretch of Rd. my
heartbeat faster as familiar landmarks blurred past, anxiety
simmering beneath my skin. I tried to convince myself I was
overreacting, that daylight would make my fears vanish.
But as the narrow Rd. came into view, dread returned with
suffocating strength. Slowing down, I peered carefully
toward the roadside, my pulse hammering like a trapped bird
against my rib cage. A rusted metal sign emerged from
behind thick brush, partially concealed and leaning
precariously. My breath caught sharply.
Dead end. I swallowed hard, guiding my car
carefully onto the shoulder, gravel crunching softly beneath
my tires. For a long moment, I just sat
there, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly my
knuckles whitened. The memory of the couple's
vacant stairs and rigid postures was vivid, haunting.
The compulsion to understand, to unravel this unsettling mystery,
proved stronger than my fear. Reluctantly, I stepped out, my
shoes sinking slightly into the soft earth, damp from the
morning dew. The woods surrounding me felt
oppressive, their thick branches forming a natural tunnel that
seemed to suck the sunlight away.
An unnatural silence enveloped everything.
Not a bird chirped, nor leaves rustled.
It was as if the forest itself was holding its breath, waiting,
taking cautious steps toward the dead end sign, I noticed faint
tire marks in the gravel. Beside them were clearer
footprints, fresh imprints leading from where the car had
parked toward the impenetrable darkness of the woods.
The couple had walked straight into the trees, leaving no trail
beyond the initial line of trees, as if they'd simply
dissolved into the shadow depths.
My pulse quickened as I followed the footprints to the tree line,
peering into the tangled, shadow filled thicket.
Something unsettlingly large had recently passed through here.
Branches were snapped at unnatural angles, bark freshly
torn. A chill prickled along my spine
as my eyes caught sight of something on the forest floor,
shattered glass and rusty, twisted metal half buried in
fallen leaves, hinting ominously at long forgotten violence.
Suddenly, a faint, nauseating odor curled through the air, A
smell of rot, damp earth, and something darker, coppery,
unmistakably familiar blood. I stumbled backward, nearly
tripping over roots hidden beneath the grass.
My heart raced, adrenaline flooding my veins as panic
threatened to overtake me. Whirling around, desperate to
return to my car, I froze. From deep within the shadowy
woods, barely visible but unmistakable, stood 2 figures.
My throat tightened painfully, heart pounding as if ready to
burst from my chest. The couple stood motionless,
staring directly at me through gaps between twisted trunks,
their pale, expressionless faces half hidden in the shadows.
It was impossible. They couldn't have been standing
there unnoticed all this time. Yet there they were, unblinking,
statuesque, their eyes gleaming dully like marbles in the gloom.
A sudden whisper drifted from the darkness, a low rasping
sound that crawled over my skin like spider legs.
My blood ran cold. It was not a language I
recognized, just unintelligible murmurs that filled the silence
with malicious intent. Terrified, I forced myself to
turn away, stumbling back to my car on numb legs, certain that
any moment I'd feel a cold hand grip my shoulder or hear
footsteps chasing me. The door slammed shut behind me
and I quickly twisted the key, the engine roaring to life, a
lifeline anchoring me back to reality.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, my blood froze one final time.
The figures had moved forward, closer to the road's edge, still
unmoving, still staring. I peeled away, tires scattering
gravel, heart hammering and chaotic rhythm, I vowed silently
never to return to this cursed road again.
Yet even now, 15 years later, their lifeless faces still haunt
me in nightmares, whispering from the darkened woods, waiting
patiently, endlessly waiting for another unfortunate soul to
follow them into the shadows.