A Collection of Strange Wilderness Stories - January 2019

[Music] you summer first ghost last summer but not in the place one would expect no old Victorian house no foggy Cemetery but instead deep within the heart of the Pacific Coast trail and along the bony spine of the Sierra Nevadas I was halfway through my two-week hike and I just reached Forester pass which is a mountain pass located on the Kings Kern Divide and on the boundary between Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Parks it is also one of the highest points along the entire 2653 mile trail and perched up around 13,000 feet in elevation if it's peace and quiet you're looking for you'll find it out here by the time I reached the pass it had been an hour since I saw any other hikers and at that point I was alone for as far as the eye could see it was high noon by the time I dropped anchor and found a good resting spot I had a clear 360 view of the surrounding terrain and had found a sliver of shade to park in beneath a large boulder it must have been 90 Plus that afternoon and I had done my fishery baking in the hot Summer Sun time to relax I told myself I chewed on a bar and guzzled some water before but climbing back against the softness of my foam pad I closed my eyes and let the sound of the afternoon breeze sing me into a deep sleep [Music] I wasn't sure how long I've been asleep before being awoken by the sound of rocks tumbling on the treble oh maybe a hundred yards out or so from what I was guessing I set up and examined my surroundings I didn't see anything below behind or ahead of me a few minutes later I heard it again much closer this time then I noticed something moving on a rocky plate and to further bit down than I expected it took me a moment to realize it was a man making his way up the trail but he was having a hell of a time doing her he was moving sluggishly and appeared to be out of breath he take a few steps than buckle he did this a few times before I decided to go help the guy out now from where I was standing he was easy to see wearing a bright red puffy jacket and grey shorts his green backpack was smaller than I imagined it should be way out here I was thinking to myself what has he gotten himself into I left my things at the top and began moving down toward him he was still a good distance away but eventually began looking up at me I hollered down to him and let him know I was coming down to help but he never said anything just kept looking down at the trail and then back up at me well this is where things got a little strange at one point he was becoming harder and harder to see and begin to blend in with the mountain those bright colors began to fade and he disappeared into nothing I couldn't believe what I was seeing and just like that he was gone the sound of the sliding rock ceased as well the man had completely vanished stunned I stood there eyes locked on that very spot waiting for him to magically reappear but he never didn't there was nowhere for him to go he was out in the open there one second and gone the next if that's not the definition of a ghost then I don't know what is I spent the next hour searching every conceivable spot a man could hide behind and eventually the entire surrounding area while calling out for the stranger but there was never a reply and no Tracey was ever there after a certain point I begin to accept what I had seen and told myself to move on and so I did up until that point every person who ever saw a ghost to me was crazy but that all changed after that day eventually my track ended and I reported the experience to search and rescue and the local authorities just in case someone had actually went missing or renders some kind of trouble as far as I know there was no follow-up on the incident and authorities couldn't tie to any recent missing person cases from what they told me in all of my years as an experienced hiker I had never seen anything like it just thought I'd share my strange experience with you all you [Music] I didn't know it was possible to get lost in an acre of woods until it happened to me but it was the way that had happened that puts a creepy spin on things if you break it down an acre of land is approximately 1 football field in size or approximately 40 3,500 square feet not a whole lot to get lost in you could fit around 18 average-sized homes in one acre of land but for this particular lot it was all doug-fir forests and owned by the Colorado land ownership about 13 years ago I had a summer job working for the Forest Service as part of the timber harvest and fire fuel reduction program I was part of a six-man crew that went around and spray-painted dead or endangered trees for future processing a technique commonly used to reduce fire hazards in preparation for upcoming warmer months it was May 2006 and we were just getting started with our work for the season our team leader drove us out to a remote parcel of government land that was divided up into smaller units so that it was easier to manage I couldn't tell you exactly where these units were because I was usually napping to infer my work areas from where we were stationed sometimes it would take a couple hours just to reach our destination other times it would only be a short 15 minute drive so you can imagine the remoteness of some of these areas we worked in teams of two and could cover a decent amount of acreage in a solid day's work our driver began dropping us off where we would eventually meet up out the main road at a set time my work partner Graham and I were the last two to be dropped off and about four miles from the last drop-off point he cooked with the GPS supplies and a backpack full of spray paint we set off into the first unit and began our markings and each group we took turns carrying the GPS and on this particular day Graham was carrying it back in 2006 the portable GPS was big and bulky but still quite reliable for marking units and navigating around the woods but this unit was tiny and wouldn't take us that long to finish and if we really wanted to we could probably go without a GPS to navigate through it as our driver left both Graham and I decided to split up and meet back on the main road in an hour the unit was flagged off so you would be easy to see where it ended and the next one began it was a foggy morning and a comfortable 65 degrees out as the morning crept on the temperatures begin to climb and by the time we met at the main road an hour later he was already 70 degrees and the Sun had burned off most of the fog so we walked further down the road and into the next unit this one much smaller and would only take about 20 to 30 minutes to comb through I took the left and he went right we had planned to meet in the middle of the parcel somewhere along the way before heading back to the main road together well it didn't quite go like that in fact this is really where my experience began as I moved further into the unit my surroundings begin changing dramatically the familiar lush green forest I was accustomed to seeing was now giving way to a thicket of skeleton trees something had stripped him of their life and I hadn't seen them in the state before I've seen trees that were scorched by wildfire and ones riddled with disease but these look different either way they could prove problematic if not properly taken care of so I began marking them and after about 15 to 20 trees in I started feeling off it's hard to describe but my ears began to pop and then ring it was almost deafening and at times I tried yawning to help alleviate it also I hadn't seen any bugs were pests that would be consistent with dead or decaying matter as I move further into the unit I had a sudden realization that I had gotten turned around or something because I lost track of where I was I could no longer see the yellow markings that surrounded me in the unit they were always clearly visible and spaced a short distance apart it was impossible to lose him yet somehow I'd managed to do it and it felt like I was losing touch with reality somehow I knew I wasn't supposed to be there and begin to having visions of these gremlin like creatures slowly closing in on me I panicked and called out for Graham something I would never imagine myself doing as an experienced timber harvest worker this was my third season and I knew this work inside and out but something weird was happening to me and the surrounding woodland this was a place of death this thoughts kept cycling in my mental state and I felt I was going downhill fast my next memory was that of Graham grabbing onto my arm and shaking me he just kept saying hey man it's all good I'm here I'm here now just the sound of his voice snapped me back into reality and together we got the hell out of there and I asked him if he could make sense of it all and he told me that he spent over an hour looking for me in an area where it should have only taken a few minutes according to where we were we were practically within shouting distance yet completely invisible to one another for over an hour we always worked in close proximity to one another and never really had reason to use radios all of our communications were done by math GPS and a quick shout everything was perfectly scheduled and carefully planned anyone outside of this experience could come up with a handful of plausible explanations but from where Graham and I stood it all just seemed unreal and unlikely this experience will always haunt me and goes to show you that there are things that we don't understand about the natural world around us [Music] I'm a farmer for a local natural food store in Northern California and I own a large plot of farmland in Willow Creek about an hour east of Eureka while some of you may have already heard about the town of Willow Creek where the infamous powder Gimlin footage was taken in the 70s depicting a so-called Bigfoot creature walking along the river several Bigfoot themed documentaries and films have also been created about the town as well but my experience has absolutely nothing to do with the Bigfoot creature whatsoever in fact I would have much rather preferred a Bigfoot experience over what I came across two years ago in 2017 I was preparing some soil for a new batch of huckleberries that I was planting and had several pots of berry plants that needed to be transported to the garden so that they could further grow and develop as I'm making the transition and I reached over to my left I went to grab a plant but as I reached for it the pot fell onto its side and began rolling toward me all on its own I immediately stood up completely stunned by what I had just seen and just try to take it in there was no wind no loose soil no means of justification whatsoever why and how that 10-pound pot could have moved on its own I then told myself perhaps a squirrel or bird knocked it over while passing through and I just didn't see it so I'll continue to work the following morning I awoke to the sound from my chickens screaming when I investigated something had torn a hole in their pen and grabbed about half of them the remaining six had pinned themselves into a corner and would not move I examined the trail of feathers and they eventually led over to the garden where I had my huckleberry plants and that's where things got real strange it took me a moment to realize the horror of what I was looking at all my plants had been ripped out of their soil and tossed to the side but in their place were these little lumps of dirt whatever had done this had taken the time to fill in those holes after they ripped the plants out and this all happened just moments before I came outside then I'll notice something horrific I saw chickens foot sticking up out of one of the mounds of soil and it was still twitching I drove right in there and managed to pull the poor bird out and saw that it was barely alive and in complete shock I raced over to the other lumps of dirt and dug him up as well but by that point the other chickens were too far gone and had suffocated they had all been buried like the first one upside down I had never felt that kind of fear in my life and I began to imagine myself as one of those chickens I don't exactly remember what happened next but I instinctively grabbed my firearm and began randomly shooting into the woods as if my very life depended on it I realized how dangerous this was looking back but at the time it was only natural and purely instinctive so as I begin popping off rounds into the woods I saw it a figure or at least an outline of one broke from his position about 30 feet in front of me and swang into the wilderness I say swing because it moved in a cursive manner and about a foot off the ground and as it moved further into the tree line and out of you it stopped and looked back at me and then it was gone I didn't really see a face it was more of a feeling than anything and that describes the entirety of it it was slightly darker than the environment around it and that's how I was able to see it but this thing injected a punch of fear into my very being it made me feel completely inferior in minuscule I was shaken to my core and to this day I have been unable to recovery emotionally I still have the farm but I've reinforced the chicken patent and other shelters from my animals I've also set up high-tech surveillance systems with alarms just in case this thing ever returned and as you might imagine I've definitely loaded up on my firepower god forbid I lose my business and my entire life's work to this thing but I think what haunts me the most is why why dig up those huckleberry plants and bury chickens alive in their place that's just pure evil and I hope this creature in doors much worse fate [Music] you [Music] I chose this next story because in a weird way it kind of ties in with the last one you heard [Music] a few years ago I took part in an indie film called prom or age which was mainly shot in parts of Oregon and Northern California I was one of several production assistants for the director and basically assisted in everything from carrying camera equipment props and getting yelled at whenever the director was out of coffee it was a great job however there was one instance that left me a bit more fragile than I was prior to the film first of all the film is basically about a small town that gets terrorized by an ancient monstrous creature and a young couple has to outsmart their way to safety well there was a scene that required marching 15 to 20 minutes out to the filming location from the main road just outside of Redwood State Park the whole group of us including around 15 cast and crew members set out to the location and that's where we focused our work for the next several days on that last day something really spooky happened as we were wrapping up and moving out we were heading back single-file on the trail when the director began asking if we had seen a tool bag that was unaccounted for but nobody had seen it since the film shoot so I was asked to go back and get it you at this point the Sun was already beginning to settle on the horizon and nightfall was just around the corner or about an hour away it would take me about five minutes to backtrack and about another 15 to reach the trailhead and regroup with the others about 20 minutes total no problem so I broke from the others while they continued on and we agreed to meet back at the main road while soon thereafter I reached the location and began looking for that tool bag I could see the area where we had been because all the vegetation around it was bent or imprinted upon but I still didn't see the tool bag I looked around some more and found one of the claps we used to hold a prop in place just one of several in that bag but where were the rest of them well I looked up and ahead on the trail and saw another one sitting out in the open in an area we hadn't been at least to my knowledge anyway I walked about 50 feet further down the trail to pick it up and as I did I noticed another clamp about a hundred feet down from it that's when I began to get an uneasy feeling he looked as though these clamps had been purposely placed there leading away from the filming area who or why would someone do that did an animal drag it out here we were sloppy at Toms but not that sloppy and between the 15 of us we usually kept everything together in one place so that we could avoid situations like this so there I was presented with another problem there were more tools in that bag and they were all expensive I kept my guard up and walked over to that other clamp picked it up and you guessed it I could see the next item further down but this time it's sat at the edge of the wood line it was an orange extension cord it was then that the uneasy feeling I had grew into a full-blown panic and I turned to head back now I was convinced something was leading me away from the trail and into those woods I held on to what I did find and ran back to regroup with the others but the whole time back I felt the woods closing in on me and their unusual choir sounds emanating from behind me I never heard them before but they were creeping up with me no matter how fast I ran a world of relief settled upon me when I heard the group's familiar chatter ahead and eventually met up with them there was no way I was being sent back so I lied and said everything had been found and brought back - two clamps I still had in my sweaty palms I would eventually replace those missing tools with new ones but that was the last time I was ever gonna go out by myself in those woods again perhaps the myth of the monstrous beasts holds some truth whatever it was it had the intellect to know that one of us was coming back to get those tools perhaps it hid it when we were all over there on the film shoot I suppose it could have been another man but those eerie choir sounds painted the whole new picture I'd like to hear your thoughts on this thanks for letting me share my story [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: Rusty West

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Rating: 4.8413749 out of 5

Keywords: rusty west scary stories, rusty west, new david paulides, new missing 411 cases, rusty west disappearances, rusty west missing 411, david paulides, david paulides interview, david paulides missing persons, national park missing person, missing people in national parks, national parks

Id: aD23d6Pxc6U

Length: 27min 7sec (1627 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 21 2019