PARANORMAL EXPERIENCE FORCES WOMAN OFF 400-FOOT CLIFF: Rescuers Make Shocking Discovery

A routine father-daughter camping trip in Arizona’s wilderness became a terrifying ordeal that left one woman fighting for survival and raised disturbing questions about what really stalks the remote canyons near Sedona.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
I'm Darren Marler, and this is a weird darkness bonus bite.
The rugged terrain around Sedona, Arizona has earned its ominous
nickname the Edge of the World, though steep cliffs and
dense forests hide secrets that most hikers never discover. In
June twenty twenty five, one woman discovered them the hard way,

(00:27):
and what happened during her rescue effort would challenge everything
the witnesses thought they knew about the Arizona wilderness. Janelle
Banda had hiked through Arizona her entire life. The thirty
two year old Phoenix resident knew Camelback Mountain like the
back of her hand, and had explored Sedona's tourist friendly
trails dozens of times. She was experienced, cautious, and never

(00:49):
took unnecessary risks. None of that mattered on the evening
of June thirteenth. She'd been camping with her father since
June eleventh in the Edge of the World area, about
twenty miles down a dirt road from civilization. The location
sits roughly eight and a half miles north of Sedona,
where Woody Mountain Road terminates in a landscape of jagged drops,

(01:10):
and impenetrable forest. Cell Phone service doesn't exist out there.
Help when needed takes hours to arrive. That evening, Janelle
stepped away from their campsite for what should have been
a brief walk. The sun was setting, casting long shadows
through the pines. Something in their shadows changed everything. According

(01:30):
to her sister, Sarah, who spoke with Janelle after the rescue,
the experienced hiker became spooked by something in the darkening woods,
not just startled, genuinely terrified. Whatever Jane encountered sent her
running blindly through unfamiliar terrain as darkness fell. The Edge
of the World doesn't forgive mistakes. One wrong step, one

(01:52):
moment of panic, and the ground simply disappears. Edge of
the World is a good name for it. Janelle's foot
found empty air where solid earth should have been. She
plummeted four hundred feet into a narrow canyon, tumbling down
rocky walls that tore at her skin and twisted her ankles.
The fall should have killed her. Instead, Janelle found herself

(02:13):
trapped at the bottom of a canyon so narrow and
remote that searchers would struggle to find her, even with
helicopters and spotlights. She'd survived the plunge with two sprained ankles,
severe cuts and abrasions covering her body like road rash,
and no way to climb out. Night in the Arizona
wilderness brings a special kind of darkness. Without city lights,

(02:36):
for hundreds of miles, the blackness becomes absolute. Janelle couldn't
see her own hands. She could only feel the sharp
rocks beneath her, the throb of her injuries, and the
growing realization that no one knew where she was. The
temperature plummeted from the day's scorching heat to near freezing.

(02:57):
The hydration sat in quickly. She had no water, no supplies,
nothing but the clothes on her back. Every sound in
that pitch black canyon could have been a rattlesnake, a
mountain lion, or something worse. Her father, in a nearby camper,
began searching immediately. When she didn't return. By morning, they'd
called for help. The Cuconino County Sheriff's Office arrived first,

(03:21):
followed by search teams from Maricopa and Yavapai Counties. The
Arizona Department of Public Safety brought helicopters. Volunteers poured in
from surrounding communities. For two and a half days, Janelle
endured conditions that break most people in hours. The daytime
heat in the canyon reached dangerous levels, baking her already

(03:42):
dehydrated body. At night, the cold threatened hypothermia. She couldn't
move far on her damaged ankles, couldn't call for help
over the canyon walls, couldn't do anything but wait and hope.
Word of the missing hiker spread through the local communities.
Among those who responded were three residents from the nearby

(04:03):
Rimrock area, Amber Webster, her husband, and his cousin. They
knew the wilderness, understood its dangers, and wanted to help.
On the evening of June fifteenth, the trio drove deep
into the search area, navigating rough dirt roads by spotlight.
They'd been calling Janelle's name for hours, sweeping their powerful
beam through the trees and undergrowth. Around nine p m,

(04:26):
approximately seventy five yards from their position, the light caught
something that shouldn't have been there. The figure stood at
least seven feet tall, its massive frame easily four hundred
pounds of solid bulk. White and brown hair covered its
body in matted patches. But the face remained disturbingly bare.
Flat leathery skin stretched over features that looked almost human

(04:50):
but fundamentally wrong. When the spotlight hid its eyes, they
reflected back a golden color, like a predator's shine, but
somehow more intelligent. For one to two minutes that felt
like hours, the three volunteers stood frozen, their light fixed
on the creature. It didn't move, didn't blink, just stared

(05:11):
back at them with those glowing eyes. Amber's husband had
haunted Arizona's wildlife his entire life. He knew every animal
that called these forests home, black bears, mountain lions, elk,
even the occasional wolf. This wasn't any of them. The
creature's proportions defied explanation. Its shoulders spread impossibly wide, its

(05:33):
arms hung too low, Its whole body seemed built for
power rather than speed. The matted fir looked like it
had never been groomed, clumped with dirt and debris from
the forest floor. But that face, that hairless, leathery face,
with its two intelligent eyes, that's what finally broke their courage.

(05:54):
They fled, driving faster than safe on those treacherous roads,
not stopping until they reached pavement and civilization. Amber's husband,
a skeptic who had laughed at bigfoot stories his whole life,
sat silent during the drive home. He'd later tell investigators
he knew exactly what he had seen and it had
shaken him more than any conventional predator ever could. Hours

(06:16):
before their encounter, while calling Janelle's name through the forest,
Amber had heard something odd. Two distinct knocks echoed through
the trees, not random branch falls, but deliberate strikes against wood.
She had joked at the time about it being bigfoot,
not realizing how close to the truth she might have
actually been. Tree knocks represent one of the most commonly

(06:40):
reported bigfoot behaviors across North America. Researchers believe the creatures
used these sounds to communicate across distances, marking territory or
warning others of human presence. The knox Amber heard came
from the same area where they had later spot the
creature with their spotlight. Matthew Moneymaker, the investigator who followed

(07:00):
up on the report, found the timing suspicious. The witnesses
encountered their creature on June fifteenth, while actively searching for Janelle.
She disappeared on June thirteenth after being frightened by something
in the woods. The location data placed both incidents within
the same remote area north of Sedona. The rescue came

(07:21):
at noon on June sixteenth. A Pima County Sheriff's helicopter
finally spotted Janelle deep in the canyon and managed to
extract her despite the narrow walls and dangerous conditions. Dehydrated, injured,
and traumatized, she was rushed to the hospital for treatment.
Her physical injuries would heal. The sprained ankles, the cuts

(07:41):
and bruises, even the severe dehydration responded to medical care.
The psychological trauma ran deeper. When the volunteers who had
seen the creature managed to speak with Janell briefly after
her rescue, her story took an even more disturbing turn.
She confirmed that something had frightened her the night, something
that caused her to panic and run blindly into the darkness.

(08:05):
She described seeing glowing things moving toward her through the trees,
not eyes exactly, but luminous shapes that seemed to approach
with purpose. The terror of that moment sent her sprinting
through unfamiliar terrain until the ground vanished beneath her feet.
Janelle's mother later told the volunteers that her daughter remained

(08:25):
too traumatized to discuss the details. Whatever she had seen
in those woods, whatever had pursued her to the canyon's edge,
she wasn't ready to relive it. The family declined further interviews,
leaving only fragments of her terrifying encounter. The Edge of
the World incident raises questions that challenge our understanding of
the American wilderness. Three experienced outdoors people, including a lifelong hunter,

(08:51):
observed a massive bipedal creature that matched no known animal.
They watched it for over a minute in good lighting conditions,
all three seeing the same impossible figure. Their sighting occurred
while searching for a woman who had fled from glowing
entities in the same area two nights earlier. The tree knox,
the golden eyeshine, the massive proportions. Every detail aligns with

(09:15):
thousands of similar reports from across North America dating back generations.
Janew Banda survived her ordeal through extraordinary luck and resilience.
The four hundred foot fall could easily have been fatal.
The two and a half days exposed to the elements
should have killed her through dehydration or hypothermia. Instead, she

(09:37):
lived to tell a story she can barely bring herself
to share. The Arizona Wilderness holds more mysteries than most
people realize. The remote areas north of Sedona remain largely unexplored,
accessible only by rough, dirt roads that few travelers brave.
In those deep canyons and dense forests far from human settlement,

(09:57):
something walks on two legs and watches with golden eyes.
Local search and rescue teams don't talk about it publicly,
but incidents like Janelle's aren't unique. Bikers go missing in
those areas regularly. Some like Janelle survive to tell fragmented
stories of terror in the darkness. Others simply vanish, leaving

(10:18):
behind only questions and the occasional footprint too large to explain.
The volunteers returned to their homes and Rimrock, forever changed
by what they'd witnessed. Amber's husband no longer dismisses bigfoot
stories with a laugh. He knows what he saw that night,
knows it wasn't any recognized animal, knows it was watching

(10:38):
them with an intelligence that made his hunter's instincts scream warnings.
For Janelle Banda, the Edge of the World lives up
to its name in ways she never imagined. She went
for a simple walk from her campsite and ended up
fighting for survival in a nightmare that began with glowing
shapes in the darkness. Her family reports she's still processing

(10:59):
the trauma, still trying to make sense of what happened
in those woods. The search for answers continues, but perhaps
some mysteries are better left unexplored. In the deep wilderness
of Arizona, where the land drops away into hidden canyons
and the forests grow too thick for sunlight, something walks
upright and watches, something that can send an experienced hiker

(11:24):
running in blind panic. Something that glows in the darkness
and stands seven feet tall with golden eyes. The Edge
of the World keeps its secrets, and those who venture
too far into its domain sometimes a terrible price for
their curiosity. Janelle Banda learned that lesson in the hardest
way possible, spending two and a half days at the

(11:46):
bottom of a canyon, because something in the woods brightened
her more than the risk of running blind through dangerous terrain.
At night. If you like to read this story for yourself,
I've placed a link to the article in the episod description.
And find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange,
and more in my blog at Weird darkness dot com.