August 20, 2025 • 47 mins
Creepy Fishing & Camping Stories
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Story number one. I've always liked camping. There's something simple
and reassuring about being out there on your own, with
only the forest watching in on you.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
At least that's what I thought.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
It's been nearly two years now since the night I
finally understood there are things you can't explain, and some
you don't even want to. It was supposed to be
a pleasant weekend and escape from city noise and blinking screens.
I set up my camp by a small lake i'd
found online, one of those quiet, lesser known places, bordered
by dense pine and birch. The air was warm, the
(00:35):
sky just shifting from blue to black as the sun
faded behind the trees. By eleven PM, i'd finish my sandwich,
zipped up the tent, and let exhaustion pull me down.
It was deep, uninterrupted sleep. At first. Something about the
lake calmed me, the gentle slap of water, soft creak
of branches in the wind. If anything moved in the dark,
(00:57):
I didn't notice. I woke up suddenly. There was a scream,
thin and sharp, slicing through the silence, snapping me fully awake.
With sheer animal panic, I struggled out of my sleeping bag,
heart pounding so hard it hurt. That scream it was
long and high, not quite human, not quite animal. I
fumbled for my phone instantly, noting my hands were shaking.
(01:20):
The screen blinked on two three am.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
No signal.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
That was odd, because earlier I'd had a full bar,
No wind outside, just a humming sort of cold that
crept in over my skin, making the air prickle. There
was a heavy sensation pressure somehow all around and in
the pit of my stomach, as if everything in the
woods was pausing to listen. That's when thunder groaned overhead,
slow and deep. Though the forecast had been clear. There
(01:49):
was no rain, but the air felt charge strange, like
a static build up before a shock. The silence after
the thunder was so complete, so unnatural, I could hear
my own pulse. Trees didn't sway, no leaves rustled. I
forced myself outside, the air colder than it had been
all day. My head spun, legs weak as I left
(02:12):
the lantern behind and stepped into the dark. My flashlight
cut a feeble beam through the black, and that's when
I saw her.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
At the far edge of the trees.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
She stood back, lit by nothing, pale in the moonlight,
wearing something white and loose, hair hanging down. She didn't move,
She looked right at me. Her face was shadowed, but
the eyes seemed too wide, too fixated. I opened my mouth,
tried to shout for her, ask who she was, what
she was doing at my sight in the middle of
(02:42):
the night, But my voice just seemed to vanish in
the thick air. Then she was gone, as if the
forest had folded over her. A sudden smell hit me,
jasmine and roses, sweet and sickly, way out of place
for the season, and unmistakably strong. The scent wasn't blown
on the breeze, it was everywhere around.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Me, in me.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
My muscles tightened, my limbs numb. I started walking. I
don't even remember making the choice to move. My body
just followed that scent, like I was bound by a
leash and someone dragged me.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
My thoughts floated.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I stepped up to the very spot where she'd stood,
and the ground started to hum under my feet. It
wasn't a normal vibration, not like the deep tremor of
distant trucks or quakes. It was closer, rhythmic, as if
something alive pulsed beneath the soil. The air behind my
neck felt oily cold. For a split second, I was
(03:41):
certain someone was behind me, but when I tried to turn,
I couldn't. My spine went rigid. A pressure built on
my back, not heavy, more like guiding me forward. Suddenly
the trees were gone, and I was at the lake,
windless and impossibly still. The water's surface reflected the class,
but shadows twined beneath the ripples, thick, swirling, darker than
(04:04):
the night sky above. My face hovered inches from the shore,
my reflection broken and strange. My thoughts screamed at me
to stop, but my hands and legs ignored the panic.
I tried to yell, to turn anything, but I might
as well have shouted into concrete. The smell grew stronger,
almost chemical, now sweet and rotten, like flowers forgotten in
(04:26):
a closed room. Something pressed at my back, deliberate, confident.
I felt myself fall slowly, like being dipped under by
invisible arms. The water closed overhead. It wasn't cold, the
way lake water should be in summer. It was freezing, empty,
like plunging into bruised metal. The shock knocked the air
(04:48):
out of me. My fingers wouldn't move. Something or nothing
wrapped around my ankles tugged me down. I kicked out,
not a fish, not weeds, nothing I could see. The
water pressed in thickened my mouth, and then it went black,
and then it was morning. I woke inside my tent,
heart racing. Every muscle ached, and my clothes clung to
(05:11):
my skin, heavy and damp. My hair dripped. The sleeping
bag was soaked through, as if I'd swum in it,
but the tent floor was dry. There was a dull
ache in my chest and throat, like I'd swallowed ice. Outside,
the rising sun was pale and unfriendly on the dirt
at my tense entrance. Someone something had set down a
(05:33):
small pile of flowers, all dark and slick, rotting into
blackish mush. The sickly sweet smell lingered half familiar. No
footprints except mine, but the edge of the lake was
marked with what could have been draglines or just the
imprint of a rolling log. I couldn't be sure. My
(05:53):
phone signal was back, and the sky was clear, as
if nothing had happened at all. I tore down the
camp in half the usual time, all day and for
weeks after, I tried to find explanations a nightmare. Maybe
I'd gone out in my sleep and stumbled back. That's
what I tell myself now. But I don't camp alone anymore.
(06:14):
Some reasons are enough even when you don't understand them.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Story number two.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Last spring, I went camping with my girlfriend along a
remote stretch of the Little Bear River. It was mid April,
the kind of early thaw where the world is damp
and you can sometimes see mist clinging to the ground
just after sunset. My girlfriend Julie had a new lantern
and a spinning reel she'd been eager to use. We
talked about how peaceful it would be without the gentle
(06:41):
roar of cars, finally hearing our own breath.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The day itself was uneventful.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
We set up the tent on sandy loam, just a
narrow belt of trees between us and the steady slow water.
It was cold, but not terribly so, and after we
built a small fire, I felt the worst of it
received from my bones. I remember how blue the sky
got just before dark, navy and endless, and how it
reflected in the river to make the water almost gleam
(07:08):
in the moonlight around midnight, we decided to try our
hand at night fishing. There's something comforting about quietly casting
side by side, the whisper of a line whipping through air.
Julie set a few feet to my left, her stare
intent on her lure as it arked and landed on
the glassy water. I was mostly watching the surface of
the river, noticing how still it had gotten, not even rippling.
(07:32):
That's when I saw it, the third reflection on the water.
In the glassy black our shapes were cast in perfect duplicate,
but I saw, standing just behind my own reflection, a
third figure. This one was taller, its face pale and featureless,
Long black hair draped down. The form didn't waver with
(07:53):
the current. It was crisp, slightly offset from me, as
though it were lurking right over my shoulder. For a
few seconds, I was rooted in place by confusion. I
remember thinking about how optical illusions work, how maybe the
combination of moonlight and fatigue was messing with my eyes.
Then I felt Julie's hand clamp around my forearm, the
(08:14):
grip cold and rigid, her version of panic. She had
seen it too. Without a word, I spun around expecting
to find another camper with a flashlight, some prankster who
had stumbled into our camp. There was no one. The
bank was clear, only our gear and the low shrubs
pale in the moonlight. But when I looked back at
the water's surface, the third reflection hadn't moved. It now
(08:38):
stood with one hand, slowly achingly rising just its hand,
the slow arc unnatural, every joint ticking with no patience.
My own arms and Julie's were frozen at our sides,
but its reflection moved entirely on its own. My body
realized the danger before my mind did. I grabbed Julie
and stumbled back from the edge, nearly dropping my rod.
(09:01):
We crashed through the brush, our tent forgotten in our panic.
I remember feeling the branches catch at my jacket zipper,
trailing down my skin like fingers. When we finally stopped,
ears straining for footsteps or voices or anything human. The
night had gone silent in a way that made my
insides jump. I could only hear my own breath, thin
(09:22):
and shallow. We doubled back in the harsh gray of morning,
both of us exhausted and feeling that surreal aftershock emptiness.
The river looked the same as always, no sign of
anything wrong, no smash reads, no footprints, not even animal
tracks in the mud. Our rods were still propped at
the water's edge, right where we left them. Julie, pale
(09:44):
and tight mouthed, didn't speak to me the whole way back.
Once home, things felt different. Julie started to avoid her
own reflection. I'd catch her at odd times, half distracted,
murmuring to herself with a strange lilt, as though she
were listening, muttering responses to words I couldn't hear. I
tried to laugh it off and chalked it up to nerves.
(10:05):
We'd had a shock, that was all. But then I
noticed her reflection in our apartment's hallway mirror would sometimes
not sync up with her movements. I told myself it
was bad lighting, warped glass, but the hairs on my
neck didn't agree. I took to avoiding mirrors myself. Even
in the bathroom, I'd splash water across my face with
(10:26):
my head down, not wanting to see anything lurking behind
or beside me. Sometimes, at night, just before sleep, I'd
hear the faint lap of water, as though the river
were running just outside our window. A trick of the mind,
I thought, memory bleeding into dream Stranger events started to
stack up. Our bathroom mirror would be fogged in the morning,
(10:46):
even when neither of us had showered. The discomfort grew
each night. Sometimes I saw a long, thin hand rising
in the glass, just waiting for me to notice. One afternoon,
I heard Julie whispering in the kitchen. I pressed my
ear to the door, listening for a second voice.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Her words were.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Soft, half apologetic, telling someone she would bring them back
to the river soon that she remembered. When I made
noise entering, she fell silent, her hands busy at the
sink in a rehearsed kind of way. Her eyes never
met mine. The rational part of me tried to seek solutions.
Maybe we'd seen a fisherman in the woods in the moonlight.
(11:24):
Our tired brains and a cold mist had fooled us.
Maybe Julie was just stressed, coping through her days after
the shock.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
But the feeling wouldn't leave.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Weeks after, I could swear the faint sound of water
would trickle in our apartment late at night. I still
haven't been back near a river Julie and I barely
talk about that night. Sometimes I catch her reflection mouthing
something I cannot hear, her eyes fixed on mine through
the glass, And when the house is quiet, I flinch
at shadows pooling near mirrors, half expecting to see a
(11:57):
third figure join me, waiting patiently for the right moment
to raise its hand. Story number three. Three years have
passed since that night in the hills outside Eureka. I
never intended to collect stories like this. I just wanted peace,
a bit of freedom. My van is in a clunky,
rusting relic. It's renovated, nice inside, clean panels, shelves, custom
(12:20):
for my gear. It smells of pine air freshener, and
most days old coffee. My dog, Molly White with brindled ears,
has always been my co pilot, fearless and loud enough
to scare off anyone or anything. That's the deal we had.
I drove, she stood guard. I remember how good that
particular night felt. As I parked a cloudless sky, the
(12:42):
moonlike scrape bone overhead hills rolled out in a blue
black sea of grass. I'd stopped on a dirt pull
out out of sight of the road, No trees close by,
just a patch of wildflowers swaying. Even though there was
hardly any breeze. The area was empty for miles. We
settled in. I read a chapter of some throwaway sci
(13:03):
fi novel, fed Molly a treat, then locked everything up
for the night. The air was cooler than usual, crisp.
Through the van's little windows, I saw only the undisturbed
emptiness of rolling fields, swaddled in moonlight. It was maybe
four AM when I was wrenched awake by a sound
both alien and horribly precise. Three hard knocks on the
(13:24):
sliding door. They echoed, carried, each one measured and forceful,
not the timid rap of a stray hiker or the
clumsy bump of a branch in wind, but sharp space taps, pause,
then three more. It repeated, each time, drawing itself out,
hollow and patient, until I could almost feel the shape
(13:45):
of knuckles in the air. Mollie, who barks at falling
pine cones, pressed herself flatter than I thought possible. At
the foot of my bed. Every sense in my body
raked itself raw. The night was so still it felt muffled,
the air before a storm. Yet those deliberate knocks kept
time on steel and glass. I pressed my face close
(14:06):
to the window, straining to see even the hint of
movement outside. No silhouettes, no passing headlights, not even the
quiver of the nearest flower stalk. The moon threw enough
light to see the outline of every stone and blade
of grass within thirty yards.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Nothing moved.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
My breath scrawled fog on the glass, Sweat gathered slick
on the back of my neck. The knocking finally stopped, abruptly,
as it looked, relief didn't come. The silence felt electric, heaving,
with things unsaid. I barely breathed, waiting. Molly was whining softly.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Then from the back doors, the ones that never opened
except for loading, came a new sound, scratching, no rhythm,
no force, just the slow, uneven drag of something sharp
and thin against the aluminum, like someone absently raking fingernails
along a desk. I picture raccoon at first, but the
weight of Molly's fear rooted her. She ignored everything, didn't bark,
(15:06):
didn't move, just stared at the wall, as if she
could make herself vanish inside it. I couldn't look away
from the shadowed back doors something about the scratching layered
inside itself set me on edge. It wasn't frantic, it
was exploratory, curious. I pressed my palm to the van's wall,
half expecting to feel a matching pressure. Cold bled through,
(15:29):
still that measured, jazzy scrape. One minute ten I lost
sense of time, mine flooded by every horror story I'd
ever thrown away as improbable. When the scratching stopped, I
dare not move, Paralyzed in my cheap sleeping bag, every
muscle rigid. That's when the whole van gave a sudden,
stomach jolting shudder. Not a gentle nudge, but a quick,
(15:53):
purposeful lean, as if something big had thrown its weight
against it in a one armed push. The springs beneath
me shrieked, objects rattled on shelves. The van creaked, but
held firm through the window. Nothing. I don't remember falling asleep.
I know I lay wrapped around Molly, one hand clamped
(16:13):
on the handle of a camping hammer, stairs crawling across
the van's roof. Every time I shut my eyes, I
heard that alien sound of knock, scratch, shove in my head.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I waited for.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
More nothing came in the morning I finally forced myself out.
No sign of footprints, no tire tracks, not even the
arch of a paw, Only the grass and wildflowers, standing
gaudy and untouched. The only proof that anything had happened
was on the rail of the sliding doors window. Three
oily handprints, black and unmistakable, one high above my own reach.
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The prints were distinct, as if pressed clean and careful.
The oil left no smell, no sticky residue. I wiped
at them with my sleeve, but the stains wouldn't fully
come off. Molly refused to leave the van and growled
at the open doors. I never found answers for what
had been there that night. Maybe a bear drawn by
old food sense. Could the scratching have been a stray raccoon?
(17:10):
I tested once home every possibility, knocked, scratched, shoved, but
nothing replicated what happened. Still, there's a sliver of me
that doesn't want to know for sure. The thin comfort
I take is that whatever it was, it eventually left.
I still sleep in the van with Molly at my feet.
The hammer stays close, and on the rare dead quiet nights,
(17:33):
I sometimes catch myself listening, waiting for that measured, deliberate
knock to come again. No answer, just a presence in
the emptiness. Story number four, The night at Kingfisher Dam,
keeps pricking needles into the back of my mind even now.
Some things are easier to forget, chalk up to fatigue
(17:53):
or an overactive imagination, but I have neither. Forty seven
years behind me, including a year in the Jungles Vietnam,
have dulled my nerves to most fears. I've been ambushed
in the dark, heard the whine of mortar shells over
my head, seen friends reduced to red streaks in the grass.
Funny though I never considered that the worst thing I'd
(18:14):
ever see would come forty years later doing something as
harmless as fishing after a barbecue. It was early May,
not quite summer yet, and the lake was still jittery
with the last of the cold air.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I remember the rough song.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Planks of the dock groaned under each step as we
wandered out, me and Mikey, my old pal. The smell
hung in the air, mud weeds and something cold and metallic,
the sort of sharp scent you get off a raw riverstone.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
We'd figured we'd put.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
In one last night out before summer crowds took over
the dam. A lot of the locals said things about
Kingfisher after sundown, big fish stories. I'd always figured Mikey
was a practical man. He laughed about it like I did.
Our boots creaked firefl speckled around our ankles, blinking slow
like dying coals. We set up on the right side
(19:05):
of the dock, where the boards leaned slightly south, dipping
toward black water dense enough to swallow a float hole.
Mikey opened a can of worms. Quiet, just the slosh
of beer and whistle of far off peepers for company.
We didn't talk much, just cast and reeled, cast and reeled,
(19:25):
hands in thick, calloused arcs through the gloom.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It's funny now, the.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Details that claw their way back through the static, the
way Mikey's wedding ring gleamed briefly in the falling sun.
The old lantern sputtering at my feet, flaring, drawing gnats
in lazy loops. We were about to leave. Dusk was collapsing,
shadows spilling out from the trees like black water. I'd
packed up, stowing my reel with old stiff fingers, glancing
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occasionally at the dark, lazy ripples. Mikey muttered he'd try
one last cast, as if the goddamn lake oed in
one big fish. It's what happened next that keeps me
from sleeping right. I heard his rod whistle softly, just
once as he flicked his line out over the water.
But I never heard the lure hit, never caught a splash,
(20:14):
no rings rippling out from where it should have dropped. Instead,
the silence thickened, almost pressing against my ears. No frogs,
no bugs, just that lantern fizzing. I turned back, expecting
to see Mikey peering into the water, cursing his line.
I saw nothing, no outline, not even his boots. Angler's
(20:35):
cap was gone too. He kept it on rain or
shine every trip. I called out for him, expected some
crude joke, maybe his head popping up from behind the
dock planks, grinning like an idiot, telling me I'd scare easy.
But there was nothing. Just the steady tremble of the rod,
now leaning against the end post, the line humming in
(20:57):
the air, taut like something heavy held it down far
under the skin of the water. I reached out hands
shaking and ran my fingers along the old cork handle.
It was cold, sticky, and vibrating, like a tuning fork.
Right at the edge of hearing, I could see the
line silver in the lantern's light, running straight out toward
(21:18):
the patch of black water, where the surface made no
sound at all. My mouth went dry. I stepped to
the very end of the dock, careful. The boards felt
distantly soft, and kept thinking of Mikey. If he'd fallen in,
there would have been a splash, a shout, something. I
listened hard. Still nothing, no circle of bubbles, no panic
(21:40):
in the weeds, just silence pressing down like the heavy
All I found was Mikey's rod and the lantern starting
to flicker out. I edged along the dock, scanning the
water line, yelling his name, more out of fear than hope.
My flashlight beam cut over the shoreline. No panic prints
in the mud, no no drag marks, nothing. The pebbled
(22:03):
shore was smooth and undisturbed, save for where our boots
had come down earlier in the evening. I kept thinking
of how his footprints should have registered. The shoreline was tacky,
the kind that sucks at your souls.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
If you stand too long.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
But nothing new, no tracks leading away, no splash, no
sign of a body or any struggle, only that trembling
rod and.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
The line snaking out to nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
When the lantern died, I stood in the cold dark
for several minutes, afraid, more than I'd been since I
was a twenty one year old, and a blasted clearing
under red tracer fire. Then I ran for my truck,
started up the engine, headlights, cutting through a wet mist
curling out from the trees. I drove to the ranger's
office in a fog, mouth and fingers numb.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
It was a blur.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Cops, search dogs, flashlights, sweeping through reeds and underbrush, calling
Mikey's name so many times it became something else. They
told me maybe he wandered off to take a leak
and slipped in somewhere down the shore, or had a
sudden spell, heart attack stroke. They asked if he drank much,
if he'd been upset. Did he talk about leaving? I
(23:13):
said no, so many times my jaw ached, but I
couldn't answer why his rod was standing up still, quivering
hours later, line as taut as a snare leading into water,
so calm it looked frozen, or why I'd never heard
a single sound, not even a ripple. Cops searched all night,
no person, no tracks. They chalked it up eventually to misadventure.
(23:36):
Maybe he wandered off.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Maybe not.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
I go by the dam sometimes, watching the shrinking sun
stutter on the water, the docks still there, soft damp
paint peeling in strips. People fish there still tell stories.
Sometimes I remember the feeling of the rod vibrating in
my hand, and the way the water beneath it seemed
to swallow all noise, all hope. Mikey's wife moved out
(24:01):
to Arkansas a year after took down his photo. I
still wonder maybe the mind tricks itself seeing what it
can't explain. Maybe Mikey slipped. Maybe he's still out there somewhere,
bones tangled with weeds. But I know what I felt,
that line, tight as a nerve, leading out to a
(24:22):
place where the world seemed to fade at the edges.
And sometimes in the cold hush before sleep, I swear
I can still fill the dock, sinking just a little,
as if someone's heavy boots still wet, or walking right
behind me. Story number five. It's strange, how a place
can look so inviting in daylight and then so unrecognizable
(24:43):
at night. That little lake was all sun flecked water
lilies and darting minnows in the afternoon, and my friend
Ethan and I chose a spot right at its northern edge,
a flat patch under the birches, with a good view.
The lake, so shallow and friendly in the light, went
flat and smooth as glass. It stopped reflecting anything but
(25:03):
the moon. I tried to read for a while in
the tent. Ethan fell asleep almost instantly. The mosquitoes seemed
to get louder as the hours pressed on, but the
night was otherwise uneventful, just the constant fidget of leaves
in the wind. I woke up, no, not quite woke,
but was jarred from a halfway dream by the sound
(25:24):
of water. Not the gentle sipping at the mudline, not
the flutter of fish fins. This was artificial, rhythmic, two deep,
overlapping splashes, like a pair of oversized paddles driving flat
through the water.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Again and again.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I heard the oars before anything else, quick and deliberate,
as if someone was racing across the lake. At first,
my brain fumbled for context. Was this Ethan going to pee?
But no, it was coming from the water itself, past
the ring of ice coated lily pads. I fumbled for
my water much it was just before three. I waited
(26:03):
for a lantern or a silhouette, for the gliding nose
of a canoe or rowboat to break from the reeds.
I stared so hard and long, I felt my vision
skip and warp. But in that field of moonlight there
was nothing, not a black shadow, not a flicker. I
pressed a hand to the thin tent wall, feeling cold
sweat beat beneath my palm. The boat was close, then
(26:25):
almost to our side, just off the small pebbled shore.
I braced for the crunch of haull on gravel. The
oars chopped faster, water splitting in quick, gasping intervals. I
tried to imagine a fisherman unable to sleep, someone desperate
or crazy, or simply lost.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
But who would row like that with no light?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
No engine is allowed on these waters, just old creaky canoes.
The rangers wheel out once a season. Then midstroke, the
sounds snapped in half gone. Mid splash, the air smothered itself.
No ripples spidered out from the water. The only thing
moving was the fog starting to tatter the surface. I
stared out from the tent. The zipper pulled halfway in
(27:10):
case I needed a yanke.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
It shut.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
The silence pressed into my ears until my own pulse
sounded like footsteps behind me. I blinked and blinked, desperate
to see, but the darkness remained seamless For an hour.
I lay rigid, every muscle strung tight, the flashlight locked
in my hand. I tried to count my breasts, tried
to convince myself this was a trick.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Especially at night. Wind can whip up noises.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Maybe it was a distant motor backfiring over the summit,
echoing here. On the other hand, the stillness was clinical, perfect,
the kind of hush that suggests something is listening to.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Just out of sight.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Eventually, I worked up the nerve to unzip the tent
fully and stick my head out. The woods looked normal,
the ground white with moonlight, the birches unmoving. The faint,
musty reek of fish drifted in on the breeze, stronger
than before, as if something had disturbed the sediment in
the shallow water or gutted a carp close to shore.
(28:09):
My heart hammered even faster in the morning. I asked Ethan,
trying to sound off hand, if he'd heard anything unusual.
He scrunched up his face and shrugged. Maybe I was overtired.
It was a long hike in sound can play tricks,
after all. Still, I walked the shore alone, searching for
footprints or drag marks, any sign of a boat landing,
(28:30):
even just a broken twig. The mud near the water's
edge was undisturbed, smooth except for the tracks of herons
and the little cloven punctures of deer. No evidence, no
or marks, no indentations. Dozens of little clues crept into
my memory during the day, things easy to discount, but
hard to dismiss altogether. The faint echo of a man
(28:53):
humming cut off, like a radio flicked suddenly off, brushed
through my head. The crisp, metallic tang the air, both
familiar and out of place, as if an engine had
run hard and cold somewhere close. The hollow, stinging pressure
behind my eyes that caffeine couldn't touch. Fatigue maybe, or
the residue of adrenaline. Back at home, I searched up
(29:15):
what I could about the lake. Lots of campers had stories,
seeing lantern lights where there shouldn't be any, the sound
of laughter mingling with early morning fog, a line cast across.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
The water with no one to hold it.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
The locals have their stories, the doomed fishermen, cursed to
row against the current forever, never coming back to shore.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
But everyone laughs them off.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yet when I switch off the light at night, there's
a trace of that other silence. Sometimes, just as I'm
drifting off, I hear again the relentless rhythm of oars
on water, getting closer than vanishing, as if they were
never there at all, and always, no matter how skeptically
I recount it, the feeling never quite lets go, the
certainty that something was moving out on that timeless water
(30:01):
just beyond sight. Still Lingers story number six. It was
supposed to be a simple night outdoors, not really the
deep wilderness, just a tent pitched near the north edge
of Blacktail State Park. I needed the reset, I told myself.
A couple of days with no phone, I left the
car at the designated pull off, slung my gear, and
(30:22):
walked a good mile off the gravel. The place I
picked was open, not far from a thin stream, nothing weird,
nothing off, the kind of place that has the everyday
hush of nature. The fog crept in as soon as
I'd staked my tent. It wasn't heavy, just a grayish
blush filtering through the branches, enough to dull the trees,
(30:43):
soften the ground in misty shadows. I figured it came
off the stream. I put some water onto boil, rummaged
through my rucksack. Maybe it was the fog or the
odd quiet, but the camp felt a little less friendly.
When twilight slid between the pines, I decided to explore
the wood before calling it a night. That was when
I noticed the old path. It didn't look right. There
(31:05):
were no blazes, no signs, just two worn lines between
stones covered in green, the moss glistening with fog. It
looked like a track that didn't feel inviting. But something
about it hooked at my curiosity. That's what I told myself. Anyway,
I figured i'd give it twenty minutes, then turn around
before the light died. My feet made soft noises on
(31:27):
the moss, but even those faded quickly. After the first
five minutes, I realized two things There was no sound anymore,
not the wind, not distant bird calls, just a dead
silence that seemed to press in on my head. And
the path didn't show up on my offline map. My
phone glowed steady GPS, spinning as if I'd walked.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Off the edge of coverage.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The fog started closing in, clinging to my legs and
swallowing the fall of my boots.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Smell, sharp and sour, like wet metal and something rot
beneath the moss. I thought maybe mushrooms or an old
animal buried under the forest mulch, but as I kept walking,
the scent remained, always faint, always just at the edge
of breath.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
I glanced behind me.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
The way I'd come was still there, the mossy stones
running straight between the trunks, but everything else was just
gray and formless. I moved faster, hoping the path would
arc back toward familiar place, or at least somewhere marked.
The minutes stretched, the path seemed to curve, doubling on itself,
but I was certain I wasn't gaining any ground. My
(32:36):
heart thumped, but I kept moving, light aimed down at
my feet. That was when I noticed the mist wasn't caring.
My breath pooled before my mouth, but the fog refused
to swirl, as though it had density, a heavy dampness
that muffled all movement. Above, the trees pressed close, branches
curled together. I didn't remember them being so thick, and
(32:58):
the silence it was absolute, no scuttle, no creaks. My
skin prickled. Surely, the path had to end. All paths
have endings. I sucked a ragged breath and turned sharply,
deciding to jog back the way i'd come. I counted
my strides, glancing for landmarks, but the scenery remained stubbornly,
(33:20):
monstrously monotonous. Mossy stones, root, thick undergrowth, fog in every cranny.
It was only when the moss started feeling springy, rotten
instead of soft, that I realized something in the air
had changed. The silence wasn't quite whole anymore. There was
a taut humming leaking from somewhere just ahead. Before I
(33:41):
had time to second guess myself, the path spilled open
into a clearing.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I stopped dead.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
The mist coiled here, slick and dense enough to taste
tinged faintly with that rotting copper smell. There were five
cabins to one side of the clearing, old, hardly more
than collapsing shells, their timber blackened by rain and time. Overhead,
low branches sagged, strung with something that looked like rusted lanterns.
(34:08):
Some of them flickered dimly, but it felt colder standing
under them, as if each spark leached a bit of
warmth from the air. I told myself there are abandoned
structures all over the country, old logging camps, ranger outposts,
even hunting lodges, most long forgotten. But as I approached
the nearest cabin, the air turned syrupy, thick, with a
(34:29):
bitter moisture that stuck to my tongue. There was glass
in the window, gray with grime, and before I fully
registered what I was seeing, my eyes locked on the
shapes pressed faintly against the inside, handprints, small kid sized palms,
streaks of moisture clinging inside the glass, long drip marks
(34:49):
running toward the boards below. The prints weren't old dust
or animal traces. They were fresh enough. My mouth dried out.
My mind raced through logical explanations, but the princes trailed downward,
not up, as though pressed by a standing child. They
looked more like something dragged slowly. I didn't dare check
the door. I already heard a muffled, rhythmic knocking from
(35:12):
one of the back cabins, but it could have been
a branch in the wind, except there was still no wind.
Nothing moved but my own panic pulse. I turned and ran,
not caring if I left the path. Branches whipped against
my face, shoes splashing through mud and dead leaves, Fog
clutching at my shins. No matter where I turned, the
(35:33):
ground felt wrong, spongy, adrift, like I might break through somehow.
I broke through the tree line to find cold air
and the reassuring faded blue of my tent, just where
I'd left it. The woods behind me looked completely normal again.
My hands shook as I zipped myself inside, feeling the
ridiculous urge to check for marks on my own skin,
(35:55):
to verify that nothing had followed me. I spent a listless,
wide eye. Every crackle of the fire felt like distant footsteps,
every pop in the brush like a muffled whisper. When
the sun rose and I forced myself outside I scoured
the area for signs, the path, the clearing, even just
(36:15):
those mossy stones.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
They were gone.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I told myself that it was just my imagination, maybe
as I broke camp, as I drove past the other
campers who laughed and pointed at deer in the ditches.
But sometimes late at night, I still feel that cold
pulsing an settling over me and wonder if I was
just lost, or if I ever really made it. Back
story number seven. It wasn't my first time ice fishing.
(36:42):
The north end of Lake Pewacket was thick with black
crappy this winter, and after a hectic week at work,
I decided to give it a shot. The weather called
for sun and clouds, maybe a little wind, typical for
a Saturday in February. I loaded the plastic sled with
my canvas pop up hut and propane heaterrag it over
the groaning ice, away from the other trucks clustered near
(37:03):
the parking lot. Two hours in, my beard crusted with frost.
I hadn't caught a thing except the dull whine of
wind nosing at the corners of my hut. The sky
outside was dark and I was threading another minnow. When
the temperature dropped, I felt it in my bones, a fine,
sharp chill, like a dentist's pick. Then, almost without warning,
(37:24):
the wind howled and everything outside turned white. The lake vanished,
as if I had been swallowed in a snow drift.
Nothing but the shriek of the blizzard against my pop
up walls and powdery snow sifting through the zipper seams.
I did what I'd always done before in storms, shut
off the heater to save propane, zipped myself deeper in
my parka texted my brother that I'd be staying put
(37:46):
until visibility came back. The wind battered my hut, stretching
the canvas, making the seams creak. I snapped somewhere underfoot,
a pure warning crack. Ten maybe fifteen minutes passed. I
knew how fast these whiteouts could roar in and then
clear again, even if the tension of waiting felt endless.
(38:07):
As suddenly as it had started, the wind eased erased.
I zipped a flap open and stared out what I
expected was my truck, maybe the parking lot across the ice,
the lonely marks of my own footprints. Instead for a
breathless moment, the world outside was old. The ice so
familiar just minutes ago, was now a rumbling pane littered
(38:31):
with squat wooden shacks. They were nothing like the modern
huts with their bright plastics and reflective tape. These were
battered crates, windows patched with rags, doors hanging on rusty hinges.
Among them, bundled figures moved, big, muffled shapes in wool coats,
boots braced with rope. A fire smoldered in a barrel,
(38:53):
soot coiling up toward the gray sky. I smelled woodsmoke
so strong it caught at my throat. Somewhere thet her
of metal pails rang out, and a man's laugh, muffled
and old, drifted over the white, like something halfway between
a memory and a threat. The ice itself flexed under
the weight of so many bodies. I could hear it,
(39:13):
a slow, groaning yawn, warped. Though maybe the most out
of place was the girl among the bundled shadows. She
alone wore a sun yellow dress, its hem frosting over
where it trailed against the ice. Her hair, long, dripping,
impossibly black, hung down over her face, so I couldn't
see her features. She stood no more than thirty yards away,
(39:35):
too thin for the weather, pale, bare feet, blue with cold.
She was waving her arms, swaying in a sluggish rhythm,
fingers crooked, and each arc of her hand leaving a
thin streak on the air, like an afterimage. I froze,
my first instinct. Panic almost made me duck back inside
my hut. But something in the way she watched told
(39:56):
me it wouldn't change anything. I tried to watch the
people at the the other huts, hoping they'd noticed the
girl or looked my way, but none so much as glanced.
They moved with mechanical slowness, not speaking, and faces all
hidden under heavy brims and hoods, as though they were
carved wooden puppets. Frantic, I looked for my own landmarks,
(40:16):
my red forward, the empty parking lot, the dock. All
I saw was the parade of ancient vehicles. A rusted
pickup whose tires seemed sunken deep in the ice, a
horse drawn sleigh. The girl took a step closer, bare feet,
making no sound at all. For a second, just before
she disappeared, I thought her mouth was open in a
(40:37):
wordless scream, a ragged, gaping maw, blackened by frostbite. Then
a soundless gust flattened the entire scene. The island of
old ice huts, the people, the strange machinery, and ancient
laughter all whisked away like soot. The girl's yellow dress flickered,
and she was gone. I was left alone, standing in
(40:58):
blinding sunlight, as if the world had been wiped clean.
My ford sat twenty yards away, waiting. I could see
my own bootprints, sharp and fresh, but none others at all.
My phone's screen claimed only fifteen minutes had passed, enough
time for a smoke or to brew my second cup
of instant coffee. For a long moment, I couldn't move.
(41:21):
My breath curled out before me and vanished. I scanned
the horizon, no old shacks, no crowd, no bonfire. Making
my way back to the truck, I kept expecting to
see footsteps tracking behind me. Each crunch of snow echoed
too loud in the flat silence. When I passed the
place where the girl in yellow had stood, I found nothing,
(41:42):
just smooth eyes, thick as ever, marked only by brittle
whirls of frost. That night, I paced the length of
my apartment. Unable to settle that girl's wave looping in
my memory like a signal out of deep space. I
searched every local form and news archive I could find.
A faded newspaper scan from nineteen twenty three told of
a winter festival out on Piewacket, featuring a contest for
(42:05):
girls in their Sunday best. One merry little in a
yellow dress, had fallen in a sudden squall and disappeared
beneath the ice. Her body had never been found. The
more I thought, the more my mind rehearsed rational explanations,
tricks of sun on ice, or the residue of half
heard stories lodged in my subconscious, simple explanations, reasonable ones.
(42:28):
But some nights I still smell old wood smoke thick
as grief, and see a flickering dot of yellow just
beyond my bedroom window, waving with a slow, broken rhythm.
When I check, there's nothing still. I can never quite
decide which is more frightening, that what I saw was real,
or that my mind is capable of conjuring such precise,
(42:50):
impossible ghosts from the cold story Number eight. Last summer,
I found myself restless, craving escape from my ordinary city life.
Solid dude had always settled my mind. So I picked
a remote lake. I loaded up my old solo canoe
with gear and paddled out just as the sun slipped away,
planning to fish by moonlight and sleep under the stars.
(43:11):
The air was still heavy with tree scent. I drifted
idly in the shallows, tying on lures and casting a
few lazy lines. The frogs were out, their low pulses,
bouncing across the water, backed by the static of insects.
Every so often, something big would pop at the surface,
somewhere in the invisible reaches behind me, making me jump,
(43:32):
even though I knew it was just a fish hunting.
It was peaceful, but not quiet, if you know what
I mean. There was always some sound to remind me
I wasn't alone.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
After midnight I noticed it.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
I couldn't tell you the exact moment it started, but
at some point the layers of night sound simply dropped away,
not faded. A frog drops off, or a wind dies slowly,
but vanished, snatched like a hand clapping out a candle.
No insects, no frogs, not even a distant owl or
the faint rush of trees in the wind. It should
(44:04):
have been beautiful, but the silence started thrumbing in my head,
prickling my arms with clammy goose flesh. Even my paddle
didn't sound right anymore. I pulled it through the water,
expecting the usual hollow slap, but it was like my
ears had been stuffed with wool. The ripples looked normal,
but the world had snapped soft, as if submerged under
(44:25):
thick glass. Every motion exaggerated and muted. I whispered a
curse to test my own voice, but the word hung
strangely on my tongue, flat and dull, as if I
were muttering into a pillow, not an echo, not even
a whisper. I tried to push the unsettled feeling aside,
maybe a storm rolling in, or the strange acoustics of
(44:48):
the water and the dense tall trees around the lake.
I glanced skyward, hoping to blame the pressure or the weather,
but the sky seemed normal, clear, but for a low
lying mist forming on the water's skin.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
In rolling off the.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Far side, where the shadows hunched heaviest, it crept toward me,
thickening as I watched the clumps of it, somehow ducking
the moonlight slipping deeper into the invisible.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
That's when I saw it.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Something tall and unnaturally black moved along the rim of
the far shore.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
At first, I tried to.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Rationalize a moose, maybe half shrouded in fog, or a
fisherman and a dark rainslicker paddling back in. I tried
to find a mast, or the glint of a paddle,
a telltale flash of reflection. But there was only shape,
tall and narrow, gliding steady as if it belonged to
the foggy water. Rather than breaking it. It didn't bounce
(45:40):
with each step. It just slid utterly, noiseless. Not even
a ripple slipped out from behind it. My skin crawled,
the hairs on my arm stood on end, like the
times I'd had fevers as a kid. Part of my
mind kept whispering moose or some big animal. I strained
to catch any noise as the thing drifted near along
(46:00):
the shore, the splash of hoofs, the snap of some
low hanging brush, But nothing filled the void. The air
pressed hot against my cheek, and I realized I was
holding my own breath, desperate not to make a sound.
The mist closed in swallowing the far bank for a second.
Everything was white and cold and close, and shapes wove
(46:20):
in the fog, ridiculous things like elongated limbs and open mouths.
I blinked, trying to clear my head, and the world
snapped back into place. The fog thinned all at once,
and sound roared back, frogs, insects, fish popping. It was
such a shock I almost dropped my paddle. It was
as though I'd slipped under water for a minute and
(46:42):
come up gasping. Every drop of noise suddenly painfully clear.
The sky still looked the same, and the trees were
still there, undisturbed and familiar. No sign of the dark
figure remained, not even a ripple on the water where
I'd watched it glide. I stared at the bank for
a long time, waiting for it to move again. My
(47:02):
eyes watered nothing. I laughed it off, but the sense
of unease lingered. Even now, I can't shake the feeling
of the silence clamping down on me, or the suffocating
sense that, for a few minutes on that lake I'd slid.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Into somewhere I didn't belong.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
That figure, whatever it was or wasn't, has never shown
up in any headlines, never left any trace of teeth
or claws or missing persons. The lake looks exactly the
same on the maps, unremarkable, just another blue smudge in
a forest. Still, on quiet nights, I feel that something
is watching me, waiting for the right moment to pounce
on me in dead silence,
Story number one. I've always liked camping. There's something simple
and reassuring about being out there on your own, with
only the forest watching in on you.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
At least that's what I thought.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
It's been nearly two years now since the night I
finally understood there are things you can't explain, and some
you don't even want to. It was supposed to be
a pleasant weekend and escape from city noise and blinking screens.
I set up my camp by a small lake i'd
found online, one of those quiet, lesser known places, bordered
by dense pine and birch. The air was warm, the
(00:35):
sky just shifting from blue to black as the sun
faded behind the trees. By eleven PM, i'd finish my sandwich,
zipped up the tent, and let exhaustion pull me down.
It was deep, uninterrupted sleep. At first. Something about the
lake calmed me, the gentle slap of water, soft creak
of branches in the wind. If anything moved in the dark,
(00:57):
I didn't notice. I woke up suddenly. There was a scream,
thin and sharp, slicing through the silence, snapping me fully awake.
With sheer animal panic, I struggled out of my sleeping bag,
heart pounding so hard it hurt. That scream it was
long and high, not quite human, not quite animal. I
fumbled for my phone instantly, noting my hands were shaking.
(01:20):
The screen blinked on two three am.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
No signal.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
That was odd, because earlier I'd had a full bar,
No wind outside, just a humming sort of cold that
crept in over my skin, making the air prickle. There
was a heavy sensation pressure somehow all around and in
the pit of my stomach, as if everything in the
woods was pausing to listen. That's when thunder groaned overhead,
slow and deep. Though the forecast had been clear. There
(01:49):
was no rain, but the air felt charge strange, like
a static build up before a shock. The silence after
the thunder was so complete, so unnatural, I could hear
my own pulse. Trees didn't sway, no leaves rustled. I
forced myself outside, the air colder than it had been
all day. My head spun, legs weak as I left
(02:12):
the lantern behind and stepped into the dark. My flashlight
cut a feeble beam through the black, and that's when
I saw her.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
At the far edge of the trees.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
She stood back, lit by nothing, pale in the moonlight,
wearing something white and loose, hair hanging down. She didn't move,
She looked right at me. Her face was shadowed, but
the eyes seemed too wide, too fixated. I opened my mouth,
tried to shout for her, ask who she was, what
she was doing at my sight in the middle of
(02:42):
the night, But my voice just seemed to vanish in
the thick air. Then she was gone, as if the
forest had folded over her. A sudden smell hit me,
jasmine and roses, sweet and sickly, way out of place
for the season, and unmistakably strong. The scent wasn't blown
on the breeze, it was everywhere around.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Me, in me.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
My muscles tightened, my limbs numb. I started walking. I
don't even remember making the choice to move. My body
just followed that scent, like I was bound by a
leash and someone dragged me.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
My thoughts floated.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I stepped up to the very spot where she'd stood,
and the ground started to hum under my feet. It
wasn't a normal vibration, not like the deep tremor of
distant trucks or quakes. It was closer, rhythmic, as if
something alive pulsed beneath the soil. The air behind my
neck felt oily cold. For a split second, I was
(03:41):
certain someone was behind me, but when I tried to turn,
I couldn't. My spine went rigid. A pressure built on
my back, not heavy, more like guiding me forward. Suddenly
the trees were gone, and I was at the lake,
windless and impossibly still. The water's surface reflected the class,
but shadows twined beneath the ripples, thick, swirling, darker than
(04:04):
the night sky above. My face hovered inches from the shore,
my reflection broken and strange. My thoughts screamed at me
to stop, but my hands and legs ignored the panic.
I tried to yell, to turn anything, but I might
as well have shouted into concrete. The smell grew stronger,
almost chemical, now sweet and rotten, like flowers forgotten in
(04:26):
a closed room. Something pressed at my back, deliberate, confident.
I felt myself fall slowly, like being dipped under by
invisible arms. The water closed overhead. It wasn't cold, the
way lake water should be in summer. It was freezing, empty,
like plunging into bruised metal. The shock knocked the air
(04:48):
out of me. My fingers wouldn't move. Something or nothing
wrapped around my ankles tugged me down. I kicked out,
not a fish, not weeds, nothing I could see. The
water pressed in thickened my mouth, and then it went black,
and then it was morning. I woke inside my tent,
heart racing. Every muscle ached, and my clothes clung to
(05:11):
my skin, heavy and damp. My hair dripped. The sleeping
bag was soaked through, as if I'd swum in it,
but the tent floor was dry. There was a dull
ache in my chest and throat, like I'd swallowed ice. Outside,
the rising sun was pale and unfriendly on the dirt
at my tense entrance. Someone something had set down a
(05:33):
small pile of flowers, all dark and slick, rotting into
blackish mush. The sickly sweet smell lingered half familiar. No
footprints except mine, but the edge of the lake was
marked with what could have been draglines or just the
imprint of a rolling log. I couldn't be sure. My
(05:53):
phone signal was back, and the sky was clear, as
if nothing had happened at all. I tore down the
camp in half the usual time, all day and for
weeks after, I tried to find explanations a nightmare. Maybe
I'd gone out in my sleep and stumbled back. That's
what I tell myself now. But I don't camp alone anymore.
(06:14):
Some reasons are enough even when you don't understand them.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Story number two.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Last spring, I went camping with my girlfriend along a
remote stretch of the Little Bear River. It was mid April,
the kind of early thaw where the world is damp
and you can sometimes see mist clinging to the ground
just after sunset. My girlfriend Julie had a new lantern
and a spinning reel she'd been eager to use. We
talked about how peaceful it would be without the gentle
(06:41):
roar of cars, finally hearing our own breath.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The day itself was uneventful.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
We set up the tent on sandy loam, just a
narrow belt of trees between us and the steady slow water.
It was cold, but not terribly so, and after we
built a small fire, I felt the worst of it
received from my bones. I remember how blue the sky
got just before dark, navy and endless, and how it
reflected in the river to make the water almost gleam
(07:08):
in the moonlight around midnight, we decided to try our
hand at night fishing. There's something comforting about quietly casting
side by side, the whisper of a line whipping through air.
Julie set a few feet to my left, her stare
intent on her lure as it arked and landed on
the glassy water. I was mostly watching the surface of
the river, noticing how still it had gotten, not even rippling.
(07:32):
That's when I saw it, the third reflection on the water.
In the glassy black our shapes were cast in perfect duplicate,
but I saw, standing just behind my own reflection, a
third figure. This one was taller, its face pale and featureless,
Long black hair draped down. The form didn't waver with
(07:53):
the current. It was crisp, slightly offset from me, as
though it were lurking right over my shoulder. For a
few seconds, I was rooted in place by confusion. I
remember thinking about how optical illusions work, how maybe the
combination of moonlight and fatigue was messing with my eyes.
Then I felt Julie's hand clamp around my forearm, the
(08:14):
grip cold and rigid, her version of panic. She had
seen it too. Without a word, I spun around expecting
to find another camper with a flashlight, some prankster who
had stumbled into our camp. There was no one. The
bank was clear, only our gear and the low shrubs
pale in the moonlight. But when I looked back at
the water's surface, the third reflection hadn't moved. It now
(08:38):
stood with one hand, slowly achingly rising just its hand,
the slow arc unnatural, every joint ticking with no patience.
My own arms and Julie's were frozen at our sides,
but its reflection moved entirely on its own. My body
realized the danger before my mind did. I grabbed Julie
and stumbled back from the edge, nearly dropping my rod.
(09:01):
We crashed through the brush, our tent forgotten in our panic.
I remember feeling the branches catch at my jacket zipper,
trailing down my skin like fingers. When we finally stopped,
ears straining for footsteps or voices or anything human. The
night had gone silent in a way that made my
insides jump. I could only hear my own breath, thin
(09:22):
and shallow. We doubled back in the harsh gray of morning,
both of us exhausted and feeling that surreal aftershock emptiness.
The river looked the same as always, no sign of
anything wrong, no smash reads, no footprints, not even animal
tracks in the mud. Our rods were still propped at
the water's edge, right where we left them. Julie, pale
(09:44):
and tight mouthed, didn't speak to me the whole way back.
Once home, things felt different. Julie started to avoid her
own reflection. I'd catch her at odd times, half distracted,
murmuring to herself with a strange lilt, as though she
were listening, muttering responses to words I couldn't hear. I
tried to laugh it off and chalked it up to nerves.
(10:05):
We'd had a shock, that was all. But then I
noticed her reflection in our apartment's hallway mirror would sometimes
not sync up with her movements. I told myself it
was bad lighting, warped glass, but the hairs on my
neck didn't agree. I took to avoiding mirrors myself. Even
in the bathroom, I'd splash water across my face with
(10:26):
my head down, not wanting to see anything lurking behind
or beside me. Sometimes, at night, just before sleep, I'd
hear the faint lap of water, as though the river
were running just outside our window. A trick of the mind,
I thought, memory bleeding into dream Stranger events started to
stack up. Our bathroom mirror would be fogged in the morning,
(10:46):
even when neither of us had showered. The discomfort grew
each night. Sometimes I saw a long, thin hand rising
in the glass, just waiting for me to notice. One afternoon,
I heard Julie whispering in the kitchen. I pressed my
ear to the door, listening for a second voice.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Her words were.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Soft, half apologetic, telling someone she would bring them back
to the river soon that she remembered. When I made
noise entering, she fell silent, her hands busy at the
sink in a rehearsed kind of way. Her eyes never
met mine. The rational part of me tried to seek solutions.
Maybe we'd seen a fisherman in the woods in the moonlight.
(11:24):
Our tired brains and a cold mist had fooled us.
Maybe Julie was just stressed, coping through her days after
the shock.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
But the feeling wouldn't leave.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Weeks after, I could swear the faint sound of water
would trickle in our apartment late at night. I still
haven't been back near a river Julie and I barely
talk about that night. Sometimes I catch her reflection mouthing
something I cannot hear, her eyes fixed on mine through
the glass, And when the house is quiet, I flinch
at shadows pooling near mirrors, half expecting to see a
(11:57):
third figure join me, waiting patiently for the right moment
to raise its hand. Story number three. Three years have
passed since that night in the hills outside Eureka. I
never intended to collect stories like this. I just wanted peace,
a bit of freedom. My van is in a clunky,
rusting relic. It's renovated, nice inside, clean panels, shelves, custom
(12:20):
for my gear. It smells of pine air freshener, and
most days old coffee. My dog, Molly White with brindled ears,
has always been my co pilot, fearless and loud enough
to scare off anyone or anything. That's the deal we had.
I drove, she stood guard. I remember how good that
particular night felt. As I parked a cloudless sky, the
(12:42):
moonlike scrape bone overhead hills rolled out in a blue
black sea of grass. I'd stopped on a dirt pull
out out of sight of the road, No trees close by,
just a patch of wildflowers swaying. Even though there was
hardly any breeze. The area was empty for miles. We
settled in. I read a chapter of some throwaway sci
(13:03):
fi novel, fed Molly a treat, then locked everything up
for the night. The air was cooler than usual, crisp.
Through the van's little windows, I saw only the undisturbed
emptiness of rolling fields, swaddled in moonlight. It was maybe
four AM when I was wrenched awake by a sound
both alien and horribly precise. Three hard knocks on the
(13:24):
sliding door. They echoed, carried, each one measured and forceful,
not the timid rap of a stray hiker or the
clumsy bump of a branch in wind, but sharp space taps, pause,
then three more. It repeated, each time, drawing itself out,
hollow and patient, until I could almost feel the shape
(13:45):
of knuckles in the air. Mollie, who barks at falling
pine cones, pressed herself flatter than I thought possible. At
the foot of my bed. Every sense in my body
raked itself raw. The night was so still it felt muffled,
the air before a storm. Yet those deliberate knocks kept
time on steel and glass. I pressed my face close
(14:06):
to the window, straining to see even the hint of
movement outside. No silhouettes, no passing headlights, not even the
quiver of the nearest flower stalk. The moon threw enough
light to see the outline of every stone and blade
of grass within thirty yards.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Nothing moved.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
My breath scrawled fog on the glass, Sweat gathered slick
on the back of my neck. The knocking finally stopped, abruptly,
as it looked, relief didn't come. The silence felt electric, heaving,
with things unsaid. I barely breathed, waiting. Molly was whining softly.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Then from the back doors, the ones that never opened
except for loading, came a new sound, scratching, no rhythm,
no force, just the slow, uneven drag of something sharp
and thin against the aluminum, like someone absently raking fingernails
along a desk. I picture raccoon at first, but the
weight of Molly's fear rooted her. She ignored everything, didn't bark,
(15:06):
didn't move, just stared at the wall, as if she
could make herself vanish inside it. I couldn't look away
from the shadowed back doors something about the scratching layered
inside itself set me on edge. It wasn't frantic, it
was exploratory, curious. I pressed my palm to the van's wall,
half expecting to feel a matching pressure. Cold bled through,
(15:29):
still that measured, jazzy scrape. One minute ten I lost
sense of time, mine flooded by every horror story I'd
ever thrown away as improbable. When the scratching stopped, I
dare not move, Paralyzed in my cheap sleeping bag, every
muscle rigid. That's when the whole van gave a sudden,
stomach jolting shudder. Not a gentle nudge, but a quick,
(15:53):
purposeful lean, as if something big had thrown its weight
against it in a one armed push. The springs beneath
me shrieked, objects rattled on shelves. The van creaked, but
held firm through the window. Nothing. I don't remember falling asleep.
I know I lay wrapped around Molly, one hand clamped
(16:13):
on the handle of a camping hammer, stairs crawling across
the van's roof. Every time I shut my eyes, I
heard that alien sound of knock, scratch, shove in my head.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I waited for.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
More nothing came in the morning I finally forced myself out.
No sign of footprints, no tire tracks, not even the
arch of a paw, Only the grass and wildflowers, standing
gaudy and untouched. The only proof that anything had happened
was on the rail of the sliding doors window. Three
oily handprints, black and unmistakable, one high above my own reach.
(16:46):
The prints were distinct, as if pressed clean and careful.
The oil left no smell, no sticky residue. I wiped
at them with my sleeve, but the stains wouldn't fully
come off. Molly refused to leave the van and growled
at the open doors. I never found answers for what
had been there that night. Maybe a bear drawn by
old food sense. Could the scratching have been a stray raccoon?
(17:10):
I tested once home every possibility, knocked, scratched, shoved, but
nothing replicated what happened. Still, there's a sliver of me
that doesn't want to know for sure. The thin comfort
I take is that whatever it was, it eventually left.
I still sleep in the van with Molly at my feet.
The hammer stays close, and on the rare dead quiet nights,
(17:33):
I sometimes catch myself listening, waiting for that measured, deliberate
knock to come again. No answer, just a presence in
the emptiness. Story number four, The night at Kingfisher Dam,
keeps pricking needles into the back of my mind even now.
Some things are easier to forget, chalk up to fatigue
(17:53):
or an overactive imagination, but I have neither. Forty seven
years behind me, including a year in the Jungles Vietnam,
have dulled my nerves to most fears. I've been ambushed
in the dark, heard the whine of mortar shells over
my head, seen friends reduced to red streaks in the grass.
Funny though I never considered that the worst thing I'd
(18:14):
ever see would come forty years later doing something as
harmless as fishing after a barbecue. It was early May,
not quite summer yet, and the lake was still jittery
with the last of the cold air.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I remember the rough song.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Planks of the dock groaned under each step as we
wandered out, me and Mikey, my old pal. The smell
hung in the air, mud weeds and something cold and metallic,
the sort of sharp scent you get off a raw riverstone.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
We'd figured we'd put.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
In one last night out before summer crowds took over
the dam. A lot of the locals said things about
Kingfisher after sundown, big fish stories. I'd always figured Mikey
was a practical man. He laughed about it like I did.
Our boots creaked firefl speckled around our ankles, blinking slow
like dying coals. We set up on the right side
(19:05):
of the dock, where the boards leaned slightly south, dipping
toward black water dense enough to swallow a float hole.
Mikey opened a can of worms. Quiet, just the slosh
of beer and whistle of far off peepers for company.
We didn't talk much, just cast and reeled, cast and reeled,
(19:25):
hands in thick, calloused arcs through the gloom.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It's funny now, the.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Details that claw their way back through the static, the
way Mikey's wedding ring gleamed briefly in the falling sun.
The old lantern sputtering at my feet, flaring, drawing gnats
in lazy loops. We were about to leave. Dusk was collapsing,
shadows spilling out from the trees like black water. I'd
packed up, stowing my reel with old stiff fingers, glancing
(19:54):
occasionally at the dark, lazy ripples. Mikey muttered he'd try
one last cast, as if the goddamn lake oed in
one big fish. It's what happened next that keeps me
from sleeping right. I heard his rod whistle softly, just
once as he flicked his line out over the water.
But I never heard the lure hit, never caught a splash,
(20:14):
no rings rippling out from where it should have dropped. Instead,
the silence thickened, almost pressing against my ears. No frogs,
no bugs, just that lantern fizzing. I turned back, expecting
to see Mikey peering into the water, cursing his line.
I saw nothing, no outline, not even his boots. Angler's
(20:35):
cap was gone too. He kept it on rain or
shine every trip. I called out for him, expected some
crude joke, maybe his head popping up from behind the
dock planks, grinning like an idiot, telling me I'd scare easy.
But there was nothing. Just the steady tremble of the rod,
now leaning against the end post, the line humming in
(20:57):
the air, taut like something heavy held it down far
under the skin of the water. I reached out hands
shaking and ran my fingers along the old cork handle.
It was cold, sticky, and vibrating, like a tuning fork.
Right at the edge of hearing, I could see the
line silver in the lantern's light, running straight out toward
(21:18):
the patch of black water, where the surface made no
sound at all. My mouth went dry. I stepped to
the very end of the dock, careful. The boards felt
distantly soft, and kept thinking of Mikey. If he'd fallen in,
there would have been a splash, a shout, something. I
listened hard. Still nothing, no circle of bubbles, no panic
(21:40):
in the weeds, just silence pressing down like the heavy
All I found was Mikey's rod and the lantern starting
to flicker out. I edged along the dock, scanning the
water line, yelling his name, more out of fear than hope.
My flashlight beam cut over the shoreline. No panic prints
in the mud, no no drag marks, nothing. The pebbled
(22:03):
shore was smooth and undisturbed, save for where our boots
had come down earlier in the evening. I kept thinking
of how his footprints should have registered. The shoreline was tacky,
the kind that sucks at your souls.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
If you stand too long.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
But nothing new, no tracks leading away, no splash, no
sign of a body or any struggle, only that trembling
rod and.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
The line snaking out to nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
When the lantern died, I stood in the cold dark
for several minutes, afraid, more than I'd been since I
was a twenty one year old, and a blasted clearing
under red tracer fire. Then I ran for my truck,
started up the engine, headlights, cutting through a wet mist
curling out from the trees. I drove to the ranger's
office in a fog, mouth and fingers numb.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
It was a blur.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Cops, search dogs, flashlights, sweeping through reeds and underbrush, calling
Mikey's name so many times it became something else. They
told me maybe he wandered off to take a leak
and slipped in somewhere down the shore, or had a
sudden spell, heart attack stroke. They asked if he drank much,
if he'd been upset. Did he talk about leaving? I
(23:13):
said no, so many times my jaw ached, but I
couldn't answer why his rod was standing up still, quivering
hours later, line as taut as a snare leading into water,
so calm it looked frozen, or why I'd never heard
a single sound, not even a ripple. Cops searched all night,
no person, no tracks. They chalked it up eventually to misadventure.
(23:36):
Maybe he wandered off.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Maybe not.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
I go by the dam sometimes, watching the shrinking sun
stutter on the water, the docks still there, soft damp
paint peeling in strips. People fish there still tell stories.
Sometimes I remember the feeling of the rod vibrating in
my hand, and the way the water beneath it seemed
to swallow all noise, all hope. Mikey's wife moved out
(24:01):
to Arkansas a year after took down his photo. I
still wonder maybe the mind tricks itself seeing what it
can't explain. Maybe Mikey slipped. Maybe he's still out there somewhere,
bones tangled with weeds. But I know what I felt,
that line, tight as a nerve, leading out to a
(24:22):
place where the world seemed to fade at the edges.
And sometimes in the cold hush before sleep, I swear
I can still fill the dock, sinking just a little,
as if someone's heavy boots still wet, or walking right
behind me. Story number five. It's strange, how a place
can look so inviting in daylight and then so unrecognizable
(24:43):
at night. That little lake was all sun flecked water
lilies and darting minnows in the afternoon, and my friend
Ethan and I chose a spot right at its northern edge,
a flat patch under the birches, with a good view.
The lake, so shallow and friendly in the light, went
flat and smooth as glass. It stopped reflecting anything but
(25:03):
the moon. I tried to read for a while in
the tent. Ethan fell asleep almost instantly. The mosquitoes seemed
to get louder as the hours pressed on, but the
night was otherwise uneventful, just the constant fidget of leaves
in the wind. I woke up, no, not quite woke,
but was jarred from a halfway dream by the sound
(25:24):
of water. Not the gentle sipping at the mudline, not
the flutter of fish fins. This was artificial, rhythmic, two deep,
overlapping splashes, like a pair of oversized paddles driving flat
through the water.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Again and again.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I heard the oars before anything else, quick and deliberate,
as if someone was racing across the lake. At first,
my brain fumbled for context. Was this Ethan going to pee?
But no, it was coming from the water itself, past
the ring of ice coated lily pads. I fumbled for
my water much it was just before three. I waited
(26:03):
for a lantern or a silhouette, for the gliding nose
of a canoe or rowboat to break from the reeds.
I stared so hard and long, I felt my vision
skip and warp. But in that field of moonlight there
was nothing, not a black shadow, not a flicker. I
pressed a hand to the thin tent wall, feeling cold
sweat beat beneath my palm. The boat was close, then
(26:25):
almost to our side, just off the small pebbled shore.
I braced for the crunch of haull on gravel. The
oars chopped faster, water splitting in quick, gasping intervals. I
tried to imagine a fisherman unable to sleep, someone desperate
or crazy, or simply lost.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
But who would row like that with no light?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
No engine is allowed on these waters, just old creaky canoes.
The rangers wheel out once a season. Then midstroke, the
sounds snapped in half gone. Mid splash, the air smothered itself.
No ripples spidered out from the water. The only thing
moving was the fog starting to tatter the surface. I
stared out from the tent. The zipper pulled halfway in
(27:10):
case I needed a yanke.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
It shut.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
The silence pressed into my ears until my own pulse
sounded like footsteps behind me. I blinked and blinked, desperate
to see, but the darkness remained seamless For an hour.
I lay rigid, every muscle strung tight, the flashlight locked
in my hand. I tried to count my breasts, tried
to convince myself this was a trick.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Especially at night. Wind can whip up noises.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Maybe it was a distant motor backfiring over the summit,
echoing here. On the other hand, the stillness was clinical, perfect,
the kind of hush that suggests something is listening to.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Just out of sight.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Eventually, I worked up the nerve to unzip the tent
fully and stick my head out. The woods looked normal,
the ground white with moonlight, the birches unmoving. The faint,
musty reek of fish drifted in on the breeze, stronger
than before, as if something had disturbed the sediment in
the shallow water or gutted a carp close to shore.
(28:09):
My heart hammered even faster in the morning. I asked Ethan,
trying to sound off hand, if he'd heard anything unusual.
He scrunched up his face and shrugged. Maybe I was overtired.
It was a long hike in sound can play tricks,
after all. Still, I walked the shore alone, searching for
footprints or drag marks, any sign of a boat landing,
(28:30):
even just a broken twig. The mud near the water's
edge was undisturbed, smooth except for the tracks of herons
and the little cloven punctures of deer. No evidence, no
or marks, no indentations. Dozens of little clues crept into
my memory during the day, things easy to discount, but
hard to dismiss altogether. The faint echo of a man
(28:53):
humming cut off, like a radio flicked suddenly off, brushed
through my head. The crisp, metallic tang the air, both
familiar and out of place, as if an engine had
run hard and cold somewhere close. The hollow, stinging pressure
behind my eyes that caffeine couldn't touch. Fatigue maybe, or
the residue of adrenaline. Back at home, I searched up
(29:15):
what I could about the lake. Lots of campers had stories,
seeing lantern lights where there shouldn't be any, the sound
of laughter mingling with early morning fog, a line cast across.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
The water with no one to hold it.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
The locals have their stories, the doomed fishermen, cursed to
row against the current forever, never coming back to shore.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
But everyone laughs them off.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yet when I switch off the light at night, there's
a trace of that other silence. Sometimes, just as I'm
drifting off, I hear again the relentless rhythm of oars
on water, getting closer than vanishing, as if they were
never there at all, and always, no matter how skeptically
I recount it, the feeling never quite lets go, the
certainty that something was moving out on that timeless water
(30:01):
just beyond sight. Still Lingers story number six. It was
supposed to be a simple night outdoors, not really the
deep wilderness, just a tent pitched near the north edge
of Blacktail State Park. I needed the reset, I told myself.
A couple of days with no phone, I left the
car at the designated pull off, slung my gear, and
(30:22):
walked a good mile off the gravel. The place I
picked was open, not far from a thin stream, nothing weird,
nothing off, the kind of place that has the everyday
hush of nature. The fog crept in as soon as
I'd staked my tent. It wasn't heavy, just a grayish
blush filtering through the branches, enough to dull the trees,
(30:43):
soften the ground in misty shadows. I figured it came
off the stream. I put some water onto boil, rummaged
through my rucksack. Maybe it was the fog or the
odd quiet, but the camp felt a little less friendly.
When twilight slid between the pines, I decided to explore
the wood before calling it a night. That was when
I noticed the old path. It didn't look right. There
(31:05):
were no blazes, no signs, just two worn lines between
stones covered in green, the moss glistening with fog. It
looked like a track that didn't feel inviting. But something
about it hooked at my curiosity. That's what I told myself. Anyway,
I figured i'd give it twenty minutes, then turn around
before the light died. My feet made soft noises on
(31:27):
the moss, but even those faded quickly. After the first
five minutes, I realized two things There was no sound anymore,
not the wind, not distant bird calls, just a dead
silence that seemed to press in on my head. And
the path didn't show up on my offline map. My
phone glowed steady GPS, spinning as if I'd walked.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Off the edge of coverage.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The fog started closing in, clinging to my legs and
swallowing the fall of my boots.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Smell, sharp and sour, like wet metal and something rot
beneath the moss. I thought maybe mushrooms or an old
animal buried under the forest mulch, but as I kept walking,
the scent remained, always faint, always just at the edge
of breath.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
I glanced behind me.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
The way I'd come was still there, the mossy stones
running straight between the trunks, but everything else was just
gray and formless. I moved faster, hoping the path would
arc back toward familiar place, or at least somewhere marked.
The minutes stretched, the path seemed to curve, doubling on itself,
but I was certain I wasn't gaining any ground. My
(32:36):
heart thumped, but I kept moving, light aimed down at
my feet. That was when I noticed the mist wasn't caring.
My breath pooled before my mouth, but the fog refused
to swirl, as though it had density, a heavy dampness
that muffled all movement. Above, the trees pressed close, branches
curled together. I didn't remember them being so thick, and
(32:58):
the silence it was absolute, no scuttle, no creaks. My
skin prickled. Surely, the path had to end. All paths
have endings. I sucked a ragged breath and turned sharply,
deciding to jog back the way i'd come. I counted
my strides, glancing for landmarks, but the scenery remained stubbornly,
(33:20):
monstrously monotonous. Mossy stones, root, thick undergrowth, fog in every cranny.
It was only when the moss started feeling springy, rotten
instead of soft, that I realized something in the air
had changed. The silence wasn't quite whole anymore. There was
a taut humming leaking from somewhere just ahead. Before I
(33:41):
had time to second guess myself, the path spilled open
into a clearing.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I stopped dead.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
The mist coiled here, slick and dense enough to taste
tinged faintly with that rotting copper smell. There were five
cabins to one side of the clearing, old, hardly more
than collapsing shells, their timber blackened by rain and time. Overhead,
low branches sagged, strung with something that looked like rusted lanterns.
(34:08):
Some of them flickered dimly, but it felt colder standing
under them, as if each spark leached a bit of
warmth from the air. I told myself there are abandoned
structures all over the country, old logging camps, ranger outposts,
even hunting lodges, most long forgotten. But as I approached
the nearest cabin, the air turned syrupy, thick, with a
(34:29):
bitter moisture that stuck to my tongue. There was glass
in the window, gray with grime, and before I fully
registered what I was seeing, my eyes locked on the
shapes pressed faintly against the inside, handprints, small kid sized palms,
streaks of moisture clinging inside the glass, long drip marks
(34:49):
running toward the boards below. The prints weren't old dust
or animal traces. They were fresh enough. My mouth dried out.
My mind raced through logical explanations, but the princes trailed downward,
not up, as though pressed by a standing child. They
looked more like something dragged slowly. I didn't dare check
the door. I already heard a muffled, rhythmic knocking from
(35:12):
one of the back cabins, but it could have been
a branch in the wind, except there was still no wind.
Nothing moved but my own panic pulse. I turned and ran,
not caring if I left the path. Branches whipped against
my face, shoes splashing through mud and dead leaves, Fog
clutching at my shins. No matter where I turned, the
(35:33):
ground felt wrong, spongy, adrift, like I might break through somehow.
I broke through the tree line to find cold air
and the reassuring faded blue of my tent, just where
I'd left it. The woods behind me looked completely normal again.
My hands shook as I zipped myself inside, feeling the
ridiculous urge to check for marks on my own skin,
(35:55):
to verify that nothing had followed me. I spent a listless,
wide eye. Every crackle of the fire felt like distant footsteps,
every pop in the brush like a muffled whisper. When
the sun rose and I forced myself outside I scoured
the area for signs, the path, the clearing, even just
(36:15):
those mossy stones.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
They were gone.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I told myself that it was just my imagination, maybe
as I broke camp, as I drove past the other
campers who laughed and pointed at deer in the ditches.
But sometimes late at night, I still feel that cold
pulsing an settling over me and wonder if I was
just lost, or if I ever really made it. Back
story number seven. It wasn't my first time ice fishing.
(36:42):
The north end of Lake Pewacket was thick with black
crappy this winter, and after a hectic week at work,
I decided to give it a shot. The weather called
for sun and clouds, maybe a little wind, typical for
a Saturday in February. I loaded the plastic sled with
my canvas pop up hut and propane heaterrag it over
the groaning ice, away from the other trucks clustered near
(37:03):
the parking lot. Two hours in, my beard crusted with frost.
I hadn't caught a thing except the dull whine of
wind nosing at the corners of my hut. The sky
outside was dark and I was threading another minnow. When
the temperature dropped, I felt it in my bones, a fine,
sharp chill, like a dentist's pick. Then, almost without warning,
(37:24):
the wind howled and everything outside turned white. The lake vanished,
as if I had been swallowed in a snow drift.
Nothing but the shriek of the blizzard against my pop
up walls and powdery snow sifting through the zipper seams.
I did what I'd always done before in storms, shut
off the heater to save propane, zipped myself deeper in
my parka texted my brother that I'd be staying put
(37:46):
until visibility came back. The wind battered my hut, stretching
the canvas, making the seams creak. I snapped somewhere underfoot,
a pure warning crack. Ten maybe fifteen minutes passed. I
knew how fast these whiteouts could roar in and then
clear again, even if the tension of waiting felt endless.
(38:07):
As suddenly as it had started, the wind eased erased.
I zipped a flap open and stared out what I
expected was my truck, maybe the parking lot across the ice,
the lonely marks of my own footprints. Instead for a
breathless moment, the world outside was old. The ice so
familiar just minutes ago, was now a rumbling pane littered
(38:31):
with squat wooden shacks. They were nothing like the modern
huts with their bright plastics and reflective tape. These were
battered crates, windows patched with rags, doors hanging on rusty hinges.
Among them, bundled figures moved, big, muffled shapes in wool coats,
boots braced with rope. A fire smoldered in a barrel,
(38:53):
soot coiling up toward the gray sky. I smelled woodsmoke
so strong it caught at my throat. Somewhere thet her
of metal pails rang out, and a man's laugh, muffled
and old, drifted over the white, like something halfway between
a memory and a threat. The ice itself flexed under
the weight of so many bodies. I could hear it,
(39:13):
a slow, groaning yawn, warped. Though maybe the most out
of place was the girl among the bundled shadows. She
alone wore a sun yellow dress, its hem frosting over
where it trailed against the ice. Her hair, long, dripping,
impossibly black, hung down over her face, so I couldn't
see her features. She stood no more than thirty yards away,
(39:35):
too thin for the weather, pale, bare feet, blue with cold.
She was waving her arms, swaying in a sluggish rhythm,
fingers crooked, and each arc of her hand leaving a
thin streak on the air, like an afterimage. I froze,
my first instinct. Panic almost made me duck back inside
my hut. But something in the way she watched told
(39:56):
me it wouldn't change anything. I tried to watch the
people at the the other huts, hoping they'd noticed the
girl or looked my way, but none so much as glanced.
They moved with mechanical slowness, not speaking, and faces all
hidden under heavy brims and hoods, as though they were
carved wooden puppets. Frantic, I looked for my own landmarks,
(40:16):
my red forward, the empty parking lot, the dock. All
I saw was the parade of ancient vehicles. A rusted
pickup whose tires seemed sunken deep in the ice, a
horse drawn sleigh. The girl took a step closer, bare feet,
making no sound at all. For a second, just before
she disappeared, I thought her mouth was open in a
(40:37):
wordless scream, a ragged, gaping maw, blackened by frostbite. Then
a soundless gust flattened the entire scene. The island of
old ice huts, the people, the strange machinery, and ancient
laughter all whisked away like soot. The girl's yellow dress flickered,
and she was gone. I was left alone, standing in
(40:58):
blinding sunlight, as if the world had been wiped clean.
My ford sat twenty yards away, waiting. I could see
my own bootprints, sharp and fresh, but none others at all.
My phone's screen claimed only fifteen minutes had passed, enough
time for a smoke or to brew my second cup
of instant coffee. For a long moment, I couldn't move.
(41:21):
My breath curled out before me and vanished. I scanned
the horizon, no old shacks, no crowd, no bonfire. Making
my way back to the truck, I kept expecting to
see footsteps tracking behind me. Each crunch of snow echoed
too loud in the flat silence. When I passed the
place where the girl in yellow had stood, I found nothing,
(41:42):
just smooth eyes, thick as ever, marked only by brittle
whirls of frost. That night, I paced the length of
my apartment. Unable to settle that girl's wave looping in
my memory like a signal out of deep space. I
searched every local form and news archive I could find.
A faded newspaper scan from nineteen twenty three told of
a winter festival out on Piewacket, featuring a contest for
(42:05):
girls in their Sunday best. One merry little in a
yellow dress, had fallen in a sudden squall and disappeared
beneath the ice. Her body had never been found. The
more I thought, the more my mind rehearsed rational explanations,
tricks of sun on ice, or the residue of half
heard stories lodged in my subconscious, simple explanations, reasonable ones.
(42:28):
But some nights I still smell old wood smoke thick
as grief, and see a flickering dot of yellow just
beyond my bedroom window, waving with a slow, broken rhythm.
When I check, there's nothing still. I can never quite
decide which is more frightening, that what I saw was real,
or that my mind is capable of conjuring such precise,
(42:50):
impossible ghosts from the cold story Number eight. Last summer,
I found myself restless, craving escape from my ordinary city life.
Solid dude had always settled my mind. So I picked
a remote lake. I loaded up my old solo canoe
with gear and paddled out just as the sun slipped away,
planning to fish by moonlight and sleep under the stars.
(43:11):
The air was still heavy with tree scent. I drifted
idly in the shallows, tying on lures and casting a
few lazy lines. The frogs were out, their low pulses,
bouncing across the water, backed by the static of insects.
Every so often, something big would pop at the surface,
somewhere in the invisible reaches behind me, making me jump,
(43:32):
even though I knew it was just a fish hunting.
It was peaceful, but not quiet, if you know what
I mean. There was always some sound to remind me
I wasn't alone.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
After midnight I noticed it.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
I couldn't tell you the exact moment it started, but
at some point the layers of night sound simply dropped away,
not faded. A frog drops off, or a wind dies slowly,
but vanished, snatched like a hand clapping out a candle.
No insects, no frogs, not even a distant owl or
the faint rush of trees in the wind. It should
(44:04):
have been beautiful, but the silence started thrumbing in my head,
prickling my arms with clammy goose flesh. Even my paddle
didn't sound right anymore. I pulled it through the water,
expecting the usual hollow slap, but it was like my
ears had been stuffed with wool. The ripples looked normal,
but the world had snapped soft, as if submerged under
(44:25):
thick glass. Every motion exaggerated and muted. I whispered a
curse to test my own voice, but the word hung
strangely on my tongue, flat and dull, as if I
were muttering into a pillow, not an echo, not even
a whisper. I tried to push the unsettled feeling aside,
maybe a storm rolling in, or the strange acoustics of
(44:48):
the water and the dense tall trees around the lake.
I glanced skyward, hoping to blame the pressure or the weather,
but the sky seemed normal, clear, but for a low
lying mist forming on the water's skin.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
In rolling off the.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Far side, where the shadows hunched heaviest, it crept toward me,
thickening as I watched the clumps of it, somehow ducking
the moonlight slipping deeper into the invisible.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
That's when I saw it.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Something tall and unnaturally black moved along the rim of
the far shore.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
At first, I tried to.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Rationalize a moose, maybe half shrouded in fog, or a
fisherman and a dark rainslicker paddling back in. I tried
to find a mast, or the glint of a paddle,
a telltale flash of reflection. But there was only shape,
tall and narrow, gliding steady as if it belonged to
the foggy water. Rather than breaking it. It didn't bounce
(45:40):
with each step. It just slid utterly, noiseless. Not even
a ripple slipped out from behind it. My skin crawled,
the hairs on my arm stood on end, like the
times I'd had fevers as a kid. Part of my
mind kept whispering moose or some big animal. I strained
to catch any noise as the thing drifted near along
(46:00):
the shore, the splash of hoofs, the snap of some
low hanging brush, But nothing filled the void. The air
pressed hot against my cheek, and I realized I was
holding my own breath, desperate not to make a sound.
The mist closed in swallowing the far bank for a second.
Everything was white and cold and close, and shapes wove
(46:20):
in the fog, ridiculous things like elongated limbs and open mouths.
I blinked, trying to clear my head, and the world
snapped back into place. The fog thinned all at once,
and sound roared back, frogs, insects, fish popping. It was
such a shock I almost dropped my paddle. It was
as though I'd slipped under water for a minute and
(46:42):
come up gasping. Every drop of noise suddenly painfully clear.
The sky still looked the same, and the trees were
still there, undisturbed and familiar. No sign of the dark
figure remained, not even a ripple on the water where
I'd watched it glide. I stared at the bank for
a long time, waiting for it to move again. My
(47:02):
eyes watered nothing. I laughed it off, but the sense
of unease lingered. Even now, I can't shake the feeling
of the silence clamping down on me, or the suffocating
sense that, for a few minutes on that lake I'd slid.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Into somewhere I didn't belong.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
That figure, whatever it was or wasn't, has never shown
up in any headlines, never left any trace of teeth
or claws or missing persons. The lake looks exactly the
same on the maps, unremarkable, just another blue smudge in
a forest. Still, on quiet nights, I feel that something
is watching me, waiting for the right moment to pounce
on me in dead silence,
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