6 True Scary National Park Horror Stories

[Music] back in 1999 i used to work as a park ranger over at yosemite national park it wasn't a job i ever really saw myself doing the fact was that until i busted my knee and had to stop playing football the nfl was seriously all i ever dreamed of i was obsessed it was football in the morning football in the afternoon and at night i used to dream about it but like many young men's dreams they turned out to be nothing but the stuff of pipes i needed a job i needed money and i needed it fast so when an uncle told me of an opening up at yosemite for park ranger i jumped at the chance he told me it was relatively easy work mostly outdoors and i could rely on it as long as there was state funding as long as there were still trees sprouting under the ground i'd always have work and so there i was 23 years old decked out my park rangers uniform hiking through valleys and over hills popping ibuprofen whenever my knees started to play up i'd done the job for about two years in march of 99 and honestly i'd grown to love it being out there meant being surrounded by nature on a daily basis i mean i'd see things weekly that wildlife photographers would give their left not to document but i never in my wildest dreams thought i'd encounter the kind of thing i did on march 18th 1999 it's something that i've thought about almost every single day since something i can't ever get out of my mind and something i don't think i ever will and it started off a chain of events that i gradually became obsessed with and that has changed my life forever i started with a call about a potential forest fire my boss called and told me a hiker had seen some smoke rising up through the trees up near a place called long cabin in sonora county i probably don't need to tell you that forest fires can be absolutely devastating to an area like yosemite and are taken very very seriously by us park rangers now you all should know that long cabin isn't technically in our jurisdiction it's actually closer to stanislaus national forest but since there was no one up in that area to go check it out my boss asked me to go check it out and call in the fire department if it was a serious threat we get a good number of calls like this and more often than not it's just a family whose barbecue had gotten out of hand or kids whose campfire is a little too big so i agree to drive up there to check it out as it was only a couple of hours drive there and back so after about an hour's drive i arrive at long barn and i can see some black smoke rising up to the trees in the distance this is unusual as black smoke means it's not just burning wood it's more like plastic or artificial fabrics and it definitely just wasn't wood burning this is kind of a relief at first it meant it wasn't an outright forest fire but it did mean someone was burning something was definitely not good for the environment i park up as close as i can to the source of smoke then hike off through the trees basically just following my nose as the smell of the burning plastics get stronger and stronger then i see it a burned out car abandoned among the trees still kind of smoldering but i guess the fire had been set at night and had mostly burned through before i got the call about it my first thought was joy riders something as simple as car thieves that had bust into someone's vehicle tore it up and down the quiet country roads up here then just abandon it and set it alight to cover up any evidence again this is a pretty unusual crime out here in the sticks and you can forgive me for associating that sort of want and mischief with more urban areas but then i started to smell something else among the smoke something more like burning meat i'm a huge barbecue guy myself and i know what it smells like when you leave something on the grill for too long like that acreage charred stench that i know is going to lead to disappointment because i've messed up on some expensive t-bone or whatever only you're definitely not supposed to smell that coming off of a burning car are you and as you can imagine i started to feel very very uneasy about the whole thing i circled the burned out vehicle looking for signs of animal carcasses or god forbid human bodies that were in or around the vehicle but saw nothing i even checked under the car but again didn't see a thing i pull out my phone to get in touch with the sonora county sheriff who said he'd send over a couple of guys to check the scene out within the next hour or so but who also asked me to stick around so i could guide them in and show them exactly where the vehicle was so given the fact that i had an hour or two to kill waiting for them i went into the trunk of my truck pulled out the little fire extinguishers stored back there and proceeded to put out the few small fires still burning in and around the vehicle i do so pretty effectively but when i'm done i notice that there's still something smoldering in the trunk smoke keeps seeping out of the cracks and the more it does the more i can smell that burning meat smell and that's when it really hit me something or someone was in that trunk and that's where the smell was coming from waiting for those sheriff deputies seemed like it took an eternity mainly because when they got there i knew they'd be able to open that trunk and i really didn't want to see what was inside so they get there i tell them what i suspect has happened and what i suspect is in that trunk one of the guys uses a crowbar to wrench the trunk open which was pretty easy considering the fire had warped the metal locks keeping it closed but what we saw inside is something i saw over and over again in my nightmares for many nights to come it was a mess of black and burned flesh and contorted limbs the sight of it alone caused me to gag and wretch puking up my breakfast onto the forest floor even those deputies hardened by years of witnessing violence and cruelty on a daily basis had a hard time dealing with what they were seeing one just leaned against a tree mouth covered with a cloth rag he kept on him probably for this exact reason while the other called into the corner to deal with the dead bodies they told me i could make a move back to yosemite whenever i was ready and boy was i ready i got out of there as soon as i was able to from what i understand the sheriff's deputies soon discovered that the two scorched bodies in the trunk of that burned-out vehicle were those of carol sunden salvina peloso the two women along with carol soon's young daughter julie had been missing since the previous february when they were last sighted alive and well at the cedar lodge near yosemite national park it was actually one of my colleagues over at the park that had been the last person to see them alive and the whole thing had drawn national attention landing them on the cover of people magazine when some journalists took an interest in the story and i mean it was a really interesting story albeit a very morbid one carol soon's wallet had been found on a street in downtown modesto california three days after they had disappeared and julie soon's body was found dumped in a heavy underbrush by an overlook at the don pedro reservoir several miles from the logging trail where the car had been found her throat had been slit from ear to ear local sheriffs and the fbi initially focused their investigation on a group of meth heads up in northern california who had previous convictions for stalking and assaulting lone groups of women but all those leads were abandoned when a break in that case cast light on another suspect because the story doesn't end here in fact it got even worse for all of us that worked up in yosemite one of the staff members of the yosemite institute was a young woman named joy ruth armstrong joey was friendly bubbly and just generally a great person to be around i'd only ever met her once or twice in my time as a park ranger but i could see why she was a popular member of the team she loved nature and she loved her job even more passionately than most others on her staff but in july of that same year 1999 joy had made plans to spend a weekend visiting friends down in sausalito team members who lived in the log cabin she shared with them in yosemite village said their goodbyes wished her safe travels and watched as she wandered off among the trees to catch a ride down to sausalito but a few days later when she was due to return to the village she didn't show up she'd actually left some contact details with the team just in case they needed to talk to her but when they followed up with a call to check up on her her friends told them she hadn't actually arrived to spend the weekend with them and that they were starting to get worried a group of rangers went over to the cabin she stayed at only to find her white pickup truck was still parked in the driveway packed with luggage for a trip having decided to begin their search in the immediate area the rangers split up into smaller groups they trudged through dense brush watching for rattlesnakes and looking for signs of their missing co-worker then after only a short while of searching they apparently spotted footprints broken saplings trampled ferns and grass all signs that someone had recently ran or perhaps even been chased that's when one of the rangers noticed something metallic glinting in the sunlight just a few feet away it was a key ring lying in a shallow ditch it was the sighting of this key ring that led them to spot something else a dead body it had on the white t-shirt and blue jeans that joy had been wearing the day that she left for sausalito except now they were filthy dirt encrusted and blood stained but despite bearing such similarities to our missing co-workers it was impossible to immediately identify the body that was because whoever had killed this person had also taken the time to cut off the head decapitating it completely for those of us that worked in and around yosemite joy's murder meant that the nightmare of those burned bodies the nightmare we'd all tried to forget about had come back with a vengeance the killings were made even more disturbing to us by just how rare it was for anything like that to happen in this area of california according to one of the older rangers the last known murder to occur inside of yosemite's boundaries happened 12 years earlier in 1987 when a guy pushed his wife off of a cliff in order to collect on a life insurance policy as you can tell i've thought about this whole thing and researched the various murders a whole lot and i've discovered that the chances of being murdered in one of our national parks is about 1 in 20 million basically you have more chance of drowning in your own bathtub so please don't think that this is an actual thing people don't just hang around in the woods waiting to ambush unwary hikers in the months that had followed the discovery of those burned bodies in the trunk of the car the cops had almost no luck in finding a suspect honestly we didn't expect joyce murder to be anything different but unbelievably in the immediate aftermath of her killing local authorities got lucky thanks to a witness statement given by one of our co-workers they had noticed a blue and white 1979 international scout parked near joy's cabin on the night of her death and the cops put out an apb on it right away then a few days later on two park rangers spotted the vehicle that looked remarkably similar parked on the shoulder of the highway not too far away what happened next was truly bizarre i spoke to the guys who found the truck who said they searched around for it for a while until they came across a guy sunbathing completely naked at a nearby riverbank they asked who he was and he told them he was a handyman at the cedar lodge some vacation homes built close by and that his name was carrie stayner the guy seemed kind of embarrassed that he'd been caught in the nude like that and quickly left the area but my co-workers immediately called the encounter into local cops who showed up and compared the tire tracks left by the trucks to those left at the scene of joyce murder they came back as exactly identical a few days later the same weird guy was taken into custody while he was visiting some nudist resort over in sacramento when they took him into custody and interviewed him regarding joy's murder he confessed just straight of confessed then also confessed to the fact that he'd murdered carol sund salvina peloso as well as carol's daughter julie the fbi were called in for additional questioning and it was then that kerry stainer told them all about how he had fantasized about hurting women ever since he was a child and how he had been completely unable to silence the voices in his head that told him to kill for five whole months this absolute psychopath had been living right under our noses hiding in plain sight he'd been chilling up at cedar lodge doing his job and eyeing up potential victims other the pretense of being a friendly albeit a little kooky local handyman from what i can gather no one had suspected him of having anything to do with the disappearances of soon to peloso because he also just seemed way too nice too much of a regular dude that and the steiner family name had been in the news before for a reason that led investigators to believe that there was no way that carrie had it in him to do something so terrible you see many years before when carrie was just 11 years old his younger brother seven-year-old stephen disappeared without a trace one afternoon while walking home from school on his own this devastated the family causing a huge rift between carrie and his dad eventually stephen escaped captivity after seven long years as the slave of kenneth parnell a convicted child abuser and former employee of the yosemite lodge inside the national park he became a celebrity of sorts there was national newspaper and television coverage as well as a book in a tv mini series chronicling his years of abuse whether or not that whole thing shaped carrie into the violent psychopath he eventually became is something i don't think anyone will be able to properly determine but shortly after kerry began to claim he'd seen bigfoot yes the ape-man thing that's said to inhabit the woods of the pacific northwest he was well on his way to being completely detached from reality at his trial in 2002 carrie steiner pled not guilty by reason of insanity his lawyers asserted that the entire stainer family had a history of abuse and mental illness manifesting itself not only in the murders but also his obsessive compulsive disorder his obsession with cryptids specifically bigfoot and his request to be provided with obscene images in return for his eventual confession he was nevertheless found sane and convicted of four counts of first-degree murder by a jury on august 27 2002 the court then had to decide if he would be executed for his crimes which it unanimously decided that he should and rightfully so stayna remains on death row as of september 2019 where problems with california death penalty laws are frustrating the process and it's becoming increasingly unlikely that kerry will suffer the same fate as his many victims i know this was an overly long post but as i'm sure you can all understand this is something i've been quite frankly obsessed about since the discovery of those burned bodies affecting me most personally i'm actually considering writing a book about the whole thing and my experiences living and working in the places that most of these crimes occurred if i can't ever get these things out of my head why not try to turn the whole thing into a kind of therapy turn it into something that others can enjoy and maybe something i can make a few bucks out of even if that does make me feel like a freaking vampire profiting off of other people's misery maybe let me know in the comments section but regardless i hope you enjoyed reading this and maybe just maybe it'll help keep you safe in a world where people are out there with the worst compulsions imaginable driving them to kill [Music] i've worked for the united states forest service here in texas for just shy of ten years now i love my job and it's rare for anything particularly creepy or scary to happen but having worked this job for so long i have my fair share of stories i can share that might just make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end for example we sometimes get jaguars hunting in the forest here a particularly scary big cat and that's because what they do with their prey once they're caught and subdued so just picture the scene you're walking through the trees on some bright sunny day when all of a sudden you start to smell something rotten you look around but there's nothing to be seen just the picturesque view of the pines and the sound of bird song floating through the green then something hits the top of your head something wet you place a hand on the top of your head feeling something cold and slimy dribbling through your hair you bring your hand down to see what it is it's not bird poop it's something way worse it's blood you look up and hanging up in a tree just feet above your head as a mutilated half-eaten corpse of an animal guts torn out skin shredded face half eaten with hooves or paws missing with broken pieces of bone protruding from cracked limbs it seems an utterly bizarre thing to do but the jaguar has a good reason for doing all this heavy lifting if a jaguar doesn't bother to hoist its kill into the tree it risks losing its meal to other more ground-based predators or scavengers creepy yeah but that kind of natural world stuff is nothing compared to some of the other stuff that i've encountered during my time in the forest service so this other time i'm on a routine walk through some of the trails to make sure all the directional signs and information markers for taurus are all in order there's a large rock protrusion about a hundred meters off this trail like this big sandstone boulder that juts out of the earth that has kind of like a shallow cave carved out on one side it's been worn away from thousands of years of wind erosion as i get close i see a guy in what i first thought was camouflage hunting gear hanging around the entrance i call out to him just some friendly greeting nothing threatening and he turns to look at me only he doesn't say a word he just runs off through the trees i start getting worried about what he was doing in the cave terrified that he's left a body or something there and honestly i thank god that he hadn't but it seems like he did leave something behind i mean i'm not even 100 sure it was him that did this and i've often considered the possibility that it was him that happened across this little find first and seeing me got the idea in his head that it was me that left those things there he got the idea into his head saw me and just freaked but when i walked into that little cave and shown my flashlight around i saw something that would completely explain why he was so quick to run away whatever his motivations for doing so were teeth there was a little circular patch of dirt one that looked like it had been raked over to clear some space and in the middle of it all were a bunch of human teeth i don't know why they were there i don't know who left them or why but i did what i could i gathered them up in a little plastic bag that i had on me that had previously contained my lunch and took them down to the nearest police station giving a little description of the guy that i'd seen run away from the cave i have the usual wild animal encounters weird noises during the night but i've never forgotten those teeth i have no explanation to offer up at all but it certainly does make for a good little campfire story [Music] montana has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world and it's one of the last beautiful places in the united states that still feels truly wild unlike my native california where almost every area of natural beauty is plastered with man-made trails ranger stations and tourist traps but i don't mean to offend anyone i'm sure your favorite hiking spots in wisconsin or washington or wherever are amazing and maybe it is just a little internal bias talking having watched too many old cowboy movies with my dad but to me montana truly feels like one of the last untouched wilderness areas in north america and luckily a buddy of mine feels exactly the same way about it so every year around september he and i would take a trip up to bozeman to spend some time away from the big city life out here in frisco we've been friends forever and pretty much spent all high school and college days together but since we slammed into our 30s and did all the boring grown-up stuff like get married have kids focus on careers we don't have nearly enough time to spend together so i honestly relish our year trips out to montana together where we can catch up on stuff get some serious drinking in but most importantly indulge in a mutual hobby of ours that's verged on an obsession ever since we were teenagers hunting our stomping ground of choice has always been glacier national park right up on the canadian border it's about a five-hour drive from bozeman itself but we make a point of driving out for a few days one to get settled into a campsite another few to actually hunt all before a few days of drinking back in bozeman to celebrate our successes or commiserate our failures last night we repeated the same old ritual driving out to the national park with our hunting gear in tow we found a good place to park the truck hiked a few hours out into the wilderness and found a decent little spot to set up camp every year we seem to be a little more exhausted when the day's end call it just a side effect of getting older i guess so last year in particular we passed out pretty early in our one-man tents with the intentions of rising at dawn to begin our day's hunt six am the next morning the little alarm on my wrist watch starts beeping it's the closest thing we have to that feeling of christmas morning when you're a kid it's just pure excitement jumping out of bed to see what hunting santa has left among the trees for us that day we have a little breakfast drink a little coffee then pack up and head out for those of you that are unfamiliar with hunting or nature in general there are two times in a day when birds sing the loudest dawn and dusk it sounds all pretty to us humans like this wonderful lyrical bird song but it's actually just pure war cries what sounds sweet and cute to us is actually like i'm here and if you come up in my tree i'ma mess you up so back the f off ah brothers for real and it's something that soundtracks every morning hunt every single time we visited glacier but that morning it was almost silent we could hear the odd squawk in the distance but our immediate vicinity was as silent as the grave and that only means one thing that a large predator is in the area something that's on the hunt i remember the look on my buddy's face when he turned to me and stated that exact thing how i double checked that i had my can of bear mace on me just in case anything happened but that area of montana right near the canadian border is known to have wolf packs roaming around and i shuddered at the thought of what would have happened if we were cornered by one two aging city boys would be run down in an instant we wouldn't stand a chance we'd be torn apart and eaten alive right there on the forest floor probably before we could even get a shot off trigger discipline is probably the most important aspect of firearm safety but i struggle to keep my finger off the trigger of my remington one side racked around into the chamber the fear was palpable it felt like something was close real close and in woods as dense as the ones we were in something could be on top of us in just seconds then just another mile or so walking through the near silent forest we saw it in the distance a grizzly and it was huge i'd never seen one in the flesh before that day and i was completely overwhelmed by the size of that thing i mean they are monsters in the very sense of the word just a flesh tank a ball of muscle and sinew perfectly designed to chase down kill and shred whatever they take a liking to we watched it staring back at us this like doll expression on its face before it sniffed the air a little catching our scent we must have looked like frightened little boys but to the grizzly we were nothing this was just another day and we were just another meal another kill business as usual we just slowly walked on keeping our eyes on that murder machine the whole time until it was eventually out of sight we're not dumb we knew we couldn't just hang around and carry on our hunt with that thing in the area especially not since it had our scent so slowly but surely we made our way back to camp with the intention of packing up and moving to a safer area but god laughs at well-laid plants and about halfway back as we were keeping our heads on a swivel trying to keep an eye out for that thing stalking us through the trees i heard something heavy bounding towards us i couldn't see it right away and frankly the idea that something so huge could just creep up on us like that is something that is just pure nightmare fuel to me but stalk us it did and in a moment of pure stomach churning horror it knocked my buddy to the ground as easy as a grown man by knock over a child i mean it just sent him crashing to the dirt and it was on him in seconds how i managed to miss that thing's head with my first shot is something i'll never really understand i'm an experienced hunter and i'm a pretty good marksman but pure panic took over and crippling fear just had me turning to jelly the feeling of expecting to see my best friend in the world torn apart before me is something i'm never ever going to forget i'm not military i've never had any official training nothing like that so i didn't even think to work the bold action and chamber another round i just went for the bear mace and spraying it right in that thing's eyes as it slashed its claws across my buddy's chest and face tearing up clothing and flesh alike with deep gouging strikes his screams though that's what i kept hearing in the quieter moments during the months following that trip these blood-curdling screams as he thought he was going to die and not just die be eaten alive watch his own guts be torn from his body and chewed up right there in front of him but it worked somehow the bear mace just worked it immediately stopped clawing at my buddy started like wrinkling its nose and doing these weird like sneezes or coughs i can't really think of any way to describe it but what was obvious is that it was in considerable discomfort as the ingredients in the mace went to work on its nose and eyes then as suddenly it disappeared it took off again crashing through the trees smacking into the odd one or two as it obviously struggled to see where it was going then it was just a case of checking on my buddy but jesus christ he was an absolute mess the bear's claws had torn off chunks of flesh from his face shoulders and chest and blood was everywhere and i mean everywhere i was frantic too i kept alternating between trying to tend to his wounds and looking around to make sure the bear wasn't charging us again like when i think back to it i can only see certain frames it's not like a movie in my head it's like still pictures side effect of the adrenaline i guess the blood is leaking off of my body as i help him to his feet he was capable of running but the attack had stunned him and he shook violently as i pulled him up and started dragging him back in the direction of our campsite i knew the bear mace or bear spray or whatever you want to call it had worked but for how long i had no idea and so we ran as fast as our legs could carry us through trees and over hillocks until we saw the bright orange fabric of our one-man tents another weird memory i have is of my buddy applying his own gauze bandages like like he'd think the guy would be in major pain at that point but he was just running on pure adrenaline that bear had torn him up real bad but he couldn't feel a thing it was just pure survival instinct kicking in he was a survivor and he wasn't about to go down easy and in a twisted kind of way i was really proud of him by that point my one major concern was that he would lose too much blood on the way back to our truck i mean he'd already left a blood trail from the scene of the attack so the bear would be able to trace our path really really easily so i was stuck in a horrendous catch-22 situation leave him with his rifle and risk getting attacked again or have him come with me to get help and risk bleeding to death or leading the bear onto our trail but the primal angry roar that echoed through the trees kind of made the decision for us the bear was still in the area not even that it was close and it was angry i wrapped like half my buddy's head in gauze taped a load of it to his chest and we got running again almost every step we took i expected that bear to just appear again only this time if it attacked me my buddy wouldn't have a rifle to be able to take this thing out although the fact that that bear mace had worked was actually a huge comfort so there was no doubt that it would work a second time but we got lucky for a second time that day first time when the injuries to my body weren't as bad as they could have been and second when that bear didn't rally for a second attack we made it out of the park and down to a place called innis pretty quickly visited a medical clinic got my buddy all stitched up and patched up then actually headed to a bar to just decompress and unwind from the nightmare we just lived through needless to say my buddy didn't have to buy a single beer that night not as he told the story of getting full on attack by a full-grown grizzly we're not sure if we're gonna go on our trip this summer with lock town and stuff aside i'm not sure either of us are quite ready to get back on that horse but i look forward to the day when we are i'm not going to let a horrific encounter like that ruin the one thing that kept us close for so many years [Music] growing up i was always on the heavy side i suppose it's because i come from a family of food lovers whose portion control was never their strongest suit it was all tv dinners and sedentary hobbies so it's no wonder we were all of a certain size and shape but it always bothered me i'd see the attention skinnier girls got around school and i know it doesn't align with my mostly feminist view of the world but i wanted that to be me too so a few years back i started my own personal weight loss journey not so much so i could fit society's view of what beautiful is but so that i could have confidence in myself and in my own body i wanted to look good for me and if that helped me land a hot guy then cool this is how i ended up taking up hiking as a hobby and why i spend so much time around acadia national park up here in maine the views up there also allowed me to indulge another hobby of mine photography and sure my pictures don't make it any further than my instagram account but still it's something that brings me a lot of joy sometimes i drive up there with friends but they couldn't commit to those long trips all the time so there were times when i'd have to go up to arcadia alone in order to get my few hours exercise in so i'm hiking the trails up there taking pictures of the way the sun glinted off the ocean through the trees messing around with filters the usual photography stuff i thought i managed to get this one amazing shot something that was bound to get a whole bunch of attention on instagram when i hear a voice sounding from behind me lovely day for it huh it was a man's voice friendly sounding but still the shock of hearing it so suddenly made me jump i turned seeing a man in a park rangers uniform the hat the little shorts the whole getup walking up the trail behind me with one of those trekking poles in his hand oh yeah gotta make the most of the nice weather here in maine it's super rare i try to sound as cheerful as possible but i won't lie i didn't really want the attention at least not from an older guy like that who'd also managed to ruin the composition of the photograph i was in the process of taking i know that makes me sound unfriendly or whatever but honestly sometimes us girls just prefer to be left alone but he continued to make conversation in that super annoying way that some people do it's like they can't detect that you just want to have some time to yourself and opt for being gregarious so i remained polite for as long as i could nodding along as he talked about how lonely it could get being a park ranger appear then eventually just straight up asked him politely to leave me to my photography making something up about being a professional photographer who was surveying the area for a magazine i worked for i know i shouldn't have lied but i got the distinct impression he wasn't going to leave me alone otherwise but he took it on the chin i suppose he got the craving for human contact out of his system he told me he was so sorry to interrupt wish me luck with my work then carried on down the trail so i take my photos taking my time over them but decided to turn back and walk the opposite way so i don't run into him again i didn't think he was creepy or anything i just didn't want to have that awkward moment of running into that guy again and being like oh hi again call me neurotic for wanting to avoid that but that's just the way i felt about it so i'm heading back the opposite way taking pictures along the way capturing the way the trails snake through the trees in such beautiful ways sometimes looking like something out of a fairy tale i happen to take a particularly aesthetically pleasing one and i'm admiring it on my phone when i happen to notice some small detail on the center right of the frame it was a figure clearly wearing a pair of shorts peeking out from among the trees i know that's a pretty innocuous little detail i know it was just the ranger i'd seen like an hour previous but it sent a chill through me just how had he managed to loop around and get ahead of me even though he walked off in the opposite direction that i had i felt distinctly unsafe a flash of fear running through me as i began to suspect that this ranger's guy's intentions were far from good i mean who just follows someone like that or rather it wasn't even following me that he was doing this guy was straight up stalking me but i had no choice but to walk by him he had literally put himself between me and my car so i'd just suck it up and walk past him even if it was putting on a brave face to do so i tried to like cut him off if that made sense i was prepping myself to just be like hi there can't stop laid back for a meeting or something to that effect but it was him that spoke first you know it's just not safe for a girl like you to be walking around the park alone i can't remember exactly what he said that's just my estimation of it you're really pretty and bad things can happen to a pretty girl that walks around on her lonesome i was ruined i tried to think of something witty to say some cutting retort that would shame him for being way way too familiar but i couldn't i was just terrified who says that to a total stranger so i just carried on walking at an increased speed ready to call 9-1-1 if he started to follow me but he didn't he just shouted like where are you going don't you want some company take care being rude like that little lady you might just end up being rude to the wrong person i thought stuff like that only happened in horror movies or something that creeps like that couldn't really be walking among us or that if they were i suppose i just hoped that i'd never encountered one so i get to the end of the trail back to the parking lot where i left my car when i see another ranger milling around the area taking like little markers out of this truck or whatever i walk up to him and demand to know who the other ranger on duty was describing the way the guy looked how his uniform was all dirty and stuff how he carried that trekking pole when suddenly i just started to feel sick this other ranger his uniform looked almost nothing like the guy back in the woods it was clean pressed and starched a lighter khaki color with different styles of patches on it some kind of main park service kind of thing just different looking i knew what he was going to say before he even said it there was no other park ranger on duty at the time he was the only guy in the area and no one else should have been wearing a park ranger's uniform he saw the look of horror on my face that nauseous shell-shocked look as i realize just how much danger i'd been in walking around with that guy on loose i told him everything but i didn't stick around to see what came of it i just got in my car and went down back north towards ellsworth and it took me a long long time before i was able to go back to acadia even with friends and i make a point of never ever going to secluded places like that alone it's just not worth the risk of running into someone like that someone willing to dress up in order to trick young women into feeling safe when in reality they may well have very very different intentions [Music] so this is a true story about one of the more real life threatening moments i've experienced about a year ago i drove across the country to california for grad school total the trip was about 2 800 miles taking me across the middle of the country i had two other options to drive the northern route through colorado or the southern way through alabama and south texas although this was probably the most boring way it was the fastest by about six hours and the entire trip took about four and a half days i had recently been through a tough breakup and things back home all around weren't going great for me since undergrad so that played into my decision to move to california i really enjoyed the drive itself it gave me plenty of time to reflect on my life and figure out the stuff i needed to change about myself i would basically drive 10 to 15 hours a day until i got tired and book an airbnb i took my time on the drive if i saw a cool national park or landmark to explore i did it because it was the most free i've ever felt i was driving through the ozark mountains to arkansas i'd never watched the show but figured it would be a cool place to explore i was making good time on the drive so i took a 30 minute detour and followed the gps my phone to the center of the national park i drove through a quaint town past a junkyard filled with old rusted vehicles and down a stretch of road that was covered in tall spruce trees eventually i lost service but that was fine because i figured it was still a relatively frequented spot for outdoor junkies i reached a gravel turnout marked with a wooden sign where people could take small boats to launch i parked locked my car and grab my knife some water and hammock hoping to find a cool spot by the river to get a peaceful rest i found two trees with the perfect distance instead of my hammock drifting off into a light sleep for about 30 minutes when i decided it was time to go i rolled my hammock into its case and put my large knife and water into the drawstring bag i carry them in i should add that i carry the knife whenever i go hiking because i'm a paranoid person that's seen too many movies i grew up hunting and fishing and wrestled in college so normally i feel fairly safe by my own as i walked up from the riverbank i noticed a black suv had parked and a young couple was standing behind it with the back hatch open the guy was setting up a fishing pole and the girl was standing there just watching i noticed a medium-sized black dog with medium-length hair it looked like a lab mixed with maybe a german shepherd my family has always had large dogs and this one looked friendly so the thought didn't cross my mind that maybe it wasn't as i got closer to their car which was parked by mine the dog noticed me and started trotting towards me as it got within five feet i stuck my palm out for it to sniff i don't know if it felt like i was a threat to the couple or what but it instantly started barking and growling running from its owner and back to me as it did this the girl just looked at it saying nothing and the guy just kept messing with the fishing line after a few times of running back and forth the dog charged at me and i started backpedaling and yelling at it this seemed to scare it off a little but it kept charging and lunging at me biting me through shorts on my mid thigh breaking the skin thankfully it didn't hold on or shake but i could immediately see blood running down my leg i had no idea what to do and i felt terrified and also intense anger towards the couple for not calling the dog off the guy was still playing with his fishing pole while the girl looked on with an expressionless face after the dog bit me it continued to do its charging back and forth as it ran back to them i quickly opened my draw string and fumbled with my knife it was a large 10-inch blade and a black sheath i drew it and yelled out to the couple that i would use it if i had to out of all the things i could have yelled to make myself seem tough i just said please get your dog i guess it was all my mind could process at the time finally the guy looked up and called his dog back and held it by the collar allowing me to get in my car i did so as quickly as possible no one saying a word to each other as i drove off the adrenaline wore off and what replaced it was pure anger my brain was telling me that i should go back and confront the couple for being so careless about their dog viciously attacking another person however the logical side told me to keep driving and not look back i know this might not seem like that big of a deal and could have been a lot worse but imagine being a thousand miles away from home in the remote arkansas wilderness with no phone service i assessed the damage once i found a safe place to pull off the road and after i regained service luckily the puncture wounds weren't very deep and i had a medical kid in my trunk from when i was a lifeguard i dressed it with rubbing alcohol and cotton gauze and drove off looking back i should have called the police or animal control because the dog could have had rabies i really didn't even think about it at the time i guess i was just still too shaken up if i ever drive through arkansas again i'll make sure to never ever go hiking again [Music] i won't tell you who i am i can't tell you where this happened and i can't tell you when this happened i got death threats for months after this and i had to quit i had to move i had to change my entire identity to stop people from finding me some of you sickos will no doubt put in the time and research into working out all the details yourself but just let me make it clear that my details were expunged from the employment records and you'll never ever find me and so i can make my confession in peace i used to work as a park ranger at a well-known frequently visited national park at this particular national park there was an old ghost story that the veteran rangers used to tell about one of our number who heard a noise coming from a lake one day the noise had apparently sounded like a puppy yelping and splashing but the ranger who heard it couldn't swim and wasn't about to put himself in danger of drowning just to save a dog the next day the body of a young child washed up on the shore it was never a dog out there it was a child that had fallen in the lake after being out there exploring unsupervised the ranger was devastated his spirit crushed that his selfishness had resulted in the death of an innocent child he was haunted by the thought took to drinking wore himself down until one night while sleeping in his cabin he heard a familiar noise coming from the lake it was the sound of a little boy crying out to be rescued he ran to the lakeside dived into the water and struggled his way into the center of the body of water until he reached the site of the splashing but there he only saw the smiling bloated corpse of that same little boy who dragged him beneath the lake and drowned him just as he had that's the way the story went and to be honest i thought it was the biggest load of bull i'd ever heard in my life i told the krusty old timers that same thing that i'd have to be of diminished capacity to believe a crock of nonsense like that but instead of laughing or whatever like okay maybe this guy isn't as dumb as we first thought they got pretty angry about it they told me not to disrespect the angry spirits of the departed but then it was my turn to laugh i could tell the difference between them getting annoyed over me disrespecting the dead or whatever and them getting annoyed over me just disrespecting their dumb stories the following week i found i'd had my shift pattern switched to nights i confronted them about it told them i was not impressed that they were that immature as to switch my shifts up but they insisted that it was only cover for a guy whose mom had taken ill and been forced to drive back to his home state in order to care for her i didn't believe a word at first and i was just straight up angry at that point angry that a pair of grown men would lie about something like that basically just gaslighting me but i didn't want to show them how frustrated i was i'd just take it on the chin so to speak and not give them the satisfaction so the first night i'm there in the lakeside cabin i'm settling in to prepare for a long night of utter boredom brewing coffee and playing dumb mobile games when i hear something from outside the cabin i put down my phone get up and walk over to the door to open it so i can listen out for what it is i recognize it instantly it's a sound of splashing coupled with the sound of a child crying out for help between spluttered breaths haha very funny i remember shouting out into the darkness you think you could scare me with your dumb stories why didn't believe them then and i don't believe them now try it with someone with an iq as low as yours this was obviously their little game playing out their attempt to scare me into submission and believing their backward ghost story but i wasn't about to let that happen i went back inside slamming the door shut and jamming my airpods in on full volume to block the noise out they were selfish and vindictive that's what i told myself anyway but apparently not determined enough to keep playing that sound from whatever speaker system they'd set up around the cabin because when i paused my music like 20 minutes later the noise was gone and all was quiet again the next morning just after sunrise i pack up my stuff and prepare to leave the cabin i was so exhausted and irritated by the prank they pulled i wasn't prepared to wait for them to arrive i figured if i did i'd be so angry at seeing them that i might have knocked some of their freaking teeth out that would get me fired and i simply couldn't afford that not with the economy in the estate that it was but as i'm walking in my truck something catches my eye from the lakeside something small and soddened that the gentle waves of the lake lapped against i turned look and saw what it was and when i did i dropped my bag in pure horror and disbelief of what i was staring at it was the body of a child face down in the dirt i pulled on my phone dialed 9-1-1 and basically screamed at the operator for an ambulance to get out to that place i was based at they had to send a helicopter in the end but before it showed up the two crusty old rangers rolled up in their truck and their eyeballs almost fell out of their head when they saw me trying to perform cpr on the dead kid i tried and tried and tried but he was gone long gone and it was all my fault i ended up word vomiting about what had happened the night before telling them everything how i thought the whole thing was part of a prank part of the punishment for not believing their freaking story they claimed to have no idea what i was talking about which angered me even more but when they asked me why i didn't help the kid i flipped i rushed one of the older guys tackled him and beat the life out of him before i was dragged off and talked me back down to earth but i couldn't never really calm down not until the chopper arrived and put that kid's body on a stretcher the paramedic seemed furious that there was no one to save i remember one of them explicitly shouting over the din of the rotor blades that kid's been dead for hours when they took off and i drove back home to go on indefinite paid leave i thought that might have been the end of it and that i'd have time and space to get over what had happened but i didn't have time someone leaked the information out on what happened i don't know if it was the old timer i decked the other ranger or the paramedics but somehow someone got a hold of my contact details and the threatening calls began i'll never forget the night my girlfriend answered the phone in our apartment saying hello in that happy chirpy way she always used to i watched as her face went from all smiley to neutral to downright horrified who is this hey who is this call here again and i'm calling the cops it was the first time of many death threats the first of many many calls and handwritten letters and emails that told me i was an awful person that i didn't deserve to live that i was dead to the world the night i let that poor innocent young boy drown in that lake when his lungs filled with water and the death spasms wracked his body he wasn't the only one to die as i died too needless to say she wasn't my girlfriend for much longer and i don't even blame her there aren't many people who can handle that kind of abuse and i only got through it by myself by the skin of my teeth and so that led me to where i am today i live alone in a state far far away from the national park where i allowed a child to drown i illegally changed my name changed my entire look so no one from my old life would be able to recognize me i went through an intense period of transformation the old me is a ghost as good as dead and dust in the wind i thought that this would be therapeutic to write out i just hope that no one will ever find me no one hey friends thanks for listening be sure to subscribe and click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations if you got a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit our let's read official and give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video and join my discord to interact with me and other listeners directly and if you want to support me even more grab early access to all future narrations for just one dollar a month on patreon and maybe even pick up some let's read merch on spreadshirt and check out the let's read podcast where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data located anywhere you listen to podcasts links in the bio thanks so much friends and remember farts are just booty burps

Channel: Lets Read!

Views: 157,093

Rating: 4.8829055 out of 5

Keywords: National Park Stories, true national park stories, national parks, national park horror stories, true scary stories, scary stories, scary true stories, horror stories, true horror stories, true stories, scary horror stories, reddit scary true stories, ASMR, asmr sleep, true scary stories from reddit, true horror stories from reddit, lets not meet, stories from reddit, reddit, lets read, asmr reading, true creepy stories, creepy stories, subscriber submitted scary stories

Id: YVKjynWxQf4

Length: 55min 54sec (3354 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 22 2020