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10 Appalachian Mountain Encounters That Should Not Be Explained | Horror Stories · Appalachian Horror | Horror Stories

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Park Ranger Files. I'm your host, and
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: today we've got something special for you. Ten bone-chilling tales
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  Speaker 1: straight from the heart of Appalachia. Story one. I've been
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  Speaker 1: a ranger at the Daniel Boone National Forest for going
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  Speaker 1: on 20 years now, and I've seen my fair share
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  Speaker 1: of strange things in these Kentucky mountains. But nothing, and
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  Speaker 1: I mean nothing, prepared me for what happened in the
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  Speaker 1: fall of 2018 along Panther Creek Trail. It started with
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  Speaker 1: missing persons reports. Three hikers in the span of two weeks,
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  Speaker 1: all experienced outdoorsmen, all vanished without a trace along the
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  Speaker 1: same five-mile stretch of trail. The first was a solo
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  Speaker 1: hiker named Marcus Webb, a retired Marine who knew these
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  Speaker 1: woods better than most. His truck was found at the trailhead,
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  Speaker 1: his gear still locked inside, but Marcus himself, gone. The
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  Speaker 1: second was a couple from Ohio, the Hendersons. They'd checked
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  Speaker 1: in at the ranger station that morning, all smiles and
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  Speaker 1: excitement about their anniversary hike. By nightfall, when they didn't return,
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  Speaker 1: we started a search. Found their backpacks about three miles in,
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  Speaker 1: contents scattered like they'd been dropped in a hurry, but
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  Speaker 1: no sign of the Hendersons themselves. After the third disappearance,
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  Speaker 1: the higher-ups brought in search and rescue teams from three counties.
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  Speaker 1: They combed every inch of that trail with dogs, helicopters,
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  Speaker 1: the works, found absolutely nothing. That's when they assigned me
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  Speaker 1: to patrol the area, see if I could spot anything
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  Speaker 1: the big search parties had missed. I headed out on
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  Speaker 1: a gray October morning, the kind where the fog sits
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  Speaker 1: so thick in the hollows you can barely see ten
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  Speaker 1: feet ahead. The trail follows Panther Creek for most of
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  Speaker 1: its length, a beautiful stretch of water that runs clear
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  Speaker 1: and cold even in the driest summers. The locals have
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  Speaker 1: always said the creek got its name back in the
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  Speaker 1: 1800s when the last panther in these parts was killed
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  Speaker 1: along its banks, but old-timers will tell you a different
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  Speaker 1: story if you get them talking after dark. They say
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  Speaker 1: the panther wasn't killed. They say it just changed. I
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  Speaker 1: was about two miles in when I heard it for
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  Speaker 1: the first time. A whistle. Not a bird call or
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  Speaker 1: wind through the trees, but a human whistle. The kind
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  Speaker 1: someone might use to call a dog or get your attention.
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  Speaker 1: It came from somewhere off the trail, back in the
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  Speaker 1: dense laurel thickets that choke at these hillsides. Now, I'm
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  Speaker 1: not a fool. I know better than to go charging
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  Speaker 1: into the underbrush chasing sounds. But it was my job
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  Speaker 1: to investigate. So I stopped and called out, identified myself
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  Speaker 1: as a ranger, The whistle came again, closer this time,
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  Speaker 1: and I could swear it sounded playful, like someone was
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  Speaker 1: teasing me. I radioed in my position and headed toward
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  Speaker 1: the sound, pushing through the laurel. The whistle kept moving,
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  Speaker 1: always just ahead, always just out of sight. I followed
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  Speaker 1: it for maybe 20 minutes, getting deeper into terrain that
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  Speaker 1: hadn't seen a human footprint in years, when I came
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  Speaker 1: to a clearing I'd never seen before. In the center
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  Speaker 1: of that clearing was a circle of stones, old ones,
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  Speaker 1: covered in moss and lichen. and in the middle of
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  Speaker 1: that stone circle sat three backpacks. I recognized one immediately.
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  Speaker 1: It had a Colorado Rockies patch on it, same as
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  Speaker 1: the one Marcus Webb's daughter had described when she filed
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  Speaker 1: the missing persons report. The whistle came again, right behind
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  Speaker 1: me this time. I spun around, hand on my radio,
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  Speaker 1: and saw something that made my blood run cold. Standing
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  Speaker 1: at the edge of the clearing was a figure, tall
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  Speaker 1: and impossibly thin, its skin the color of old bark.
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  Speaker 1: At first I thought it was a person in some
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  Speaker 1: kind of costume, but then it moved. And I realized
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  Speaker 1: no human being moves like that. All wrong angles and
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  Speaker 1: jerky motions like a puppet on tangled strings. It whistled again,
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  Speaker 1: and this time I saw where the sound came from.
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  Speaker 1: Its mouth, if you could call it that, stretched wider
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  Speaker 1: than any human mouth should, showing teeth that looked like
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  Speaker 1: they'd been filed to points. I ran. I'm not ashamed
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  Speaker 1: to admit it. I crashed through that laurel thicket like
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  Speaker 1: the devil himself was on my heels. And maybe he was.
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  Speaker 1: I could hear it behind me, moving through the brush
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  Speaker 1: without a sound except for that damned whistling. Sometimes ahead
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  Speaker 1: of me, sometimes behind. Sometimes right beside me, though, I
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  Speaker 1: never saw it again. I made it back to the
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  Speaker 1: trail more by luck than navigation and didn't stop running
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  Speaker 1: until I reached my truck. My uniform was torn to
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  Speaker 1: shreds and my face and hands bloody from the laurel.
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  Speaker 1: But I was alive. I reported what I'd seen, of course.
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  Speaker 1: They sent a team back to find that clearing, but
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't there. They searched for three days and never
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  Speaker 1: found those backpacks either. The official report says I got
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  Speaker 1: disoriented in the fog, that the stress of the search
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  Speaker 1: had gotten to me. They transferred me to a different
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  Speaker 1: section of the forest, said I needed a change of scenery.
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  Speaker 1: But I know what I saw. And I know why
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  Speaker 1: even now, five years later, they've never found Marcus Webb
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  Speaker 1: or the Hendersons. Because whatever's in those woods along Panther Creek,
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  Speaker 1: it's not interested in being found. It's interested in finding you.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing that keeps me up at night, though.
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  Speaker 1: About a month after my encounter, I was going through
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  Speaker 1: some old ranger logs from the 1950s, just curiosity, really,
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  Speaker 1: seeing what kind of things my predecessors had dealt with.
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  Speaker 1: I found an entry from October 1957, written by a
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  Speaker 1: ranger named Thomas Oakley. He described hearing a whistle along
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  Speaker 1: Panther Creek, following it into the woods, finding a clearing
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  Speaker 1: with a stone circle and two old hiking packs from
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  Speaker 1: missing persons cases that had gone cold. The entry ended
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  Speaker 1: with a single sentence in all capital letters. I pray
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  Speaker 1: God forgives me for not warning the next one. I
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  Speaker 1: looked up Thomas Oakley in the old personnel files. He'd
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  Speaker 1: worked as a ranger for 32 years, well-respected, never a problem,
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  Speaker 1: until October of 1957, when he requested an immediate transfer
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  Speaker 1: to a different forest. He died in 1989, but before
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  Speaker 1: he passed, he made his children promise they'd never hike
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  Speaker 1: in the Daniel Boone National Forest. His daughter told me
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  Speaker 1: he used to wake up screaming, even decades later, calling
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  Speaker 1: out about the whistling man in the woods. Now I'm
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  Speaker 1: doing the same thing Oakley did. I'm writing this down,
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  Speaker 1: putting it in the official record where maybe someday someone
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  Speaker 1: else will find it and understand. Because I can't shake
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  Speaker 1: the feeling that whatever's out there on Panther Creek, it's
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: still whistling, still waiting, still adding backpacks to that stone circle.
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  Speaker 1: And the worst part? Last week I heard through the
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  Speaker 1: grapevine that a group of college kids is planning a
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  Speaker 1: camping trip along that very same trail. They want to
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  Speaker 1: investigate the disappearances, make some kind of documentary about it.
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  Speaker 1: I tried to warn them off, showed them my scars
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  Speaker 1: from the laurel, told them everything I'm telling you now.
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  Speaker 1: But they just laughed, said they weren't afraid of local
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  Speaker 1: superstitions and folklore. I guess some people just have to
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  Speaker 1: learn the hard way. I just hope they get the
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  Speaker 1: chance to learn it all. Before we continue with the
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  Speaker 1: next story, I want to ask you something. Have you
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  Speaker 1: ever heard unexplained sounds in the woods? Strange whistles? Calls
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: that didn't quite sound right? Drop a comment below and
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: let me know. Your story might end up being featured
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: in a future episode. And hey, if you're enjoying these
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: tales from the dark heart of Appalachia, hit that subscribe
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  Speaker 1: button and ring the bell. We're working our way to 1,000 subscribers,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: and every single one of you helps keep these stories
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  Speaker 1: alive And these warnings spread. Now, let's move on to
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  Speaker 1: our next tale. This one from the cold heights of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: West Virginia. Story two. They say Spruce Knob is the
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  Speaker 1: highest point in West Virginia, standing at 4,863 feet above
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  Speaker 1: sea level. What they don't tell you in the tourist
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  Speaker 1: brochures is that it's also one of the loneliest places
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  Speaker 1: you'll ever experience, especially in winter when the observation tower
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  Speaker 1: stands like a sentinel over a frozen, windswept landscape. that
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  Speaker 1: seems to belong more to the Arctic than Appalachia. I
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  Speaker 1: learned about the midnight knock from an old ranger named
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  Speaker 1: Dale Hutchins. Dale had worked Spruce Knob for 30 years
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  Speaker 1: before retiring in 2015, and on his last day, he
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  Speaker 1: pulled me aside in the parking lot and told me
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  Speaker 1: something that still makes my skin crawl. You ever work
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  Speaker 1: the winter tower duty? He asked me. I nodded. Part
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  Speaker 1: of being a ranger at Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks meant
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  Speaker 1: taking shifts at the observation tower during the off-season, making
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  Speaker 1: sure no one had gotten stranded up there, checking that
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  Speaker 1: vandals hadn't damaged the structure. Usually quiet work, just you
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  Speaker 1: and the wind and the vast silence of the mountains.
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  Speaker 1: Then you need to know about the midnight knock, Dale said.
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  Speaker 1: His eyes had this haunted look, like he was seeing
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  Speaker 1: something far away and long ago. If you hear it,
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  Speaker 1: don't answer. Don't even acknowledge it. Just pretend you're asleep
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  Speaker 1: and wait for morning. I laughed it off at the time,
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  Speaker 1: figured Dale was just messing with the new guy on
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  Speaker 1: his way out. But Dale didn't laugh. He grabbed my arm,
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  Speaker 1: squeezed it hard enough to leave bruises. I'm serious, son.
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  Speaker 1: Don't answer the midnight knock. Whatever you do, whatever you hear,
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  Speaker 1: keep that door closed. Two months later, I was assigned
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  Speaker 1: to overnight tower duty during a particularly brutal cold snap
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  Speaker 1: in January. Temperature was supposed to drop to near zero.
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  Speaker 1: They wanted someone up there to make sure the facility's
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  Speaker 1: pipes didn't freeze. I loaded up my truck with supplies
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  Speaker 1: for a three-day stay, including enough coffee to keep me
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  Speaker 1: wired for a week, and made the drive up the mountain.
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  Speaker 1: The observation tower at Spruce Knob is a stone structure
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  Speaker 1: that looks like something out of medieval Europe, all gray
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  Speaker 1: rock and narrow windows. During the day, it offers a
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  Speaker 1: view that stretches across multiple states. At night, especially in winter,
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  Speaker 1: it's like being alone at the edge of the world.
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  Speaker 1: I settled in for the first night, got a fire
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  Speaker 1: going in the old wood stove, made myself dinner The
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  Speaker 1: wind was howling something fierce, shaking the tower's windows and
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  Speaker 1: making the whole structure groan. I'd worked enough mountain towers
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  Speaker 1: to know this was normal, just the building settling against
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  Speaker 1: the wind. Nothing to worry about. I fell asleep around 10,
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  Speaker 1: exhausted from the drive and the cold. I don't know
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  Speaker 1: what time it was when the knocking started, but I
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  Speaker 1: woke to the sound of it, loud and insistent against
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  Speaker 1: the tower's heavy wooden door. Three knocks, pause, three knocks, pause,
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  Speaker 1: three knocks. My first thought was that someone was stranded
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  Speaker 1: up here, Maybe a hiker who underestimated the weather and
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  Speaker 1: needed help. I sat up in my sleeping bag, about
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  Speaker 1: to call out, when I remembered Dale's words. Don't answer
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  Speaker 1: the midnight knock. I checked my watch. 11.58 p.m. The
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  Speaker 1: knocking came again, the same pattern. Three knocks, pause, three knocks, pause,
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  Speaker 1: three knocks. Slow, deliberate, patient. I stayed quiet, listening. The
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  Speaker 1: wind had died down to almost nothing, which was strange because,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: at this elevation... The wind never completely stops. Never. Then
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  Speaker 1: I heard the voice. Ranger, I need help. Please, I'm
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  Speaker 1: freezing out here. It was a woman's voice, young, desperate.
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  Speaker 1: Every instinct I had screamed at me to open that door,
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  Speaker 1: to help whoever was out there in the killing cold.
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  Speaker 1: I actually got up, started toward the door with my
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  Speaker 1: hand reaching for the handle, when something made me stop.
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  Speaker 1: The voice was too clear, too perfect. There was no
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  Speaker 1: chatter in it, no shivering. None of the slurring that
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  Speaker 1: comes with hypothermia. And in weather like this, at this elevation,
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  Speaker 1: anyone who had been out there long enough to reach
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  Speaker 1: the tower would be barely able to speak at all.
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  Speaker 1: I backed away from the door, returned to my sleeping bag.
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  Speaker 1: The knocking continued. Three knocks, pause, three knocks, pause, three knocks.
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  Speaker 1: Over and over with mechanical precision. Like a metronome, counting
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  Speaker 1: out the seconds until dawn. Please, the voice said again.
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  Speaker 1: and there was such genuine pain in it, such raw desperation.
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  Speaker 1: I can see your light. I know you're in there.
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  Speaker 1: Why won't you help me? I stayed silent, though it
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  Speaker 1: was one of the hardest things I've ever done. The
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  Speaker 1: knocking went on for what felt like hours. Sometimes it
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  Speaker 1: would stop for a few minutes, and I'd think it
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  Speaker 1: was over, but then it would start again. The voice
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  Speaker 1: changed too. Sometimes it was the young woman, desperate and pleading.
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  Speaker 1: Other times it was a man's voice, angry and demanding,
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  Speaker 1: calling me a coward for not opening the door. Once,
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  Speaker 1: and this is what really got to me, it was
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  Speaker 1: a child's voice, sobbing, calling for their mommy, begging me
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  Speaker 1: to let them in where it was warm. I lasted
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  Speaker 1: until morning by sheer willpower, sitting in that sleeping bag
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  Speaker 1: with my hands clamped over my ears, trying not to
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  Speaker 1: listen to the voices begging to be let in. I
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  Speaker 1: prayed for the first time since I was a kid,
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  Speaker 1: recited every prayer I could remember from Sunday school, anything
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  Speaker 1: to block out those voices. As soon as the first
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  Speaker 1: light of dawn crept through the tower windows, the knocking stopped.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Just like that mid-knock, it ceased. The sudden silence was
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  Speaker 1: almost worse than the noise had been. I waited another
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  Speaker 1: hour before I worked up the courage to open the door.
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  Speaker 1: When I finally did, stepping out into the freezing morning air,
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  Speaker 1: I looked down at the fresh snow that had fallen
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  Speaker 1: during the night. There were no footprints. Not a single
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  Speaker 1: track in the pristine white blanket that covered the observation platforms.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever had been knocking at my door all night hadn't
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  Speaker 1: left any sign it had ever been there. But here's
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  Speaker 1: what made my blood run cold. There were no tracks
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  Speaker 1: leading to the door either, meaning whatever it was, it
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  Speaker 1: had been there before the snow started falling. It had
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: been waiting. I radioed in, told my supervisor I needed
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  Speaker 1: to come down, claimed I was feeling sick. It wasn't
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: entirely a lie. My hands were shaking so badly, I
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: could barely hold the radio. I packed up my gear
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  Speaker 1: and got off that mountain as fast as I could,
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  Speaker 1: swearing I'd never do another overnight shift at that tower.
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  Speaker 1: But here's where the story gets worse. I started researching
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the history of Spruce Knob, digging through old newspapers and
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: ranger reports at the county library. What I found made
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  Speaker 1: my blood run cold all over again. In 1963, a
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  Speaker 1: young couple disappeared during a winter storm near the observation tower.
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  Speaker 1: Thomas and Ellen Whitmore, both in their mid-twenties, had driven
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  Speaker 1: up to see the snow. Search parties found Ellen's body
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  Speaker 1: three days later, frozen solid, less than 50 feet from
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  Speaker 1: the tower door. Her hands were bloody, fingernails broken, like
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: she'd been clawing at something. Thomas was never found. The
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  Speaker 1: investigation concluded that they'd gotten separated in the storm, that
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Ellen had made it to the tower but had been
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: unable to get inside before succumbing to hypothermia. But here's
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: the thing that didn't make the official report. The ranger
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  Speaker 1: who'd been stationed at the tower that night, a man
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  Speaker 1: named Robert Finn, resigned the very next day. Wouldn't talk
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: about what happened. Wouldn't even finish out his two weeks' notice.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Just packed up and left the forest service for good,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: moved all the way to Charleston, and never came back
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: to the mountains. I tracked down Robert Finn to a
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: nursing home in Charleston. He was 92 years old, mind
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: still sharp, but his hands shook the whole time I
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: talked to him. At first, he didn't want to discuss
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that night. Said it was ancient history better left buried.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: But when I told him about the midnight knock, about
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the voices, his face went white as the sheets on
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  Speaker 1: his bed. You heard it too, he said. It wasn't
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: a question. I didn't answer, I told him. Just like
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Dale Hutchins warned me. Robert Finn nodded slowly. Smart man, Dale.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I wish someone had warned me. Then he told me
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: his story. That night in 1963, he'd been the ranger
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: on duty when the knocking started. He'd heard the woman's voice,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: pleading for help, saying she was freezing. He'd opened the door.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: But there was no one there, he said, his voice
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: barely above a whisper. Just the wind and the snow.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I called out, looked around with my flashlight, but I
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: didn't see anyone. The snow was coming down so hard,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: I could barely see past the edge of the platform.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: So I shut the door and went back inside, figured
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: I'd imagined it. He paused. his hands shaking harder. The
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: knocking started again five minutes later. Same pattern, same voice.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: This time when I opened the door, I saw her.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: She was standing at the edge of the platform, just
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: barely visible in the snow. She looked at me, reached
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: out her hand. And I swear to God, son, something
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: made me step back and close that door. Some instinct,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: some feeling that what I was seeing wasn't right. What
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: happened then? I asked. The knocking went on all night.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: By morning, I'd convinced myself I'd imagined the whole thing.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: That the storm had played tricks on my eyes. Then
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the search party arrived. They'd been looking for the Whitmores
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: since the night before. And when they found Ellen's body...
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: He trailed off, tears running down his weathered cheeks. She'd
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: frozen to death hours before I ever heard that first knock.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: He finally said, The coroner put her time of death
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: around 8 p.m. I didn't hear the knocking until midnight.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: We sat in silence for a long moment. But she
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't asking for help, I said quietly. Was she? Robert
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Finn met my eyes. I've had 58 years to think
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: about it. And no, I don't think that was her.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I think something else was using her voice, using her image.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Because the Ellen Whitmore they found? She'd frozen to death
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: trying to get down the mountain, not trying to get
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: into the tower. She was heading away from it when
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: she died, Then what was knocking at your door? Something old,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: he said. Something that knows how to use our better
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: nature against us. It knows we're taught to help people
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: in distress. It knows we'll open a door for someone
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: freezing in a storm. And it uses that against us.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: I left the nursing home with more questions than answers.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: But I did learn one more thing from Robert Finn.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I asked him about the pattern of the knocking, about
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: why it was always three knocks, pause, three knocks, pause,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: three knocks. It's old, he said. Older than these mountains, maybe.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Three knocks for the Father, three for the Son, three
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: for the Holy Ghost. It's a mocker, you see. Whatever's
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: up there on Spruce Knob, it knows the old ways,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: knows what'll make you want to open that door. It's
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: calling out in the name of the Trinity, making you
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: think you'd be doing God's work to answer. But what
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: is it? I asked. Robert Finn shook his head. Something
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: that was here before the first European ever set foot
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: in these mountains? something that Cherokee knew about and avoided,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: something that feeds on the cold and the dark and
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: the desperate need to help a fellow human being in distress.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And if someone opens the door, he looked at me
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: for a long time before answering, then it doesn't have
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: to knock anymore. I haven't been back to Spruce Knob
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: since that night. I requested a transfer to a different
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: section of the Monongahela National Forest, somewhere far from that
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: lonely tower on top of West Virginia. But sometimes on
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: quiet winter nights, I wake up thinking I hear it.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Three knocks, pause, three knocks, pause, three knocks. And I
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: wonder how many other rangers have heard the midnight knock.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: How many of them ignored Dale Hutchins' warning? How many
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: of them opened that door? The Forest Service doesn't keep
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: official records of overnight tower duty incidents. They say it's
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: to protect ranger privacy, to avoid lawsuits. But I think
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: it's because they don't want anyone putting the pieces together.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Don't want anyone seeing the pattern. Because here's the last
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: thing Robert Finn told me before I left that nursing home.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: He said that in all the years he'd stayed in
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: touch with other rangers, in all the stories he'd heard,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: passed around at conferences and retirement parties, he'd never once
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: met a ranger who'd opened the door and lived to
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: tell about it. The ones who open it, he said,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: they don't come back. And the next time someone's stationed
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: at that tower, the knocking knows exactly what to say,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: exactly what voice to use. because it learned from the
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: last one who answered. Story three. Now, I'm going to
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: tell you about something that happened to a colleague of mine,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: a woman named Sarah Brennan, who worked as a ranger
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Sarah was one of
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: those rangers who loved the mountains with a passion that
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: bordered on spiritual. She'd grown up in Gatlinburg, spent her
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: whole life exploring these hills, and she could navigate Cades
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Cove blindfolded. Cades Cove, for those who don't know, is
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: one of the most popular destinations in the Smokies. It's
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: a broad, lush valley surrounded by mountains, with an 11-mile
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: loop road that takes you past old homesteads and churches
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: dating back to the early 1800s. On a pretty fall day,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: you might see deer grazing in the meadows, black bears
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: ambling through the woods, and wild turkeys strutting across the road.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: It's picture-perfect Appalachia, the kind of place that ends up
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: on postcards and coffee table books. But Sarah knew Cades
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Cove had a darker side, one that the Park Service
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: didn't advertise to the millions of tourists who visited each year.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: She first told me about the facing trees over beers
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: after a long shift. We were sitting at a bar
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: in Townsend, watching the sunset paint the mountains gold and purple,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: and Sarah got quiet in that way people do when
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: they're about to share something they're not supposed to talk about.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: You ever hear about the facing trees? She asked. I
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: shook my head. Sarah took a long pull from her
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: beer before continuing. Back in the old days, before the
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: park existed, the people who lived in Cades Cove had
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: a tradition. When someone died in a way that wasn't natural, murder, suicide,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: things like that, they'd plant two trees facing each other
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: at the spot where it happened. Oak trees, usually, or
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes hickory. The idea was that the trees would keep
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: watch over the spot, would prevent whatever dark thing had
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: happened there from happening again. That's an interesting tradition, I said,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: thinking it sounded like the kind of folklore that gets
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: passed down through generations, getting embroidered and exaggerated with each telling.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: It is, Sarah agreed. Except here's the thing. Those trees
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: are still out there. All over Cade's Cove, back in
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the woods off the main trails, you'll find pairs of
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: trees that grew facing each other in ways that aren't natural.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: And if you're unlucky enough to walk between them... She
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: trailed off, staring into her beer. What happens if you
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: walk between them? I prompted. Sarah looked up at me,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and I saw something in her eyes I'd never seen before. Fear. Real,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: genuine fear from a woman who'd spent 20 years in
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: these mountains and had never shown an ounce of it before.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: You see what happened, she said. Whatever death occurred at
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: that spot, you experience it. Not like watching a movie,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: but like you're actually there, living through it, feeling what
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: they felt. seeing what they saw in their final moments.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I started to laugh, thinking she was pulling my leg,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: but the look on her face stopped me cold. I'm serious,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: she said. It happened to me last month. Here's what
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Sarah told me. She'd been doing a routine patrol of
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: one of the backcountry areas in Cades Cove, checking on
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: some campsites, and making sure no one had left trash
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: or started illegal fires. It was early October, that perfect
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: time of year, when the leaves are turning but the
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: weather is still warm enough that you don't need a
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: heavy coat. She was following an old game trail that
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: deer had worn through the forest, not really paying attention
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: to where she was going because she'd walked this area
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: hundreds of times. That's when she noticed the trees. Two
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: massive white oaks, easily 150 years old, growing about six
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: feet apart. What caught her attention was how they'd grown
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: toward each other. Their trunks literally bent at an angle
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: so they were facing It wasn't the kind of thing
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: that happens naturally. Trees grow toward the sun, toward open sky,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: not toward each other like two people leaning in for
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: a conversation. Sarah, being a trained ranger and naturalist, was fascinated.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: She pulled out her phone to take some pictures, thinking
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: this would make an interesting addition to her nature journal.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: She walked between the trees to get a better angle.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: The moment she stepped between them, the world changed. It
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: was still October, still sunny and warm, but Sarah wasn't
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: alone anymore. Standing about 20 feet away, near what looked
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: like a small clearing, was a woman in a long dress,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: the kind they wore in the 1800s. She was young,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: maybe 25, with dark hair pinned up under a bonnet.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: She was crying, and in her hands she held a rope.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Sarah tried to call out to her, tried to ask
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: if she needed help, but no sound came from her mouth.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: She tried to move, to walk toward the woman, but
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: her feet were rooted to the spot. All she could
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: do was watch, trapped in her own body, forced to
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: witness what came next. The woman tied the rope to
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: a tree branch, tested it to make sure it would hold.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely tie
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the knots, and Sarah could feel those trembling hands as
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: if they were her own. Then she fashioned the other
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: end into a noose, placed it around her own neck,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and stepped off the stump she'd been standing on. Sarah
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: told me she tried to close her eyes, tried to
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: look away, but she couldn't. She was forced to watch
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: every horrible second as the woman strangled, her feet kicking,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: her face turning purple, her hands clawing at the rope
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: around her neck, and worse than watching, was feeling it.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Sarah felt the rope tighten around her own throat, felt
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the panic and regret flooding through her, felt the desperate
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: need for air as her vision started to go dark.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: It seemed to take forever, though Sarah knew it was
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: probably only a few minutes, the longest few minutes of
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: her life. When it was finally over, when the woman's
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: body hung still and lifeless, the vision ended. Sarah found
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: herself standing between the two oak trees again, her phone
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: still in her hand, tears streaming down her face. Her
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: throat ached like she'd been screaming for hours. She ran.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Didn't stop running until she made it back to her truck.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Didn't stop shaking until she'd driven all the way out
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: of the cove and back to the ranger station. She
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: went home sick that day. Called in sick the next day, too.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: spent those 48 hours trying to convince herself she'd hallucinated,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: that she'd had some kind of heat stroke or panic
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: attack or mental breakdown. But she couldn't convince herself because
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: the vision had been too real, too detailed. She'd smelled
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the woman's fear sweat, had heard the creak of the
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: rope against the branch, had felt the despair radiating off
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: her like heat from a fire. And she'd felt that
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: rope around her own neck, felt the life being squeezed
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: out of her, When Sarah finally went back to work,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: she did something she probably shouldn't have. She went to
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the park's archives, started digging through old records from before
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the park was established, before the government bought up all
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: the land in the 1930s and moved the residents out.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: She found the woman's story. Her name was Elizabeth Parrish,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and she'd lived in Cades Cove with her husband and
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: three children. In November of 1887, her husband had taken
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: sick with pneumonia and died within a week. leaving Elizabeth
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: alone to work the farm and raise the children. She'd tried,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: struggled through two hard winters, but eventually the farm failed.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: The children were starving. She was three months behind on
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: debts she couldn't possibly pay, and the bank was threatening
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: to take the land. Unable to feed her children, unable
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: to pay the debts her husband had left behind, Elizabeth
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: had made a terrible choice. She'd given her children laudanum
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: to make them sleep peacefully, then hanged herself from a
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: tree near her cabin. When neighbors found her body three
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: days later, they found the children too, still in their beds,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: all three dead from overdose. The community had been horrified.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Suicide was considered a mortal sin, but what Elizabeth had
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: done to her children was beyond comprehension. They'd buried her
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: in an unmarked grave at the edge of the cemetery,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: wouldn't even let her be interred in consecrated ground. And
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: they'd planted two trees at the spot where she'd hanged herself,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Trees that would grow to face each other, keeping watch
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: over the place where such tragedy had occurred. Sarah showed
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: me the documentation she'd found. Old surveyor's maps and church
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: records that confirmed the story. Then she showed me something else.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: A modern survey map of Cades Cove, with dozens of
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: red X's marked on it. Each X is a pair
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: of facing trees, she said. I've been documenting them, trying
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: to figure out how many there are. So far I've
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: found 43 pairs, 43 murders, suicides, and tragedies, all marked
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: by the people who'd witnessed them, all preserved by trees
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: that had grown for more than a century, keeping silent
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: watch over pain and death and despair. Have you walked
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: between any of the others? I asked, though I was
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: pretty sure I knew the answer. Sarah shook her head violently.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Hell no, once was enough. But I've heard stories from
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: other rangers. from hikers who didn't know what they were
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: walking into, people who walked between facing trees and came
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: out different, Traumatized by things they'd seen. There's a woman
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: who works at the visitor center now. Used to be
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: a backcountry ranger. She walked between a pair of facing
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: trees on the Anthony Creek Trail and saw a murder.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: A man killing his brother over a land dispute beat
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: him to death with a rock. She doesn't work in
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the backcountry anymore. Can't handle being alone in the woods.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Does the park service know about this? I asked. Officially? No. Unofficially.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: There are whispers, rumors. But think about it from their perspective.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: How do you tell millions of tourists not to walk
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: between certain trees? How do you explain it without sounding insane?
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: And even if you cut the trees down, what good
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: would that do? You'd just be destroying the markers. not
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: changing what happened at those spots. The memories are in
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the ground itself, in the very earth where the blood
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: was spilled. I thought about that for a long time.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Sarah was right. There was no good solution, no way
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: to protect people from stumbling into these pockets of preserved
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: horror without causing a panic or making the park service
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: look incompetent. So what do we do? I asked. Sarah
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: finished her beer, set the glass down with a decisive thunk.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: We do what the old-timers did, we remember. We pass
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the story down. We warn the people we can warn,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and we hope they're smart enough to listen. That conversation
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: happened three years ago. Sarah still works at the Smokies,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: still patrols Cade's Cove, but she's careful now about where
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: she walks. She's also created an unofficial guide for other rangers,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: a map showing the locations of all the facing trees
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: she's documented. along with brief descriptions of what she's learned
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: about each tragedy. The map is an official park service material.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: It gets passed from ranger to ranger quietly, usually with
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: a warning not to share it outside the service. I've
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: got a copy in my desk drawer, though I've never
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: worked at the Smokies. Sarah sent it to me with
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: a note that said simply, in case you ever need
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: to know, in case you ever work here, in case
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: someone you love plans to visit, I looked at that
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: map recently, studied the locations of all those facing trees,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: and I realized something disturbing. The oldest trees in Cades
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Cove date back to the late 1700s, early 1800s. They're
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: dying now, falling victim to disease and age and storms.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Every year, Sarah adds notes to her map. Pair 7,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: south tree fallen. Pair 23, both trees dead, still standing.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: In another 20 or 30 years, most of them will
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: be gone. And when they fall, the markers will disappear,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the warnings will vanish. All those tragedies will be forgotten,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: lost to time and decay. Unless we remember. Unless we
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: keep telling the stories. Keep warning people about the facing
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: trees and what happens when you walk up between them.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Unless we make sure that Elizabeth Parrish and all the
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: others aren't forgotten. That their suffering isn't erased by time. So,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: consider this your warning. if you ever find yourself in
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Cades Cove or any of the old settlements in the Smokies,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: and you see two trees growing toward each other in
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: an unnatural way, don't walk between them. Take a picture
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: if you want. Admire the strange beauty of it, but
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: don't step into that space. Because some things that happened
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: in the past aren't meant to be relived. Some tragedies
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: are so dark, so horrible, that experiencing them even secondhand
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: can break something inside you that never quite heals. Sarah
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: learned that the hard way. You don't have to. Alright folks,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: we're three stories deep into this collection, and I want
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: to hear from you. Have you ever experienced something unexplainable
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: in the mountains? Seen something that didn't quite make sense?
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe felt like you were being watched, or stumbled across
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: something that gave you chills for no reason you could explain?
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Drop a comment below and share your story. And hey,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: if you're enjoying Park Ranger Files, smash that like button
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: and subscribe. We're pushing hard to hit 1,000 subscribers, and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: your support means everything. Every subscription, every like, every comment
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: helps spread these warnings to more people who need to
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: hear them. Now, let's continue with our next tale. Story 4.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Dolly Sod's Wilderness in West Virginia is one of the
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: strangest places I've ever worked. It's a high-altitude plateau that
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: feels more like Canada than Appalachia. with stunted trees, boulder fields,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: and vast open meadows that seem to stretch on forever.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: The weather can change in minutes, going from sunny and
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: calm to a white-out blizzard even in summer. It's beautiful
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: and deadly in equal measure. But the strangest thing about
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Dalisads isn't the weather or the landscape. It's the stairs.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I first heard about them from a hiker who came
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: stumbling into the wilderness office looking pale and shaken. This
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: was back in 2016, early September. during one of those
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: perfect fall days when every leaf cruncher in a hundred
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: mile radius decides to hit the trails. The hiker, a
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: guy named Tom Chen, had been doing a three-day backpacking
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: trip through Dolly Sods. He was experienced, had all the
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: right gear, knew what he was doing. But on the
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: second day of his trip, while bushwhacking through an area
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: off the main trail, he'd found something that didn't make
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: any sense. There were stairs, he told me. still breathing
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: hard from his rushed hike back to the trailhead. Stone stairs,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: just standing there in the middle of nowhere. I nodded,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: not really seeing what the problem was. Dolly Seeds has
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: a history. It was farmland once, before the logging companies
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: came through in the early 1900s and stripped everything bare.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: There are old foundations scattered throughout the wilderness area, remnants
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: of cabins and barns and outbuildings. I've seen old homestead
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: ruins before, I told Tom. It's pretty common out here. No,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: he said, shaking his head violently. You don't understand. These
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: weren't attached to anything. They were just stairs, a whole
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: staircase standing upright in the middle of the forest, like
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: someone had built a set of basement stairs and then
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: removed everything around them. No foundation, no building, nothing. Just stairs.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I'll admit that got my attention. Tom pulled out his phone,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: showed me pictures. Sure enough, there they were, a set
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: of stone stairs maybe 15 steps high, standing alone among
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: the trees. They looked old, covered in moss and lichen,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: but structurally sound. They led up to nothing and came
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: from nowhere, just a staircase standing in the woods, like
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: a monument to absurdity. Okay, I said, that's definitely unusual,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: but why did you hike out early? Why are you
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: so upset? Tom's hands were shaking as he put his
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: phone away. Because I climbed them. And? And when I
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: got to the top, I could see my campsite. The
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: one I'd left that morning. The one that was supposed
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: to be five miles behind me. I could see my
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: tent still set up. Could see my campfire from the
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: night before. Could see my backpack leaning against a tree.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: It was like I'd walked in a circle, except I
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: know I hadn't. I'd been following my GPS. It had
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: been heading north the whole time. Maybe you got turned around,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: I suggested. It happens, especially in thick forest. I checked
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: my GPS, Tom said. It showed me five miles north
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: of my campsite. According to the satellite, I was exactly
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: where I should be. But when I looked down from
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: those stairs, I could see the campsite clear as day,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: close enough that I could read the label on my
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: water bottle. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: So I climbed back down, figured I was just disoriented
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: or something. Walked another two miles north, checked my GPS again.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: still showed me heading the right direction, still showed me
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: making progress. Then I found another set of stairs. Another set?
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: I asked, feeling a chill run down my spine. Exactly
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: the same. Same stone, same moss, same 15 steps. Same
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: construction down to the last detail. When I climbed these ones,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: I could see my campsite again. Same view, same angle.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Like I was looking at it from the exact same spot.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Like the stairs were always showing me the same place
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: no matter where I was. Tom left Dolly Sods that day,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and as far as I know, never came back. I
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: filed his report, included the pictures of the stairs, and
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: figured that was the end of it. Weird, sure, but
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: not really my problem. People see all kinds of strange
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: things in the woods. Stress, dehydration, altitude sickness. They can
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: all mess with your perception. Then I started finding more stairs.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Not through hiker reports, though those came in eventually. No,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: I found them myself during routine patrols. I'd be walking along,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: following a game trail or checking on a backcountry campsite,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: and there they'd be, stone stairs, standing alone, leading nowhere.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: I photographed each set I found, documented their locations, tried
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: to figure out if there was a pattern. In six months,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: I found 11 different staircases, all stone, all about 15
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: steps high, all covered in the same moss and lichen.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Some were in dense forest, some in open meadows. One
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: was standing in the middle of a stream like it
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: had been in there for centuries. But here's what really
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: got me. No two staircases were ever in the same
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: place twice. I'd mark a location on my GPS, go
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: back a week later, and find nothing. The stairs would
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: be gone, or they'd never been there in the first place.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I started to think I was losing my mind. Then
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: I met Harold Vickers. Harold was a local, born and
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: raised in the mountains around Dolly Sods. His family had
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: lived in the area since before the Civil War, back
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: when it was all farmland and timber operations. He was
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: in his 80s when I met him, still sharp as
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: a tack. and he knew more about the history of
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Dolly Sodds than anyone else alive. I showed him the
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: pictures of the stairs, asked if he knew what they
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: were or where they'd come from. Harold studied the photos
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: for a long time, his weathered face unreadable. You been
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: climbing them? He finally asked. No, I said. Should I? God, no,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: he said, looking up at me with eyes that had
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: seen too much. Don't you ever climb them stairs, boy.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Nothing good comes from it. Then he told me a story.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Back in the 1920s, when logging companies were clear-cutting the mountains,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: there was a work camp in what's now Dali Sads.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: A couple hundred men living in rough barracks, working dawn
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: to dusk, cutting timber and hauling it out on narrow-gauge railroads.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: It was hard, dangerous work. Men died regularly, crushed by
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: falling trees, mangled by machinery, killed in accidents on the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: rail lines. One of the workers was a man named
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Samuel Cutler. He was different from the other loggers, kept
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: to himself, didn't drink or gamble or whore around like
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: the rest. He spent his free time carving, wooden animals,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: little figurines, that sort of thing. The other men thought
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: he was strange, but they left him alone. Then men
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: started disappearing. At first, nobody paid much attention. Loggers drifted
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: from camp to camp all the time, following the work.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: But these men weren't showing up at other camps. They
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: were just gone. vanished without collecting their pay or gathering
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: their belongings. After the fifth man disappeared, the camp supervisor
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: started asking questions. That's when someone remembered seeing Samuel Cutler
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: talking to each of the missing men in the days
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: before they vanished. When they searched Cutler's bunk, they found
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: something disturbing. Five small wooden figurines, each one carved to
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: look like one of the missing men. They dragged Cutler
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: out of the barracks, demanded to know where the missing
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: men were, Cutler just smiled and said they'd gone up.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: When they asked what that meant, he pointed toward the
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: mountains and said the men had climbed the stairs, had
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: gone up to a better place. The supervisor thought Cutler
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: was mocking them, making light of murder. A group of
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: men grabbed him, hauled him out to the edge of camp,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and lynched him from a tall oak tree. They buried
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: him in an unmarked grave and tried to forget the
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: whole ugly business. But the disappearances didn't stop. Over the
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: next six months, another dozen men vanished from the logging camp.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Some were found eventually, their bodies discovered in impossible places.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: At the tops of cliffs they couldn't have climbed, or
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: in the middle of boulder fields miles from any trail,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: but most were never found at all. The logging company
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: shut down the camp in 1927, claimed the timber was
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: played out. But Harold's grandfather, who had worked there, said
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: the real reason was that men were too scared to stay.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: They'd started seeing things in the woods. Stone stairs that
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: appeared and disappeared. Staircases that led up to nothing but
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: showed you places you shouldn't be able to see. My
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: grandfather saw them stairs once, Harold told me. Said he
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: was walking back to camp after dark and there they were,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: just standing in the middle of the trail. He walked
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: around them, wouldn't go near them, but he said he
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: could hear something at the top, like someone walking around
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: up there. even though the stairs didn't go anywhere. Did
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: he ever figure out what they were, I asked. Harold
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: shook his head. He thought they were some kind of doorway,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: a way between here and somewhere else. He said Samuel
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Cutler had found a way to open doors that should
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: stay closed, and hanging him just made it worse, made
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: it so those doors couldn't be shut again. I left
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Harold's house with more questions than answers, but I took
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: his warning to heart. I never climbed the stairs I
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: found in Dolly Sods, and I made sure to warn
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: other rangers and hikers about them. But the stairs are
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: still out there. I still find them during patrols, still
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: photograph them and mark their locations, even though I know
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: they won't be there the next time I look. And
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: every so often a hiker comes into the office with
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: a story about climbing a set of stone stairs in
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: the wilderness and seeing something impossible from the top, their
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: car at the trailhead when they're 10 miles deep in
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: the backcountry, They're housed two states away, places they've never
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: been but somehow recognize. Most of them laugh it off,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: blame it on altitude or exhaustion. But a few come
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: back changed, haunted by what they saw from the top
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: of those stairs. And a very few don't come back
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: at all. Last year, a college student disappeared in Dolly Sods.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: They found his backpack and camping gear at a campsite,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: everything neat and organized like he'd just stepped it away
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: for a minute. Search and Rescue combed the area for
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: two weeks, found nothing, No body, no clues, no sign
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: of where he'd gone. But one of the search and
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: rescue volunteers came to me privately, pulled me aside after
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: the official search was called off. He'd found something he
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: didn't report to the team, a photograph on the student's camera,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the last picture he'd taken. It showed a set of
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: stone stairs, standing alone in a meadow. And at the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: top of the stairs, barely visible in the frame, was
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: what looked like a figure standing there, waiting. I'm The
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: volunteer deleted the photo before anyone else could see it.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Said he didn't want to cause a panic, didn't want
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: people asking questions that couldn't be answered. But he gave
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: me a copy on a thumb drive, made me promise
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: I'd keep it safe. I've got that photo in my
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: desk drawer, along with dozens of others I've taken over
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: the years. Sometimes late at night when I can't sleep,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: I pull them out and study them, trying to find
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: a pattern or explanation. And sometimes if I look closely enough,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: I can see things in those photos that I didn't
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: notice when I took them. Shadows at the top of
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the stairs that look almost like people, or footprints in
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: the moss leading up the steps and then just ending.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the stairs in Dolly Sods are
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: or where they came from. I don't know if Samuel
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Cutler really opened some kind of doorway or if there's
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: a simpler explanation that I'm just not seeing. But I
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: know this. If you're hiking in Dolly Sods, And you
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: find a set of stone stairs, standing alone in the wilderness.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Don't climb them. Don't even get close. Mark the location
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: if you want. Take a picture from a distance. But
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: don't touch them. Because once you climb those stairs, once
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: you see what's at the top, there's no one seeing it.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: And you might not come back down the same person
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: who went up. You might not come back down at all.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Story five. I want to tell you about Shutton Creek.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: a remote area in the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: It's called shut-in because the creek runs through a narrow
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: gorge with walls so steep and close together that it
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: feels like the mountains are shutting you in. It's beautiful
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: in a claustrophobic kind of way, with water cascading over
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: mossy rocks and rhododendron so thick you can barely see
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: the sky. It's also one of the most dangerous areas
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: in the forest. Not because of the terrain, though the
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: gorge is treacherous enough, Not because of wildlife, though there
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: are bears and copperheads aplenty. No, Shut-In Creek is dangerous
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: because of the singers. I first heard about them from
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: an old-timer named Bessie Caldwell, who lived in a hollow
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: near the forest boundary. Bessie's family had been in these
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: mountains since before there was a United States, and she
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: knew stories that went back generations, passed down from grandmother
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: to granddaughter in an unbroken chain. I'd stop by her
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: place to ask about an old trail I'd found on
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: a map from the 1930s, wanted to know if it
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: was still passable. Bessie invited me in for sweet tea
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: and cornbread, and we got to talking about the forest
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: and its history. You work up near Shutton Creek? She
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: asked me. I nodded. Sometimes. Beautiful area, but tricky terrain.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Bessie's expression darkened. Do you ever hear singing up there? Singing,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: I asked. You mean like birds? No, she said. I
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: mean singing. Human voices or something close to it. Beautiful singing.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: the kind that makes you want to follow it deeper
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: into the gorge. I shook my head. Bessie leaned forward,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: her weathered hands gripping her teacup. If you ever hear it,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: you turn around and walk the other way. Don't matter
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: how pretty it sounds, don't matter if it sounds like
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: angels themselves, you don't follow that singing. Then she told
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: me why. Back in 1934, during the worst of the Depression,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: there was a family living in the mountains near Shutton Creek.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: The Mercers, a mother, father, and five daughters, ranging in
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: age from six to seventeen. They were poor, dirt poor,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: like everyone else in the mountains during those years. But
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: they had something special. Those five girls could sing like
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't believe. People would come from miles around to
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: hear the Mercer girls sing at church on Sundays. Perfect harmony,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: voices like crystal bells, singing old hymns and mountain ballads
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: that would bring tears to the eyes of the hardest men.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Folks said it was a gift from God, that those
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: girls had been touched by something divine. The father, Jacob Mercer,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: saw an opportunity. He started taking his daughters to towns
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and cities, had them sing on street corners and in theaters,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: collecting donations. The money wasn't much, but it was enough
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: to keep the family fed when most folks were starving.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: But Jacob got greedy. The more money they made, the
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: more he wanted. He started pushing the girls harder, making
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: them sing for longer hours in more places. They'd travel
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: for days, singing in town after town, barely stopping to rest.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: The girls' voices started to suffer, started to crack and
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: falter from exhaustion. Jacob became desperate. He'd promised some fancy
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: venue in Asheville that his daughters would perform, had already
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: spent the advance money they'd given him. But the girls
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: were worn out. could barely carry a tune anymore. He
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: needed their voices back, needed them perfect again. That's when
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: he took them to Shut-In Creek. There were old stories
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: about the creek, tales that Cherokee had told before they
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: were driven out, stories about spirits that lived in the gorge,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: ancient things that loved music and beauty. Jacob had heard
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: these stories his whole life, dismissed them as superstition, but now,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: desperate and afraid, he was willing to try anything. He
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: took his daughters to the narrowest part of the gorge,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: where the walls closed in so tight you could touch
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: both sides if you spread your arms. There was a
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: pool there, deep and still, where the water collected before
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: tumbling over a waterfall. Jacob made his daughters stand at
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: the edge of that pool and sing. At first, nothing happened.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: The girls sang their hymns, their voices echoing off the
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: stone walls. But then something changed. The acoustics of the
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: gorge began to amplify their voices, making them sound fuller. Richer,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: more beautiful than they'd ever been. And underneath their singing,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: barely audible, there was something else. Another voice, or maybe
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: many voices, singing in harmony with them. The girls sang
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: for hours, and the longer they sang, the more beautiful
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: their voices became. By the time Jacob finally let them stop,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: they sounded perfect again. Better than perfect. Angelic. They went
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: to Asheville and performed The audience was spellbound. People wept openly,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: said they'd never heard anything so beautiful in their lives.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Jacob collected more money than he'd ever seen, and he
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: immediately started planning the next performance, and the one after that.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: But something had changed in his daughters. They'd stopped talking,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: barely ate, just sat in silence, staring at nothing. And
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: at night, they'd wake up and sing. Not hymns or ballads,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: but songs in a language Jacob didn't recognize. with harmonies
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: that shouldn't be possible for human voices to produce. It
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: went on for weeks. The girls would perform during the day,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: their voices more beautiful than ever, then sing those strange
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: songs at night. Jacob was making money hand over fist,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: but his wife begged him to stop, said something was
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: wrong with their daughters. He wouldn't listen. Then came the
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: night the girls didn't come back. Jacob woke to find
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: their beds empty. He searched the house, the yard, called
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: their names until he was hoarse. Finally, as dawn broke,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: he heard them. Singing. The sound was coming from the
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: direction of Shutton Creek. He ran through the woods, following
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: their voices. The closer he got to the gorge, the
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: more beautiful the singing became, and the more terrified he felt.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Because underneath his daughter's voices, he could hear those other voices.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: The ones from the pool. And they weren't singing in
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: harmony anymore. They were singing over his daughter's. drowning them out.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: He reached the narrowest part of the gorge, where the
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: pool was, and found his five daughters standing at the
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: water's edge. They were singing with their eyes closed, swaying
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: in perfect unison, and they were walking into the water.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Jacob screamed at them to stop, rushed forward to grab them.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: But the moment he got close to the pool, he
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: heard it too. The other voices singing so beautifully, it
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: made his chest ache, made tears stream down his face.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: made him want nothing more than to walk into that
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: water and join them. He might have done it, too,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: if his wife hadn't followed him. She grabbed him from behind,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: dragged him away from the pool, even as he fought her.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: By the time she'd pulled him back to safety, their
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: daughters had disappeared beneath the surface. They searched for days,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: brought in people from all over the county to help
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: drag the pool, to dive down and look for bodies.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: But the pool was deeper than it looked, fed by
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: underground springs, and they never found anything. Jacob Mercer went
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: mad with grief. He spent the rest of his short
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: life wandering the mountains, listening for his daughters' voices. People
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: would find him standing at the edge of the gorge,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: staring down at the water, humming tunes nobody recognized. He
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: died in 1936, walked into Shutton Creek during a winter storm,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: and drowned in the same pool that had taken his daughters.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: That's a tragic story, I said when Bessie finished, but
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: surely it's just a story. a cautionary tale about greed.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Bessie shook her head. You think that's where it ended?
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: The singing didn't stop when those girls drowned. People still
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: hear it up at Shutton Creek. Beautiful singing coming from
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the gorge, especially at dawn and dusk. And every few years,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: someone follows that singing and doesn't come back. I wanted
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: to dismiss it as folklore, but Bessie's expression was too serious,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: too concerned. I'm telling you this because you work up there,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: she said, because you might hear it someday. And when
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: you do, I want you to remember that singing isn't
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: a gift. It's a trap. Something in that gorge is
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: still hungry for voices, for beauty. Don't give it yours.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: I thanked Bessie for the warning and the tea, drove
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: back to the ranger station thinking about what she'd said.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: I looked up the Merster family and the county records,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: curious to see if there was any truth to the story.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: There was. I found death records for five Mercer girls,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: all dated March 1934, cause of death listed as drowning.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: I found a news article about the search efforts about
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: how the community had come together to look for the
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: missing girls. And I found Jacob Mercer's death record from 1936,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: drowning in Shutton Creek. So the basic facts were true,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: but that didn't mean the rest of the story was real.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: People drown in mountain streams all the time. It didn't
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: mean there were spirits in the water luring singers to
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: their death. Then I heard the singing for myself. It
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: was early morning in late April, in that magical time
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: when the rhododendrons are blooming and the forest is bursting
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: with life. I was doing a routine patrol along Shudden Creek,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: checking for damage from recent storms. The gorge was beautiful
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: that morning, sunlight filtering through the canopy, making the water
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: sparkle like diamonds. That's when I heard it, singing, The
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: most beautiful singing I'd ever heard in my life. It
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: sounded like women's voices, five or six of them, singing
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: in perfect harmony. The song itself was strange, not quite
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: a hymn, and not quite a ballad, with words I
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: couldn't quite make out. But the voices, God, those voices.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: They made my chest ache, made me want to cry
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: and laugh at the same time. I found myself walking
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: toward the sound without realizing I was moving. The singing
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: was coming from deeper in the gorge, from the narrow
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: part where the walls closed in. I pushed through the rhododendron,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: my feet finding the path like they knew the way.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Then I remembered Bessie's warning. I stopped, forced myself to
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: stand still, even though every fiber of my being wanted
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: to keep moving toward that singing. I pulled out my phone,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: hit record, wanting to capture the sound. But when I
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: played it back, there was nothing. Just the sound of
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: water and birds, no singing. That's when I knew Bessie
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: had been telling the truth. I turned around and walked
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: back the way I'd come, even though it was one
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: of the hardest things I've ever done. The singing followed
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: me for a while, growing more insistent, more beautiful, almost angry.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: But I kept walking, didn't look back, didn't stop until
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: I was out of the gorge and back on the
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: main trail. I've been back to Shutting Creek many times
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: since then, always during the day, always alert. I've heard
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: the singing three more times over the years. Each time,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: I've turned around and walked away. But I know not
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: everyone does. In 2019, a music student from Appalachian State
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: went missing while hiking near Shutton Creek. She was a
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: vocalist studying opera, and she'd told her roommate she was
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: going to the gorge to practice because the acoustics were amazing.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: They found her car at the trailhead, found her backpack
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: near the narrow part of the gorge, never found her body.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: In 2021, a professional singer from Charlotte disappeared in the
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: same area. He'd been researching Appalachian folk music, collecting recordings
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: of traditional songs. His digital recorder was found near the
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: pool at the narrowest part of the gorge. The last
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: thing on it was his own voice, singing a song
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: in a language none of the experts could identify. Then
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: his voice faded out, and there was just the sound
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: of water. And underneath it, if you listened closely, you
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: could hear singing. multiple voices in harmony, and one of
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: them sounded just like him. The Forest Service doesn't publicize
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: these disappearances. They don't want to scare tourists or start
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: a panic. but rangers know we warn each other pass
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: down the stories mark the gorge as a place to
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: be careful and i'll warn you too if you ever
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: find yourself near shutton creek in the pisgah national forest
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: and you hear beautiful singing echoing through the gorge don't
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: follow it don't try to find the source Don't let
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: yourself be drawn into that narrow place where the walls
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: close in and the water runs deep. Because whatever's down
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: there in that pool, it's been singing for 90 years.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: And it's always hungry for new voices to add to
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: the chorus. Story six. Linville Gorge in North Carolina is
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: known as the Grand Canyon of the East. It's a
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: massive slash in the earth, 12 miles long and nearly 2,000
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: feet deep in places, with the Linville River running through
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: the bottoms. It's rugged, wild, and dangerous. We lose hikers
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: there every year. People who underestimate the terrain. Who get
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: lost in the maze of unmarked trails. Who try to
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: climb down cliffs they can't climb back up. But there's
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: one trail in Linville Gorge that's more dangerous than all
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: the others combined. And the strange thing is, it's not
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: on any map. I first heard about the wrong trail
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: from another ranger. A guy named Marcus Webb. who'd worked
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: Linville Gorge for 15 years before transferring out. We were
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: at a regional training conference, sharing stories over beers, when
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: he leaned in close and asked me if I'd ever
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: found a trail that wasn't supposed to be there. What
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: do you mean, I asked. I mean a trail that's
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: not on any map, not in any records, but looks well-maintained.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: Clear pathway even has blazes on the trees, but when
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: you follow it, it doesn't go where it should. I
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: shook my head. Marcus took a long drink, then told
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: me his story. He'd been doing a solo patrol in
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: the gorge, checking on some of the more remote backcountry campsites.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: It was late afternoon in October, the perfect time when
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: the leaves are peak and the weather's cool but not cold.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: He was following one of the established trails when he
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: noticed a junction he didn't remember seeing before. There was
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: a clear path branching off to the left, marked with
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: orange blazes on the trees. Marcus checked his map, but
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: there was no trail marked at this location. He figured
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: maybe the Forest Service had cut a new trail and
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: failed to update the maps yet, so he radioed in
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: his position and followed it to see where it went.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: The trail was well-maintained, almost too well-maintained. The pathway was
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: clear of debris, the blazes on the trees looked fresh,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: and there were even what looked like fairly new footprints
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: in the soft earth. Marcus followed it for about 20 minutes,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: descending deeper into the gorge. That's when he started noticing
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: things that didn't make sense. The forest around him had changed.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: The trees were different, species he didn't recognize, with bark
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: that looked wrong and leaves that seemed to shift color
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: when it wasn't looking directly at them. The light was wrong, too,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: dimmer than it should be for late afternoon, with shadows
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: that fell at odd angles. And it was quiet. Too quiet.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: No birds, no insects, no rustling in the underbrush. just
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: his footsteps and his breathing in a strange pressure in
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: the air, like the atmosphere itself was holding its breath.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Marcus stopped, turned around to head back the way he'd come,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: but the trail behind him looked different now. The orange
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: blazes were still there, but they were faded, covered in moss,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: like they'd been there for decades instead of being fresh,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: and the trail itself looked overgrown, barely visible through the vegetation.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: He tried to follow it back anyways, but within minutes,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: he was completely lost. The trail seemed to shift and change,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: leading him in circles. His GPS was no help. It
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: showed him standing in the middle of the Linville River,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: which was impossible because he was at least a quarter
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: mile from the water. Marcus spent three hours trying to
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: find his way back, growing more panicked with each passing minute.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: The light was fading, and he knew he didn't want
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: to be on this wrong trail after dark. Finally, in desperation,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: He did the one thing every ranger trains not to do.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: He left the trail completely and started bushwhacking through the forest,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: using his compass to head in what should be east,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: back toward the established trail system. It worked. After about
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: 30 minutes of fighting through thick underbrush, he stumbled back
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: onto a trail he recognized. The relief was so intense
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: he nearly wept. He hiked out as fast as he
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: could and didn't stop until he reached his truck. I
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: went back the next week, Marcus told me. Took a
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: crew with me, trying to find that junction. That wrong trail.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: We searched for hours. Never found it. No junction, no trail,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: no orange blazes. Nothing. Like it had never existed. Maybe
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: you just got disoriented, I suggested. The gorge can mess
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: with your sense of direction. Marcus shook his head. That's
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: what I told myself. But then I started hearing stories
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: from other rangers, from hikers. People finding trails that weren't
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: on the map, following them, getting lost. Some of them
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: made it back. Some didn't. He pulled out his phone,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: showed me a list of names. These are all hikers
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: who've gone missing in Linville Gorge in the last 20 years.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Most of them were experienced, had GPS and maps, should
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: have been fine. But they vanished anyway. And in almost
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: every case, the last person to see them said they'd
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: mentioned finding an interesting trail or a shortcut they wanted
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: to explore. I looked at the list. There were 17
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: names on it. What do you think it is? I asked.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: The wrong trail? Marcus was quiet for a long time.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: I think there are places in these mountains where the
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: boundaries get thin, where you can slip from here to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: somewhere else without even realizing it. And I think that
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: trail is one of those places. A doorway that opens
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: and closes, leading people somewhere they can't come back from.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: I transferred to Linville Gorge six months after that conversation.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Part of me wanted to find the wrong trail. Wanted
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: to prove Marcus right or wrong. But another part of me,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: the smarter part, hoped I'd never see it. I found
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: it anyway. It was early spring. I'd been working the
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: gorge for about three months. I was doing a routine
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: patrol on one of the main trails when I saw it.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: A clear junction branching off to the left, marked with
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: orange blazes. I checked my map. No trail was marked
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: at this location. My heart started pounding. This was it,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: the wrong trail. Part of me wanted to radio it
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: in to call for backup, but another part, the part
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: that had become a ranger, because I loved exploring, wanted
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: to know where it went. I compromised. I marked my
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: position on my GPS, took pictures of the junction and
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: the blazes, then radioed in that I was investigating an
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: unmarked trail. I promised to check in every 15 minutes.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Then I followed the trail. At first, everything seemed normal.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: The path was clear, the blazes were visible, the forest
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: looked like forest. But gradually, subtly, things started to change.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: The light got dimmer, the trees got taller and stranger.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: The sounds of the forest faded away until there was
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: nothing but silence. I checked my watch. I'd been walking
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: for ten minutes. Time to radio in. But when I
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: tried to key the radio, all I got was static.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: I checked my phone. No signal. I wasn't unusual in
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: the gorge, but it was concerning. I kept walking, telling
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: myself I'd go just a little further, just to see
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: where the trail led. The path started to descend steeply,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: switch backing down into what should have been the heart
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: of the gorge. But the gorge I was descending into
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: didn't look right. The walls were too close together, too smooth,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: like they'd been carved rather than eroded. And at the bottom,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: I could see something that definitely shouldn't be there. Structures. Structures.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: Buildings or what was left of them. Old log cabins,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: maybe a dozen of them, arranged in a rough circle
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: around a central clearing. They looked ancient, the logs black,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: with age and rot. But there was smoke coming from
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: one of the chimneys. Every instinct I had was screaming
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: at me to turn around and run. But I couldn't
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: help myself. I had to know what was down there,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: who or what was making that smoke. I descended the
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: last switchback and stepped into the clearing. The cabins were
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: definitely old, maybe from the 1800s or earlier. Most had collapsed,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: their roofs caved in and walls fallen. But one, the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: one with the smoking chimney, was still standing. The door
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: was open and I could see firelight flickering inside. I
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: should have run. God knows I should have run. But
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: I called out instead, identified myself as a ranger, asked
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: if anyone needed help. No answer. Just the crackle of
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: the fire and the whisper of wind through the broken buildings.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: I stepped closer to the open door, peered inside. What
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: I saw made my blood run cold. The cabin's interior
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: was furnished like a home from two centuries ago. There
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: was a table with plates set for dinner, a rocking
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: chair by the fireplace, bundles of dried herbs hanging from
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: the ceiling, and sitting at the table were people. Four
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: of them. A man, a woman, and two children. They
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: were dressed in old-fashioned clothing, homespun fabric, and worn leather.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: They sat perfectly still, hands folded in their laps, faces
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: turned toward the door. Toward me. Their eyes were wronged.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Too large, too dark, reflecting the firelight in a way
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: human eyes shouldn't. And they were smiling, all four of them,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: with smiles that stretched just a little too wide. The
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: man spoke. His voice sounded like it was coming from
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: very far away or through water. Won't you join us
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: for supper, Ranger? We've been expecting you. I ran. I
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: don't remember making the conscious decision to run, but suddenly,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: I was sprinting back up that trail, my legs pumping,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: my lungs burning. Behind me, I could hear them laughing.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: Not cruel laughter, but warm and inviting, like they were
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: genuinely amused by my fear. I ran until I couldn't
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: run anymore, until my lungs felt like they were going
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: to burst. When I finally stopped to catch my breath,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: I looked around and realized I was on a trail
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: I recognized. One of the main trails marked on all
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: the maps. The wrong trail was gone. I checked my GPS.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: According to it, I'd never left the main trail. My
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: radio crackled to life, and my supervisor was asking for
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: my 15-minute check-in. I looked at my watch. Only 15
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: minutes had passed since I'd radioed in, even though it
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: felt like I'd been walking for an hour. I told
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: my supervisor everything was fine, finished my patrol, and hiked out.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: I didn't mention the wrong trail or the settlement or
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: the people with the wrong eyes. I knew how it
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: would sound. But I started researching. I spent weeks in
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: libraries and historical societies, digging through old records about Linville Gorge.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: And I found something that made my hands shake. In 1782,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: there was a small settlement in what's now Linville Gorge.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: About a dozen families trying to make a life in
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: the wilderness. They were isolated, cut off from other settlements
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: by the rugged terrain. Then in the spring of 1783,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: a hunting party from a nearby town made their way
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: into the gorge and found the settlement abandoned. Not destroyed,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: not ransacked, just empty. The buildings were intact, food was
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: still on tables, fires were still burning in fireplaces. But
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: every single person was gone. Men, women, children, all vanished
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: without a trace. The hunting party searched the area for
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: days but found nothing. No tracks, no signs of struggle,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: no indication of where the settlers had gone or what
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: had happened to them. Eventually, people started saying the settlement
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: was cursed, that something in the gorge had taken them.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: No one ever resettled that area. The records didn't say
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: exactly where in the gorge the settlement had been located.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: The terrain was too rugged and unmapped back then for
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: precise locations, but the description matched what I'd seen. a
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: circle of cabins and a clearing at the bottom of
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: a steep descent. I've seen the wrong trail three more
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: times since that first encounter. Each time I've marked it
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: on my GPS, taken pictures, documented everything. And each time
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: when I go back the next day, there's no trail there,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: just unbroken forest. Other rangers have seen it too, though
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: most won't talk about it officially. We warn each other quietly,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: pass along descriptions of what the junction looks like, what
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: the orange blazes look like. We tell new rangers to
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: trust their instincts. If a trail feels wrong and if
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: something about it makes your skin crawl, don't follow it.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: Because here's what I think, based on everything I've learned
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: and seen. That settlement in 1783 didn't go anywhere. The
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: people didn't leave or get taken. They're still there in
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: whatever pocket dimension or timeline or reality they slipped into.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: And they're lonely. They want company. They want visitors. They
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: want someone to join them for supper. And that trail,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: the wrong trail, is their invitation. Last year, a hiker
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: went missing in Linville Gorge. Experienced guy, had all the
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: right gear, knew the trails well. They found his backpack
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: on one of the main trails, found his GPS unit
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: that showed him walking in a straight line off the
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: trail into an area of unbroken forest. They never found him.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: But I think I know where he went. I think
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: he found the wrong trail. I think he followed it,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: And I think he's sitting at that table now, with
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: the people with the wrong eyes, waiting for the next
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: visitor to come by. So if you ever hike in
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Linville Gorge, stick to the marked trails. Don't follow paths
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: that aren't on your map, no matter how well-maintained they look.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: Don't trust orange blazes in places where there shouldn't be
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: any trails at all. And if you find yourself in
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: a settlement that shouldn't exist, if you see people who
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: invite you to supper, for the love of God, run.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: Run and don't look back. because once you sit down
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: at that table, you might never get up again. Raven
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: Rock is a massive cliff in Cumberland Gap National Historical Park,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: straddling the border between Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. It's a
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: popular destination for hikers, offering spectacular views of three states
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: from its summit. But there's a section of the cliffs,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: about a mile from the main overlook, that rangers are
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: told to keep hikers away from. Officially, it's because the
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: rock face is unstable there, Dangerous for climbing. Unofficially, it's
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: because of the children. I learned about them during my
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: first week working at Cumberland Gap. I was being shown
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: around by a veteran ranger named Patricia Holbrook, and she
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: took me to a section of trail that led toward
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: the western edge of Raven Rock. This trail is closed,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: she told me, pointing to a gate with a trail-closed,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: unstable terrain sign. Don't let hikers pass this point. Don't
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: go past it yourself. Why? I asked. What's actually wrong
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: with it? Patricia looked at me for a long moment,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: clearly debating how much to tell me. Because kids get
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: lost there. Good kids. Smart kids who know how to hike.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: They go past this gate and they don't come back.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: Lost or missing? I asked, not quite understanding the distinction. Both,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: Patricia said. Some we find eventually, usually within a day
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: or two. But they're different when we find them. They
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: don't talk about what happened, won't stay where they were
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: or what they saw. They just stare at nothing and
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: flinch at loud sounds and some she trailed off. Some what?
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: Some we don't find at all. Over the next few months,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: I heard more about Raven Rock from other rangers. How
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: there had been disappearances there for decades, maybe longer. How
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: it was always children or teenagers, never adults. How the
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: kids who came back were never quite the same. Then
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: I met one of them. Her name was Emma Thorne
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: and she was 17 years old when she disappeared at
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: Raven Rock in 2015. She was missing for three days
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: before a search and rescue team found her sitting on
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: a boulder about two miles from where she'd vanished. She
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: was dehydrated and scratched up, but otherwise physically unharmed. Psychologically, though,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: she was wrecked. She wouldn't speak for two weeks after
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: they found her. When she finally did start talking again,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: she refused to discuss what had happened during those three days.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: Her parents tried therapy, tried medication, tried everything. Nothing helped.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Emma just retreated further into herself. I met her four
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: years after her disappearance at a coffee shop in Middlesbrough.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: She'd reached out to me through a mutual friend, said
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: she wanted to talk to a ranger about what had happened.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: She'd never told anyone the full story, but she felt
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: like she needed to before the memories consumed her. We
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: sat in a back corner booth and Emma told me everything.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: This is her story. Emma had been hiking with her
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: youth group from church, a big group of about 20
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: kids with several adult chaperones. They'd hiked to the main
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: Raven Rock overlook, taken pictures, enjoyed the view. On the
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: way back, Emma had fallen behind, stopped to tie her shoe.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: By the time she looked up, the group had rounded
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: a bend and disappeared from view. She wasn't worried. The
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: trail was well marked and she could hear voices ahead.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: She'd catch up in a minute, but as she stood up,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: She noticed a smaller trail branching off to the right.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: It wasn't marked on any signs, but it looked well used,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: with clear footprints in the dirt. And she could hear
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: something down that trail. Children laughing and playing. Emma figured
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: it must be another group, maybe another youth group from
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: a different church. She decided to walk down and say hello,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: maybe catch up with her own group afterward. The side
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: trail led through dense forest for about a quarter mile
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: before opening into a clearing. And in that clearing were children,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: dozens of them, ranging in age from maybe 5 to 15.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: They were playing games, tag, hide-and-seek, jumping rope, normal kid stuff.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: But something about them was off. Their clothes were strange,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: a mix of different eras and styles. Some wore modern
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: jeans and t-shirts, others wore clothing that looked like it
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: was from the 1950s or 60s. and a few were
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: dressed in even older styles, like something from the early 1900s.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: They were too quiet. Kids playing make noise, shouting, laughing, arguing.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: These children were silent. They ran and jumped and played,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: but without any sound except the rustle of their movement
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: through the grass. Emma stood at the edge of the clearing, watching,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: unsure whether to approach. One of the children, a girl
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: who looked about 10 years old, noticed her and stopped playing.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: She stared at Emma for a long moment then smiled
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: and waved her over. Emma walked into the clearing. As
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: she got closer, she could see that the children weren't
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: just oddly dressed. They were too pale, their skin almost
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: translucent in the dappled sunlight, and their eyes were strange,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: too dark, with pupils that seemed to take up most
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: of the iris. Do you understand? to play with us
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: the 10 year old asked her voice was flat emotionless
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: like she was reading from a script i should get
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: back to my group emma said suddenly very uncomfortable they'll
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: be wondering where i am you can't go back yet
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: another child said a boy who looked about emma's age
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: you just got here You have to play first. I
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: really should go, Emma insisted, backing toward the trail. But
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: the trail wasn't there anymore. Where there had been a
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: clear path leading back to the main trail, there was
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: now just unbroken forest, thick with undergrowth. The children surrounded her,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: not threatening exactly, but forming a loose circle that prevented
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: her from leaving. Don't be scared, the ten-year-old said. We're
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: going to be friends. We're going to play together forever.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: Emma tried to run. She picked a direction and sprinted,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: but the forest was too thick. She couldn't get through
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: the undergrowth, couldn't find any way out of the clearing.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: The children watched her struggle, their faces expressionless. Finally, exhausted
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: and terrified, Emma collapsed at the base of a tree.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: The children gathered around her, sitting in a circle, staring
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: at her with those two dark eyes. Why won't you
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: play with us? the 10-year-old asked. Don't you want to stay? No,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: Emma sobbed. I want to go home. I want my parents.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: The children looked at each other, seemed to communicate without words.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: Then the 10-year-old spoke again. We all wanted to go
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: home once, but now this is home. This is where
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: we play, forever and ever and ever. Emma spent three
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: days in that clearing. The children never heard her, never
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: even touched her, but they never let her leave either.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Every time she tried to find a way out, the
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: force would shift and change, depositing her back in the clearing.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: The children played their silent games constantly, day and night.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: They didn't eat, didn't sleep, just played. And gradually, Emma
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: realized they were trying to make her like them, trying
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: to make her forget about leaving, forget about her old
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: life until all she wanted was to stay and play
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: their endless games. She might have succeeded in resisting, or
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: she might have eventually given in. Emma still doesn't know
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: which would have happened. But on the third day, she
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: heard voices in the forest. Human voices. The search and
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: rescue team. The children heard them, too. For the first
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: time since Emma had arrived, they showed emotion. Fear. The
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: ten-year-old grabbed Emma's arm, her grip cold and far too strong.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: Don't call out to them, she hissed. If you leave,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: you can never come back. You'll forget us. You'll forget everything.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: Is that what you want? Emma didn't hesitate. She screamed
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: for help. The children vanished, just disappeared like they'd never
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: been there. The clearing remained, but it was empty now
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: except for Emma. And when the search and rescue team
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: found her, she was sitting on a boulder at the
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: edge of the clearing, confused and disoriented, with no memory
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: of how she'd gotten there. Except she did remember. Over
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: the following weeks and months, the memories came back in
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: fragments and nightmares. The children... The endless games. The feeling
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: of being trapped in a place outside of time. I
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: looked them up. Emma told me, her hands shaking as
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: she clutched her coffee cup. The children. I couldn't remember
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: all their faces, but I remembered some. A girl in
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: a yellow dress from what looked like the 1960s. A
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: boy in overalls that looked even older, like Depression era.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: I went through missing persons reports, old newspapers, anything I
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: could find. Did you find them? I asked. Emma nodded.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: The girl in the yellow dress was Melissa Crawford. She
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: disappeared during a family camping trip at Raven Rock in 1968.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: They searched for weeks, but never found her. The boy
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: in overalls was Thomas Eckhart. Went missing in 1934 during
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: a church picnic. And there were others. So many others.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: Kids who disappeared at Raven Rock going back to at
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: least the late 1800s. What do you think they are?
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: I asked. Ghosts? I don't know, Emma said. They felt real, solid.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: But they weren't human anymore, not really. I think maybe
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: they were human once. But whatever took them changed them,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: turned them into something else. Something that can't leave that clearing,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: that can't do anything but play games forever. Why didn't
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: it work on you, I asked. Why didn't you become
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: like them? Emma was quiet for a long moment. I
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: think it's because I didn't want to stay. Some part
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: of me, no matter how scared I was, no matter
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: how much they tried to make me forget, still wanted
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: to go home. Still remembered my parents and my friends
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: and my life. The other children, I think they gave up.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: I think they accepted it. And once you accept it,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: once you stop fighting, that's when it gets you for good.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: After my conversation with Emma, I started looking into disappearances
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: at Raven Rock. What I found was disturbing. Since the
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: park was established in 1940... There have been 23 disappearances
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: of children and teenagers in the Raven Rock area. Seven
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: were never found. The other 16 were found within a
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: few days, usually in the same general area where Emma
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: had been found, sitting or standing in a daze with
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: no memory of where they'd been. But the disappearances go
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: back much further. I found newspaper articles from the 1920s
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: and 30s, church records from the 1800s, all documenting children
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: who vanished near Raven Rock. Some were found, some weren't.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: The pattern was always the same. The Park Service knows
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: about this. They have to. That's why they keep that
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: section of trail closed, why they warn rangers to keep
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: hikers away. But they can't exactly tell the public that
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: there's a pocket dimension or temporal anomaly or whatever it
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: is near Raven Rock that traps children in an internal playground.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: So they say the rock is unstable. They say it's dangerous.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: They keep the gate closed and hope people listen. But
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: people don't always listen. Every year, someone ignores the signs,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: jumps the gate, goes exploring. And every few years, a
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: child doesn't come back. Emma ended her story with a warning.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: If you have kids, she said, if you know anyone
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: with kids who wants to visit Raven Rock, tell them
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: to stay on the marked trails. Don't let them wander off,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: not even for a second. Because those children in the clearing,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: they're lonely. They're always looking for new friends. And once
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: they find you, they don't want to let you go.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: I asked Emma if she'd ever thought about going back,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: about trying to help the trapped children. She looked at
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: me like I was insane. Go back? I have nightmares
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: about that place every single night. I wake up thinking
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: I'm still there, still trapped in that clearing with those children.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: I'll never set foot in Cumberland Gap again as long
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: as I live. Then she leaned forward, her eyes intense.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: But sometimes, late at night, I hear them. The children?
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: The children? They're calling my name, asking me to come
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: back and play. And the worst part? Part of me
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: wants to go. Part of me misses them. Misses that clearing.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: That's what scares me most. That they're still in my
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: head somehow. Still trying to pull me back. Emma left
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: after that, and I haven't seen her since. But I
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: think about her story every time I patrol near Raven Rock.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: I make sure that gate stays closed I turn back
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: every hiker who tries to go past it, no matter
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: how much they argue that they're experienced, that they know
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: what they're doing. Because I know what's waiting back there
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: in that clearing. I know those children are still playing
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: their silent games, still waiting for new friends to join them.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: And I'll do everything in my power to make sure
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: no one else gets the invitation. We're past the halfway
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: point now, folks, and these stories just keep getting darker.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: I want to take a moment to ask you, Have
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: any of you had experiences with places that felt wrong?
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: Areas where you knew, deep in your gut, that you
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be there? Share your stories in the comments below.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: And if you're finding value in these warnings from the
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: deep mountains, please hit that like button and subscribe to
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: Park Ranger Files. We're so close to 1,000 subscribers, and
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: your support helps these stories reach the people who need
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: to hear them. Now, let's continue into even darker territory.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: Story eight. Bald Mountain in Cherokee National Forest, Tennessee, got
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: its name because the summit is completely bare. No trees,
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: just grass and rock and spectacular views. There are a
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: few theories about why the summit is treeless. Some say
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: it's because of fires. Others say the soil composition won't
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: support trees. The Cherokee had a different explanation, but most
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: folks dismiss it as legend. I learned the Cherokee explanation
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: from an old man named Joseph Swimmer, who claimed descent
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: from one of the Cherokee family's that had managed to
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: avoid the Trail of Tears. He lived in a cabin
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: near the forest boundary and had been there so long
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: that even the oldest rangers couldn't remember a time when
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: he wasn't part of the landscape. I met Joseph when
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: I was investigating reports of illegal campfires on Bald Mountain.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: Rangers had been finding fire rings near the summit, big ones,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: large enough for gatherings of 20 or 30 people. But
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: we never found anyone up there, never caught anyone in
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: the act of building these fires. They'd just appeared. still
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: warm from recent use, with no footprints or other evidence
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: of who'd been there. I'd hiked up to check on
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: another report, found a fire ring that was still smoking.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: I was photographing it, documenting the evidence, when Joseph appeared.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: I don't mean he walked up, I mean he just appeared,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: like he'd materialized out of the air. You won't find them,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: he said, nearly giving me a heart attack. Jesus, I
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: spun around, hand on my radio. Where did you come from?
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: Been here longer than you, Joseph said, which wasn't really
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: an answer. You won't find the ones making these fires.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: They're not from your time. I'd dealt with my share
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: of eccentric locals who liked to spin yarns for the rangers,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: so I figured Joseph was just another storyteller. But he
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: settled down on a rock like he was preparing for
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: a long conversation, and I was curious enough to listen.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: My grandmother told me about the fires on Bald Mountains
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Joseph said. Her grandmother told her, going back seven, eight generations.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: The fires have been burning up here since before the
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: white man came. Since before the Cherokee came, even. They're
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: older than any of us. Who lights them? I asked,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: playing along. The ones who came before, Joseph said, the
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: old ones. They gather here on certain nights when the
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: barrier between their world and ours grows thin. They light
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: their fires and dance and sing and celebrating or mourning
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: or doing whatever it is they do. And sometimes if
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: you're foolish enough to climb this mountain on one of
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: those nights, you might see them. Have you seen them?
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: I asked. Joseph's expression darkened. Once, when I was young
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: and stupid, I came up here on the night of
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: the autumn equinox, wanted to see if the old stories
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: were true. I saw them all right, and I've spent
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: every day since wishing I hadn't. He wouldn't say more
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: than that. just warned me not to come to Bald
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: Mountain after dark, especially during the equinoxes and solstices. Then
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: he vanished as suddenly as he'd appeared, leaving me wondering
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: if I'd hallucinated the entire conversation. Yeah, I didn't hallucinate
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: the fire ring, though. It was real, and it wasn't
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: the last one I'd find. Over the next few months,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: fire rings kept appearing on Bald Mountain's summit, always after dark,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: always when no one was supposed to be up there.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: Then came the night I saw the fire myself. It
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: was late September, about a week before the autumn equinox.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: I'd been working late, finishing up some paperwork at the
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: ranger station, when I looked out the window and saw
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: a glow on the horizon. A big glow, like a
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: massive bonfire, coming from the direction of Bald Mountain. I
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: grabbed my radio and my gear and headed up the mountain.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: It was a two-hour hike to the summit, and by
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: the time I was halfway there, I could hear music. Drums, maybe,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: or chantings. The sound echoed off the mountains in a
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: way that made it impossible to tell exactly where it
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: was coming from. I kept climbing, following the glow and
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: the sound. As I got closer to the summit, the
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: music got louder, more complex. There were definitely drums, but
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: also other instruments I couldn't identify, playing rhythms that seemed
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: to shift and change, never quite falling into a pattern
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: my ears could follow. I reached the tree line and
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: looked up at the summit. There was definitely a fire
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: up there, a huge bonfire that lit up the night sky,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: and around it silhouetted against the flames were figures, dozens
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: of them, maybe hundreds, dancing in a circle around the fire.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: Every instinct I had told me to turn around and
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: go back down the mountain, but I was a ranger.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: It was my job to investigate illegal activities in the park,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: and this is definitely qualified as illegal. You can't have
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: open fires on Bald Mountain, and gathering in groups this
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: large requires a permit. I climbed the last stretch to
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: the summit and stood at the edge of the bare ground,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: looking at the scene before me. The fire was massive,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: 20 feet tall at least, burning with flames that were
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: the wrong color, too blue, too green, too bright. The
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: figures dancing around it were human-shaped but wrong in subtle ways.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: too tall or with limbs that bent at odd angles,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: or with faces that seemed to shift and blur when
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: I tried to look directly at them. The music was
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: overwhelming up close, vibrating through my bones, making my teeth ache.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: The rhythm was complex beyond anything I'd ever heard, layers
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: upon layers of sound that seemed designed to confuse and disorient.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: I tried to call out to identify myself as a ranger,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: but my voice was lost in the music. I tried
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: to step forward, to get closer, but my legs wouldn't move.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: I was frozen at the edge of the summit, unable
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: to advance or retreat, forced to watch the dance. The
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: figures moved in patterns around the fire, weaving in and out,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: coming together and breaking apart. And gradually I realized I
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: could see through them. They weren't solid. They were translucent,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: like projections or holograms. There, but not quite there. Then
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: one of them noticed me. It stopped dancing, turned to
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: face me directly. Even though I couldn't make out its
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: features clearly, I knew it was looking at me, studying me.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: Then it raised one too long arm and beckoned me forward.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: The paralysis broke. I could move again. And every fiber
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: of my being was screaming at me to run, but
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: I found myself taking a step forward instead. Then another,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: walking toward the fire, toward the dancing figures. toward whatever
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: waited in that circle of flames and shadows. I was
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: maybe 10 feet from the fire when something grabbed my
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: arm and yanked me backward. It was Joseph Swimmer. He
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: pulled me away from the fire, away from the dancing figures,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: back toward the tree line. I tried to resist, tried
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: to get back to the fire, but Joseph was surprisingly
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: strong for an old man. He dragged me down the trail,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: away from the summit, and didn't stop until we were
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: well into the trees. The music was still audible, but
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: quieter now. Less overwhelming. Joseph pushed me against a tree
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: and held me there until the compulsion to return to
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: the fire faded. What the hell were you thinking? He demanded.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: I told you not to come up here. At night.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: I saw the fire, I managed to say. I had
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: to investigate. It's my job. Your job? Joseph laughed bitterly.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: Your job will get you killed or worse if you're
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: not careful. Those things up there, they're not bound by
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: your laws or your authority. They don't care that you're
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: a ranger. They're just happy to have a new dancer.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: A new dancer. You think all those figures are the
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: old ones? Joseph asked. Some of them are, but some
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: are people like you. Curious fools who climbed this mountain
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: at the wrong time and got caught in the dance.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: They'll dance around that fire forever now, or until they're
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: too fated to hold any shape at all. We sat
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: in the forest for hours, waiting for the fire to
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: die down. Joseph told me more about the old one.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: about how they'd been here long before humans, how they
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: gathered at places of power like Bald Mountain to perform
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: their rituals. He said the Cherokee had known about them,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: had avoided these places during certain times, had passed down
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: warnings from generation to generation. But your people don't believe
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: in warnings, Joseph said. You need explanations, need everything to
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: make sense according to your science and your logic. So
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: you ignore the signs and walk right into danger As
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: dawn approached, the music finally stopped. The glow faded from
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: the summit. Joseph and I climbed back up to investigate
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: and found nothing. No fire ring, no ashes, no sign
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: that hundreds of figures had been dancing there just hours before.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: Just bare ground and grass, same as always. They're between,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: Joseph explained. Between this world and theirs. The fire is real,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: but it's not in a place you can reach with
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: water or dirt. And the dancers are real, but They're
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: not solid enough to leave footprints. They exist in the
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: spaces between things, and on certain nights, those spaces overlap
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: with our world. I filed a report about the incident,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: but I left out most of the details. I said
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: I'd seen what looked like a large bonfire, but when
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: I investigated, there was nothing there. Probably just lightning or
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: atmospheric phenomenon. The Park Service seemed happy with that explanation.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: But I've been back to Bald Mountain many times since
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: that night, and always during the day, always alone. I've
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: found those fire rings, still appearing after certain nights. I've
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: felt the thin places Joseph talked about, spots on the
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: summit where the air feels different, where reality seems just
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: a bit more flexible. And I've seen other rangers who've
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: encountered the bonfire. They don't talk about it openly, but
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: I can see it in their eyes, that haunted look,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: that knowledge of something that shouldn't exist, but does. Last year,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: a hiker went missing on Bald Mountain. They found his
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: campsite abandoned, his gear still there, no sign of struggle.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: The search went on for two weeks before being called off.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: No body was ever found. On. But on the next
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: autumn equinox, I hiked up to Bald Mountain's summit and
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: watched from the tree line as the fire appeared, and
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: the dancers began their eternal dance. And I swear I
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: saw a new figure among them, one that moved with
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: the uncertain steps of someone still learning the rhythm Someone
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: wearing a park service jacket. I don't go to Bald
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: Mountain after dark anymore, and I don't care what I
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: see from the ranger station windows, don't care what reports
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: come in. When the sun sets, that mountain belongs to
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: something else, something old and hungry and always looking for
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: new dancers to join the circle. If you ever find
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: yourself in Cherokee National Forest, if you ever decide to
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: climb Bald Mountain, do it during the day. Leave before sunset.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: And if you see a fire on the summit at night,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: No matter how curious you are, no matter how much
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: it seems to call to you, turn around and walk away.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: Because some dances, once you join them, never end. Story nine.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee is named for the
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: mountain that dominates the area, which gets covered in ice
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: in winter, making the peak look like a frozen head.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful, rugged country, popular with serious hikers. It's also
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: where they hold the Barkley Marathons, one of the world's
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: toughest ultramarathons. But there's a place in Frozen Head that
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: has nothing to do with races or recreation, a place
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: that rangers are told about during orientation, always off the record,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: always with the same warning, stay away from the old well.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: I first heard about it from my supervisor, a grizzled
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: veteran named Tom Redding, who'd worked Frozen Head for 30 years.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: We were doing a trail inspection together, and he pointed
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: out a faint path leading off into the woods. Don't
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: follow that path, Tom said, and if hikers ask about it,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: tell them it's closed due to hazards. What kind of hazards?
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Tom was quiet for a long moment. The kind that
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: are hard to explain. Just trust me on this one.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: That path leads to an old homestead site. There's a
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: well there, and you don't want anything to do with
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: that well. Of course, Tom's warning just made me more curious.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: So a few weeks later, when I had some free time,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: I decided to follow that faint path and see what
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: was so dangerous about an old well. The path led
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: through dense forest for about a mile before opening into
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: a small clearing. The homestead was long gone, just a
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: few rotting timbers and a collapsed chimney remained. But the
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: well was intact, a circular stone structure about three feet high,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: with a wooden cover that looked surprisingly well-preserved for something
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: that must have been a hundred years old. I approached
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: the well cautiously, not sure what I was expecting to find.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: When I reached it, I lifted the wooden cover and
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: looked down. The well was deep, dropping away into darkness
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: beyond the reach of daylight. I pulled out my flashlight
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: and shined it down into the depths. The beam didn't
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: reach the bottom, just faded away into blackness. But I
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: could see the stone walls of the well shaft, slick
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: with moisture and covered in moss. And I could see writings.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: Someone had carved words into the stones, dozens of lines
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: of text spiraling down into the darkness. The writing was crude,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: done with a knife or sharp rock, and it was
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: hard to read from this angle, but I could make
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: out a few words. Stay away, don't listen, they lie.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: I leaned further over the well's edge, trying to read
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: more of the writing when I heard it. A voice
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: coming from deep in the well, a woman's voice, faint
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: and distant. Help me, please, someone help me, I'm trapped
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: down here. My blood ran cold. I pulled back from
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: the well's edge, my mind racing. Someone was down there.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: Someone was trapped in this well, calling for help. I
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: needed to call for rescue, needed to get a team
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: out here immediately. I grabbed my radio, was about to
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: call it in, when I heard the voice again. Please hurry,
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: I'm so cold. I've been down here for so long.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: Something about the voice made me pause. It was too clear,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: too steady. If someone had really been trapped in that
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: well for any length of time... They'd be panicked, desperate,
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: probably hypothermic. This voice was calm, almost pleasant. And it
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: was coming from impossibly deep in the well. The shaft
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: had to be at least 50 feet deep, probably deeper.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: No one could have fallen that far and survived, let
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: alone be coherent enough to call for help. I leaned
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: over the well again, shined my flashlight down. Hello? Can
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: you see my light? Yes, the voice said. I can
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: see it. Please, throw down a rope. Pull me up.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: How deep are you? I asked. There was a pause, then.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: Not deep, just a little ways down. I can almost
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: reach the top. If you lean down, you can grab
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: my hand. I shined the flashlight directly down the shaft,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: following it as far as the beam would reach. There
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: was nothing there, no person, no hand reaching up. Just
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: empty well shaft descending into darkness. I don't see you,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: I said. I'm right here. The voice said, and now
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: it sounded closer, much closer. Just lean down a little further.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: Reach your hand down. You'll feel me. Every instinct I
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: had was screaming at me to back away from the well,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: to replace the cover and leave this place. But there
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: was something compelling about the voice, something that made me
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: want to lean down, want to reach into that darkness.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: I found myself stretching out over the well's edge, one
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: hand gripping the stones, the other reaching down into the shaft.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: My fingers were inches from the darkness when I saw
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: something that made me jerk back. Handprints all over the
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: inside of the well, just below the edge. Dozens of them,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: maybe hundreds, pressed into the moss and slime that covered
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: the stones. And they were all reaching upward, fingers extended
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: like dozens of hands, trying desperately to climb out. I
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: scrambled backward, nearly fell, caught myself on the edge of
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: the well structure, The voice came again, but it wasn't
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: pleasant anymore. It was angry. Why won't you help me?
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: Why won't anyone ever help me? Then I heard other
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: voices joining the first. Men, women, children, all calling up
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: from the depths of the well. All asking for help,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: all begging to be pulled up, all promising they were
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: just a little ways down, just out of reach. I ran.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't stop running until I was back on the
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: main trail, back in sunshine and safety. My hands were
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: shaking so badly I could barely keep my radio. I
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: called Tom, told him I needed to see him immediately.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: An hour later, we were sitting in his office, and
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: I was telling him everything I'd seen and heard. Tom
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: listened without interrupting, his expression growing grimmer with each detail.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: When I finished, he opened his desk drawer and pulled
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: out a file. It was old, the paper yellowed with age,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: and it was marked, Frozen Head, Historical Deaths. The well's
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: been there since the 1850s, Tom said, part of a
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: homestead belonging to a family named Garrett. They lived there
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: for about five years before something happened. The exact details
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: are murky, but the end result was clear. The entire
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: family disappeared. He opened the file, showed me newspaper clippings
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: from 1857. The articles described how neighbors had gone to
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: check on the Garrett family and found the homestead abandoned.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: No sign of struggle, no indication of where they'd gone.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: The only unusual thing was the well. Its cover had
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: been removed and was lying on the ground nearby. A
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: search party checked the well, Tom continued. They lowered a
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: man down on a rope to see if anyone had
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: fallen in. He made it about 30 feet down before
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: he started screaming to be pulled up. When they got
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: him to the surface, he wouldn't talk about what he'd seen,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: just kept saying, they're all down there, all of them,
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: still reaching. The Garrett family was in the well? I asked.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: That's what the searchers seemed to think. But when they
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: went back with proper equipment to recover the bodies, they
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: found nothing. Empty well. No bodies. No sign anyone had
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: ever been down there. Just water at the bottom. Clear
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: and cold. Tom closed the file. Since then, there have
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: been dozens of incidents at that well. People hearing voices,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: calling for help. people seeing hands reaching up from the darkness.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: Three people have actually climbed into the well, trying to
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: rescue whoever was calling. All three disappeared. Their bodies were
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: never found. What's down there? I asked. Tom shook his head.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Something old, something that's been there a
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: lot longer than the well itself. The well just gave
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: it a voice, gave it a way to call to people.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: The Garretts must have figured that out eventually, tried to
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: seal it shut. but whatever's down there, it got them first.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: Can't we just fill it in? Seal it permanently? We tried,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: Tom said. Back in the 80s, a ranger had the
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: same idea you did. Got a crew together, filled the
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: well with rocks and dirt, poured concrete over it. Three
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: days later, the cover was off again and the well
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: was empty. Whatever's down there doesn't want to be sealed in.
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: I've been back to that clearing a few times over
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: the years, always to check on the well and always
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: to make sure the wooden cover is in place and
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: the warning signs I posted are still visible. Each time
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: I can hear the voices if I get too close,
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: always calling, always asking for help, always promising they're just
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: out of reach. And each time I notice new handprints
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: on the inside of the well, new marks where someone
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: leaned over too far and nearly fell in. Or did
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: fall in, and we just haven't found their car abandoned
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: at the trailhead yet. The Park Service won't acknowledge the
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: well officially, can't put up signs saying, Beware, a mysterious
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: entity in Old Well lures people to their deaths. So
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: we just mark the trail as closed, tell hikers it's hazardous,
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: and hope people listen. Most do. But every few years,
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: someone ignores the warnings. And sometimes they don't come back.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: If you ever find yourself at Frozen Head State Park,
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: if you ever decide to explore off the marked trails
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: and you come across an old homestead site with a
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: stone well, do not look down into it. Do not
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: listen to any voices you might hear. Do not reach
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: down into the darkness. Because whatever's down there has been
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: waiting for a very long time, and is very, very hungry.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: Story 10. I want to end with a story that's
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: personal to me, something that happened during my first year
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: as a ranger in Tennessee. It's about Harpeth River State Park,
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: specifically about an old iron bridge that crosses a particularly
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: scenic stretch of the river. The bridge dates back to
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: the 1890s, a beautiful piece of engineering that's popular with
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: photographers and history buffs. During the day, it's one of
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: the most picturesque spots in the park. At night, it's
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: something else entirely. I learned about the bridge from a
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: local woman named Ruth Ann Miller, who had lived near
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: the park her entire 83 years. She cornered me at
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: a community meeting about park management and pulled me aside
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: with a warning. You're new here, so you don't know
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: about the bridge, she said. But you need to learn quick.
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: Don't cross that bridge after dark. And don't let anyone
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: else cross it either. When I asked why, Ruthann told
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: me a story that went back to 1952. There was
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: a young couple, high school sweethearts, who'd been dating for
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: two years. The boy's name was Daniel Tucker. The girl's
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: was Mary Lee Patterson. Everyone in the community expected them
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: to get married after graduation, settle down, raise a family.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: But then Daniel got drafted to fight in Korea. He
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: went off to war, promising Mary Lee he'd come back
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: to her. promising they'd get married as soon as he returned.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: Mary Lee promised to wait, promised she'd be there when
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: he came home. Daniel died in Korea in November of 1952,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: killed in action during a patrol. The notification came to
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: his family just before Thanksgiving. They were devastated, but they
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: didn't tell Mary Lee right away. They wanted to wait
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: until after the holidays, didn't want to ruin her Thanksgiving
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: and Christmas. But Mary Lee found out anyway. A letter
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: Daniel had written to her weeks before he died arrived
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: in late December. In it, he mentioned some of the
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: boys in his unit who'd been killed, boys from nearby
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: counties that Mary Lee knew. She started asking questions, started
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: checking casualty lists. When she found Daniel's name, something broke
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: inside her. On New Year's Eve 1952, Mary Lee told
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: her parents she was going to a party with friends. Instead,
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: she drove to the Iron Bridge over Harpeth River She
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: parked her car at one end, walked to the middle
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: of the bridge, and jumped. The river was running high
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: from recent rains, and the current was strong. They found
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: her body three days later, caught in branches a mile downstream.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: At her funeral, Mary Leigh's mother read a note they'd
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: found in her daughter's car. It said simply, That would
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: have been the tragic end of the story, except for
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: what started happening at the bridge. People began reporting seeing
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: a young woman in a white dress standing in the
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: middle of the bridge at night. She'd appear suddenly, always
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: around midnight, always in the same spot where Mary Lee
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: had jumped. And if anyone tried to approach her, she'd vanish.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: Ruth Ann herself had seen the woman once, back in
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: the 1960s. She'd been driving home late, crossed the bridge,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: and saw her standing there in the headlights. Ruth Ann
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: stopped the car, got out to see if the woman
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: needed help, But when she walked onto the bridge, the
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: woman disappeared. That's not the scary part, though, Ruthann told me.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: The scary part is what happens if you're on the
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: bridge when she appears. According to Ruthann, if you're walking
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: or driving across the bridge and Mary Lee's ghost appears,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: you have to keep moving. You can't stop, can't try
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: to talk to her, can't acknowledge her presence at all.
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: Because if you do, if you stop on that bridge,
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: she'll try to convince you to jump with her. Hint? Hint?
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: She's lonely, Ruthanne explained, still waiting for Daniel, still convinced
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: he's going to come back. And in her confused state,
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: she thinks anyone on the bridge at midnight might be him.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: When she realizes they're not, she gets angry, desperate. And
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: desperate ghosts are dangerous ghosts. I thanked Ruthanne for the warning,
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: filed it away with all the other local legends I'd
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: heard since starting my job. I didn't really believe in ghosts,
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: figured there was some rational explanation for the sightings. Probably
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: just moonlight on mist, or people's imaginations running wild. Then
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: I saw her myself. It was late October, about three
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: months after my conversation with Ruthann. I'd been working late,
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: doing paperwork at the ranger station. I left around 11.30,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: tired and ready to go home. The quickest route home
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: was across the iron bridge. I was halfway across when
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: my headlights caught her. A young woman in a white dress,
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: standing in the exact center of the bridge. She was
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: facing away from me, looking down at the water below.
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: Her hair was long and dark, and even from a
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: distance I could see she was soaking wet, water dripping
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: from her dress and hair. I slammed on the brakes
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: without thinking, my ranger training kicking in. Someone was in distress,
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: someone needed help. I started to get out of my
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: truck when I remembered Ruthann's warning. Don't stop on the bridge.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: I looked at the woman again, really looked at her.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: She was too still, not shivering, despite being soaked in
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: late October weather. And there was something wrong with the
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: way she stood, like her feet weren't quite touching the
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: bridge deck. As I watched, she slowly turned to face
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: my truck. I couldn't see her features clearly in the headlights,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: but I could see her eyes. They were dark and empty,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: like looking into deep water. She raised one hand, beckoning
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: me forward. Every instinct I had was screaming at me
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: to shift into reverse and get off that bridge. But
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: I was frozen, my hand on the door handle, unable
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: to move. The woman started walking toward my truck, her
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: movements smooth and fluid, her feet definitely not touching the
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: ground now. She reached my driver's side window and looked
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: in at me. Up close I could see that she
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: was young, probably 18 or 19. She was beautiful in
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: a heartbreaking way, with delicate features and sad eyes that
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: seemed to hold centuries of loneliness. She tapped on my window.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: I'm waiting for someone, she said. Her voice was muffled
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: by the glass, but clear enough to understand. Have you
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: seen him? Daniel Tucker? He promised he'd come back. I
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: should have driven away. Should have hit the gas and
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: gotten off that bridge as fast as possible. But looking
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: into those sad eyes, all I wanted to do was
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: help her. I started to roll down the window. That's
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: when I heard shouting. I looked in my rearview mirror
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: and saw another vehicle approaching the bridge, headlights flashing. The
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: woman at my window turned to look and her expression changed.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: The sadness was replaced by anger, by frustration. You're not him.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: She hissed. You're never him. Why is it never him?
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: Then she was gone, just vanished like she'd never been there.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: My window was down now, and I could feel the
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: cold night air rushing in. And I realized with a
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: chill that I'd been about to get out of my truck,
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: been about to walk to the edge of the bridge
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: with her. The approaching vehicle was a parked police car.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: The officer inside was Bob Hartman, a grizzled veteran who'd
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: worked the park for 20 years. He pulled up next
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: to my truck, rolled down his window. You all right?
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: He asked. I nodded, not trusting my voice. You saw her,
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: didn't you? Bob didn't wait for an answer. I was
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: making rounds. Saw your truck stopped on the bridge. Figured
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: she'd gotten to you. That's why I came in hot,
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: lights and noise. She doesn't like disruption. Usually makes her disappear.
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: She was going to make me jump, I said, finally
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: finding my voice. I was going to get out of
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: the truck and walk to the edge with her. Bob
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: nodded grimly. You're the fourth person I've pulled off this
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: bridge this year, and you're lucky. Some years, I don't
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: get here in time. He told me to follow him
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: off the bridge, and we parked at the far end
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: to talk. Bob explained that the park service was well
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: aware of Mary Lee's ghost, that rangers were instructed to
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: patrol the bridge area around midnight to discourage people from
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: crossing at that time. But we can't close it, Bob said,
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: it's a public roadway, and there's no legal grounds for
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: shutting it down. So we do what we can. We patrol,
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: we warn the locals, and we hope no one gets
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: caught on that bridge when she appears. Has anyone died,
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: I asked. Bob was quiet for a long moment. Three
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: people that we know of. All drownings in the river
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: near the bridge, all around midnight. All young men roughly
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: the same age Daniel Tucker was when he died. We
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: can't prove it was her, but he didn't need to finish.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: We both knew. I've crossed that bridge hundreds of times
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: since that night, but never after dark. I take the
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: long way home now. Add an extra 20 minutes to
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: my drive. It's worth it to avoid that bridge at midnight.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: But I still hear the stories. People still see the
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: woman in white, still get caught in her desperate search
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: for her lost love. Some of them get away, say
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: by a patrolling ranger or by their own common sense
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: kicking in at the last moment. Some of them don't.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: Last year, a college student from Nashville drowned in Harpeth River.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: His car was found parked near the bridge, his phone
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: in the front seat showing he'd been on the bridge
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: at 1147 p.m. Search teams found his body downstream two
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: days later. His family said he'd been fascinated by local
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: ghost stories, had been researching them for a class project.
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: They found notes in his apartment about Mary Lee Patterson,
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: about the ghost on the bridge, about how he wanted
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: to see her for himself. He saw her, all right,
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: and he paid the price. So if you ever find
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: yourself in Tennessee, if you ever drive through Harpeth River
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: State Park and see that beautiful old iron bridge, cross
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: it during the day. Admire the engineering, take your pictures,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: enjoy the scenery. But when the sun goes down, find
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: another route. Because Mary Lee Patterson is still waiting on
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: that bridge, still searching for her lost love. And in
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: her loneliness and confusion, she might just convince you to
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: join her in the dark water below. After all, she
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: made a promise to wait. And some promises, it seems,
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: last forever. Conclusion. Well, folks, there you have it. Ten
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: tales from the deep mountains of Appalachia, ten warnings about
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: places and things that most people dismiss as superstition or folklore.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: But those of us who work in these mountains, who
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: spend our days and nights in the forests and hollers,
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: we know better. We know that there are thin places
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: in these ancient mountains, places where the barriers between our
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: world and others wear thin. We know there are things
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: older than our understanding lurking in the shadows of the
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: ridges and valleys. And we know that the warnings passed
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: down through generations of mountain folk aren't just stories, they're
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: survival guides. I've shared these stories with you not to
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: scare you away from the mountains. They're beautiful places worthy
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: of respect and exploration. I've shared them to keep you safe,
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: to help you recognize when you've wandered into a thin place,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: when you've heard a call that shouldn't be answered, when
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: you've seen something that shouldn't be seen. The mountains are old,
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: older than we can truly comprehend. And like all old places,
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: they have their secrets, their dark corners, their hungry things
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: that wait in the shadows. But they also have their beauty,
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: their majesty, their power to inspire and heal. Just remember,
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: stay on the marked trails. Don't follow unexplained sounds. Don't
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: answer knocks at midnight. Don't walk between facing trees. Don't
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: climb stairs that lead nowhere. Don't trust voices from dark wells.
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: And for God's sake, if you see something that makes
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: your skin crawl, that makes every instinct scream at you
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: to run, then run. Don't investigate. Don't try to rationalize it.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: Just get to safety and count yourself lucky. These mountains
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: have been here for millions of years, and they'll be
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: here long after we're gone. Respect them. Fear them when
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: fear is warranted, and maybe, just maybe, you'll leave with
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: nothing but good memories and beautiful photographs. And one final
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: ask from me to you. If these stories resonated with you,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: if they gave you chills or made you think twice
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: about that late-night hike, do me a favor. Hit that
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: subscribe button. We're so close to 1,000 subscribers, and reaching
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: that milestone means these warnings, these stories, these lessons can
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: reach even more people who need to hear them. Drop
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: a like if you enjoyed this collection, and please, please,
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: Share your own experiences in the comments. Your story might
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: save someone's life someday. This has been Park Ranger Files.
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: Stay safe out there, folks. The mountains are beautiful, but
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: they're not always kind. And sometimes, the old warnings are
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: the only things standing between us and the darkness that
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: waits in the deep places. Until next time, this is
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: your host signing off. And remember, if you hear whistling
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: in the woods, if someone knocks at midnight, If you
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: find stairs that lead nowhere, turn around and walk away.
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: Some invitations are better left unanswered.