Whispers in the Wilderness Idaho's Untold Secrets

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/nighttime-scary-tales--6704938/support.

Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
By twenty fourteen, my friend Lewis and I had been
hiking buddies for years, and we went through the forest
of Washington and Oregon together, baked ourselves to a crisp
in the deserts of the southwest, and scaled the peaks
of the Sierra Nevada side by side. But next on
our list was the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness,

(00:33):
or the Frank as everyone calls it. We planned to
hike in, camp out, and see what the place had
to throw at us. We loaded up the car, drove
north from California to Idaho, and set out for what
was supposed to be a straightforward, long haul trip. The
drive took two days of heading up the I five,
then east into Idaho's interior, and then before long we

(00:55):
saw the Franks two million acres sprawled out ahead of us,
a chunk of land so big that it dwarfed anything
we tackled before. We parked a trailhead near the middle
fork of the Salmon River in a gravel lot with
a faded sign warning about bears and fire bands, and
then pulled our packs out from the trunk. They were

(01:15):
really heavy, but seeing as they contained our food, our tent,
our sleeping bags, our water filters, and much much more,
and they were our entire lives at that moment. The
first day we stuck to the trail, moving steadily through
the pine and trees, and the forest was very quiet,
but it was kind of a gentle quiet, and we
managed to make it around the eight miles before we

(01:37):
ended up camping near a creek at dusk, and Day
two was pretty much more of the same. We pushed
deeper into the woods. The trail was winding through the
valleys and up ridges as the underbrush started to get
thicker and it was swallowing up the path entirely in
certain spots. We didn't talk much. We just walked ate
some trail mix and checked out our maps every so

(01:58):
often to make sure that we were headed in the
right direction. At the end of the day, we pitched
the tent on a flat patch of ground, boiled water
for these instant noodles that we had, and then pretty
much slept like the dead. Eighteen miles in the frank
felt like ours. We felt dialed in, and we were
ready for more. On the third day, we started to

(02:21):
feel a little restless, for want of a better word,
trails were fine for Taurus, but we'd come for something real.
So when Lewis suggested that we ditched the path and
cut cross country and see what most people missed, I
didn't argue. We veered off the trail and the change
was almost instant. The woods turned very dense, with trunks

(02:42):
wider than my shoulders and roots that started to sprawl
out like veins under the dirt. Moss was pretty much
draped on everything, starting to dull the light of the
sun coming in and carpeting the forest floor so thick
that it was almost like sponge under our feet. We
moved a little slip lower, avoiding rabbit holes and scrambling
over fallen logs, and while it made for much rough going,

(03:06):
it truly was worth it. The place felt completely untouched,
like we traveled back in time by almost a thousand years.
Then at one point Lewis suddenly stops and tilts his
head to the side like he'd heard something. A second
later I caught it too, this low hum, steady and

(03:27):
very out of place. It wasn't the wind or running water.
It sounded artificial, almost mechanical, and me and Lewis didn't
say anything to each other. We just obeyed our sort
of mutual curiosity and followed that noise. The sound grew
louder as we pushed forward. Then after a few minutes,

(03:47):
we broke through this thicket of saplings and saw it
a bunker sunk into a low rise. A steel door
was crooked in the frame, and its concrete shelled appeared
to be covered in scratched cymbals, circles, zigzags, or lines
that twisted into nothing really recognizable. And the hum came

(04:10):
from inside, and once we were close enough we could
hear that it was some kind of heavy metal, all
distorted and screaming vocals. It was then that I saw
the door hung almost a jar, just an inch, but
enough to allow the noise inside to spill out. Louis
and I stopped dead in our tracks, just a few
feet short of the bunker's door. The music was aggressive

(04:33):
and violent, either death metal or some kind of hardcore.
But it wasn't the kind of music that had us
approaching with such caution. It was the thought of the
people playing it inside. Lewis shot me this look, I mean,
sure there was a chance that was just a bunch
of metal heads throwing a party. In some old, abandoned
metal bunker. But what if it wasn't just that, you know,

(04:56):
what if they were a way out in the middle
of nowhere for a reason. And I remember looking back
at Louis and gently leaning my head back in the
direction we'd come, as if to say, let's get out
of here, and he nodded. Then we turned to leave.
We were aiming to put miles between us in that
place before dark, and neither of us wanted to find

(05:17):
either who was down there or what they were doing.
But we'd only gone a few hundred yards before they
found us. We were walking along discussing who in the
hell would build a bunker way out in the middle
of nowhere, when two men stepped out from the tree
line like they'd been waiting for us. They were wearing
full camo with faces hidden behind balaklavas, and each held

(05:40):
a rifle that looked like something like an a K.
Barrels were down but gripped very tightly. My blood turned
to ice as Lewis and I stopped cold. I could
hear him breathing beside me, and I knew that he
was sizing them up the same as I was. The
two men didn't move. They just stood there for a second,
eyes locked on us through those slits in their masts,

(06:02):
with the hump from that bunker faintly audible through the
trees behind us. And then suddenly one of them raised
their rifle on your knees. He said, arms up. His
voice was flat, cold, and there was no room for debate.
I looked at Lewis, his hands were moving towards his

(06:23):
pack straps. Counting the people back in the bunker, we
were obviously outnumbered, and considering our pistols were still in
our packs, we were incredibly outgunned too. I started to
ease my arms up, buying time. When Louis moved. He
unclipped his pack, let it drop, and then took off running.

(06:43):
The thud of it hitting the ground snapped me out
of that daze of fear that had come over me,
and then yanked my own straps free, ditching that weight,
and bolted after him. As we ran, a shot cracked
out overhead, loud enough to make my ears ring. The
bark exploded off her tree to my left, showering me
with splinters. I ducked legs pumping, weaving in and out

(07:05):
of the tree, trunks as I followed Louis, and then
behind me, I heard someone yelling, cease fire, we need
them alive. After hearing that, I thought that they'd ease up,
but maybe only a few seconds later more shots started
coming out lower, now kicking up the dirt around my feet.
They weren't aiming to kill. They wanted us slow down, crippled,

(07:28):
easier to drag back. My lungs were burning, but I
kept going. Louis was ahead of me, dodging tree trunks,
but I matched him step for step. The gun fire
suddenly stopped at one point, but we kept on running.
I didn't know how far we ran, it had to
have been a mile or two, but eventually we stopped.
My legs were shaking, my chest was heaving. As Lewis

(07:51):
braced against a tree, we checked to see if there
was anything behind us, but there was nothing. No gunshots,
no shouts, just the wind rustling the canopy. We'd lost
the men shooting at us, but we'd also lost our packs,
meaning all of our food, gear and maps were now
in their hands. It was a pretty bad situation, one

(08:14):
of the worst you could ever wish for, but there
was nothing else to do but keep moving, so that's
what we did without our tents and sleeping bags. That
first night was brutal. The temperature dropped fast, cold seeping
through my clothes and into my bones, and my stomach
growled loud in the quiet, but there was nothing to eat,

(08:35):
and we just huddled against a fallen log and jackets
were pulled tight around us. I kept my eyes open,
expecting those men to creep up on us in the
dark with their rifles ready, but they didn't. Louis barely
slept either. We just sat there waiting for dawn. Morning
eventually came, and with it it brought hunger. We found

(08:57):
some berries growing on a low bush. There were sour
and barely ripe, and then ate a handful and I
grimaced as everything was staining my fingers, and Lewis did
the same. We knew enough to avoid the toxic stuff
years of hiking pang off, but it wasn't enough to
silence the hunger pangs. We eventually used the sun as

(09:19):
a guide when it peeked through the trees and we
started moving south and towards the car. My head ached
this dull thud behind my eyes, but we had to
keep moving and the forest just stretched on, swallowing every
sound but just our footsteps, and my boots were rubbing
blisters into my heels. And we walked all day, stopping
only to scoop water from some stream with our hands.

(09:42):
Night eventually came again, and we found a shallow dip
under an overhang of rock. We couldn't light a fire,
as that was probably too risky, but we had no
food to cook anyway. I eventually slept in little bits,
waking up to every rustle of leaves or shift of
the wind, and in day three, I have to say,
was the worst. My legs felt like lead. We found

(10:05):
more berries, a few edible roots that Lewis recognized, but
again they barely touched the hunger. My vision blurred at
the edges, and exhaustion was starting to sink deep. I
lost track of time and just followed Lewis's back as
he trudged along ahead. He didn't look much better than
I did. His shoulders were slumped and his pace was slowing.

(10:25):
And we didn't talk about the men, or the bunker
or the guns. We just didn't say anything at all.
We just kept walking. When we hit the dirt road,
I swear that I could have cried with relief. It
was nothing but a thin rudded track cutting through the trees,
barely wide enough for a truck, but my god, it
was a road. We stumbled along it until a ranger

(10:47):
station came into view. It was a low wooden building
with a pickup parked out front. We were filthy, scratched up,
our eyes sunken into their sockets. The ranger inside, a
guy with a gray beard and a faded NPS patch,
took one look at us and said, I'll get you
boys some coffee, and as we sipped from our cups,

(11:09):
we told him everything, the bunker, the weird graffiti that
we saw on the side, with the symbols, the men
with the rifles, and the fact that they chased us.
He called the police, who showed up an hour later
and took our statements and then sent rangers to check
that spot. And we were hopeful. But when those rangers
came back, they said the bunker was completely empty, no people,

(11:33):
no gear, just the concrete shell and those scratched up cymbals.
There was no sign of our packs either, and the
police didn't seem surprised. One of them even said the
frank had a history of militia activity, armed groups that
had gathered, train and sometimes party out there away from
prying eyes. He figured we'd probably crossed paths with a

(11:55):
nasty one, violent types who didn't like witnesses, and we
were lucky to be alive. They told us not to
go back, not through that area anyway, and that was it.
No arrests, no leads, just a warning and a shrug,
and driving home, Lewis stared out the passenger window, staying
silent almost the whole way. I gripped the wheel. My

(12:18):
knuckles were turning white, just replaying all of that in
my head. The forest that had been hours once a
place of sanctuary and recreation, but on the drive back,
it felt like something else, something hostile and uninviting. Lewis
and I didn't talk about hiking again for a while,
not in the frank not anywhere, and I've often wondered

(12:40):
who those men were and if they ever returned, rifles
in hand, watching for the next pair of idiots to
step too close. A long time ago now, my buddy

(13:00):
Andre and I went hiking on the Lost Coast Trail.
We'd been at it since early morning, walking along the
trails laughing about stupid stuff from work, and just kind
of soaking in the piece. By noon, my legs were
pretty much screaming, and I could tell Andrea was feeling
it too, so we stopped to check the map and
catch our breath. We found a little clearing just off

(13:21):
the path with a big flat rock that looked good
enough to sit on. I dropped my pack, pulled out
my water bottle, and took a long swig while Andre
unfolded the map. He was always better with directions, so
I let him figure out where we were While I rested,
Andrea was kind of just muttering to himself, tracing a
finger along the map. When it happened, this huge shadow

(13:45):
slid over us like someone had flicked a switch and
turned off the sun for a second. It wasn't a
little patch of shade either. It was big enough to
cover the whole clearing. I remember freezing midsip water dribbling
down my chin as I looked up, but the sky
was still that perfect, endless blue with not a cloud
in sight. And Andre must have seen it too, because

(14:08):
he stopped talking and snapped his head up just as
it passed over and the light returned. What the hell
was that. He sounded spooked, and I didn't answer right away. Instead,
my eyes were darting around, scanning the tree tops and
the skies for anything that might explain the large shadow
that passed over. But it was nothing. There were no

(14:29):
planes up there, no birds, and this was way before
drones too. I didn't know of anything that could have
made a shadow that big, let alone, something that could
move so fast and so quiet. It was almost gliding.
And then the breeze hit. It came out of nowhere,
stiff and cold, rustling the trees around us and kicking
up dust from the trail. It didn't feel like normal wind.

(14:52):
It felt like it was chasing whatever had passed over us,
like it was part of it. Somehow, I felt the
hairs of my next en up, and Andrea went pale.
He lowered the map and spun around, looking in every direction.
You saw that, right? I just nodded, because what else
was there to say. Really? We stood there for a minute,

(15:14):
maybe two, waiting for something to happen, and my heart
was thumping at a mile a minute, and I could
hear Andrea breathing hard next to me. The woods had
gone quiet. There were no birds, no bugs, just silence.
It was like everything was holding its breath the same
as we were. I kept expecting to see something break

(15:35):
through the trees or drop out of the sky, but
there was just nothing. The sun was back bright as ever,
like it had never left. We should go, I said,
and Andrea didn't argue. He grabbed the map off the
ground and stuffed it into his pack and we started moving.
Neither of us set it out loud, but I knew

(15:56):
that we were both thinking the same thing. Get out
of there now. We didn't even bother sticking to the trail.
We just headed straight back the way we came, cutting
through bushes and trees and ducking under branches. I kept
my eyes on the sky, half expecting that shadow to
come back, and I could tell Andrea was doing the same.
Every light breeze or rustle of leaves made me jump,

(16:18):
and I had this awful feeling whatever it was would
come back. It took us maybe an hour to get
back to the trailhead, though it felt like longer. I
was burning up and my shirt was soaked with sweat.
By the time we saw the parking lot, Andrea's truck
was still there, right where we'd left it, and I
don't think I've ever been so relieved to see a

(16:38):
beat up old Ford. We threw our packs in the
back and climbed in and for a while we just
kind of sat there, catching our breath, staring out the
windshield at the trees. And after a while Andrea broke
the silence, asking it was probably just a bird, like
a hawk or something flying low. Shadows can look bigger

(16:59):
than that than they are, right. It didn't sound convincing,
but I could tell that he was trying to talk
himself into it, right, I said, nodding, even though I
didn't believe it, and the wind was just a coincidence.
He agreed as he started the engine, and I could

(17:21):
hear the relief in his voice, like saying out loud
made it true. Is freaking ourselves out over nothing, he said,
And I wanted to agree with him, I really did,
but I couldn't. A bird made sense, a big turkey
vulture or an eagle swooping down catching the light just right,
And the breeze could have been random too, It's not

(17:43):
like the weather stays still in the woods. But deep
down I knew it didn't add up. That shadow had
been too big and too solid. It wasn't some flimsy
bird shape. It was thick, heavy, like something massive had
passed over us. Then the way it moved so smooth
and quick, it didn't feel like anything I'd ever seen
in the sky before. We drove back to town, mostly

(18:07):
quiet radio filling in the space between us and country songs,
and every now and then Andre would just glance at me,
and I could tell that he was still rattled, and
so was I. When we got to my place, he
didn't stick around like he usually did after hike. There
was no cracking open a bier or rehashing the day.
He just said that he'd see me later and peeled out,

(18:28):
like he couldn't wait to put distance between him and
what happened. And to be honest, that night I couldn't sleep.
All I could think about was that shadow and the
breeze and the way the woods just went quiet. I
told myself it was stupid that we just spooked ourselves
like a couple of kids, but I really couldn't shake it,
And eventually weeks went by and we didn't talk about

(18:49):
it again. Life went back to normal, or at least
it tried to. With work and bills and the usual grind,
helping us keep our minds off the shadow. I even
went hiking again, though not on that trail, and nothing
weird happened. But every time I'm outside now, especially on
a clear day, I catch myself looking up. I don't
know what I'm expecting to see, but I can't help

(19:10):
it that shadows still there in the back of my mind,
and I still get the feeling that whatever caused it
wasn't just some bird. I looked it up online once
late at night, when I couldn't stop thinking about it.
I type stuff like big shadow and sky and unexplained
things in woods into Google, before scrolling through pages of
conspiracies and blurry photos. Some people talked about UFOs, others

(19:35):
about giant birds or government experiments, but none of it
seemed to fit, not entirely. Anyway, whatever we saw, or
whatever we didn't see, seemed stranger than that, like it
was something that didn't belong. My mind wandered exploring possibilities,
but in the end I felt silly and I just
shut my laptop, feeling dumber for even trying. Andrea and

(19:57):
I still hang out, but we really don't hike much
any more. It's not like we decided that we just
stopped planning trips. And I think we both know why.
Neither of us wants to say it, but the day
changed something. We can't really laugh it off, call it
a fluke. But there's this sort of quiet thing between
us now, a sort of shared secret that we don't touch. Sometimes.

(20:18):
I wonder if it's still out there, circling the woods,
waiting for someone else to come across it. I'll never
forget how small it made me feel standing in that clearing,
watching the sky for something that never showed itself. I
don't know if it's dangerous or if it's just there,
but I know, deep in my gut that it isn't normal.

(20:49):
I was part of a search and rescue team dispatched
to Olympic National Forest in the summer of nineteen eighty three.
The call came in late Tuesday night, just as I
was finishing a ship to the station. Terry Fishgold, a
local hiker who had been walking the trails for years,
hadn't returned from one of his solo trips. His wife
had waited until Monday evening before she called it in,

(21:12):
figuring he'd just stayed out longer than expected. When he
still wasn't back by Tuesday, she gave us the details
in the description of his gear. His last known location
was a trailhead near the Quinault River, and his intended
destination was a ridge around eight miles north. It sounded routine,
Terry knew the forest, and we had a clear starting point,

(21:34):
so I'd have bet my last dollar on us finding
him by sundown. But as it happened, that particular search
and rescue operation proved anything but routine. Including local law
enforcement and a bunch of civilian volunteers, around thirty to
forty of us gathered at the trailhead just before dawn
on that Wednesday. We loaded up with the usual radios,

(21:58):
first aid kits, maps, rope, and flashlights, and then split
the search area into a grid. My team and I
took the western edge of the grid near the river,
while the others fanned out east. The plan was to
sweep north, hit the ridge by nightfall, find fish Gold,
and bring him home. Then at exactly five forty seven
a m we hit the trails. The first few hours

(22:21):
dragged on with little to report. We moved slow, scanning
for broken branches, scuff dirt or anything that might show
Terry had passed through. We'd caught out his name every
so often, but apart from that, the forest was quiet.
But then around noon, the voice of one of my
team members buzzed through my radio and broke the silence.

(22:41):
He'd found something. I adjusted my course and then hiked
a half mile east to meet the rest of my team.
When I got there, they were all looking up. High
up in some tree, about thirty feet off the ground,
was a backpack. It was torn open, its straps were
flapping in the content had spilled out onto the branches
and ground below. From its appearance alone, we knew it

(23:05):
was fish golds, and it was just as his wife
had described it, a green kelty with a red patch
stitched on the side. One of my team, a guy
named Jim, volunteered to climb up, rigging a rope and
harness while we watched from below. And the tree was thin.
Its branches were too slender to hold much weight, Yet
the pack was lodged up there, caught like it had

(23:26):
been thrown with an impressive amount of force. When Jim
brought it down, we saw the damage up close. The
fabric was shredded, with long gashes running through it, no
bites or scratches. From what we could tell. It was
more like something sharp had ripped it apart. Inside Terry's
water bottle was cracked, and a soggy sandwich sat just

(23:48):
half eaten and crushed with the dirt. And there was
no blood, though not yet from what we could see.
That came afterwards. Two hours later, one of my team
radioed in she'd found one of Terry's boots in a
small clearing. I hugked over and there it was just
like the danners his wife had mentioned him, wearing brown

(24:09):
leather laces, tide standing upright like he'd stepped right out
of it. No blood, no damage, just the boot sitting
there alone. We marked the spot and moved on, figuring
the other one would turn up close by. It didn't.
About an hour later one of the other teams called
from the eastern edge of the search ring, almost two

(24:30):
miles away, and when I heard what they had to say,
my blood turned to ice. They'd found the second boot,
but it wasn't empty. Terry's foot was still inside, cut
off just above the ankle. The bone brake wasn't clean,
the skin was torn, and a few flies were circling it,

(24:50):
and the blood was still sticky too, meaning it hadn't
been there very long. The other teams said that they
snapped a few photos for the report and then they
bagged it and moved on. But after that the forest
started to feel heavier. To me. We'd seen bad injuries before, falls, shootings,
animal tacks, but this didn't fit. A bear might tear

(25:12):
into some one, but it wouldn't leave a foot in
a boot severed clean and dropped miles from the other one.
We widened the search after that, breaking the grid into
tighter sections, and not long after we'd noticed the blood.
The first time I spotted some it was on a tree.
It was a small smear, no bigger than a coin,

(25:32):
staining the bark at eye level. One of my team
found another spot ten feet away, higher up, like it
had been flicked there. Then another pointed out more droplets
splattered across a cedar's lower branches. We started marking them
with flags, and it didn't take long to see the pattern,
or rather the lack of one. The blood was everywhere,

(25:53):
tiny specks of it spread across the forest in every direction.
I'd taken a few steps and find another dot, and
then another, like some one had taken a blood soaked
rag over entire sections of the woods. But late afternoon
we'd covered almost half the grid and found nothing. No body,
no clothes, just the pack, the boots, and his blood.

(26:17):
A few hours later, the sun was starting to set
and a fog was rolling in. We stuck closer as
a group, not really talking much at all. We just
kept moving, marking blood spots and searching for a missing hiker.
The night came fast, and we set up a base
camp near the ridge. The plan was to rest as
much as possible and then pick up at dawn, but
I couldn't sleep. The forest was too quiet. There really

(26:41):
didn't seem to be any wind or animals, just this
sort of eerie silence. Then and around midnight, I heard
a branch snapping. It was loud and sharp, maybe a
hundred yards out. I sat up, grabbed my flashlight and
swept that beam across the trees, but I didn't see
anything move. I stayed put and things stayed quiet till

(27:02):
I was relieved. But it was the same unnatural quiet,
the kind that you'd never hear in the woods at
night unless something's making everything else stay quiet. I got
a few hours of sleep after a teamate took over
the watch, but morning didn't bring me any relief. We
packed up and pushed north following that blood trail, and

(27:22):
it kept going, smeared on trunks and dotted on branches,
with some spot so high that I had to tilt
my head all the way back to see them. I
found one mark on a pine tree ten feet up,
with no limbs below it to climb. The blood looked fresh,
like it had been put there while we slept, and
I remembered that sense of creeping apprehension growing as I

(27:44):
marked on the map. One of my team found a
cluster of droplets on a rock arranged in a rough
half circle. Another spotted more on a fallen log, a
thin line of blood streaking the moss. We stopped trying
to make sense of it at that We just kept going,
hoping to find Terry, or by then what was left

(28:05):
of him. And by noon on the second day, we'd
reached the outer edge of the search area, but on
account of the pieces we'd found, the prospects of finding
fish gold alive were getting slimmer by the minute. We
tried our best covered all of the ground we'd set
out to, but it was no good. We called off
the search on the afternoon of the third day. Terry

(28:26):
was obviously dead. No one could lose that much blood
and still be walking around. We radiated it in, packed
it up, and left the rest a local law enforcement.
When we hit the trailhead, I looked back. The trees
were just standing still. The fog was starting to roll
in again, and officially Terry wasn't anywhere in the grid.

(28:46):
But my gut told me that wasn't all the way true.
The official report listed this as an animal attack. The
bear made sense for the torn pack and the severed foot,
but I knew that it wasn't right. No bear could
toss a pack thirty feet into a tree, on to
branches too weak to hold its weight. No bear could
spread blood across miles of forest painting and on bark

(29:09):
and rocks like some deliberate mark. I've seen bear kills,
the torn flesh, the scattered bones, the mess of guts
left behind, but this this was different. The report got filed,
Terry fish Coold was declared deceased, and his body stayed unrecovered.

(29:29):
It was one of three failed missions that we had
in the nineteen eighties. Most of us moved on after
that and took desk jobs or left the field entirely.
But I couldn't let it go. The pack and the
tree stuck with me, and every so often my mind
would wander off and I'd see the pack hanging there,
shredded and out of reach. I'd think about that foot

(29:50):
in that boot too, all raggedly severed, like it had
been torn off and dropped for us to find. I'd
remember all that blood, and how the branch snapped sharp
been close, and how I've been almost certain that something
was out there watching us. The team didn't talk about
him much after. One of my search and rescue team members, Paul,
stayed in touch the longest, and years later I asked

(30:13):
him what he thought actually happened. He simply told me
we didn't find him because he wasn't there to find.
And I knew what he meant. I just didn't agree
that he wasn't there. Whatever took Terry wasn't to bear,
but it tore him apart piece by piece and marked
the forest with what was left. I think he was
still there too, or I know he was because of

(30:35):
how fresh the blood was on that second day. Another
team member, Lisa quit search and rescue a year after.
She moved inland, away from the trees and didn't leave
a number. And Sarah disappeared too, not missing, just kind
of gone, not forwarding an address. Our guide Jim stuck
around much longer, and he got kind of quiet, and

(30:57):
he started to drink more. And I heard that he
took job with a forest service. Irony of ironies. Really,
though we never really talked about that mission. I don't
blame them. We all carried it differently, but we carried
it all nonetheless. I kept the map from that search.
The blood marks are still on it, little xes in
red ink, stretching across the grid like a web. I

(31:21):
don't look at it often, and when I do, it's
not unusual for a shiver or two to run down
my spine. Terry was gone, but something else was there instead,
waiting in the woods. We'd never search again. I used

(31:46):
to be a forestry surveyor back in the nineties, working
up in vun Tutt National Park in Yukon, Canada. On paper,
the job was simple, mapped the land mark, the trees,
note the changes. But in practice, out there there was
anything but The park stretched over four thousand square kilometers,
a sprawl of dense forest, jagged ridges, and boggy lowlands

(32:09):
that could swallow a man whole. I'd been at it
for years, comfortable with the solitude and the long days
of nothing but myself in the forest. In late August
of nineteen ninety three, I was deep in the interior,
further than I had ever gone before. My pack was
heavy with gear. The nearest road was a three day
hike in the Ranger Station. Even further, I was completely

(32:32):
and utterly alone, and that's how I liked it. The
day started normal. I woke up at dawn Broke Camp
and headed north through a thick stand of spruce, and
I'd been following a drainage line, plotting its curve for
the survey. When the trees ahead started to look a
little off. They weren't standing right. They were tilted, leaning outward,

(32:52):
like they'd been pushed by some powerful force. I stopped,
adjusted my pack and squinted through the branches. Beyond them
was a clearing, a rough circle punched into the forest.
I stepped closer. My boots were sinking in slightly into
the earth, and that's when I saw it. Everything within
that circle, the trees, the shrubs, the dirt itself. It

(33:16):
was all bleached and ashy white, not burned, not frosted,
just sort of drained of color. The trees kind of
stood there like skeletons, their bark peeling in dry, powdery flakes.
And as I walked, the brittle ground crunched under my weight.
I had seen plenty in those woods, fire scars, beetle kills,

(33:38):
even the aftermath of a bear tearing through a campsite.
But this was different. I moved forward, drawn toward the center,
despite the growing sense of unease in my gut. There
in the middle of it all was a crater. It
was small, maybe three feet wide and two feet deep,
little more than a shallow scoop in that white earth.

(34:00):
And I stood over it, staring down. There was no meteorite,
no rocks, no sign of what had just made it,
just an empty hole. I remember how still the air was,
no birds, no winds, no nothing, and how I felt
a sharp and sudden chill crawl up my spine. I
couldn't place it, but something about that spot made my

(34:21):
skin prickle, like I was being watched by very unkind eyes.
I shifted my weight and I decided that I needed proof.
I dropped my pack and pulled out my analog camera.
My hands were trembling as I fumbled with the lens cap,
but I managed to line up some shots. I got
some wide angles of the blasted trees and a few

(34:42):
of the white expanse, and then close ups of the
crater itself. The shutter clicked with each photo. I took
a dozen pictures, maybe more, becoming more and more unsettled
as I did. This wasn't just another log entry. This
was something my bosses needed to see, something the scientists
were going to be very interested in. And once I

(35:03):
was done, I packed the camera away and slung my
bag over my shoulder and started that trek back, only
too glad to be getting away from that place. I
knew there had to be an explanation for it, but
still the place just gave me the willies seeing the aftermath.
The walk out of the woods was a long one,
maybe six or seven hours in total, and I planned
to camp another night, but after seeing that strange white

(35:25):
patch of forest, I wanted solid walls around me. At
that point. The first couple of hours were fine, just
the usual ache in my shoulders from the weight of
my pack, but then after a while the headache started.
I figured it was the strain, maybe dehydration, so I
stopped and drank pretty deep from my canteen, but it

(35:46):
didn't help. My stomach started twisting into knots, a kind
of dull pang that got sharper with every step, and
by the time I hit the last ridge before the
ranger station, I was sweating like a pig. With the
station in sight, I stop and leaned against a tree
to catch my breath, but then just as it felt
like my head was clearing, I threw up. I vomited.

(36:09):
It hit me fast, a hot rush that left me gasping.
I spit and wiped my mouth and realized that there
might genuinely be something wrong with me. I stumbled through
the door of the station. Just a few minutes later.
The ranger on duty, a guy named Pete, looked up
from his log book and just froze. I must have

(36:29):
been a sight pale, sweaty and swaying back and forth,
probably a little puke still on my shirt, and he
grabbed the radio before I could even say anything, and
then bark something about a medical pickup. I didn't hear
the rest. My legs gave out and I hit the
ground and I puked again. Pete rushed over as my
vision started to blur and I felt hands on me,

(36:49):
and then just nothing. I woke up in an ambulance.
My head pounded, my skin was thick with sweat, and
an oxygen mask covered my mouth the nose. The paramedics
were there, and their voices were very professional as they
asked their questions, like where I'd been, what I'd eaten,
or if anything had bitten me. And I mumbled about

(37:11):
the crater and the white trees, but the words came
out just kind of jarbled, and I don't know if
they gave me anything, but I remember blacking out again,
and the next time I opened my eyes, I was
in a hospital bed and the room was sterile. There
were white walls and these beeping machines with an ivy
line tugging at my arm, and I just felt completely

(37:32):
hollowed out, but I guess I was alive. When a
nurse realized that I was awake and that I could
hear her, she called a doctor into the room. He
was a tired looking man with these very thin glasses,
and I was relieved when he told me that it
was good news. He said their best guess was that
I'd been hit with some kind of viral infection, something

(37:52):
really nasty that most probably came from an insect fight.
But after stabilizing me with ivy fluids and anti virals,
i'd probably be out in a few days. I nodded.
My throat was dry, but my mind went straight to
that crater. It wasn't a bite. I knew it wasn't.
I told him about the impact sight, the bleached circle,

(38:14):
and the empty hole, and he listened, scribbling some notes,
and then left, and he said he'd keep it in mind,
but I knew he wasn't listening. Delirious people will probably
say crazy stuff to him all the time. All the
doctors can do is work with what's in front of them.
And I got discharged a few days later, still shaky,
but able to stand on my own, probably with a

(38:37):
hefty bill. And back at headquarters, I handed over my
camera my boss, this gruff guy named Harris, took it
off my hands after asking me to go over what
I'd seen, and after that I sat in the brake
room while the tech developed the film. I needed those pictures.
They'd showed that I wasn't crazy, and then something real

(38:57):
had actually happened out there. Now, just so you know,
some National Park Service facilities used to have photo dark
rooms to develop film photographs taken by rangers and photographers.
And that tech eventually came back about ninety minutes later,
and his face was just blank. He laid out the
prints on the table and my heart sank. Every shot

(39:19):
of the impact site was a white, fuzzy blur, not
over exposed, not under exposed, just a static mess of nothingness.
The other photos, the ones from earlier in the trip,
were fine, but the crater and the trees, and the
bleached white bark and soil, they were all gone. I
remember staring at the prince. My hands were clenching the

(39:42):
table at the time, and the tech just shrugged, muttering
something about a bad roll. Harris didn't say much. He
just told me that I had it rough and I
should take it easy. And no one accused me outright,
but I felt it these sort of side glances the
way conversation stopped whenever I walked into a room. They

(40:02):
didn't think that I was lying, but they sure as
how thought that I'd imagine the whole thing while burning
up with some fever, and I tried to explaining how
the timing didn't fit, how I'd been fine until I
left that impact site, but no matter what I said,
they'd still give me these insincere nods and looks of pity,
and without proof, it was just me talking and my

(40:23):
words simply wasn't cutting it. In the end, Harris told
me to just drop it and that it was bothering
the rest of the team. So I tried to routine
dulled the edges and just keeping busy with these mapping trails,
counting trees and filing reports made it easy to pretend
that I'd moved on, but I hadn't, and I really couldn't.

(40:45):
Every other trip out, I'd scanned those woods sort of
half expecting to see that ashy glow between tree trunks,
and I wanted more than anything to find that strange
white impact site again so I could mark it on
my map. But at the same time, I didn't want
to expose myself or anyone else for that matter, to
whatever made me sick, and that's what made it easier

(41:06):
to keep my mouth shut. But I never forgot about it.
I started warning the new guys to stay away from
anything strange or unfamiliar, and they just kind of grin,
thinking that I was spinning some tail or playing a
trick on them. But I meant every word. The forest
wasn't just trees and dirt. Sometimes it hides things, things
that'll make you sick, things that just don't belong now.

(41:30):
Time rolled on, and after my retirement to Know four,
I moved south to a little house near white Horse,
and the nightmares eventually tapered off, but that memory really
stuck around. I'm old now, pushing seventy, and I wanted
to share this with you. All My hands shake worse
than they did back then, and my knees creak when
I stand up, but my mind works just fine, and
sometimes I get to thinking about what I saw up there.

(41:52):
Back in the nineties. I kept those blurry photos shoved
in some envelope in my desk drawer, and every so
often I might pull them out and just stare at
those white smears and sort of wonder. And after doing
some reading, the meteorite theory just doesn't quite fit. There
was no debris, no heat scars, and if I had
been exposed to radiation or some kind of chemical, then

(42:14):
the doctors would have found it in my system during
one of their tests, I assume, and I guess I
can't roll it out entirely, but I'm not a believer
in anything celestial or intergalactic, and most likely there's a
total rational explanation for what I saw on what happened
to me afterwards. I just can't, for the life of
me figure out what that is. I'd like to know,

(42:35):
don't get me wrong, But at the same time, in
my old age, I guess it doesn't matter, because whatever
it is, if I ever see it again, I'm walking
straight the other way. A few years back, I decided

(42:58):
to go for a hike by myself. It wasn't something
I did often, but I'd been feeling cooped up like
I needed to get out and breathe some fresh air.
I grabbed my keys, threw a water bottle into my backpack,
and drove out to this trail that I'd heard about.
It was an hour or so from my house, tucked
away in some woods that I'd never explored before, and

(43:18):
the drive was quiet, just me, the hum of my
engine and the trees blurring past the windows. I parked
my car in a little gravel lot near the trail,
had locked it up and started walking. But that's where
things get a little fuzzy. The next clear memory that
I have is me driving back home, hands on the wheel,
in the sun dipping low, like hours had just slipped by,

(43:41):
but everything between gone. There was a black spot in
my head, like someone snipped out a chunk of film
and stitched the ends back together. I tried to piece
everything back together that night, sitting on my couch with
a beer that I barely touched. I could picture myself
pulling into that lot, the gravel that was under my tires,

(44:02):
the faded wooden sign marking the trail, and I could
even see myself stepping into the woods and hiking steadily
along the trail. There's this one fleeting image that keeps
popping up, me walking through those woods. Everything calm, but
that's pretty much it. Everything else is just a blank
wall in my mind. Before I'm back in my car

(44:24):
driving home like nothing happened. It creeped me out very badly,
and I kept asking myself what the hell could have happened,
but I couldn't think of anything. The next day I
called in sick to work. My head was feeling pretty
heavy and I couldn't focus, and I kept staring at
my hiking boots by the door. They seemed to be
caked in mud, little pine needles sticking in the laces,

(44:47):
and all the proof that I'd been out there, I guess,
but I couldn't remember stepping in that mud or brushing
against those trees. I started wondering if I'd hit my
head or something. So I went to the doctor. He
poked at me and asked some questions. He checked my
eyes and my reflexes, all that kind of stuff, and
he said I seemed fine, that there were no signs

(45:08):
of a concussion or anything weird, and he told me
to come back right away if it happened again and
got another one of those memory gaps. I said I would,
but driving home from that appointment, I felt this in
the pit of my stomach. He said I was fine,
but I didn't feel right. That evening, I remember sitting
on the couch in front of the TV, but I

(45:29):
wasn't really watching. I was just thinking, sort of like
waiting for something to click. I thought maybe I'd just
zoned out on that hike, like when you drive somewhere
familiar and don't remember the turns. But that wasn't that.
This was hours upon hours that I couldn't remember, like
they'd been stolen from me. So I got up and

(45:49):
grabbed my phone and looked up that trail online. It
was called Black Pine Loop, some old path not many
people used anymore, and I scrolled through a couple of
hiking forms, hoping for something useful, but most posts were
a whole bunch of nothing. People talked about deer sightings
or how the trail needed upkeep. But then I found
this one threat buried deep, from a guy who'd hiked

(46:12):
a few years before me. He said that he'd felt
off the whole time, like something was wrong with the woods.
And he said he found a stretch of trail where
the trees looked wrong, very thin, twisted, like they had
some type of disease. He didn't mention anything about memory
loss or anything like that, but reading about those trees
got me thinking. And then by the time I got

(46:33):
to overthinking, I shut my phone off and didn't look again,
and days eventually turned into weeks, and I tried letting
it go, and I didn't tell anyone about it, not
my friends or family. I mean, really, what was they
going to say, Hey, I went for a walk and
forgot the whole damn thing. They'd probably think I was nuts.
I'd catch myself zoning out, staring at nothing. Sometimes I'd

(46:54):
think it was happening again, and panic would start to hit.
But thankfully it hasn't. But still I couldn't shake the
feeling that whatever happened with that time loss was tied
to that trail. When I was a kid, my family

(47:18):
loved the outdoors. My dad was in the Air Force,
stationed at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, so we
often went to Farmington Canyon, especially in the fall when
the trees turned bright red and gold. The drive took
about an hour, but the dirt road was scary. It
hugged tight against rock walls on one side, with a
steep drop on the other. Sometimes cars had to creep

(47:40):
past each other inches from the cliff, and I'd look
out my window and see tiny trees far below, and
I remember kind of just shuddering. One trip stands out
back in the nineties, I was thrilled because we were
camping in a tent, a rare treat for me. My
dad's bad back. Usually meant day trips or cabins, but
this time we borrowed an old seventies tent from a garage.

(48:03):
Sail me, my parents, and my siblings, and are two
dogs piled into the car. We reached the campsite by
a creek in the late afternoon and then set up
the tent, laughing as the dogs just chased each other.
We built a fire, ate some hot dogs, and then
when it got dark, we doused the fire and crawled
into our sleeping bags. I fell asleep to the sound

(48:23):
of the creek, but some time later I woke up.
One of our dogs was growling low, his fur bristling,
and at first I thought it was just a rabbit,
because earlier we'd seen a few hopping around. Then I
heard it crunch, crunch, the sound of footsteps on the
forest outside. My whole body froze stiff as a board.

(48:47):
Someone was out there moving around our camp. I was
so scared I could barely breathe. The footsteps got closer,
and I heard them circle the tent slowly. The dogs
growling got louder, but I stayed still, too scared to move,
and I could tell the person was poking around and
be checking our stuff. They even tugged at the car door,
but it was locked. Was it a camper from another sight,

(49:11):
someone lost, or something worse, someone who wanted to hurt us.
I heard them crunching again louder, right by the tent,
and I squeezed my eyes shut, praying that they'd go away.
The dog growled sharper, and suddenly the footsteps stopped. They
then started again, faster and moving away. I laid there,

(49:34):
My heart was pounding until I couldn't hear them any more.
I don't know how long I stayed frozen, but eventually
I heard my dad's whisper. He'd been awake the whole time,
listening too, and he didn't say it, but I could
tell he was scared. He waited a bit, shook my
mom and siblings awake, and then announced that we were leaving.
We packed up fast. No one talked much, just stuffed

(49:56):
sleeping bags and tore down the tent by flashlight, and
the dog stayed close, but they were still on edge.
It was around one a m. We've piled into that car.
The canyon road was darker than ever, and as we drove,
I kept looking out the window, half expecting to see
someone in the shadows. My dad mentioned seeing cars full
of college kids heading up earlier, and he said maybe

(50:18):
it was one of them, but he didn't sound too sure.
We got home safe, but I didn't sleep that night,
None of us did. Was it someone who was lost
looking for help, a thief checking camp sites, or some
one who lived in the woods watching us from the dark.
I'll never know, But even now, years later, when I

(50:39):
hear the crunching of footsteps on the forest floor, my
heart skips a beat. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click
that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations.
I released new videos every Monday and Thursday at nine
p m. Eastern Time, and there are super fun live

(51:01):
streams on Sundays and Wednesday nights. If you've got a story,
be sure to submit them over at my email Let's
read submissions at gmail dot com and maybe even hear
your story featured on the next video. And if you

(51:23):
want to support me even more, grab early access to
all future narrations and bonus content over on Patreon, or
click that big join button to hear about the extra
perks for members of the channel and check out the
Letcher podcast, or you can hear all of these stories
and big compilations located anywhere you listen to podcasts links
in the description below. Thanks so much, friends, and remember dies.