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10 Appalachian Trail Encounters Hikers Still Fear After Dark | Horror Stories · Appalachian Horror | Horror Stories

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Park Ranger Files. The Appalachian Trail runs
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Speaker 1: for more than 2,000 miles through some of the most
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Speaker 1: remote land in the eastern United States. Most people who
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Speaker 1: hike it have normal experiences, but some don't. These are
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Speaker 1: 10 accounts from people who ran into something they still
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Speaker 1: can't explain. Before we start, hit subscribe and turn on
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Speaker 1: a comment and Tell me which part stayed in your
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Speaker 1: head the longest. I read every single one. And if
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Speaker 1: It helps support the channel, and you'll get extra content
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Speaker 1: and early access to the stories before everyone else. Story 1.
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Speaker 1: My name is Delia Marchetti, and I want to start
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Speaker 1: by telling you exactly what kind of person I am,
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Speaker 1: because I think it matters for how you receive what
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Speaker 1: I am about to describe. I have been a long-haul
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Speaker 1: truck driver for 11 years. Before that, I spent four
1:04
Speaker 1: years doing warehouse logistics, and before that, I worked two
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Speaker 1: years on a fishing boat out of a small port
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Speaker 1: in Oregon that my uncle owned. I tell you the
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Speaker 1: fishing boat because that is where I learned what it
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Speaker 1: means to be alone with something large and dark and
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Speaker 1: indifferent to your presence. The ocean teaches you that fast.
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Speaker 1: It teaches you that the world has no particular investment
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Speaker 1: in your comfort and that your job is to pay
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Speaker 1: attention and move accordingly. I brought that lesson off the
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Speaker 1: water and onto the road and it has served me well.
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Speaker 1: I run the Appalachian corridor route through Eastern Kentucky and
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Speaker 1: into the Virginia Highlands. I have done that specific run
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Speaker 1: so many times over 11 years that I do not
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Speaker 1: need to think consciously about it. My hands know the
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Speaker 1: wheel adjustments. My eyes know where the grade changes are
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Speaker 1: coming before my headlights confirm them. I know where the
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Speaker 1: fog pools in the low spots between the ridgelines. I
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Speaker 1: know which mile markers smell like the chicken processing plant
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Speaker 1: that closed six years ago and still hasn't fully aired out.
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Speaker 1: I know where the deer crossings cluster, where the black
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Speaker 1: bears come down to the shoulder in blueberry season, where
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Speaker 1: the road gets deceptive in ice because of a particular
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Speaker 1: hollow that holds cold air differently from its surroundings. Eleven years.
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Speaker 1: That road is inside me the way a long marriage
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Speaker 1: gets inside you. It is not foreign. It is not frightening.
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Speaker 1: It is mine. This happened in November three years ago.
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Speaker 1: I was on a night run, which I prefer for
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Speaker 1: the obvious reasons. Cleaner roads. Fewer civilian drivers making unpredictable decisions.
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Speaker 1: Better time. Way stations that are less crowded or sometimes dark.
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Speaker 1: I had departed the depot just after 11 at night
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Speaker 1: and I was making good progress through the corridor, running
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Speaker 1: a little ahead of my usual time because the road
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Speaker 1: was dry and clear and traffic was essentially nothing. It
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Speaker 1: was around 2 in the morning when I came into
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Speaker 1: the stretch of US 23 that I want to describe
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Speaker 1: to you specifically. This is a 9 mile section where
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Speaker 1: the road drops between two ridgelines and you get a
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Speaker 1: corridor effect, the hills rising on both sides and the
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Speaker 1: tree line pressing right up to the gravel shoulder. There
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Speaker 1: are no structures in those nine miles. No lights except
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Speaker 1: what the rig throws forward. No exits, no driveways, nothing.
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Speaker 1: Just the road in the dark and the trees on
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Speaker 1: both sides and the ridgelines above them, blocking out everything.
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Speaker 1: On a clear night, you can see stars directly overhead,
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Speaker 1: in a narrow strip, but the sides of your world
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Speaker 1: are just black. I know that stretch. I have driven
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Speaker 1: it in every condition. I have driven it in dense
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Speaker 1: fog where I could see maybe 30 feet and I
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Speaker 1: had to slow to 30 miles an hour and just
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Speaker 1: trust that the road was where it always was. I
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Speaker 1: have driven it in snow. I have driven it in
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Speaker 1: the kind of mountain rain that comes sideways. It does
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Speaker 1: not rattle me. Nothing on that corridor rattles me. About
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Speaker 1: four miles into the corridor, my headlights picked something up
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Speaker 1: on the right shoulder. I want to be precise about
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Speaker 1: the distance because it matters. I first registered it as
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Speaker 1: a shape at approximately 300 feet, which is a comfortable
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Speaker 1: distance at the speed I was traveling. It gave me
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Speaker 1: time to process it before I was on top of it.
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Speaker 1: At 300 feet, in the sweep of headlights, your brain
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Speaker 1: does its pattern matching automatically. Mine said, deer, the eyeshine.
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Speaker 1: Two points of reflected light, then the shape coming in
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Speaker 1: behind them. I've seen thousands of deer on that road.
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Speaker 1: My brain labeled it DEER. and began the automatic calculation
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Speaker 1: of trajectory and speed. Then at 200 feet, the pattern
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Speaker 1: stopped matching. The shape was wrong. Deer are horizontal animals.
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Speaker 1: The reflected light was at the wrong height, and at
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Speaker 1: 150 feet it resolved completely, and it was a woman.
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Speaker 1: She was standing on a gravel shoulder at the very
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Speaker 1: edge of the road surface, positioned facing the oncoming lane.
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Speaker 1: which meant she was facing directly toward me as I approached.
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Speaker 1: She was not moving. She was not attempting to flag
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Speaker 1: me down or signal distress. She was not walking along
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Speaker 1: the shoulder in any direction. She was standing with her
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Speaker 1: arms at her sides, perfectly still, facing my headlights as
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Speaker 1: they came. She was wearing something pale, light-colored, what appeared
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Speaker 1: to be a thin dress or nightgown, the kind of
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Speaker 1: garment that is appropriate for a warm bedroom and nothing else.
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Speaker 1: certainly nothing appropriate for a mountain road, at two in
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Speaker 1: the morning in November when the temperature was 34 degrees.
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Speaker 1: Her hair was dark and long and down around her shoulders.
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Speaker 1: As I came fully abreast of her, I could see
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Speaker 1: that her feet were bare on the gravel. I slowed significantly.
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Speaker 1: I want to be clear about why I did not stop.
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Speaker 1: It is not that I did not want to help.
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Speaker 1: If she needed help, It is that stopping a fully
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Speaker 1: loaded semi on that shoulder in the dark is a
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Speaker 1: dangerous thing to do, both for me and for anyone
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Speaker 1: approaching on foot. And my company has specific protocols about
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Speaker 1: roadside stops that exist for exactly these reasons. I slowed
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Speaker 1: to well under the speed limit. I was slow enough
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Speaker 1: that I had real time to look at her as
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Speaker 1: I passed. She turned to watch the truck go by.
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Speaker 1: That is the detail that I have spent three years
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Speaker 1: trying to metabolize and cannot. When I was approaching her,
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Speaker 1: she was already facing my direction, as if she had
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Speaker 1: been facing it before my lights reached her, as if
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Speaker 1: she had been waiting and knew something was coming. And
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Speaker 1: as I passed, she tracked the truck with her head,
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Speaker 1: a slow, deliberate turning that kept her face oriented toward
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Speaker 1: me through the full arc of my passage. In the
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Speaker 1: red glow of my taillights, visible in my driver's side mirror,
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Speaker 1: I could see her as a pale shape with long
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Speaker 1: dark hair and bare feet on gravel, watching the truck
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Speaker 1: go away from her with the same steadiness with which
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Speaker 1: she had watched it arrive. I got on the CB immediately.
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Speaker 1: I know a driver named Teddy who runs that corridor regularly,
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Speaker 1: and I knew from our check-in about an hour earlier
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Speaker 1: that he was behind me. I gave him the mile
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Speaker 1: marker and told him exactly what I had seen, and
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Speaker 1: asked him to come through that section carefully and radio
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Speaker 1: me when he passed it. Then I drove the remaining
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Speaker 1: five miles out of the corridor and pulled into the
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Speaker 1: lot of a closed diner at the other end and
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Speaker 1: sat there with my engine running and my lights on.
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Speaker 1: Teddy came back to me on the CB 17 minutes later.
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Speaker 1: He had come through the mile marker and the surroundings
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Speaker 1: stretched slowly, keeping his eyes on both shoulders. He had
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Speaker 1: gone half a mile north of the point I gave
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Speaker 1: him and half a mile south of it. He saw nobody,
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Speaker 1: no woman, no person of any kind. nothing on either shoulder.
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Speaker 1: I sat in that parking lot for a while and
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Speaker 1: went through every rational explanation I could construct. Someone had
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Speaker 1: broken down further north and was walking back to the
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Speaker 1: last settlement, but in 17 minutes, barefoot in 34-degree November air,
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Speaker 1: on gravel, she would have covered perhaps a quarter mile
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Speaker 1: at best. In the flat stretch of that corridor, there
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Speaker 1: is nowhere to go to either side of the road,
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Speaker 1: The gravel shoulder drops off into rock and scrub. There
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Speaker 1: are no structures, no paths, no openings in the tree line.
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Speaker 1: I've studied that section on satellite imagery since then at
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Speaker 1: high resolution, and there's nothing there. No way in or
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Speaker 1: out except the road itself. A woman, barefoot, in a nightgown,
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Speaker 1: on a mountain highway in November at two in the morning,
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Speaker 1: standing still with her arms at her sides, watching trucks
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Speaker 1: go by. Gone within 17 minutes with nowhere to go.
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Speaker 1: I still run that corridor. I still know every mile
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Speaker 1: of it better than I know most people. I have
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Speaker 1: not seen her again. I keep telling myself that not
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Speaker 1: seeing her again is the comfortable outcome. But sometimes at
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Speaker 1: four in the morning when I come into that stretch
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Speaker 1: and the road is empty in both directions and the
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Speaker 1: dark is complete on both sides, I look very carefully
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Speaker 1: at the right shoulder around that mile marker, and I
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Speaker 1: do not know anymore whether I am hoping to see
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Speaker 1: her or hoping not to, because the explanation for what
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Speaker 1: she was, whichever direction it goes, is something I'm not
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Speaker 1: entirely sure I'm ready for. Story two. I'm a retired
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Speaker 1: school teacher, 63 years old. I taught fourth grade science
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Speaker 1: at the same elementary school in Burnsville, North Carolina, for
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Speaker 1: 26 years, which means I spent 26 years teaching children
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Speaker 1: to distinguish between evidence and assumption, between what we observe
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Speaker 1: and what we infer, between the data and the interpretation
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Speaker 1: of the data. I'm telling you this because I want
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Speaker 1: you to understand that when I describe what happened on
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Speaker 1: my property over the past two years, I am doing
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Speaker 1: so as someone who has actively applied those distinctions to
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Speaker 1: the events in question. I have tried to explain this.
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Speaker 1: I have genuinely tried. And I'm not able to do it.
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Speaker 1: My property is 14 acres of mixed woodland, just outside
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Speaker 1: of Burnsville. My husband and I bought it in the
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Speaker 1: late 80s for almost nothing because... That part of the
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Speaker 1: state was not yet desirable to anyone, and we were
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Speaker 1: young and did not have much money, and we fell
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Speaker 1: in love with the trees and the creek that runs
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Speaker 1: along the south boundary. He is gone now, eight years
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Speaker 1: ago this past spring, and since then it has been
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Speaker 1: just me on the 14 acres. I know every part
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Speaker 1: of it the way you know a place you have
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Speaker 1: walked through every season for more than 30 years. I
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Speaker 1: know where the morals come up in April, I know
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Speaker 1: which hollow holds the last snow of winter longest. I
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Speaker 1: know the big tulip poplar on the northeast corner that
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Speaker 1: was struck by lightning in 2011 and is slowly dying
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Speaker 1: from the crown down, but still puts out leaves every spring.
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Speaker 1: I know the stone wall along the eastern boundary that
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Speaker 1: was laid by someone before us, before anyone alive now,
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Speaker 1: and which my husband always said proved there had been
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Speaker 1: a farm here before the trees came back. I have
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Speaker 1: two Labrador retrievers. Both of them are older, both healthy
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Speaker 1: and active for their age, and both have been with
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Speaker 1: me on every morning walk for the past several years.
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Speaker 1: They know the property as well as I do. They
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Speaker 1: have their established routes and their established interests. Decades of
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Speaker 1: muscle memory between them and those 14 acres. In the
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Speaker 1: spring of 2022, they began refusing to go past the
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Speaker 1: stone wall on the eastern boundary. I want to be
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Speaker 1: specific about what I observed, because specificity is what I
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Speaker 1: taught for 26 years, and I think it matters. It
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Speaker 1: was not that they stopped at the wall because they
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Speaker 1: were tired or distracted. They did not stop gradually, day
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Speaker 1: by day, moving a little less willingly each morning until
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Speaker 1: they simply stopped. It happened abruptly. One morning in late March,
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Speaker 1: we came to the wall on our usual route And
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Speaker 1: both dogs stopped at the same time, without any communication
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Speaker 1: I could see between them. And they turned and looked
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Speaker 1: toward the trees on the other side of the wall,
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Speaker 1: not over it, through the gaps in the stones, into
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Speaker 1: whatever they could see or smell or sense on the
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Speaker 1: other side. And they would not go further. I have
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Speaker 1: spent enough time with dogs to know that there's a
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Speaker 1: vocabulary of behavior available to them, and that different situations
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Speaker 1: call for different words. There is excited dog behavior and
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Speaker 1: curious dog behavior and alarmed dog behavior. There is the
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Speaker 1: specific bristling and low center of gravity posture that means predator.
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Speaker 1: There is the whining and ear flattening that means I
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Speaker 1: am uncomfortable and want to leave. What I saw from
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Speaker 1: my two dogs at the Stonewall fits none of those
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Speaker 1: categories neatly. The closest I can come to naming it
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Speaker 1: is this. They look the way a person looks when
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Speaker 1: they are watching something that has not yet moved, but
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Speaker 1: that they believe is about to move. And they do
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Speaker 1: not know what it will do when it does. I
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Speaker 1: crossed the wall myself and walked into the trees on
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Speaker 1: the other side. I know those trees. I have been
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Speaker 1: in them many times. Old hardwoods, beech and oak mostly,
14:03
Speaker 1: with some younger maple coming in at the edges. The
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Speaker 1: ground is soft with years of leaf litter. There was
14:10
Speaker 1: nothing obviously different about that section on the day I
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Speaker 1: went in. No smell I could identify. No tracks that
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Speaker 1: seemed unusual. No sign of digging or disturbance. The light
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Speaker 1: came through normally. Everything looked exactly as it always had. Then,
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Speaker 1: the smell began. It arrived a week or ten days
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Speaker 1: after the dogs first refused the wall, and it became
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Speaker 1: the defining feature of whatever was happening. I cannot describe
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Speaker 1: it with the precision I would like. And that frustration
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Speaker 1: is itself significant to me because I have been trained
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Speaker 1: to observe and describe precisely. The closest approximation I have
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Speaker 1: found after more than two years of trying is this.
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Speaker 1: The base note was animal musk, the kind of heavy
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Speaker 1: biological scent that large mammals produce. But it was not
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Speaker 1: any specific animal I've encountered in 26 years of walking
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Speaker 1: those woods. Underneath the musk there was something else, a
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Speaker 1: secondary quality that was simultaneously slightly sweet and slightly rotten,
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Speaker 1: the way certain wildflowers smell in the first stages of
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Speaker 1: decay when the cellular walls have begun to break down
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Speaker 1: but the fermentation has not fully set in. Together those
15:29
Speaker 1: two elements made something that did not belong to any
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Speaker 1: category of woodland smell I had ever encountered before. The
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Speaker 1: smell was not constant. This is important. It came and went.
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Speaker 1: Some mornings the air at the wall was completely normal,
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Speaker 1: carrying only the ordinary scents of that season, leaf mold
15:50
Speaker 1: and creek water and the particular cold earth smell of
15:54
Speaker 1: an Appalachian spring morning. On those mornings my dogs would
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Speaker 1: come to within about 15 feet of the wall, which
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Speaker 1: was closer than on other mornings, and they would stand
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Speaker 1: and look. Other mornings, the smell was present. On those mornings,
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Speaker 1: I could sometimes detect it as far back as 30
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Speaker 1: feet from the wall, and my dogs would stop further back,
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Speaker 1: 20 feet or more, and their reluctance was visibly greater.
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Speaker 1: They would position themselves behind my legs rather than beside me.
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Speaker 1: I kept a scientific record of these observations because it
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Speaker 1: is what I know how to do. Date, time, temperature...
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Speaker 1: Wind speed and direction as best I could estimate it.
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Speaker 1: Barometric pressure from the weather app on my phone. Smell
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Speaker 1: present or absent and estimated intensity of present. Precise behavior
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Speaker 1: of each dog. My own observations about the section of
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Speaker 1: woodland on the other side of the wall. I maintained
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Speaker 1: this record for eight weeks and produced 43 observation entries.
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Speaker 1: In those 43 entries, the smell was present on 19 occasions.
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Speaker 1: The dog's behavior was measurably more reluctant on all 19
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Speaker 1: of those occasions compared to the 24 occasions when no
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Speaker 1: smell was detected. In the seventh week of my observations,
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Speaker 1: I added a notation field for sounds from the other
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Speaker 1: side of the wall. On most mornings, there were no
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Speaker 1: sounds beyond ordinary woodland sounds. Birds, wind in the upper canopy,
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Speaker 1: the occasional crack of a settling branch. But on four
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Speaker 1: of the 19 mornings when the smell was present, I
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Speaker 1: recorded sounds that I could not categorize as ordinary. Not
17:40
Speaker 1: dramatic sounds. Not crashing or roaring or anything that would
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Speaker 1: constitute obvious alarm. Small sounds. The kind of sounds made
17:50
Speaker 1: by something large that is trying to be still, but
17:54
Speaker 1: cannot fully suppress the evidence of its mass. Weight shifting,
17:59
Speaker 1: slow sounds. deliberate adjustment of position. Once the sound of
18:04
Speaker 1: something exhaling slowly, though I acknowledged the possibility that this
18:08
Speaker 1: was my own interpretation of ambient sound, filtered through a
18:12
Speaker 1: heightened state of attention. The morning that changed things permanently
18:17
Speaker 1: was a Tuesday in late April. I came out at 5.50.
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Speaker 1: The ground fog was heavy that day, the dense white
18:24
Speaker 1: fog that forms in the hollows and rolls up against
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Speaker 1: things and My visibility from the porch to the wall
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Speaker 1: was less than 40 feet. The smell hit me before
18:35
Speaker 1: I was off the porch steps, strong enough that morning
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Speaker 1: to register on my tongue as well as my nose.
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Speaker 1: My dogs pressed against the backs of my legs from
18:44
Speaker 1: the moment I stepped outside. I walked to the wall.
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Speaker 1: I do not know fully why. Scientific stubbornness, probably. I
18:53
Speaker 1: stood at the wall and looked at the fog on
18:55
Speaker 1: the other side. which meant I could see perhaps ten
18:58
Speaker 1: feet into the trees. The smell was very strong. My
19:02
Speaker 1: dogs were trembling against my legs, but they were completely silent,
19:06
Speaker 1: which in that moment seemed more frightening to me than
19:09
Speaker 1: barking would have. I heard it very clearly. A single sound.
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Speaker 1: The sound of weight shifting, the sound of something large
19:17
Speaker 1: and heavy moving from one foot to the other, with
19:20
Speaker 1: enough mass that the movement compressed the leaf litter beneath
19:24
Speaker 1: it with a soft, definitive sound one sound one deliberate
19:30
Speaker 1: clear shift of weight then nothing the fog moved the
19:36
Speaker 1: birds in the upper canopy continued their morning noise nothing
19:39
Speaker 1: else i backed away from the wall i did not
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Speaker 1: run i moved deliberately and i kept my face toward
19:47
Speaker 1: the wall until i was back on the porch I
19:50
Speaker 1: went inside and I sat at the kitchen table for
19:52
Speaker 1: a long time. I called the county extension office that week.
19:56
Speaker 1: They told me about bear activity that spring. I held
19:59
Speaker 1: the bear explanation for several weeks because it was the
20:02
Speaker 1: best one I had. But I kept coming back to
20:05
Speaker 1: one thing that the bear explanation cannot account for. 26
20:10
Speaker 1: years of walking with dogs on this property. Many encounters
20:15
Speaker 1: with bears, confirmed with tracks and scat, and on two occasions,
20:20
Speaker 1: visual confirmation. Every single time, both dogs barked. The alarmed, urgent,
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Speaker 1: escalating bark that they produce for predators. The bark that
20:31
Speaker 1: wakes me up if I'm inside and they are out.
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Speaker 1: Not once in 26 years have they responded to a
20:38
Speaker 1: bear with the silence I have observed at that wall.
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Speaker 1: The silence and the trembling and the pressing against my legs.
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Speaker 1: That is not what bare smells like to them. Whatever
20:50
Speaker 1: is on the other side of that wall is something
20:52
Speaker 1: they do not have a category for either. I still
20:55
Speaker 1: walk every morning. I do not cross the wall. Some
20:58
Speaker 1: mornings the smell reaches me from the porch before I
21:01
Speaker 1: am even down the steps. I write it in my notebook. Date, time, conditions,
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Speaker 1: present or absent. Because 26 years of teaching science taught
21:12
Speaker 1: me that the most important thing you can do in
21:15
Speaker 1: the face of something you do not understand is keep
21:18
Speaker 1: observing it, even if you never arrive at the mechanism,
21:22
Speaker 1: even if the data never resolves into an explanation. You
21:25
Speaker 1: keep recording what is true. Story three. I am a
21:30
Speaker 1: wildlife photographer. Seven years professionally, four years as a serious
21:36
Speaker 1: amateur before I was able to leave the desk job
21:39
Speaker 1: at the insurance company and do it full time. I
21:42
Speaker 1: have spent more continuous time alone in backcountry wilderness than
21:46
Speaker 1: most people spend in their offices over the same period.
21:50
Speaker 1: I carry significant technical gear and I am careful and
21:54
Speaker 1: methodical in the way that extended solo backcountry work trains
21:57
Speaker 1: you to be. Because the consequences of carelessness out there
22:01
Speaker 1: compound quickly and the distance to help is real. I
22:05
Speaker 1: want to establish something clearly before I get into this.
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Speaker 1: I am not someone who attributes unusual occurrences to supernatural causes.
22:14
Speaker 1: When I encounter something I cannot immediately explain in the field,
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Speaker 1: my first response is methodical. I look for the mechanism.
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Speaker 1: I consider alternative explanations in order of probability. I am
22:28
Speaker 1: patient with uncertainty. This is the person I am describing
22:32
Speaker 1: encountering the thing I am about to describe, and I
22:35
Speaker 1: want you to hold that in mind. because it will
22:37
Speaker 1: tell you something about what it means that I still
22:40
Speaker 1: do not have an explanation. This happened in July of
22:44
Speaker 1: 2019 in the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee. I was
22:48
Speaker 1: there on a personal project, not a paid assignment, just
22:51
Speaker 1: documentation work I was doing for my own archive. I
22:55
Speaker 1: had been following a riparian habitat along a small tributary
22:58
Speaker 1: creek for two seasons, watching the wildlife patterns shift, tracking
23:03
Speaker 1: which species were using which parts of the corridor at
23:05
Speaker 1: which times of year, It was patient, unglamorous work. The
23:11
Speaker 1: kind that does not make for dramatic portfolio pieces, but
23:15
Speaker 1: that produces the kind of deep ecological knowledge that eventually
23:19
Speaker 1: makes everything else in your work better. I had a
23:24
Speaker 1: dispersed campsite about a half mile from the primary creek.
23:27
Speaker 1: I had used that campsite before in the same season.
23:31
Speaker 1: It was a flat area with good sight lines, close
23:34
Speaker 1: to a reliable water source. with the specific configuration of
23:38
Speaker 1: trees and ground cover that makes the site comfortable for
23:41
Speaker 1: extended work. I had been there four days before the
23:46
Speaker 1: thing I'm describing happened. The previous three days had been ordinary,
23:51
Speaker 1: exactly what three days of field work in remote terrain
23:54
Speaker 1: are supposed to be. On the fourth day, I returned
23:57
Speaker 1: to camp at midday after my morning session at the creek.
24:00
Speaker 1: I came in from the north, which was my usual approach,
24:04
Speaker 1: and I noticed almost immediately that something was different. I
24:08
Speaker 1: did not know what I was seeing at first. My
24:11
Speaker 1: gear was visible from the normal approach distance, and it
24:14
Speaker 1: was all there. Nothing had been knocked over by wind.
24:18
Speaker 1: The camp looked intact, but something was wrong, and my
24:22
Speaker 1: body registered it before my mind did, that animal sensation
24:26
Speaker 1: of a change in a space you have occupied long
24:29
Speaker 1: enough to have an unconscious map of it. I set
24:33
Speaker 1: down my equipment and walked through the camp carefully, and
24:36
Speaker 1: then I found it. My field notebook was not on
24:39
Speaker 1: top of my main pack, where I had left it
24:42
Speaker 1: that morning. It was on the ground about four feet
24:45
Speaker 1: from the pack, lying open, open to a blank page
24:49
Speaker 1: near the back of the book. My cook stove, which
24:52
Speaker 1: I had left on my designated cooking rock, facing its
24:56
Speaker 1: usual direction, had been rotated approximately 90 degrees, not knocked.
25:02
Speaker 1: rotated precisely and carefully to face a new direction. And
25:07
Speaker 1: a lens cloth I had draped over a low branch
25:10
Speaker 1: to dry after cleaning a piece of glass was no
25:13
Speaker 1: longer on the branch. It was folded, folded in thirds,
25:18
Speaker 1: and placed on top of my camera bag. I'd check
25:21
Speaker 1: my food line first. It was intact, the line between
25:24
Speaker 1: the trees undisturbed, the hanging bag untouched. Then I checked
25:28
Speaker 1: every item of camera equipment, all present. Then I checked
25:32
Speaker 1: my other gear, my sleeping system, my navigation tools, my
25:36
Speaker 1: emergency kit. Nothing missing. I went through the camp three
25:41
Speaker 1: times to be certain. Nothing had been taken. Whoever had
25:45
Speaker 1: been in my camp had not been there to take anything.
25:50
Speaker 1: I sat in camp for a long time that afternoon.
25:53
Speaker 1: I was three miles from the nearest maintained trail. I
25:56
Speaker 1: had not seen another human being in four days. The
26:00
Speaker 1: terrain around that campsite It's not the kind of terrain
26:02
Speaker 1: that draws casual hikers. Getting to it requires genuine intention
26:07
Speaker 1: and real navigation. Someone had come to my camp while
26:11
Speaker 1: I was at the creek, had moved specific items in
26:14
Speaker 1: specific ways, and had left. Nothing taken. No message. No
26:20
Speaker 1: obvious explanation for the movement of objects, except the one
26:24
Speaker 1: that was most disturbing. They wanted me to know they
26:27
Speaker 1: had been there. I decided to stay. Packing out felt
26:31
Speaker 1: like a fear response, and I have learned over seven
26:34
Speaker 1: years of solo backcountry work to distinguish between fear responses
26:40
Speaker 1: and threat responses. A threat response is when you are
26:43
Speaker 1: in actual danger and your body is telling you to move.
26:48
Speaker 1: A fear response is when you are uncertain and your
26:51
Speaker 1: body is urging you toward comfort. This felt like a
26:55
Speaker 1: fear response. I did not have enough information to conclude
26:59
Speaker 1: I was in danger, What I had was evidence that
27:03
Speaker 1: something unusual had happened and a desire to understand it.
27:07
Speaker 1: But I changed my setup. Before last night, I positioned
27:11
Speaker 1: my wide-angle camera on a tripod facing the center of camp.
27:15
Speaker 1: I set it to motion-activated capture at 30-second intervals. I
27:20
Speaker 1: cleared the existing card and confirmed the settings and checked
27:24
Speaker 1: the battery level. Then I went through my pre-sleep routine, ate,
27:28
Speaker 1: stowed food properly, secured the camp, and got into my tent.
27:34
Speaker 1: I had my bear spray within arm's reach. I had
27:37
Speaker 1: a fixed blade knife on the other side. I did
27:41
Speaker 1: not sleep for several hours. When I finally slept, it
27:44
Speaker 1: was light and I woke frequently. In the morning, I
27:47
Speaker 1: checked the camera first before anything else. The card showed
27:51
Speaker 1: 11 frames captured. The first seven frames were empty camp, dark,
27:56
Speaker 1: the shapes of my tent and packs in the ambient light.
27:59
Speaker 1: Nothing moving, nothing there. I went through them quickly. Frame 8,
28:04
Speaker 1: I almost missed it. I was looking at the frame
28:07
Speaker 1: on my camera's small LCD screen, and at first I
28:10
Speaker 1: thought I was seeing a branch that had come into
28:13
Speaker 1: a different position. The frame showed the eastern edge of
28:16
Speaker 1: camp where the tree line begins, and there was something
28:19
Speaker 1: there that I initially categorized as a branch. But when
28:24
Speaker 1: I got to my truck two days later and opened
28:26
Speaker 1: the card on my laptop and zoomed into that portion
28:29
Speaker 1: of the frame... I saw what it actually was. It
28:32
Speaker 1: was a leg from approximately the knee downward. Human, pale, bare, thin,
28:39
Speaker 1: standing just inside the tree line at the very edge
28:42
Speaker 1: of the frame, facing toward the camp. Still, just standing there,
28:48
Speaker 1: in the dark, at the edge of my campsite. I
28:51
Speaker 1: have looked at that image hundreds of times since. I
28:54
Speaker 1: have sent it to two people, my younger sister who
28:57
Speaker 1: does graphic design, and would have the eye to identify manipulation,
29:02
Speaker 1: and a friend who works in forensic imaging professionally. Both
29:06
Speaker 1: of them looked at it carefully, and both of them
29:08
Speaker 1: said the same thing. It is what it appears to be,
29:11
Speaker 1: a bare human leg. Standing just inside the tree line
29:16
Speaker 1: at the edge of a backcountry campsite at night, frames
29:19
Speaker 1: 9 and 10 were empty camp again. Frame 11, time
29:23
Speaker 1: stamped at 4.47 in the morning, showed the camp. Empty.
29:27
Speaker 1: But my field notebook... which I had placed back on
29:30
Speaker 1: top of my pack before getting into the tent, was
29:33
Speaker 1: on the ground again. I packed up at first light
29:36
Speaker 1: and hiked out in one push. I did not stop
29:39
Speaker 1: at the sampling station. I had planned to visit that morning.
29:42
Speaker 1: I have not returned to that drainage. I have been
29:45
Speaker 1: trying since 2019 to decide who to report this to
29:49
Speaker 1: and what exactly I would say, because what I have
29:51
Speaker 1: is an image of a leg and a notebook that
29:54
Speaker 1: moved twice and a cook stove that was rotated 90 degrees.
30:00
Speaker 1: and I do not know how to make a report
30:01
Speaker 1: out of that or who would take it seriously. What
30:05
Speaker 1: I know is that something stood at the edge of
30:07
Speaker 1: my campsite in the dark and watched me sleep and then,
30:11
Speaker 1: before leaving, moved my notebook to where it had been
30:13
Speaker 1: the first time, as if completing something it had started,
30:18
Speaker 1: as if making a point that had not yet been received.
30:22
Speaker 1: I have not figured out what the point was. I
30:24
Speaker 1: think about it every time I set up a campsite
30:27
Speaker 1: in remote terrain. Which is still often. I think about
30:31
Speaker 1: it every time I turn a camera on before dark.
30:35
Speaker 1: Call to action. We are three stories in and I
30:39
Speaker 1: want to take a breath here with you. If tonight
30:41
Speaker 1: is working the way I hoped it would, you're feeling
30:44
Speaker 1: something right now that is a little hard to name.
30:47
Speaker 1: Not quite fear. More like the awareness that the world
30:51
Speaker 1: has more in it than the ordinary surface suggests. That
30:56
Speaker 1: feeling is exactly why this channel exists. I want you
31:00
Speaker 1: to subscribe right now if you have not already done it.
31:03
Speaker 1: It takes two seconds, and it makes a genuine difference
31:06
Speaker 1: to whether this content keeps existing. And I want to
31:09
Speaker 1: ask you something specific in the comments tonight. Tell me
31:13
Speaker 1: about a moment when you felt watched and could not
31:15
Speaker 1: explain it. Not necessarily in the woods, anywhere. I think
31:20
Speaker 1: more people have had that experience than talk about it.
31:23
Speaker 1: And I think this community is a place where it
31:26
Speaker 1: is safe to say so. Leave it below. I will
31:29
Speaker 1: be reading tonight. Story four. My name is Corin Baxter,
31:34
Speaker 1: and I have been a home hospice nurse for nine years.
31:37
Speaker 1: My territory in southwestern Virginia and along the West Virginia
31:40
Speaker 1: border covers some of the most rural patient locations I
31:44
Speaker 1: have ever heard of in this line of work. I
31:47
Speaker 1: have patients who live on roads that do not appear
31:50
Speaker 1: on most navigation apps. Roads that are essentially gravel paths
31:55
Speaker 1: pressed into the mountain by years of use. with nothing
31:59
Speaker 1: to stop you from going off the edge except your
32:02
Speaker 1: own attention. I drive to those patients alone at all
32:06
Speaker 1: hours because the nature of hospice care is that it
32:09
Speaker 1: does not keep business hours and dying does not schedule
32:13
Speaker 1: itself conveniently. This is not a complaint. This is simply
32:16
Speaker 1: the texture of the job. I'm also not superstitious. I
32:21
Speaker 1: want to be precise about this rather than just asserting it.
32:25
Speaker 1: I sit with people who are dying, I've held the
32:28
Speaker 1: hands of people in their last hours many times. I've
32:32
Speaker 1: been present in the room when someone draws their last
32:34
Speaker 1: breath and the body begins immediately to become only a body.
32:39
Speaker 1: I have seen what grief does to families in real time.
32:42
Speaker 1: I have been in that work for nine years, and
32:45
Speaker 1: it has given me a particular relationship with the parts
32:48
Speaker 1: of experience that most people turn away from. Death is
32:52
Speaker 1: not frightening to me. The unknown is not frightening to me,
32:55
Speaker 1: at least not in the abstract. I say this so
32:58
Speaker 1: you understand the person I am when I tell you
33:00
Speaker 1: that what I saw on a county road in February
33:03
Speaker 1: frightened me. Not abstractly. Concretely. In the moment. It was
33:10
Speaker 1: close to midnight on a Tuesday. I was driving home
33:13
Speaker 1: from a late visit, one of my patients in a
33:15
Speaker 1: difficult phase who needed extra time that evening. The county
33:19
Speaker 1: road I take home runs along a ridgeline for about
33:22
Speaker 1: two miles before it drops into a hollow and joins
33:25
Speaker 1: the main highway. The drop is significant. Maybe 300 feet
33:30
Speaker 1: of elevation change over less than a mile with two
33:33
Speaker 1: switchbacks to manage the grade. I've driven that road in
33:37
Speaker 1: every kind of weather and every kind of night for
33:40
Speaker 1: the better part of five years. I came around the
33:43
Speaker 1: first switchback and the road opened up to the view
33:46
Speaker 1: across the hollow. That road at that point gives you
33:50
Speaker 1: a clear sight line to the opposite slope. Across a
33:53
Speaker 1: distance of about 200 feet of open air, above the
33:56
Speaker 1: bottom of the hollow. In full daylight, you can see
33:59
Speaker 1: the trees on that slope, the variations in the canopy,
34:04
Speaker 1: the rock outcroppings where the slope gets steeper near the ridge.
34:08
Speaker 1: At midnight in February, the slope is dark, and the
34:11
Speaker 1: trees are bare winter trees, and you can see the
34:14
Speaker 1: shape of the hill against the sky if the sky
34:17
Speaker 1: has any light in it. That night there was a
34:20
Speaker 1: half moon, enough light to see the slope in rough outline.
34:25
Speaker 1: and on that slope I saw lights. I am going
34:29
Speaker 1: to describe them as precisely as I can, because I
34:32
Speaker 1: have been asked about this a number of times since,
34:35
Speaker 1: and I want to get the description right. They were
34:39
Speaker 1: not the amber-white of flashlights. They were not the warm
34:43
Speaker 1: yellow of lanterns. They were pale, distinctly cooler in color temperature,
34:50
Speaker 1: what I would call blue-white if pressed to name a color.
34:55
Speaker 1: There were 8 or 10 of them. I counted several
34:57
Speaker 1: times and the number was between 8 and 11, depending
35:00
Speaker 1: on exactly when I looked. They were distributed across an
35:04
Speaker 1: area of the slope that I would estimate at about
35:07
Speaker 1: 60 feet of horizontal spread and maybe 40 feet of
35:11
Speaker 1: vertical spread. And they were moving, not quickly, slowly and
35:16
Speaker 1: independently of one another, each one tracing its own small
35:20
Speaker 1: wandering path through its own small portion of the slope.
35:25
Speaker 1: Sometimes one would go still while the others continued. Sometimes
35:29
Speaker 1: two would seem to approach each other and then diverge.
35:32
Speaker 1: The motion was slow enough that if you looked away
35:35
Speaker 1: and back, you might miss the movement. But if you
35:38
Speaker 1: fixed your eyes on a single light and watched it,
35:40
Speaker 1: you could see clearly that it was not stationary. The
35:45
Speaker 1: light was not directional in the way of a flashlight
35:47
Speaker 1: or headlamp. A beam of light projects outward from a source,
35:51
Speaker 1: and you see the projected light on the surfaces it hits.
35:55
Speaker 1: These lights did not project. They emanated. The source was
36:00
Speaker 1: the light. It was like looking at a lamp from
36:03
Speaker 1: behind a thin cloth, something diffuse and contained, glowing from
36:09
Speaker 1: a point rather than illuminating from a point. I have
36:13
Speaker 1: been trying to find a natural explanation for that quality
36:16
Speaker 1: of light for more than a year, and I have
36:19
Speaker 1: not found one that fully satisfies me. I pulled over
36:23
Speaker 1: at the second switchback. It gave me a clean sight
36:26
Speaker 1: line across the hollow to the opposite slope. I turned
36:29
Speaker 1: off my headlights completely so my eyes could adjust. I
36:32
Speaker 1: counted the lights again. Ten. I watched them for four
36:37
Speaker 1: full minutes. My phone was in my hand and I
36:40
Speaker 1: thought about filming, but the situation felt too strange and
36:44
Speaker 1: I was too focused on watching to divide my attention.
36:48
Speaker 1: I watched for four minutes, maybe four and a half.
36:52
Speaker 1: and the lights continued their slow, independent movements across that
36:56
Speaker 1: portion of the slope. Then they went out. All of them. Simultaneously.
37:02
Speaker 1: In the space of perhaps half a second. Not dimming.
37:06
Speaker 1: Not going out one by one in sequence. Off. All
37:10
Speaker 1: of them together. As if a single switch had been
37:13
Speaker 1: thrown for all of them at once. I sat in
37:16
Speaker 1: the dark with my window down and listened. February Mountain's
37:20
Speaker 1: silence is very complete. No wind that night. No traffic.
37:25
Speaker 1: No sound from the hollow. Nothing. I drove home. I
37:30
Speaker 1: lay awake for a long time. The following week, I
37:33
Speaker 1: was visiting one of my long-term patients, a woman in
37:36
Speaker 1: her 80s, who has lived in that hollow her entire life.
37:40
Speaker 1: Her grandmother was born in a house on that slope,
37:42
Speaker 1: and the family has been there for generations. She is
37:46
Speaker 1: sharp in the way of people who have not spent
37:47
Speaker 1: a lot of time on screens. and have instead spent
37:50
Speaker 1: their lives paying close attention to physical things. I value
37:55
Speaker 1: her perspective, and I trust her observation. I told her
37:58
Speaker 1: what I had seen, describing it carefully, the color and
38:01
Speaker 1: the motion, and the quality of the light, and the
38:04
Speaker 1: way it all went out at once. She listened to
38:06
Speaker 1: the whole account without interrupting. When I finished, she was
38:10
Speaker 1: quiet for a moment. And then she said, in the
38:13
Speaker 1: tone of voice you use to tell someone what time
38:16
Speaker 1: the pharmacy opens, Oh, honey, those are just the lights.
38:20
Speaker 1: They have always been in that hollow. My grandmother saw
38:23
Speaker 1: them and her mother before that. Then she adjusted her
38:27
Speaker 1: blanket and asked if I had checked her medication log.
38:31
Speaker 1: She would not be drawn back to the subject no
38:33
Speaker 1: matter how gently I tried to return to it. She
38:36
Speaker 1: had nothing more to say about it. Just the lights.
38:39
Speaker 1: They have always been in that hollow. As if that
38:42
Speaker 1: were a complete explanation. As if there were a category
38:46
Speaker 1: called the lights that everyone in that hollow had agreed
38:49
Speaker 1: on generations ago. and the category itself contained all the
38:52
Speaker 1: information anyone needed. I think about those words more than
38:58
Speaker 1: I think about the lights themselves. I think about what
39:01
Speaker 1: it means to inherit an explanation that does not explain anything,
39:06
Speaker 1: that simply names a thing and leaves it there. Just
39:10
Speaker 1: the lights. They have always been there. I think about
39:15
Speaker 1: her grandmother and her grandmother's mother standing somewhere on that
39:20
Speaker 1: slope or looking up at it from the road, watching
39:23
Speaker 1: the same pale blue-white points move slowly through the bare
39:27
Speaker 1: winter trees, and deciding that a name was sufficient, that
39:32
Speaker 1: the name and the generations were enough. What I keep
39:37
Speaker 1: coming back to is a question about what it means
39:39
Speaker 1: to live alongside something inexplicable for long enough that you
39:44
Speaker 1: stop trying to explain it and simply incorporate it. The
39:48
Speaker 1: lights are in the hollow, They have always been in
39:51
Speaker 1: the hollow. You name them, and you go back inside,
39:54
Speaker 1: and you live your life. That is one way of
39:58
Speaker 1: being in the world. It is probably the way most
40:01
Speaker 1: of our ancestors were in the world, in much more
40:05
Speaker 1: intimate contact with the unexplainable than we are. And they
40:08
Speaker 1: survived it by giving things names and leaving the names
40:12
Speaker 1: to do the work that understanding could not. I was
40:16
Speaker 1: not raised that way. I was raised to pursue mechanisms.
40:20
Speaker 1: to close the gap between observation and explanation. And I'm
40:24
Speaker 1: sitting here nearly a year later with a gap I
40:27
Speaker 1: cannot close, with pale blue-white lights that moved independently across
40:32
Speaker 1: a winter hillside and went out simultaneously, as if switched off.
40:37
Speaker 1: And an old woman who knows exactly what they are
40:39
Speaker 1: called and nothing else, and I'm genuinely not sure anymore
40:43
Speaker 1: which approach leaves you better equipped. I drive that road
40:47
Speaker 1: every week because my job requires it. I look across
40:50
Speaker 1: the hollow and I come down the switchbacks now, which
40:53
Speaker 1: I did not used to do. Most nights there is
40:57
Speaker 1: nothing over there. Bare trees and rock and the dark
41:00
Speaker 1: shape of the hill against whatever the sky is doing.
41:04
Speaker 1: But on three occasions since that February night, I have
41:06
Speaker 1: seen them again. The same lights, the same pale, cool color.
41:12
Speaker 1: Moving the same slow, independent paths through the same section
41:16
Speaker 1: of slope. Each time I have pulled over at the
41:19
Speaker 1: second switchback and watched until they went out. Each time
41:23
Speaker 1: they went out all at once, the same as the
41:26
Speaker 1: first night, switched off simultaneously. I have not filmed them.
41:32
Speaker 1: Something in the moment of seeing them makes me reluctant
41:34
Speaker 1: to reach for my phone and I do not fully
41:37
Speaker 1: understand that reluctance except to say it feels like the
41:41
Speaker 1: camera would change what I am seeing or would miss
41:44
Speaker 1: something that only direct observation catches, so I watch. And
41:49
Speaker 1: then they go out. And then I drive home. Just
41:53
Speaker 1: the lights. They have always been in that hollow. Story five.
41:58
Speaker 1: My educational background is a master's degree in environmental hydrology
42:03
Speaker 1: from a program in the southeast that I will not
42:06
Speaker 1: name because the institution and the work I was doing
42:09
Speaker 1: at the time are identifying enough if anyone wanted to
42:13
Speaker 1: find me. I spent three consecutive field seasons doing water
42:18
Speaker 1: quality assessment in the central Appalachians. I am a quantitative scientist.
42:24
Speaker 1: My entire professional training is oriented toward observable, measurable phenomena.
42:30
Speaker 1: When I encounter something I cannot explain, I do not
42:33
Speaker 1: reach for the supernatural. I reach for the unobserved mechanism,
42:39
Speaker 1: the thing I have not yet found that would make
42:41
Speaker 1: the picture complete. I want you to hold that in
42:44
Speaker 1: mind throughout what I'm about to describe. I want you
42:48
Speaker 1: to hold the specific person I am describing with the
42:51
Speaker 1: specific training and the specific epistemological orientation, and I want
42:57
Speaker 1: you to sit with what it means that that person
42:59
Speaker 1: is telling you that they and their equally trained, equally
43:03
Speaker 1: skeptical field partner encountered something in a hemlock stand in
43:07
Speaker 1: West Virginia that they have chosen by mutual unspoken agreement
43:12
Speaker 1: to never discuss again. My field partner for the season
43:16
Speaker 1: was a woman named Rhonda. She had 15 years of
43:20
Speaker 1: field work behind her by the time we were working together,
43:23
Speaker 1: which is significant in a discipline that spends as much
43:26
Speaker 1: time in the actual field as ours does. She is
43:30
Speaker 1: not impressionable. She is not imaginative in the way that
43:33
Speaker 1: people mean when they say someone is imaginative, meaning that
43:37
Speaker 1: they fill gaps with invented content. She observes. She records.
43:43
Speaker 1: She draws conclusions proportional to the evidence. She is the
43:47
Speaker 1: best field partner I've ever had. We were sampling in
43:52
Speaker 1: a remote section of the Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia,
43:56
Speaker 1: at sites that required significant off-trail travel. Some sites were
44:00
Speaker 1: more than three miles from the nearest maintained trail and
44:03
Speaker 1: terrain that discouraged speed. We carried satellite communication devices and
44:08
Speaker 1: maintained check-in protocols. We were experienced and we were careful.
44:13
Speaker 1: The site I am describing required passage through a stand
44:16
Speaker 1: of old-growth hemlock. I want to describe this stand because
44:20
Speaker 1: the place itself matters for the story, and because it
44:23
Speaker 1: is worth describing. It is a remnant stand, one of
44:26
Speaker 1: the last significant ones in that region, which survived the
44:30
Speaker 1: logging era by a combination of inaccessibility and, some ecologists
44:35
Speaker 1: have argued, simple chance. The trees are very old. Some
44:40
Speaker 1: of them are four to five feet across at the
44:43
Speaker 1: base with root buttresses that rise to waist height. The
44:47
Speaker 1: canopy is so dense and so interlocked that the interior
44:52
Speaker 1: of the stand exists in its own light regime, significantly
44:57
Speaker 1: dimmer and cooler than the surrounding forest even in summer
45:01
Speaker 1: and approaching genuine dimness in late September when we were
45:05
Speaker 1: working there. The acoustic environment in that stand is unusual
45:10
Speaker 1: I have some education in forest acoustics from a course
45:14
Speaker 1: I took as a graduate student. And I can say
45:16
Speaker 1: with some confidence that the hemlock stand absorbs sound in
45:20
Speaker 1: a way that was immeasurably different from the surrounding forest.
45:24
Speaker 1: You could speak at normal conversational volume and your voice
45:27
Speaker 1: felt close, felt like it landed near you rather than
45:31
Speaker 1: propagating outward the way sound normally does in open forest.
45:35
Speaker 1: Rhonda and I had discussed this on our two previous
45:37
Speaker 1: visits to the site. It was a noted feature of
45:40
Speaker 1: the place, not alarming, just unusual. A physical phenomenon with
45:46
Speaker 1: a reasonable explanation in the density of the biomass. On
45:51
Speaker 1: our third visit to that site in late September, we
45:54
Speaker 1: entered the stand from the south side at our usual
45:56
Speaker 1: approach angle. I was following Rhonda at a distance of
46:00
Speaker 1: about three paces, which was our normal field configuration. We
46:04
Speaker 1: had not been in the stand for more than perhaps
46:06
Speaker 1: 30 seconds, when Rhonda stopped walking and held up her hand.
46:11
Speaker 1: There was a figure approximately 80 feet ahead of us,
46:14
Speaker 1: standing between two of the large hemlocks in the dim
46:17
Speaker 1: interior of the stand, standing completely still, facing us. The
46:23
Speaker 1: light inside the stand was low enough that I could
46:25
Speaker 1: not resolve a face or specific features at that distance.
46:30
Speaker 1: What I could see was the outline of a human figure, upright,
46:33
Speaker 1: of average height, positioned with no obvious pack or equipment.
46:38
Speaker 1: in a place where there was no trail, and where
46:41
Speaker 1: reaching that specific location required deliberate navigation through unmarked terrain.
46:48
Speaker 1: The nearest trail junction was approximately a mile and a
46:51
Speaker 1: half away. We called out, Are you okay? Do you
46:55
Speaker 1: need assistance? This is the standard protocol for encountering a
46:59
Speaker 1: person in unexpected backcountry circumstances. We waited. The figure did
47:05
Speaker 1: not respond, did not move, did not shift posture or
47:10
Speaker 1: turn its head. Simply stood. We called a second time.
47:15
Speaker 1: The same question, slightly louder. Same result. The figure was
47:19
Speaker 1: still and silent. I looked at Rhonda. She looked at me.
47:24
Speaker 1: We made the decision simultaneously without speaking and began walking
47:29
Speaker 1: toward the figure. I need you to understand what I'm
47:32
Speaker 1: about to say because I understand how it sounds and
47:35
Speaker 1: I've been trying for five years now to find a
47:38
Speaker 1: different way to say it that is accurate and does
47:40
Speaker 1: not sound like what it is. As we walked toward
47:44
Speaker 1: the figure, the distance did not close proportionally to the
47:48
Speaker 1: steps we were taking. I have walked toward things for
47:51
Speaker 1: 15 years in field conditions. I know what it feels
47:55
Speaker 1: like to cover ground. I know how many steps it
47:58
Speaker 1: takes to close 40 feet of distance over flat terrain.
48:03
Speaker 1: We took what I estimated as 25 to 30 steps,
48:06
Speaker 1: and the figure remained at the same distance from us,
48:09
Speaker 1: approximately 80 feet, not closer. I looked at the trees
48:13
Speaker 1: around us. I oriented myself using specific trees I recognized
48:17
Speaker 1: from our previous visits. I was not disoriented. I was
48:21
Speaker 1: not confused about my position in the stand. I was
48:24
Speaker 1: standing in a place I had stood twice before, and
48:27
Speaker 1: I knew exactly where I was. The figure was 80
48:31
Speaker 1: feet away from us, We had walked 30 steps, and
48:34
Speaker 1: it was still 80 feet away. Rhonda gripped my arm.
48:37
Speaker 1: We stopped. Neither of us spoke. We stood there for
48:41
Speaker 1: perhaps half a minute and looked at the figure. It
48:44
Speaker 1: had not moved. In all the time we had been
48:47
Speaker 1: approaching it, calling to it, watching it, it had not
48:50
Speaker 1: made any movement at all. We backed up, together slowly,
48:55
Speaker 1: without turning away from the figure. We backed to the
48:59
Speaker 1: edge of the stand, and then we went around it entirely.
49:03
Speaker 1: through the considerably more difficult terrain of the surrounding deciduous
49:06
Speaker 1: forest and came at our sampling site from a completely
49:10
Speaker 1: different angle. We collected our samples, we did the work,
49:13
Speaker 1: we did not speak. After about 20 minutes at the site,
49:17
Speaker 1: Rhonda said quietly and without looking at me. I felt
49:21
Speaker 1: as though reaching it would have been a mistake. That
49:24
Speaker 1: is not how Rhonda speaks. In five years since that day,
49:28
Speaker 1: I have never heard her use language like that again.
49:32
Speaker 1: She said it as a statement of observed fact, the
49:35
Speaker 1: way she would tell me the pH of a sample,
49:38
Speaker 1: and then she went back to her work. I understood
49:41
Speaker 1: exactly what she meant because I had felt it too.
49:44
Speaker 1: Walking toward the figure had produced a specific quality of
49:47
Speaker 1: sensation that I have not experienced before or since. Something
49:52
Speaker 1: that was not fear exactly, not the adrenalized urgency of
49:56
Speaker 1: physical threat, but something closer to the feeling of approaching
50:00
Speaker 1: the edge of something that cannot be unapproached. A threshold quality.
50:05
Speaker 1: The sense that continuing would constitute a passage into something
50:08
Speaker 1: from which return would not be simple. We do not
50:11
Speaker 1: speak of it. We see each other at professional gatherings
50:15
Speaker 1: twice a year. The subject does not arise. The agreement
50:19
Speaker 1: was never stated. It simply exists. I think we both
50:23
Speaker 1: know independently that whatever that figure was, whatever the stand
50:27
Speaker 1: was doing to distance or to us, there is no
50:30
Speaker 1: language in the discipline we share that contains it. And
50:35
Speaker 1: we are people who live in our discipline. We live
50:38
Speaker 1: in the language of what can be measured. What happened
50:42
Speaker 1: in that stand cannot be measured, and so we have
50:45
Speaker 1: put it somewhere outside the language. Somewhere it can sit
50:49
Speaker 1: without requiring us to categorize it, where it will be
50:53
Speaker 1: for the rest of our lives. Story 6. I am
50:59
Speaker 1: a long-distance runner, have been since college, when I discover
51:02
Speaker 1: that my body responded to high volume in a way
51:05
Speaker 1: that most bodies do not. and that running very far
51:08
Speaker 1: was something I could do and something that made me
51:11
Speaker 1: feel like myself in a way that very few other
51:14
Speaker 1: things did. I have been running ultras competitively for six years.
51:19
Speaker 1: I cover terrain that most people would not attempt to walk,
51:23
Speaker 1: in conditions that most people would not choose to be
51:25
Speaker 1: outside in, at speeds that require a level of physical
51:29
Speaker 1: fitness that I maintain the way other people maintain a
51:32
Speaker 1: professional credential, constantly, seriously, and with significant personal investment I'm
51:39
Speaker 1: also six feet, one inch tall, and I currently weigh
51:42
Speaker 1: 212 pounds. I mentioned my physical characteristics, not as a boast,
51:48
Speaker 1: but as relevant context, because I'm aware that I'm not
51:52
Speaker 1: a person who typically experiences physical fear in ordinary outdoor settings.
51:57
Speaker 1: My size and my fitness level and my familiarity with
52:00
Speaker 1: remote terrain mean that the category of things that genuinely
52:04
Speaker 1: frightened me has become relatively small over the years. What
52:09
Speaker 1: I am about to describe is in that category. It
52:12
Speaker 1: entered that category on an October morning two years ago,
52:15
Speaker 1: and it has remained there. I was training on a
52:18
Speaker 1: loop I knew well, a 28-mile circuit through the mountains
52:22
Speaker 1: outside of Boone, North Carolina, that connects several trails in
52:26
Speaker 1: a way. I worked out over multiple seasons. I have
52:29
Speaker 1: run that loop in every season. I know every rise
52:32
Speaker 1: and drop on it, every technical section, every place where
52:36
Speaker 1: the trail goes close enough to an edge that you
52:38
Speaker 1: have to be paying attention. I started before 5 in
52:42
Speaker 1: the morning, as I usually do for long training days,
52:45
Speaker 1: in the dark with a headlamp, and I moved into
52:47
Speaker 1: the daylight around mile 8 or 9. The first 11
52:51
Speaker 1: miles went cleanly, good legs, good air, the particular pleasure
52:56
Speaker 1: of a long run in good conditions where everything is
52:58
Speaker 1: working the way it is supposed to, and your body
53:01
Speaker 1: feels like a reliable instrument. At mile 11.5, there is
53:05
Speaker 1: a short spur trail about 200 meters out and back
53:09
Speaker 1: that leads to a point overlook. I have taken that
53:12
Speaker 1: spur on every run of this loop that I can remember.
53:16
Speaker 1: The view is worth the extra 400 meters. The view
53:20
Speaker 1: is east-facing, and in October, when I am running early,
53:24
Speaker 1: the light is coming up through the ridges as you
53:26
Speaker 1: reach the overlook point, and it is genuinely beautiful and
53:30
Speaker 1: worth stopping for. I took the spur that morning. I
53:34
Speaker 1: ran it out, hit the overlook, stopped, I took a gel.
53:37
Speaker 1: I stood there, maybe two and a half to three minutes,
53:40
Speaker 1: looking east at the light, letting my breathing settle. Standard
53:45
Speaker 1: mid-run break at a scenic point. I turned around and
53:49
Speaker 1: ran back down the spur toward the main trail. At
53:53
Speaker 1: 60 feet from the junction where the spur meets the
53:55
Speaker 1: main trail, I stopped running. There was a man standing
53:59
Speaker 1: at the junction. He was standing in the center of
54:02
Speaker 1: the main trail, directly at the point where the spur
54:05
Speaker 1: meets it, and he was facing up the spur, which
54:08
Speaker 1: meant he was facing directly at me. He was somewhere
54:12
Speaker 1: between 55 and 65 years old. Heavyset but not soft,
54:18
Speaker 1: the specific kind of heaviness that comes from years of
54:21
Speaker 1: physical labor rather than inactivity. He was wearing canvas work
54:26
Speaker 1: pants and a canvas jacket, the kind of heavy-duty work
54:29
Speaker 1: clothes worn for farm labor or construction in cold weather.
54:33
Speaker 1: not for trail hiking. His boots were rubber, knee-high, the
54:37
Speaker 1: kind used for working in wet ground or mud. He
54:40
Speaker 1: had nothing in his hands. No pack, no water, no poles,
54:46
Speaker 1: no phone. Nothing. He was simply standing at the junction
54:50
Speaker 1: in farm clothes and rubber boots at 5.40 in the morning,
54:54
Speaker 1: looking up the spur at me. I called out good
54:58
Speaker 1: morning from 60 feet away. He said nothing and did
55:02
Speaker 1: not move. I kept coming down the spur, because stopping
55:06
Speaker 1: made no sense, and turning around made less. As I
55:11
Speaker 1: got closer, I said, Hey, morning, how are you doing?
55:14
Speaker 1: The kind of thing you say passing someone on a trail.
55:18
Speaker 1: He said nothing. His eyes were on me. He was
55:22
Speaker 1: looking at me with a kind of steady, unhurried attention
55:25
Speaker 1: that was different from the eye contact of someone who
55:27
Speaker 1: has simply not heard you yet. He had heard me.
55:32
Speaker 1: He was looking at He was choosing not to respond.
55:37
Speaker 1: I reached the junction and angled around him because he
55:40
Speaker 1: was not moving out of the trail. There was about
55:43
Speaker 1: two feet of clearance between us when I passed him.
55:45
Speaker 1: I said, excuse me as I went by. I got
55:49
Speaker 1: past him and I did not look back immediately. I
55:53
Speaker 1: gave myself a hundred feet of trail between us first.
55:56
Speaker 1: Then I looked back over my shoulder. He had turned
56:00
Speaker 1: to watch me go. He was in the exact spot
56:04
Speaker 1: at the junction, turned to face the direction I was
56:07
Speaker 1: moving now, watching me go away from him with the
56:10
Speaker 1: same steady, unhurried attention with which he had watched me approach.
56:15
Speaker 1: He did not move as I looked at him. He
56:18
Speaker 1: simply watched. I ran. I'm being honest. I picked up
56:23
Speaker 1: to a hard pace and I ran. I have covered
56:26
Speaker 1: that next mile and a half of trail many times
56:28
Speaker 1: and never faster than I covered it that morning. I
56:31
Speaker 1: did not look back again. What actually frightens me and
56:35
Speaker 1: what I want you to understand is the specific thing
56:37
Speaker 1: that I cannot put down is not the man's behavior
56:40
Speaker 1: at the junction. It is the math of his presence.
56:45
Speaker 1: The overlook spur is 200 meters out and back. I
56:48
Speaker 1: was at the overlook for two and a half to
56:50
Speaker 1: three minutes. The trail junction is visible from the overlook.
56:55
Speaker 1: I know this for certain because I have looked back
56:58
Speaker 1: down the spur from the overlook point many times and
57:01
Speaker 1: you can see the junction clearly from there, maybe 200
57:05
Speaker 1: meters away. When I turned around from the overlook to
57:08
Speaker 1: start back down, I looked toward the junction out of habit.
57:12
Speaker 1: It was empty. I looked directly at it from the overlook,
57:15
Speaker 1: and there was no one there. He was not there
57:18
Speaker 1: when I turned to leave the overlook. He was standing
57:21
Speaker 1: at the junction when I was 60 feet away on
57:23
Speaker 1: the spur, which means he appeared at that junction in
57:27
Speaker 1: the time it took me to run approximately 140 meters
57:31
Speaker 1: downhill at training pace. The terrain on either side of
57:34
Speaker 1: that junction is steep and dense. There is no maintained
57:39
Speaker 1: connection to any other trail within reasonable distance. A man
57:43
Speaker 1: in rubber farm boots, heavyset with no gear, who was
57:47
Speaker 1: not at that junction when I looked at it from
57:49
Speaker 1: the overlook, was standing there 60 feet from me 30
57:53
Speaker 1: seconds later. I had been asking for two years where
57:57
Speaker 1: he came from. I have been asking what he was
57:59
Speaker 1: doing there. I have been asking why he watched and
58:02
Speaker 1: did not speak. I have no answers. I have only
58:06
Speaker 1: the math of the impossible presence. And the feeling in
58:09
Speaker 1: my chest as I ran that last mile and a
58:12
Speaker 1: half that I had been very close to something that
58:15
Speaker 1: I did not want to be close to and that
58:17
Speaker 1: whatever it was, it had let me go. Call to action.
58:22
Speaker 1: Six stories in and I want to stop and say
58:25
Speaker 1: something about why I do this It would be easy
58:28
Speaker 1: to treat these submissions as content, as raw material, to
58:33
Speaker 1: be processed and packaged and delivered. I have tried very
58:36
Speaker 1: hard to resist that. Each of these stories is someone's life.
58:42
Speaker 1: Someone's sleepless nights. Someone's thing they have been carrying. I
58:47
Speaker 1: take that seriously and I want you to take it
58:49
Speaker 1: seriously too. If you have been watching this channel and
58:53
Speaker 1: you have not joined the membership, I genuinely ask you
58:56
Speaker 1: to consider it. The membership is what makes it possible
59:00
Speaker 1: for me to spend the time that each story deserves.
59:04
Speaker 1: The link is in the description. Even if membership is
59:07
Speaker 1: not for you, please hit the like button. on this
59:10
Speaker 1: video and drop a comment. Tell me what you think.
59:14
Speaker 1: Tell me what you felt. Tell me which story made
59:17
Speaker 1: you look over your shoulder. The comment section is one
59:20
Speaker 1: of the most important things about this community. Use it.
59:24
Speaker 1: I'm down there with you. Story seven. My name is
59:28
Speaker 1: Bet Solis. I'm 44 years old, and I have worked
59:31
Speaker 1: the overnight shift at a paper mill in eastern Tennessee
59:35
Speaker 1: for 12 years. Before the mill, I worked nights at
59:38
Speaker 1: a distribution center for eight years before that. I have
59:42
Speaker 1: spent the bulk of my adult working life in the
59:45
Speaker 1: hours between 10 at night and 6 in the morning.
59:48
Speaker 1: I know what those hours feel like. I know the
59:51
Speaker 1: particular quality of the world in the deep middle of
59:54
Speaker 1: the night, and I know how to move through it
59:57
Speaker 1: without being frightened by it. That is not bravado. It
1:00:01
Speaker 1: is just familiarity. The night is ordinary to me in
1:00:05
Speaker 1: the way that other people's ordinary hours are ordinary to them.
1:00:10
Speaker 1: I live alone in a house on a rural road
1:00:13
Speaker 1: four miles from town. Three sides of the property are wooded.
1:00:17
Speaker 1: The fourth faces the road and the empty field of
1:00:20
Speaker 1: the neighbor across from me. I have been there seven
1:00:24
Speaker 1: years since my divorce, and I know the property in
1:00:27
Speaker 1: the specific way. You know a place you have navigated
1:00:31
Speaker 1: alone in every season and at every hour. I know
1:00:35
Speaker 1: what sound the back door makes when the temperature drops
1:00:38
Speaker 1: below 20. I know which of the floorboards in the
1:00:41
Speaker 1: hallway is going to speak no matter how carefully you
1:00:43
Speaker 1: step on it. I know the difference between the sounds
1:00:47
Speaker 1: my dogs make when they hear a possum on the
1:00:49
Speaker 1: back porch and when they hear a coyote in the field.
1:00:53
Speaker 1: These are the distinctions you develop when you live alone
1:00:56
Speaker 1: in a quiet place and pay attention I got home
1:01:00
Speaker 1: from my shift at 3.40 in the morning on a
1:01:02
Speaker 1: Tuesday in March of last year. Parked in the drive,
1:01:06
Speaker 1: got out, reached back in for my bag and noticed
1:01:10
Speaker 1: that the motion sensor light on the front right corner
1:01:12
Speaker 1: of the house was on. I have had that sensor
1:01:16
Speaker 1: for six years and I know its behavior the way
1:01:18
Speaker 1: I know the sounds of the house. I know when
1:01:20
Speaker 1: it is deer and I know when it is the
1:01:22
Speaker 1: neighborhood cat and I know when it is something else.
1:01:26
Speaker 1: There is a quality to those specific occasions of the
1:01:29
Speaker 1: light being on That is different from the ordinary occasions,
1:01:33
Speaker 1: and I do not know how to quantify it except
1:01:36
Speaker 1: to say that six years of living there alone at
1:01:39
Speaker 1: night have given me a sensitivity to the difference. This
1:01:44
Speaker 1: was the second kind. My body knew it before my
1:01:47
Speaker 1: head confirmed it. I looked around from beside my car.
1:01:51
Speaker 1: The light illuminated the front of the house and the
1:01:53
Speaker 1: near portion of the driveway and the yard on that side.
1:01:57
Speaker 1: I could see those areas were empty. I looked at
1:02:00
Speaker 1: the shadows that the light created, the places it did
1:02:03
Speaker 1: not reach. I could not see anything that should not
1:02:06
Speaker 1: be there. No movement. No sound beyond what that hour
1:02:11
Speaker 1: ordinarily produced. I went inside. Checked the ground floor methodically.
1:02:17
Speaker 1: Locked what was not locked. Then I sat at the
1:02:20
Speaker 1: kitchen table with my laptop and opened the security footage.
1:02:25
Speaker 1: Two cameras. Front camera covering the driveway and doors. back
1:02:29
Speaker 1: camera covering the rear of the house and the backyard.
1:02:33
Speaker 1: The back camera had recorded a motion event with a
1:02:35
Speaker 1: timestamp of 3.47 in the morning, 13 minutes before I
1:02:39
Speaker 1: arrived home. I opened the clip and I watched it
1:02:43
Speaker 1: three times straight through before I moved. The backyard and
1:02:47
Speaker 1: night vision, that particular green-gray color that makes everything familiar
1:02:52
Speaker 1: and strange at the same time. My yard, my fence
1:02:56
Speaker 1: line in the background, my shed to the right, and
1:02:59
Speaker 1: in the center of the yard, standing approximately 40 feet
1:03:02
Speaker 1: from the rear of the house, a person, standing and
1:03:05
Speaker 1: facing the back of the house, just standing there, looking
1:03:09
Speaker 1: at it. I watched them stand there for the full
1:03:12
Speaker 1: 4 minutes and 32 seconds that the clip ran. They
1:03:18
Speaker 1: did not move toward the house. They did not move
1:03:21
Speaker 1: around the yard. They stood in one spot, and they
1:03:24
Speaker 1: looked at the back of my house. Then they walked
1:03:27
Speaker 1: to their left, which is the side of the house
1:03:30
Speaker 1: where the motion sensor is mounted on the front corner,
1:03:33
Speaker 1: and they walked out of the frame. Approximately 13 minutes later,
1:03:37
Speaker 1: I would pull into my driveway and find that sensor
1:03:40
Speaker 1: light on. I called the sheriff. A deputy was there
1:03:44
Speaker 1: within 20 minutes, a serious and professional young man who
1:03:49
Speaker 1: walked the entire perimeter of the property with a flashlight
1:03:53
Speaker 1: and then came back and sat with me and looked
1:03:55
Speaker 1: at the footage on my laptop. He was quiet for
1:03:58
Speaker 1: a while. He said he would file a report and
1:04:01
Speaker 1: that I should call if anything else happened. He could
1:04:04
Speaker 1: not tell me who the person was or why they
1:04:07
Speaker 1: were there because there was nothing on my property and
1:04:10
Speaker 1: nothing in the footage that rose to the level of
1:04:13
Speaker 1: a reportable crime. A person standing in someone's yard in
1:04:17
Speaker 1: the night is not illegal unless there is accompanying intent
1:04:22
Speaker 1: that can be demonstrated. The thing I have turned over
1:04:25
Speaker 1: every day since is this. Four minutes and 32 seconds.
1:04:32
Speaker 1: Standing in my backyard looking at the back of my house.
1:04:36
Speaker 1: Not moving around. Not checking windows or doors. Not assessing
1:04:41
Speaker 1: the property for entry points. Standing in one place looking
1:04:44
Speaker 1: at the building for four and a half minutes. I
1:04:48
Speaker 1: have thought about every explanation available to me. A burglar
1:04:53
Speaker 1: doing reconnaissance? A burglar moves around. A burglar looks at windows,
1:04:58
Speaker 1: at doors, at points of entry. A burglar does not
1:05:02
Speaker 1: stand in an open backyard for four and a half
1:05:06
Speaker 1: minutes staring at the back wall of the house. Someone
1:05:10
Speaker 1: who was drunk or confused and had wandered onto the
1:05:13
Speaker 1: wrong property. They do not stand for four minutes and
1:05:17
Speaker 1: then walk specifically to the side of the house where
1:05:20
Speaker 1: the motion sensor is and trip it as they leave.
1:05:24
Speaker 1: Someone I know someone with a reason to be there.
1:05:28
Speaker 1: I cannot name anyone who would stand in my backyard
1:05:31
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night and look at my
1:05:33
Speaker 1: house for four and a half minutes and then simply
1:05:36
Speaker 1: walk away. The camera was visible from where they were standing.
1:05:41
Speaker 1: It is not hidden. A person looking at that backyard
1:05:44
Speaker 1: at night can see the camera housing in the corner
1:05:47
Speaker 1: of the eave. They stood in full view of it
1:05:50
Speaker 1: for four and a half minutes, and they did not care.
1:05:55
Speaker 1: or they knew it was there, and it did not
1:05:57
Speaker 1: change their purpose. I sleep differently now. The house is
1:06:02
Speaker 1: the same house. The yard is the same yard. But
1:06:05
Speaker 1: something has changed about how I occupy it, some quality
1:06:09
Speaker 1: of my relationship to the space, because now I know
1:06:12
Speaker 1: that someone stood outside it in the dark and looked
1:06:16
Speaker 1: at it with a purpose I cannot identify for 4
1:06:19
Speaker 1: minutes and 32 seconds, and then left and has not
1:06:22
Speaker 1: been back. And the not being back is almost the
1:06:26
Speaker 1: strangest part. Because it means they finished whatever they came
1:06:29
Speaker 1: to do. Whatever they were there for. Standing in my
1:06:33
Speaker 1: backyard in the middle of a Tuesday night in March,
1:06:35
Speaker 1: they got it. And I will never know what it was.
1:06:39
Speaker 1: Story 8. My name is Tom Reardon. I'm going to
1:06:44
Speaker 1: tell you something that Anne and I have never written
1:06:47
Speaker 1: down before. I have told it to two people. My
1:06:50
Speaker 1: wife and one old friend. And both of them heard
1:06:53
Speaker 1: it and accepted it. and neither of them was able
1:06:56
Speaker 1: to make sense of it either. I am 41 years
1:07:00
Speaker 1: old and I've been carrying this for 15 years and
1:07:04
Speaker 1: what I've decided finally is that carrying it alone inside
1:07:08
Speaker 1: my own head for the rest of my life is
1:07:10
Speaker 1: not a better option than putting it somewhere outside of me.
1:07:15
Speaker 1: So here it is. I was 26 years old and
1:07:18
Speaker 1: I had just been through a divorce. It was the
1:07:21
Speaker 1: kind of divorce that does not happen because anyone did
1:07:24
Speaker 1: anything specifically terrible, which in some ways is more disorienting
1:07:28
Speaker 1: than the other kind, because at least the other kind
1:07:30
Speaker 1: gives you something specific to be angry at. This was
1:07:34
Speaker 1: two people who had made promises they discovered they could
1:07:37
Speaker 1: not keep, and the unkeeping of those promises was quiet
1:07:40
Speaker 1: and gradual, and by the time it was legally concluded,
1:07:43
Speaker 1: I had spent three years slowly becoming a stranger in
1:07:47
Speaker 1: my own life. I took a week off work, Drove
1:07:51
Speaker 1: into the mountains of western Virginia with camping gear and
1:07:54
Speaker 1: food for six days and no itinerary. No destination. I
1:07:59
Speaker 1: just drove until I was in the national forest and
1:08:01
Speaker 1: then drove on the forest roads until I found a
1:08:03
Speaker 1: dispersed camping spot near a creek about two miles from
1:08:07
Speaker 1: the nearest road. No one else there. The creek ran
1:08:11
Speaker 1: over flat rocks maybe 30 feet from my tent site
1:08:14
Speaker 1: and the sound it made was exactly the sound I
1:08:16
Speaker 1: needed to hear. I set up camp and I stayed
1:08:19
Speaker 1: for five nights And for most of those five nights,
1:08:22
Speaker 1: I slept long and hard and dreamlessly in a way
1:08:25
Speaker 1: I had not been able to sleep for years. On
1:08:29
Speaker 1: the fourth day, I walked up the drainage following the creek.
1:08:33
Speaker 1: I had no destination in mind. I just wanted to
1:08:36
Speaker 1: see where the water came from. I walked about two
1:08:39
Speaker 1: miles up from camp before the train got too rough
1:08:42
Speaker 1: to continue easily. And in the last quarter mile of
1:08:45
Speaker 1: navigable train, I found something I was not looking for.
1:08:49
Speaker 1: A pool. A natural basin in the bedrock where the
1:08:53
Speaker 1: creek had been channeled into a widening that formed a
1:08:55
Speaker 1: still dark mirror of water. Maybe 30 feet across in
1:08:59
Speaker 1: any direction. shaded by old hemlocks on the uphill side
1:09:03
Speaker 1: so that the light on it was green and filtered
1:09:06
Speaker 1: and extraordinarily still I sat there for an hour I
1:09:10
Speaker 1: ate the food I had brought I looked at the
1:09:12
Speaker 1: pool and I thought about my life and I felt
1:09:14
Speaker 1: for the first time in a long time that it
1:09:16
Speaker 1: was going to be possible to continue On the way
1:09:20
Speaker 1: back down toward camp, I found the carving. It was
1:09:23
Speaker 1: on a birch tree about a foot off the trail
1:09:25
Speaker 1: on the right side. I almost walked past it. I
1:09:29
Speaker 1: caught it in my peripheral vision, a set of marks
1:09:32
Speaker 1: in the bark, and stopped to look. Two initials, which
1:09:36
Speaker 1: I will not repeat here, because they were not my initials,
1:09:39
Speaker 1: and I do not want to start speculation about a
1:09:41
Speaker 1: specific person and a date carved into the bark of
1:09:46
Speaker 1: a birch tree in the backcountry. Eight days in the
1:09:49
Speaker 1: future from the day I was standing there. I stood
1:09:52
Speaker 1: in front of that carving for a long time. I
1:09:55
Speaker 1: studied the state of the bark around the cuts. I
1:09:58
Speaker 1: have some knowledge of how trees heal from damage. The
1:10:02
Speaker 1: bark around a fresh carving is bright, and the exposed
1:10:05
Speaker 1: wood beneath is pale and sometimes moist. The bark around
1:10:09
Speaker 1: a carving that has had time to begin healing will
1:10:13
Speaker 1: show subtle darkening and early callous formations. What I saw
1:10:17
Speaker 1: fell between those states. My best estimate, based on what
1:10:21
Speaker 1: I was seeing, was that the carving had been made
1:10:24
Speaker 1: somewhere between a few days and a week before I
1:10:27
Speaker 1: was standing in front of it, which at the far
1:10:30
Speaker 1: end of that range put the carving at approximately the
1:10:33
Speaker 1: day I arrived at that campsite. I went through every
1:10:37
Speaker 1: explanation I could construct. Someone had carved the wrong date.
1:10:43
Speaker 1: The date was a reference to a future event, a
1:10:45
Speaker 1: planned return, something that had meaning in the life of
1:10:48
Speaker 1: the person who made it? The initials were common enough
1:10:52
Speaker 1: that coincidence was possible, and I was in a state
1:10:55
Speaker 1: of mind where I was more alert to meaning than
1:10:57
Speaker 1: I usually would be. I know all of these explanations,
1:11:01
Speaker 1: and I have held all of them at various times
1:11:03
Speaker 1: over the past 15 years, and none of them has
1:11:06
Speaker 1: fully satisfied me, not because they are implausible, but because
1:11:10
Speaker 1: of what happened two days later on my last night
1:11:13
Speaker 1: in the forest. I was in my tent, about an
1:11:16
Speaker 1: hour after full dark. I was not asleep yet. The
1:11:21
Speaker 1: creek was making its sound, and the night was cold
1:11:23
Speaker 1: and clear, and I was lying there in that in-between
1:11:27
Speaker 1: state between thinking and sleep. Then I heard footsteps on
1:11:31
Speaker 1: the trail. The trail ran about 40 feet from my tent,
1:11:34
Speaker 1: and these footsteps were on the trail, moving from south
1:11:38
Speaker 1: to north, which meant from the direction of the pool
1:11:41
Speaker 1: toward the direction of the road. Heavy footsteps, slow footsteps,
1:11:46
Speaker 1: The irregular rhythm of something large moving without hurry. The
1:11:50
Speaker 1: kind of rhythm that belongs to something significantly bigger than
1:11:53
Speaker 1: a deer or a bear cub. And the character of
1:11:56
Speaker 1: the sound was different from what an animal makes when
1:11:59
Speaker 1: it is simply moving through the forest, which is a
1:12:02
Speaker 1: sound I know from years of camping. This had a
1:12:05
Speaker 1: deliberateness to it. A pacing. The footsteps slowed and stopped
1:12:11
Speaker 1: in the area closest to my camp. Very close. within
1:12:16
Speaker 1: what I estimated at 15 to 20 feet of my tent.
1:12:21
Speaker 1: I lay completely still. The creek continued its sound. Everything
1:12:26
Speaker 1: else stopped. And then I heard breathing. Or I heard
1:12:31
Speaker 1: something that my brain categorizes breathing. Slow and deep and close.
1:12:37
Speaker 1: From outside the tent wall on the side facing the trail.
1:12:40
Speaker 1: The kind of breathing you hear from something large at rest.
1:12:44
Speaker 1: I do not know if it was breathing. I know
1:12:47
Speaker 1: that my brain told me it was breathing, and I
1:12:50
Speaker 1: know that the air in the tent changed in a
1:12:52
Speaker 1: way I cannot describe precisely except to say that the
1:12:55
Speaker 1: quality of the space changed, the way the quality of
1:12:59
Speaker 1: a room changes when another person walks into it. Then
1:13:03
Speaker 1: a voice, not a whisper, conversational volume, a man's voice,
1:13:10
Speaker 1: lower register, unhurried and calm, in the way of someone
1:13:14
Speaker 1: speaking in a room where they expect to be heard.
1:13:18
Speaker 1: He said three words. It is too soon. The footsteps resumed.
1:13:23
Speaker 1: They continued north on the trail, moving away from my camp.
1:13:27
Speaker 1: I lay in my tent, and I heard them fade
1:13:29
Speaker 1: and diminish, and then the night was empty again, except
1:13:32
Speaker 1: for the creek. I did not sleep. Before four in
1:13:35
Speaker 1: the morning, I'd packed everything, and I was hiking out
1:13:38
Speaker 1: in the dark with my headlamp. I'm 41 years old.
1:13:43
Speaker 1: I have a wife and a child and a house
1:13:45
Speaker 1: and a life that is full and daily and good.
1:13:49
Speaker 1: And those three words are still with me. It is
1:13:52
Speaker 1: too soon. I do not know whose initials were on
1:13:55
Speaker 1: that birch tree. I do not know whose date it was,
1:13:59
Speaker 1: eight days in the future, carved into the bark of
1:14:02
Speaker 1: a backcountry tree by someone who was there around the
1:14:05
Speaker 1: time I arrived. I do not know what was on
1:14:08
Speaker 1: that trail at night speaking in a conversational voice to
1:14:12
Speaker 1: the dark. I do not know what it was too
1:14:15
Speaker 1: soon for. I know that the date on the tree
1:14:18
Speaker 1: came and went in my own life without incident. I
1:14:21
Speaker 1: do not know if that is a comfort or if
1:14:23
Speaker 1: it means the date belonged to someone else. I have
1:14:27
Speaker 1: been asking that question since I was 26 years old,
1:14:30
Speaker 1: and I am not closer to an answer. Story 9.
1:14:35
Speaker 1: I am a retired state trooper from the state of
1:14:37
Speaker 1: West Virginia. I joined the force in 1987, and I
1:14:39
Speaker 1: retired in 2017 with 30 years of service. In that time,
1:14:45
Speaker 1: I worked patrol, accident reconstruction, criminal investigation, narcotics, fugitive apprehension,
1:14:52
Speaker 1: and several years on a unit that dealt specifically with
1:14:55
Speaker 1: violent crimes in rural areas, which in West Virginia covers
1:14:58
Speaker 1: a particular and specific category of human darkness that I
1:15:02
Speaker 1: will not detail here. I have seen what people do
1:15:06
Speaker 1: to each other. I have seen it repeatedly and in
1:15:08
Speaker 1: considerable variety. I have developed over 30 years the ability
1:15:13
Speaker 1: to categorize what I see. To put it in the
1:15:16
Speaker 1: appropriate box and close the box and move to the
1:15:19
Speaker 1: next thing. You develop that ability or you do not
1:15:23
Speaker 1: survive the work with anything intact. I am telling you
1:15:27
Speaker 1: about my career because I want to explain what it
1:15:29
Speaker 1: means when I say that I encountered something three years
1:15:32
Speaker 1: ago on a hiking trail in the Canaan Valley area
1:15:36
Speaker 1: that I have not been able to put in a box.
1:15:39
Speaker 1: After 30 years of successfully categorizing things that most people
1:15:44
Speaker 1: never encounter at all, I'm telling you that I found
1:15:47
Speaker 1: something that will not categorize. That fact alone, the fact
1:15:51
Speaker 1: of its refusal to be filed, is the thing that
1:15:54
Speaker 1: keeps me returning to it. My wife and I are
1:15:57
Speaker 1: regular hikers. We are both in our mid-60s, and we
1:16:01
Speaker 1: know our limitations, and we stay within them. Day hikes,
1:16:06
Speaker 1: four to eight miles, well-maintained trails, nothing technical. We hike
1:16:11
Speaker 1: two or three times a month when the weather allows,
1:16:13
Speaker 1: and we have been doing it together for more than
1:16:15
Speaker 1: 20 years. It is a good thing we do together,
1:16:19
Speaker 1: and it is something I value. This particular trail is
1:16:23
Speaker 1: one we had done once before. Seven miles round trip,
1:16:27
Speaker 1: with an overlook at the end point, that my wife
1:16:29
Speaker 1: specifically wanted to see again. We parked at the trailhead
1:16:33
Speaker 1: late morning on a weekday in October, which meant light
1:16:36
Speaker 1: traffic on the trail. We had passed one other hiker
1:16:39
Speaker 1: in the first mile and a half, a solo man
1:16:42
Speaker 1: with a dog, and then no one until the family
1:16:45
Speaker 1: we encountered about three miles in. Two adults and three
1:16:48
Speaker 1: young children, all clearly in good spirits, making the trip
1:16:52
Speaker 1: back from the overlook. We stopped and asked if the
1:16:55
Speaker 1: overlook was worth the last push. They said absolutely, great views,
1:17:00
Speaker 1: enjoy it. We thanked them and continued. About a quarter
1:17:03
Speaker 1: mile past the family, We came around a left-hand curve
1:17:07
Speaker 1: in the trail and there was a man sitting on
1:17:09
Speaker 1: a fallen log just off the right side of the trail.
1:17:13
Speaker 1: He was sitting on the log facing the trail with
1:17:16
Speaker 1: his hands resting flat on his knees. I want to
1:17:20
Speaker 1: describe him carefully because this is where my training is
1:17:24
Speaker 1: most relevant and I want you to understand what I
1:17:26
Speaker 1: was seeing. He was approximately 45 years old, possibly a
1:17:31
Speaker 1: few years older. Average height, moderate build, He was wearing
1:17:35
Speaker 1: jeans and a gray sweatshirt with nothing printed on it.
1:17:38
Speaker 1: No pack, no water bottle, no phone that I could see,
1:17:42
Speaker 1: nothing in his hands or near him on the log.
1:17:45
Speaker 1: His footwear was trail appropriate, which registered as normal. He
1:17:49
Speaker 1: was sitting with his hands on his knees, looking at
1:17:52
Speaker 1: the trail with a relaxed posture that in isolation would
1:17:55
Speaker 1: read as a man taking a rest on a hike.
1:17:59
Speaker 1: In isolation. But nothing is interpreted in isolation if you
1:18:03
Speaker 1: have spent 30 years reading people. In 30 years of
1:18:08
Speaker 1: interviews and field encounters, I have developed a vocabulary for
1:18:12
Speaker 1: human affect that goes well beyond what most people consciously access.
1:18:17
Speaker 1: You read the hands, the eyes, the jaw, the shoulders.
1:18:21
Speaker 1: You read the microexpressions that cross a face between one
1:18:24
Speaker 1: expression and the next. You read posture in terms of
1:18:28
Speaker 1: what it is doing for the person, what purpose it
1:18:31
Speaker 1: is serving. You read the quality of stillness And the
1:18:35
Speaker 1: quality of attention. And you synthesize all of that into
1:18:38
Speaker 1: a read that is rarely a single thing. Rarely simple.
1:18:44
Speaker 1: The read I got from this man in the seconds
1:18:46
Speaker 1: of eye contact as we approached was not simple. and
1:18:50
Speaker 1: it was not good. The flatness in his expression was
1:18:54
Speaker 1: not the flatness of a tired person who has run
1:18:57
Speaker 1: out of energy for social engagement. It was the specific
1:19:01
Speaker 1: flatness I have seen many times in 30 years in
1:19:05
Speaker 1: people who have passed the point of deliberation. People who
1:19:09
Speaker 1: have made a decision and are on the other side
1:19:11
Speaker 1: of the making of it, in the quiet aftermath, where
1:19:15
Speaker 1: there is nothing left to argue with themselves about. It
1:19:18
Speaker 1: is a particular quality of repose. Still and calm, not
1:19:23
Speaker 1: because the person is at peace, but because the work
1:19:26
Speaker 1: of deciding is done and only the execution remains. My
1:19:31
Speaker 1: wife is perceptive in the specific way of someone who
1:19:34
Speaker 1: has been married to a law enforcement officer for 25 years.
1:19:38
Speaker 1: She reached over and took my arm as we passed
1:19:40
Speaker 1: the man. She does not normally do that on a trail.
1:19:45
Speaker 1: We continued past him. He turned to watch us go.
1:19:49
Speaker 1: I registered that in my peripheral vision and I noted
1:19:52
Speaker 1: it and I kept walking. I spent the next ten
1:19:55
Speaker 1: minutes doing what I do, which is arguing with my read.
1:19:59
Speaker 1: I told myself I was projecting. I told myself that
1:20:02
Speaker 1: thirty years of looking for the specific thing I had
1:20:05
Speaker 1: described had made me oversensitive to its signals. I told
1:20:10
Speaker 1: myself that unusual affect does not constitute probable cause for anything.
1:20:15
Speaker 1: I told myself that my job was 30 years ago
1:20:18
Speaker 1: and I was not working and this was a hike
1:20:20
Speaker 1: with my wife. We reached the overlook. It is a
1:20:24
Speaker 1: beautiful overlook. My wife took photographs. We rested and had
1:20:29
Speaker 1: water and something to eat. After about 10 minutes, I
1:20:32
Speaker 1: told my wife, I was going to walk back down
1:20:35
Speaker 1: the trail a short distance to check on the man
1:20:37
Speaker 1: we had passed. She knows me. She said okay. She
1:20:41
Speaker 1: sat down with her water to wait. I walked back
1:20:44
Speaker 1: down the trail approximately a quarter of a mile. The
1:20:47
Speaker 1: fallen log was there. He was not. I stood and
1:20:51
Speaker 1: looked at the terrain from that point. The trail runs
1:20:55
Speaker 1: along a ridge with a significant drop on the left
1:20:57
Speaker 1: side and 60 feet or more before the slope levels
1:21:00
Speaker 1: into dense brush. and a steep uphill slope on the right.
1:21:05
Speaker 1: There is no maintained connecting trail within a mile in
1:21:08
Speaker 1: any direction. The terrain on both sides of the trail
1:21:12
Speaker 1: at that point is the kind of terrain you do
1:21:14
Speaker 1: not traverse quickly without deliberate effort and appropriate footwear. I
1:21:20
Speaker 1: walked to the left edge of the trail and looked
1:21:22
Speaker 1: down the slope. Approximately 40 feet down the slope, caught
1:21:27
Speaker 1: on a branch jutting from the hillside, was a piece
1:21:30
Speaker 1: of gray fabric the same gray as the sweatshirt the
1:21:33
Speaker 1: man had been wearing, caught on the branch and hanging there.
1:21:37
Speaker 1: Nothing beneath it moving, no sound from below, no sign
1:21:41
Speaker 1: of anyone on the slope. I went back to the
1:21:44
Speaker 1: trailhead and drove with my wife to the nearest ranger station.
1:21:47
Speaker 1: I filed a report. I described the man in as
1:21:50
Speaker 1: much detail as I could and described the fabric on
1:21:53
Speaker 1: the slope and the location as precisely as I was
1:21:56
Speaker 1: able to give it. They took it seriously and sent
1:21:59
Speaker 1: people out. As far as I have been able to determine,
1:22:03
Speaker 1: nothing was found. I checked missing persons reports for that
1:22:06
Speaker 1: region over the following weeks. I found nothing that matched.
1:22:10
Speaker 1: I do not know what happened on that slope. I
1:22:12
Speaker 1: know what the fabric suggests. I know what the reed
1:22:15
Speaker 1: I got from that man suggests. I know what the
1:22:17
Speaker 1: combination of those two things suggests. I have a 30-year
1:22:21
Speaker 1: history of being right about reeds like that one, and
1:22:24
Speaker 1: I'm not able to tell myself I was wrong. What
1:22:27
Speaker 1: I think about most is not the man on the
1:22:29
Speaker 1: log or the fabric on the slope. What I think
1:22:32
Speaker 1: about most is those three seconds of eye contact as
1:22:36
Speaker 1: my wife and I walked past him. The quality of
1:22:39
Speaker 1: repose I saw in his face. The specific kind of stillness.
1:22:44
Speaker 1: I have seen it before. I have sat across a
1:22:46
Speaker 1: table from it. I know what it means when a
1:22:48
Speaker 1: person looks that way. I hope I was wrong. I
1:22:53
Speaker 1: have spent three years trying to construct a version of
1:22:55
Speaker 1: that morning where I was wrong, where the man on
1:22:59
Speaker 1: the log was someone having a hard day who needed
1:23:01
Speaker 1: to sit outside in the October air and did not
1:23:04
Speaker 1: feel like talking to strangers, where the gray fabric on
1:23:08
Speaker 1: the slope was a coincidence, a piece of trash left
1:23:11
Speaker 1: by an earlier hiker that happened to be the same
1:23:14
Speaker 1: color as his sweatshirt and happened to be exactly where
1:23:17
Speaker 1: the terrain became impassable, where the missing person's database did
1:23:21
Speaker 1: not match because he drove himself home that evening and
1:23:24
Speaker 1: was sitting down to dinner while I was filing a report.
1:23:28
Speaker 1: I've tried very hard to live in that version. I
1:23:31
Speaker 1: have not been able to stay in it for long.
1:23:34
Speaker 1: Because the reed was the reed. Because 30 years of reeds,
1:23:37
Speaker 1: and that one was as clear as anything I ever
1:23:39
Speaker 1: sat across a table from. Because the fabric was 40
1:23:43
Speaker 1: feet down a slope that a man in trail-inappropriate footwear
1:23:48
Speaker 1: went down fast enough to leave fabric on a branch
1:23:51
Speaker 1: and leave no other trace. Because nobody found him. My
1:23:56
Speaker 1: wife and I do not hike that trail anymore. She
1:23:59
Speaker 1: has not asked to go back, and I have not
1:24:01
Speaker 1: suggested it. We go to other places in the Canaan
1:24:05
Speaker 1: Valley area, places with different overlooks and different views. They
1:24:10
Speaker 1: are beautiful. We have good days there. But when we
1:24:15
Speaker 1: drive past the trailhead to that particular trail, I notice
1:24:19
Speaker 1: that she looks out the window at the parking area
1:24:21
Speaker 1: for a moment. The way you look at something you
1:24:24
Speaker 1: have agreed not to talk about. And I notice it,
1:24:28
Speaker 1: and neither of us says anything. And we drive on.
1:24:32
Speaker 1: Story 10. My name is Soraya Whitfield, and I am
1:24:36
Speaker 1: 29 years old. I am a licensed veterinary technician at
1:24:41
Speaker 1: a clinic in southwestern Virginia. I've worked there for four years.
1:24:46
Speaker 1: And before that, I did my clinical hours at two
1:24:49
Speaker 1: other practices. and I have been around animals in professional
1:24:52
Speaker 1: settings since I was 18. I tell you about my
1:24:56
Speaker 1: work because it is relevant to who I am, which
1:25:00
Speaker 1: is someone accustomed to reading situations carefully and acting calmly
1:25:04
Speaker 1: under conditions of stress. When a frightened animal comes into
1:25:08
Speaker 1: our clinic, I am the person who talks slowly and
1:25:12
Speaker 1: moves gently and pays attention to what the animal is
1:25:14
Speaker 1: telling me. I do not panic. I do not fill
1:25:18
Speaker 1: in gaps with what I want to be true. I
1:25:22
Speaker 1: observe what is there. I want you to hold that
1:25:25
Speaker 1: in your mind throughout what I'm about to describe, because
1:25:30
Speaker 1: I have been holding it in mind for four weeks,
1:25:32
Speaker 1: and it has not made the thing I am going
1:25:34
Speaker 1: to describe any smaller or any more explainable. Four weeks ago,
1:25:40
Speaker 1: I was driving home from my sister's house. She lives
1:25:43
Speaker 1: about 40 minutes from me on the other side of
1:25:45
Speaker 1: a mountain pass. The road between us goes up to 2,800
1:25:49
Speaker 1: feet over the pass and then comes down on a
1:25:51
Speaker 1: series of switchbacks before it gets back into the valley
1:25:54
Speaker 1: where I live. I have driven that road my entire life.
1:26:00
Speaker 1: I learned to drive on it. I know every curve
1:26:03
Speaker 1: of it, the way you know the walk, from your
1:26:05
Speaker 1: bedroom to the bathroom in the dark, by feel and
1:26:08
Speaker 1: by the body's memory of the space. It was early evening.
1:26:13
Speaker 1: The light was in that transitional period when the sun
1:26:16
Speaker 1: has dropped below the ridgeline, but the sky still holds color,
1:26:20
Speaker 1: a period when everything looks slightly different from how it
1:26:23
Speaker 1: looks in full daylight, slightly flattened, slightly uncertain in its
1:26:28
Speaker 1: depths and distances. I was coming around the first switchback
1:26:32
Speaker 1: of the descent, the long left-hand curve that opens up
1:26:37
Speaker 1: the downhill view, and as I came around it, my
1:26:39
Speaker 1: headlights swept across the road ahead, There was a child
1:26:44
Speaker 1: standing in my lane. A little girl. I am estimating
1:26:48
Speaker 1: her age at 7 or 8 years old based on
1:26:51
Speaker 1: her height and her proportions. She was standing in the
1:26:54
Speaker 1: center of my lane, facing my vehicle with her arms
1:26:57
Speaker 1: at her sides. She was wearing a dress, pale yellow.
1:27:02
Speaker 1: The specific yellow of a dandelion that has just begun
1:27:04
Speaker 1: to fade. The color between bright and gone. I braked hard.
1:27:10
Speaker 1: Both feet full pressure, the kind of braking that costs
1:27:13
Speaker 1: you something. The car stopped approximately 20 feet from her.
1:27:17
Speaker 1: She had not moved when my headlights hit her. She
1:27:20
Speaker 1: had not flinched or thrown her hands up or recoiled
1:27:23
Speaker 1: the way a person recoils instinctively from an oncoming vehicle.
1:27:28
Speaker 1: She stood in the center of the lane with her
1:27:30
Speaker 1: arms at her sides and she looked at the car.
1:27:33
Speaker 1: I put the hazard lights on. My hands were shaking slightly,
1:27:36
Speaker 1: but I was functional. I got out of the car.
1:27:40
Speaker 1: I want to be specific about the scene around me
1:27:42
Speaker 1: because it matters. The switchback at that point is on
1:27:46
Speaker 1: a steep descent. On the uphill side of the road,
1:27:50
Speaker 1: the side the car had come from, the slope rises
1:27:53
Speaker 1: sharply from the road edge, bare rock and scrub growth
1:27:56
Speaker 1: going up 200 feet to the ridge. On the downhill side,
1:28:01
Speaker 1: there is a guardrail and then a significant drop, the
1:28:04
Speaker 1: slope falling away into the trees of the hollow below.
1:28:07
Speaker 1: The road itself is empty asphalt, no shoulders to speak of.
1:28:11
Speaker 1: The kind of mountain road that exists only because it
1:28:13
Speaker 1: has to. Because someone needed to get from one side
1:28:17
Speaker 1: of the mountain to the other. There are no houses
1:28:20
Speaker 1: visible from that switchback. No lights. No structures. The nearest
1:28:25
Speaker 1: residence in either direction is several minutes of driving away.
1:28:30
Speaker 1: I said, Honey, are you okay? I said, Can you
1:28:33
Speaker 1: hear me? Are you hurt? I walked toward her. I
1:28:37
Speaker 1: kept my voice calm and low in the way I
1:28:39
Speaker 1: keep my voice with a frightened animal, steady and unhurried, non-threatening.
1:28:45
Speaker 1: I got to within about 10 feet of her and
1:28:46
Speaker 1: I said, can you tell me your name, sweetheart? Where's
1:28:50
Speaker 1: your mom? Where did you come from? She did not speak.
1:28:55
Speaker 1: She did not move toward me or away from me.
1:28:58
Speaker 1: She was looking at me with an expression that I
1:29:00
Speaker 1: cannot fully describe. It was not frightened. It was not
1:29:04
Speaker 1: the bewildered look of a child who is lost and overwhelmed.
1:29:09
Speaker 1: It was attentive, present. She was looking at me with
1:29:13
Speaker 1: an intensity of focus that seemed disproportionate to the situation
1:29:18
Speaker 1: or proportionate to something I did not yet understand. Then
1:29:22
Speaker 1: she raised her right arm and she pointed. She pointed
1:29:26
Speaker 1: up the mountain, off the road, toward the uphill slope
1:29:29
Speaker 1: on my left, toward the rock and scrub on the
1:29:33
Speaker 1: steep face that went up 200 feet to the ridge.
1:29:37
Speaker 1: She pointed to a specific place on that slope. Not
1:29:41
Speaker 1: the slope in general. A specific place. About halfway up,
1:29:47
Speaker 1: slightly to the left of the road's direct projection upward,
1:29:51
Speaker 1: she was pointing steadily and clearly at something on that slope.
1:29:55
Speaker 1: I looked. I looked for approximately two seconds, maybe three.
1:30:00
Speaker 1: I looked at the place she was pointing. In the
1:30:03
Speaker 1: failing evening light, I could see the rock and the
1:30:05
Speaker 1: scrub and the bare lower branches of the trees at
1:30:09
Speaker 1: the edge of the stone and nothing that I could
1:30:11
Speaker 1: identify as anything specific. No movement, no structure, no person.
1:30:17
Speaker 1: Just the mountain going up. I looked back at the road.
1:30:21
Speaker 1: She was not there. I will tell you what happened
1:30:24
Speaker 1: in those two or three seconds. When I was looking
1:30:27
Speaker 1: at the slope as precisely as I'm able, I heard nothing.
1:30:31
Speaker 1: No sound of movement, no footsteps, no crackling of rock
1:30:34
Speaker 1: or brush. The hazard lights on my car were blinking
1:30:37
Speaker 1: and the road was empty in both directions. And there
1:30:40
Speaker 1: was no wind and there was absolute silence except for
1:30:43
Speaker 1: the clicking of the hazards. In two or three seconds
1:30:46
Speaker 1: of my attention being directed at the slope, she was
1:30:49
Speaker 1: gone from the road in front of my car and
1:30:51
Speaker 1: there was no sound of her going. I turned around completely.
1:30:56
Speaker 1: I looked up and down the road. I looked at
1:30:58
Speaker 1: the guardrail on the downhill side. I looked at the
1:31:01
Speaker 1: rocky slope on the uphill side. There was no one.
1:31:06
Speaker 1: Nothing moved. The road was empty in both directions as
1:31:09
Speaker 1: far as I could see in the fading light. I
1:31:13
Speaker 1: stood in the middle of that road for what I
1:31:15
Speaker 1: think was 30 seconds. Then, I got back in my
1:31:18
Speaker 1: car and I drove. I drove until I reached the
1:31:21
Speaker 1: first gas station in the valley, which was about 4
1:31:24
Speaker 1: miles further. and I sat in that bright parking lot
1:31:27
Speaker 1: with the engine on for 15 minutes before I could
1:31:30
Speaker 1: make myself drive the rest of the way home. I
1:31:34
Speaker 1: have told two people. My sister, because I almost called
1:31:38
Speaker 1: her from the parking lot, and I did not, because
1:31:41
Speaker 1: I did not trust my voice yet, and my closest friend,
1:31:44
Speaker 1: who listened carefully and said she believed me and held
1:31:47
Speaker 1: my hand while I talked. Neither of them knows what
1:31:50
Speaker 1: to make of it. Neither do I. What I think
1:31:54
Speaker 1: about most is not the impossibility of where she went,
1:31:59
Speaker 1: though that is the part that makes sleep difficult, the
1:32:02
Speaker 1: two or three seconds and the silence and the emptiness.
1:32:07
Speaker 1: What I think about most is the pointing. She did
1:32:10
Speaker 1: not speak. She did not try to tell me anything
1:32:12
Speaker 1: with her face. She raised her arm and she pointed
1:32:16
Speaker 1: at a specific location on the slope above the road,
1:32:19
Speaker 1: and she held that point steadily and clearly, The way
1:32:22
Speaker 1: you point when you need someone to look at a
1:32:24
Speaker 1: specific thing and you are very sure of where that
1:32:26
Speaker 1: thing is. I looked. I did not see anything. I
1:32:32
Speaker 1: have driven that road six times in the four weeks since.
1:32:35
Speaker 1: I come around that switchback slowly every time. Every single time.
1:32:41
Speaker 1: Because I do not know what I am going to
1:32:43
Speaker 1: find there. And I will never fully stop expecting to
1:32:46
Speaker 1: find something. So far it has been empty. So far
1:32:50
Speaker 1: it has just been the mountain and the road. in
1:32:52
Speaker 1: the early evening light. But she pointed at something on
1:32:56
Speaker 1: that slope. She was very sure of what she was
1:32:59
Speaker 1: pointing at. And I looked away for two seconds, and
1:33:03
Speaker 1: she was gone. And whatever she needed me to see
1:33:05
Speaker 1: is still up there, on that mountain above the switchback.
1:33:10
Speaker 1: And I'm never going to know what it was. Thank
1:33:14
Speaker 1: you for being here tonight. Thank you for listening all
1:33:17
Speaker 1: the way through all ten. That genuinely is not a
1:33:21
Speaker 1: small thing. And I want you to know I mean that.
1:33:25
Speaker 1: If you have not subscribed to this channel yet, please
1:33:27
Speaker 1: do it right now. Hit the bell so you do
1:33:29
Speaker 1: not miss the next upload. Leave a like on this
1:33:32
Speaker 1: video because the algorithm responds to it. And it genuinely
1:33:36
Speaker 1: affects how many people find this content. Which is what
1:33:40
Speaker 1: makes the community grow. Which is what makes more of
1:33:43
Speaker 1: this possible. And please, please leave a comment. Tell me
1:33:48
Speaker 1: which story hit hardest. Tell me which one made you
1:33:50
Speaker 1: turn a light on. tell me which one you are
1:33:53
Speaker 1: still thinking about right now. Tell me your own thing
1:33:57
Speaker 1: if you have one. I read every single comment on
1:34:00
Speaker 1: every video I have ever posted, and that is not
1:34:03
Speaker 1: an exaggeration, and it is not going to change. If
1:34:07
Speaker 1: you want to support this channel at a deeper level,
1:34:09
Speaker 1: the membership link is in the description. Members get early
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Speaker 1: access to every video before it goes public. They get
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Speaker 1: access to a private community where We go deeper into
1:34:20
Speaker 1: these stories and hear from additional submitters who chose not
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Speaker 1: to go fully public, and they make it directly possible
1:34:27
Speaker 1: for me to do this work the way it deserves
1:34:29
Speaker 1: to be done. Every member matters. If it is not
1:34:34
Speaker 1: the right time for membership, I understand, and just being
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Speaker 1: here and watching and sharing the content is support enough.
1:34:42
Speaker 1: I will be back next week with more. The inbox
1:34:45
Speaker 1: is always open if you have something to send, Until then,
1:34:48
Speaker 1: take care of yourselves, and keep the lights on if
1:34:51
Speaker 1: you need to. There is no shame in that. None
1:34:54
Speaker 1: at all.