[Music] I grew up in a small town in North Carolina a place called Bakersville it's only about 16 mil from the Tennessee State Line and beyond that lies the fabled Appalachian Trail I never really considered it until I moved elsewhere but there's a certain Spirit to Appalachia especially the lower half where the trail extends up into the Great Smokies and the Pisa National Forest Bakersville is about 20 mi north of Pisa right in the center of the triangle where the three forests converge and I don't know if there's something in the trees or the hills
or the water but it gets into the people for better and for worse for example Appalachians are just about the most superstitious people I had ever come across just about every Culture has its little idiosyncrasies like that you probably heard someone say knock on wood to prevent something bad from happening or perhaps they suggested that a black cat crossing your path is an omen of Misfortune some people are told never to walk under ladders or that stepping on a crack will Doom their mother to a broken back but of all the people I've met on
my travels Appalachians win the prize for Their bizarre superstitions for instance my grandmother God Rest her soul said she never trusted anyone with a dimple on their chin she always used to say dimples are made by the devil's shoe and it wasn't just some silly saying to her either she was deadly serious in her belief that people with chin dimples were essentially cursed she also thought that if your chickens lady eggs in odd numbers it meant Misfortune was on the Way and that you should never ever wash your clothes on a Sunday she had a
ton of other crazy rules like that and like I said it was no joke she really did believe that if she did a certain thing like wearing a buckeye in her bra to ward off rheumatism it would achieve the desired effect and she also believed in the power of bad luck and black magic with all her heart and soul I guess we're just much more prone to believing in things like that down Here in lower Appalachia things of an otherworldly or Fantastical nature and that's why I believe my friend scoot wholeheartedly when he said that
there was a witch living up near Rattlesnake Ridge I didn't believe him when he first told me but he said that his cousin swore on his eyes that there was a witch living out there in a one room Shack and that she put a curse on four men just after the war who'd all ended up dying in mysterious Circumstances but not only that and thanks to his cousin he knew exactly where the switch's shack was located on the south side of Rattlesnake Ridge naturally I demanded that he take me to it at the first available
opportunity to prove he and his cousin weren't a pair of no good rotten Liars but to my surprise he indignantly promised to do just that we were both 12 and 13 years old at the time so we were capable of finding our way back after a Length the sojourn in the woods and aware enough for me to want to show scoot what a long tongue liar his cousin was so one Saturday we set off in the early afternoon Bound for Rattlesnake Ridge I understand that probably sounds like far too dangerous a trip for a couple
of boys in their early teens but you grow up in rural North Carolina and you learn how to walk in the woods I feel like there are stereotypes of the Southern Outdoorsman or Midwest mountain Man Shing softly through the woods like a cross between a choc and a ninja but that's just not accurate at all any Woodsman worth his salt Treads heavy through the woods snakes pick up on vibrations and the handy thing about Rattlers is they let you know that they're there if they don't hear you coming and get out of the way first
anyway that's just to give you a little background on why our parents were okay with us hiking out to a place named After a venomous snake from our neighborhood the walk out to the ridge took about an hour at a casual Pace until finally we see the tree covered Ridge rising up before us like some great sleeping giant scoot's cousin had said the witch's Shack was on the Southeastern side on the Ridge and then we'd smell the smoke of her fireplace before we ever saw her this was the same fireplace where she supposedly cooked the
butchered bodies Of the children she captured before turning their bones into magical charms I thought we' spent an hour or two just wandering around not being able to see or smell anything before scoot finally accepted that his cousin was full of crap but then suddenly we start to detect something that smells a lot like a campfire or perhaps even the smoke billowing from the chimney of a witch's Cottage scoot just about pops a gasket Telling me I told you I told you he wasn't lying in reference to his older cousin then honestly I'd be a
liar if I said that it didn't send a shiver running through me I just remember standing there slack jawed having gone from not believing in him to not wanting to believe him it was creepy all right but it was creepy in the way that a boy scouts campfire ghost story is creepy smelling that smoke in the way that we did it had a kind of perfect timing to It like when the innocent High School couple discover the hook that's still buried in the car door or when the babysitter learns that the call was coming from
inside the house it sent a shiver down my spine and it couldn't have been real there was no such thing as witches and smelling campfire smoke was evidence of a campfire and nothing more once I realized that I felt foolish scoot's cousin was lying and feeling foolish only made me more determined to Prove it plus it was a fine opportunity to prove How brave I was to scoot by marching off into the woods in search of the smoke Source he thought I was straight up crazy saying that we'd had to get out there and that
I must have some kind of Death Wish to go looking for that witch after all she'd already killed four men by putting curses on them so there's no telling what she'd do to two kids who deliberately set off to go Treading around her holler I knew that whoever was out there probably wouldn't react kindly to strangers but I also knew that there wasn't any such damn thing as witches so I didn't exactly go running off through the woods but I kept going with scoop behind me keeping an eye out for where the smoke was coming
from then about 200 yd in we see this Thicket of Myrtle trees the real dense kind with the wavy leaves and behind Them is what looked to be an Old Log Cabin one with a big old stone chimney a fixed to the side of it and Scoot says you believe me now and I'll admit the evidence was mounting in his favor but until we saw black cats and flying broomsticks I wasn't buying a word of it and I wasn't about to go all that way only to turn back now that we' found what we were
looking for and so for anyone who doesn't know wax myrtles they sprout fairly close to The ground meaning you got to duck down low under all the leaves and branches if you want to Traverse a patch of them there was also the occasional dog wood in there too meaning that we had to weave in and out to get to where we could see the log cabin and all its shabby and gloriousness but when we did finally lay eyes on that cabin it looked exactly like you might expect a witch's Shack to look there was a
broomstick right there near the little Entrance with all kinds of dried herbs Windchimes and charm looking things hanging on either side of the door scoot just about had a fit when he saw the broomstick and I have to admit I was starting to actually believe it myself at that point but then right as we're starting to get really and truly frightened the door to the shack swings open and out steps The Witch of Rattlesnake Ridge her hair was white and patchy and She walked with a bit of a stoop and I swear that she'd had
a wart or two on her nose and Chin I was just about ready to pee my pants with fear at the sight of her cursing myself for not believing Scoot and his cousin but at least I stayed quiet scooted on the other hand he blurts out in a shaky voice there she is which the witch then hears and spins around a squint in our Direction she starts crowing who's there Y'all better show yourselves but by that point me and Scoot are bolting like startled fos deaf dumb and blind to anything and everything except getting the
hell away from Rattlesnake Ridge and the wit we should have known better than to go looking for we were terrified absolutely beside ourselves with fear we were convinced the witch was going to put a curse on us for having trespassed on her patch and that it was only a matter of Time before we too ended up dead under mysterious circumstances we agreed to each head home to our parents to ask what they could do for us how maybe the cops might be able to head out there and convince the witch to take back her curse
but whatever we did we had to do it fast so after issuing each other what we'd hoped would be not our final goodbye we each headed home to beg our parents for help I remember holding back tears until I got to my parents house but then the second I walked through the door and my mom asked me why I look so terrible I broke down and told her everything how I hadn't believed Scoot and his cousin about the witch up on the ridge how we trespassed on her property and how we were now probably cursed
to each suffer an untimely death all the commotion brought my dad in from the garage and he and my mother listened to the whole story before Finally issuing their assurances they told me that there was no such thing as witches but that there was indeed an old woman living up near that Ridge she'd been living there for quite some time and all she wanted was to be left alone and that's why she gotten angry when she'd heard us in the bushes she couldn't put any curses on us we weren't going to die but it was
not a good idea to go wandering off into the woods like that for any reason Especially when that reason was to go bother some old little lady and once I was safely reassured that the lady that we saw was most certainly not a witch I started to calm down a little but it didn't explain why a woman lived out in the woods all on her own like that and when I asked I was essentially told that it was complicated but that she wanted to live out there on her own it wasn't like the people in
town were mean to her or anything like That and after that my mom called scoots mom and they talked it out to make sure everyone was on the same page scoot's parents were nice folks so they told him basically the same thing as I was told we didn't have to be scared of that old lady but we weren't to go snooping around her property anymore and Scoot and I were then allowed to talk on the phone and we went from crying to laughing in the space of a few minutes it was just pure relief I
think that and How funny it was that we ran full Sprint from a woman whose top speed was probably a mile or two an hour hour we just kind of moved on after that I remember thinking of that woman every so often but I wasn't afraid of her I just thought that she was kind of weird living all alone in the woods like that I didn't feel sorry for her I mean she chose to live out there and I didn't know why but I didn't care to know either she was just the crazy cat lady
Who lived out in the woods and just like everyone else in town that fact grew as normal to me as just about any other thing I guess a lot of other kids asked their parents the same thing scoot's cousin talked about the Witch and so did we when we returned to school that Monday we were telling people how we'd been out there and how she wasn't really a witch and then we laughed off everyone who swore blind that she was and that we Were doomed to die any day from the curse that she put on
us the other kids had heard about those four men she supposedly cursed to die but we knew better we'd had grown-ups to tell us the not so scary truth so we weren't afraid at all and that pretty much settled the argument as a bunch of other kids mentioned how their parents had told them the truth too she was just a sad weird old lady and those four men's deaths had nothing to do with her But as I came to learn that wasn't strictly the truth the first part of this story as in mine and scoot's
little encounter with the witch that took place back in the mid 70s long time ago and I remember it was around late April of 1975 because the TV had pictures of Vietnam on it almost non-stop things were turning real bad for the folks on the ground and I remember my dad watching reels of helicopters lifting people off of Rooftops and Saigon and the next part which doesn't really involve the witch at all took place in 2004 when myself and Scoot were home in Bakersville visiting family now there was nowhere to drink alcohol around Bakersville so
we had to catch a ride over to Burnsville 10 Mi South so we could get drunk there before my sister drove over to pick us up come closing time I hadn't seen scoot in maybe two years at that point and since The Panthers were playing that night I wanted to whoop his ass at pool and I thought that we'd take things over to a little bar down there so we could really make a meal of things but anyway we headed down there the Panthers lose their game but I went at pool so that just about
evened things out it was a week night too so the place was pretty empty during the last hour of service just a few patrons and a few of the booths then myself Scoot and this older Looking guy finishing our beers at the bar Scoot and I are deep and reminiscing by that point and we're talking about this and that until eventually the subject of the witch of Rattlesnake Ridge comes up and we start laughing to ourselves cursing as cousin for having us scare the beesus out of ourselves like that but then with years of hindsight
under under our belts we start kind of ruminating on why the witch was living out there in the first place I'm Sure she wouldn't mind us calling her that either the reputation sure did keep folks from prying into her Affairs too much but it did strike me as odd that I'd never taken the time to really find out why she was out there but also who were those four men who supposedly had died and why did people blame their deaths on our Wicked Witch's Curse we started speculating very casually too I do recall I didn't
think that she'd be Around anymore she was ancient back when we were kids so we both agreed that she probably wasn't around almost 30 years later none unless she really was a witch anyway we're talking about her back and forth when suddenly the older guy sitting down from us at the bar asked the bartender for one more for him and one more for each of the Two Fellas he's about to tell a very long and Eerie tale to and then he invit invites us down to the stools to sit next to him and Introduces himself
as a former resident of our hometown Bakersville we introduce ourselves thank him for the beer and then ask him what sort of eerie tale that he has to tell us as we both kind of laugh I should have known that it concerned the Witch and I guess I was a little slow in the uptake on account of the beers but when he told us that he knew why the witch of Rattlesnake Ridge chose to live where she did and what's More he knew why people link those men's death to her my interest was peaked the
Oldtimer told us that if this was 30 or 40 years ago he'd never have dreamed of telling us the truth but since everyone involved was surely passed by this point the wit included there wasn't any reason why we shouldn't know the truth especially if we'd once seen her with our very own eyes and foolishly I started poking fun at the guy probably due to all the beers again It wasn't that he'd offered to tell her us nor was it that he did so in such a dramatic way it's that he tried to tell us that
the witch and the deaths of those four men I mentioned really were linked in some way I started asking if she' turned them into frogs or flew out on her broomstick to claim their souls in the night of the full moon but the guy shook his head evidently not appreciating my attempts at humor he told us the men's death had Nothing Supernatural about them but they were very much connected to both the witch and the reason she chose to live out there alone he reiterated that if folks involved were still alive there's no way in
hell that he' be telling the whole tale to a little brat like me in his words so I didn't want to listen and I could just take my beer and go jump in a godamn lake his words again if I did want to listen I could sit my ass down and find out why at least one of those Men's deaths simply had to be connected to the witch because one of the men had been her own godamn husband I then realized how terribly I'd misjudged this whole situation and all my years I never once heard
anyone mention how one of the witch's so-called victims had been her own husband the fact this guy knew that and was willing to tell us that gave him this whole level of legitimacy and so I sat my ass down and Listened to what he had to tell us the witch's name was Dora an quinland and back in 1941 one she gotten married to a man named James Cranwell their marriage was a happy one at first anyway and then the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor in the whole world changed overnight for them Cranwell was called up into
the army and then was sent off to fight the Germans in North Africa and then at some point during his service he was declared missing an Action a few months later Dora Anne gets news that a whole bunch of American bodies had been found Germans had taken him prisoner then instead of taking them off to some Camp those Nazi bastards massacred them piled up their bodies and then set him on fire some of James of stuff was found among the charred remains so it was assumed that he'd been among those executed by the Germans she
got the news in the late of Summer of 42 and Dora Anne was Devastated she wore black for months but by Christmas of 43 she was said to be getting cozy with a grocery store or clerk who had been declared unfit for service I don't think that you could find a single person who judged or Anne harshly for wanting to find happiness again but all the same she didn't want to Sully the memory of her marriage to her late husband so she opted to conduct the affair in secret and that worked for them all throughout
the early 44 but by The holidays of that same year the affair was something of an Open Secret yet naturally almost no one thought any less of Dora Anne for wanting to rekindle a little romance in her life and so folks kind of just played dumb while silently hoping for some kind of marriage proposal but then in early 46 right when everybody is expecting Dora Anne and the clerk to tie the knot she gets a telegram from the army with news that Shook her world just as much as when those Japanese Torpedoes sunk the Arizona
her husband James Arthur Cranwell was alive Cranwell had been a prisoner at one of those last camps to be liberated during the Allied March through Germany and when he'd been found he was on death's door when he left the states James was around 180 lbs give or take but by the time they got him back to the American field hospital he didn't weigh an ounce Over 95 lb skeletal they called him but over the months that followed his rescue he put on some weight learned to walk again and the first thing thing he asked was
for his wife to be contacted so she learned of his survival a few days later Dora Anne gets her telegram and she and her clerk know that their relationship is doomed James comes home and the whole town welcomes him back as a hero Dora included but there's just one big problem she doesn't Want to end her relationship with the clerk which results in them making a serious error of judgment and one night after a session of heavy drinking with his old high school buddies James Cranwell comes home to find his wife in bed with that
grocery store clerk what happened next is something that Almost Doesn't bear repeating so I'll try to put it in as implicit a manner as possible Cranwell was Furious he beat the clerk to a pulp tied him to The bed frame with his belt and then set about teaching Dora Anne a lesson but that wasn't enough when his buddies tried to leave Cranwell insisted they stay in watch then when he was done he demanded that they teach Dora Anne a lesson too and they beat the hell out of that girl and then took turns having their
way with her then when it was all said and done the clerk who had been forced to watch The entire thing from just a few feet away was dragged into the woods outside of town and then shot in the head Cranwell and his buddies then did something to hide the body nobody knows what because they never found it but Dora Anne knew that they killed the clerk and she told the town sheriff that much when he asked her about it Cranwell kept Dora locked up for a few days and then he kicked her out of
the house Barefoot wearing nothing but a dirty Dress she walked into town then went straight to the Sheriff's Office to tell him everything the sheriff then goes over to talk to Cranwell but he denies the whole thing yes it was true that he'd come home to find his wife in bed with another man after she'd falsely believed him to be staying out all night and sure he might have slapped the guy around a little before kicking him out but he hadn't killed him he threatened to if he Ever saw him again but he hadn't murdered
him no the clerk had gone missing due to the shame of what he' done and if he did so happen to show back up in town Cranwell claimed that he was happy to let bygones be bygones after all coming home drunk like that thinking that he might have been assaulting poor D Anne in their marriage bed Cranwell said the clerk was lucky to be alive and reluctantly the sheriff agreed the thing was if he had a shred Of evidence that Cranwell killed the clerk or if he could prove beyond all doubt that all the stuff
Dora Anne said was true he'd be happy to bring a case against Cranwell and his buddies but aside from Dora Anne who at this point was not looked un favorably thanks to our decision to continue the affair the sheriff had no Witnesses no evidence and therefore no case but that didn't sit well with the Bakersville towns folk from their perspective all they noticed At first was that the clerk was missing and it took days before Dora Anne limped into town to give an account to the sheriff and his deputies after that word of the incident
spread like wildfire and although everyone agreed that Dora and and her bow should have ended the affair no one thought it warranted a death sentence and what Cranwell and his buddies did to Dora an was nothing short of unforgivable certain figures approached The town sheriff and begged him to do something about it the sheriff then ordered corpse hounds to go sniffing around the Cranwell place and they picked up the scent of a body that had been moved sometime in the past week or so this on its own was incriminating but the deputies couldn't actually find
any corpse as the trail just sort of petered out somewhere in the woods near Rattlesnake Ridge sure someone else might have killed the clerk and maybe They did it on his propert property Cranwell claimed but as sure as I wasn't him and his soon to be ex-wife was welcome to press charges if she wanted to but she didn't instead Dora Anne went to live with her parents and spent the foreseeable future tucked into her old childhood bedroom lingering in a very deep depression it was an incredibly sad and Incredibly horrible situation but the People of
Bakersville weren't about to let such an atrocity slide months went by and with each passing day those who murdered the clerk became more and more convinced that they gotten away with their crimes but then one night Bakersville settled down to sleep without a care in the world and then the next morning residents awoke to find the town crawling with State Patrol officers during the night not only had Cranwells house gone up in Flames presumably with James Arthur having been burned to a crisp but his two old high school Buddies I had also suffered mysterious and
horrifying accidents one had driven off the road on a clear stretch of highway then struck a tree at what had to be at least 50 m an hour the other had drunk an entire bottle of bad whiskey and had been slowly poisoned while in a state of unconsciousness the three suspicious Deaths had caused quite a racket on law enforcement channels and with the local fire and Sheriff's departments overwhelmed with the various scenes the state patrol had been called in they visited every home in town asking everyone the same two questions did you see anything and
did you hear anything to both questions everyone gave the same two replies no and no somehow three men had died without anyone in town having the slightest idea Of how they'd lost their lives to the town's people it was a freak accident and the fact that all three men had died within hours of one another and all happened to be involved in the disappearance of the clerk well that was just all one big coincidence now wasn't it just like it had been a mere coincidence that someone had been murdered on James cranwells property on the
very same night the clerk had gone missing only one of the deaths were ever Proven to be murder as the state patrol proved the fire at cranwells house was caused by arson but as for his two buddies well both their deaths appear to be nothing more than tragic accidents when news of their deaths reached Dora Anne she was said to have smiled for the first time in months she started eating properly again started to sleep properly again and after a while she started taking long walks in the woods she'd walk out on her own most
Days leaving just after sunrise and coming home just before dark and she'd spend every trip wandering around the last place those corpse hounds picked up the scent of what everyone believed was the clerk's dead body at Rattlesnake Ridge she was looking for the body and she carried on looking for it for years and years until one day Dora Ann stopped coming home again people thought that she might have offed herself out there Others thought that she picked up a rattlesnake bite or had a run in with an overly protective mama bear but then sometime later
I guess someone must have found her cabin out there either newly built or haphazardly refurnished and then words spread that she was still alive I guess the men's death must have stayed in people's minds for a while back then enough to get their kids and grandkids talking about it and that's when I Figured the rumors of Witchcraft first started to get some over curious kids to shut their damn mouth the less people talked about it the better and if kids did insist on talking about it then the next best thing was to shroud the truth
and myth and Legend I guess Dora Anne figured that she'd be better positioned to find her old Lover's body if she resided around its last known location that way she could spend the Rest of her days trying to find it while being pleasantly sequestered from a world that had so terribly let her down and may she and her long departed lover rest in peace and many thanks to the Oldtimer in the bar that night who finally gave us the answers to the age-old mystery of the witch of Rattlesnake Ridge [Music] many many years ago now
an old friend of Mine and I were hiking along a section of the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee he had camping gear with us along with a bunch of other survival stuff but as much as we tried to pack as light as possible day after day of almost non-stop hiking really started to take its toll on us plus there was the unexpected factor of not being being able to get any real sleep Outdoors we'd each done a little camping in the past but we'd each done so way up In the Northeast and we' done so in
a very controlled and safe environment sleeping in paper thin tents out in Appalachia however was something else entirely but then on the afternoon of the fourth day of our journey we ran into a solo hiker coming the opposite way up the trail so we stopped and picked their brain on what the trail ahead of us had in store and that's when he mentioned a shelter a Two-story one that had Camp beds on both the ground and first floor he says it was only around 10 Mi further down the trail and if we got on the
move again we could be there by Nightfall if we really beat feet an enclosed shelter like that meant that we might be able to just get a full8 hours of sleep which at that stage would be a huge boost both physically and mentally so after thanking the guy a thousand times over we got back on the Trail immediately maybe 3 to 4 hours later the shelter comes into view and although it wasn't quite what we'd been expecting it certainly beat setting up camp all over again the wooden cabin looking thing wasn't completely closed off but
it had these two raised sleeping platforms one taller and one shorter I guess that's what the guy meant by twostory we pictured a small cottage or something with a door and maybe a Fireplace but Beggars most certainly can't be choosers so we claimed one of the sleeping platforms by tossing our bags up onto it before unpacking our food supplies to make ourselves some dinner maybe an hour or two after we'd eaten my friend and I are just chilling near the shelter when we suddenly see two other hikers making their way down the trail towards us
it was a guy and girl and I figured they might have been a couple As We greeted them they asked If both sleeping platforms have been claimed and when we said no the guy half of the couple asked if they could use it we said sure and that we try and be good bunk mates so we could all get some well-deserved rest without worrying about stuff crawling or slithering into our tents now don't get it twisted we each knew that we could seal our tents up and keep out the bugs snakes and bigger creatures but
just try sleeping in an airless piece of plastic during Early Tennessee Summers you find you've created less of a sleeping space and more of a sauna but anyway we were very happy to find ourselves some shelter but the couple who did turn out to be a couple were anything but they got to bickering almost as soon as they put their gear down meaning the vibe went from oh cool we got some company to well this is awkward faster than you can say trouble in Paradise they didn't have a standup Fight or anything but we could
hear them whisper arguing up on the sleeping platform for a little while and then they'd quit but then start up again minutes later the biggest break in the tension was when my buddy says something like Jesus just break it up already under his breath I started laughing and then the lady half of the couple confronted us asking what's so funny what's so funny huh we denied everything insisted that We're laughing at something else and the girl's boyfriend or fiance or whatever he has to basically pull her away from us while explaining that we weren't laughing
at them I mean we were but there was no point turning a two-person argument into a four-person argument and the atmosphere was bad enough as it was so like I said the couple next to us are arguing on and off pretty much all night but they managed to cool it long Enough for everyone to get some sleep but then at some point in the middle of the night my buddy and I wake up to the sound of them arguing again only this time it's quite a bit louder than it had been before I couldn't make
out exactly what they were arguing over I just heard the odd word or two like the girl hissing something like you never listen to me or the guy saying something like it's too far Sarah we won't make it in Time and they kept at it like that getting louder and louder and then right when we were on the verge of telling them to keep it down so we could get some sleep the girl raises her voice all the way up to like a low yell and says to the guy oh yeah well maybe that's exactly
what I'll do this is Then followed by the sound of someone moving around on the sleeping platform next to and below us the guy starts saying something like don't do This and then says the girl's name but I don't want to repeat that here I'd rather not drop the guy's name either because in this context it feels like a little too much info to go throwing around online and anyway their argument gets a little louder and we're just trying to figure out what the guy doesn't want the girl to do when all of a sudden
she tosses her pack down off the sleeping platform and then we hear the sound of her climbing down the Ladder before she comes into view the guy and the girl continue their cryptic argument for a minute or so but one thing becomes obvious the girl is about to walk off into the dark Trail armed with nothing but a flashlight because for whatever reason she wants to continue their hike while I'm assuming her boyfriend wanted to rest the entire night I get that she was mad at him or whatever but hiking alone and at night especially
somewhere like The southern at is never ever a good idea my buddy calls out Excuse Me Miss I wouldn't do that if I were you but she cuts him right off by yelling an exploitive back in his Direction and we're both like okay suit yourself lady and shared a hushed nervous little chuckle as the guy on the platform next to us called out to his girlfriend one last time we then watched her walking off into into the trees watching as the beam of her flashlight Got fainter and fainter until finally when it was just on
the verge of Disappearing completely my buddy kind of shimmies over to the edge of the platform and starts talking to the guy half of the couple uh you should go after her I remember he said but at first that guy was like hell no if she wants to leave she can leave recognizing that he was just mad and would 100% live to regret not going after her we started insisting that he Follow his girl and then my buddy probably trying to sort of galvanize him into action says to the guy if you're too scared to
go after her fine but I will I figured it was probably the lack of sleep making him talk like that and I was right about to tell him not to antagonize the guy when I hear from the other bunk the hell did you just say to me and my heart sinks and I'm thinking my buddy is about to get into a fist fight with some complete stranger in the Ass end of no where luckily the guy doesn't climb down off of his sleeping platform and he and my buddy just carry on talking trash to each
other I didn't want to really inflame the situation but I couldn't help but agree that the guy should probably go after her even if it was just to convince her to come back to the shelter the discussion continued down this dumb immature path for a minute or two and I remember pulling myself out of My sleeping bag and getting ready to put my boots on if my buddy and her boyfriend were content to bicker like children and someone had to go be a grown adult and put their boots on and go tell that girl that
a solo night hike sounded like the mother of all bad ideas I tried once and failed once to get the two guys to shut up so I could announce my departure and request their assistance and they kept at it for a few more seconds and that's when we heard it The scream that echoed through the pitch blacked Woods cut through their bickering like a hot knife through butter inside silenced the pair of them completely then as we all just sat there Frozen in Terror we heard a second scream and that one launched us into action
I threw in my boots the other two guys did the same and then after grabbing our flashlights we started hustling down the trail in the direction of the Screams the girl's boyfriend was way ahead of us and I don't know if he ran track in college or whatever but he should have that or realizing his girl was in danger gave him superhuman speed because he had us eating his dust to get to his girl in as fastest time as possible the screams get louder and louder as we got closer and closer to her then all
of a sudden there she is lying just off the trail ahead of us and right away I can see why she's Screaming one of the girl's legs was sitting at this weird unnatural angle clearly Broken But as we get to her and start trying to give her first aid she starts yelling that he's here he's still here he has to to be one of us asks who's here and then the girl replies the person who broke my leg at first were obviously all thinking okay don't touch her don't make the break any worse but then
the moment she said someone had attacked her me and her Boyfriend started scrambling to get her up while my buddy starts shining his flashlight into the woods all around us trying to spot whoever the girl was screaming about those were legitimately the most terrifying few minutes of my entire life someone was out there someone who wanted to do us physical harm and we could only move as fast as we could safely transport the girl with the broken leg every other second I was asking my buddy Do you see anyone and the whole time he's calling
back I don't know I can't tell because he's having to cover like 360° with just one flashlight the girl was screaming right in my ear as I was supporting her left side too so I was having to ask my buddy over and over just to be able to hear his replies oh while I'm expecting some psycho hillbilly to pop out from behind a tree at any moment before smashing me over the head with whatever he just Broke that girl's leg with thankfully we were able to get back to that shelter without running into anybody and
there we armed ourselves with our knives and hatchets and then set about giving the girls some first aid and this is way back before cell phon so there was no calling 911 or ranger stations to get some help we had to literally put troll our wooden shelter all night with our flashlights in hand making sure no one was sneaking Up on us and that whole thing made for the second most terrifying thing I'd ever experienced at least by that point we were actually armed in some capacity but like you're already probably thinking the big fear
was that someone with a gun was just going to use the beam of our flashlight as a Target if that happened we'd be sitting ducks fish in a barrel and we wouldn't stand a chance but if anyone did follow us back to the shelter That night they chose not to show themselves and we held out until dawn before getting the move on again the other really creepy thing was right after we got the girl back to the shelter and we started to give her first aid we were obviously all very curious as to who or
what attacked her she kept saying how she didn't see the guy's face but after the impact on her leg and her falling to the ground she saw the back of the guy running away through the Trees she was 99% sure that it was a man and he'd hit her leg with a stick or something blunt before running off it was definitely some kind of stick or tool she said not a punch or a kick someone had waited for her run up from the side smash something into the side of her knee so hard that it
actually broke the leg it was terrifying to think if we hadn't have to run out there when we did whoever broke the girl's leg would have Probably come back for part two I figured he probably turned back for her then saw all of her flashlights coming up the trail towards the screaming and that's also what makes me think that it was just one or maybe two guys at the most small numbers for us to be able to scare them off like that anyway once Dawn hit and we got some decent light we made ourselves a
makeshift little stretcher rolled the girl onto it and then carried her all The way into this little town called Hampton where we were able to get her some medical attention we were originally going to part ways there and then but not before we swapped contact info so we could keep in touch to see how things went but then literally as we were walking away we decided that we'd stay in town help the guy half of the couple with all the stressful stuff that he had to deal with you know police reports and all that kind
of stuff and Also get some decent rest in the hotel room if we could find one and we also realized it would be very stupid to just walk back up on the same Trails the attack had just taken place on and to do so on no sleep would just be insanity and the rest of the story is kind of boring so I'll keep it short we kept in touch with the couple to make sure that they were okay and to find out if the person who attacked the girl got caught and no surprises for those
who Guess that the cops had no clue where to even begin and were not very helpful at all the girl's leg seemed to heal okay though we ended up finishing the rest of our hike after skipping ahead about 10 Mi just to be certain that we were well away from the sight of that attack human onum encounters like that tend to be as rare as hen's teeth on a place like the Appalachian Trail 99.9% of folks you meet are fundamentally good and I can attest to that myself but it's Not just the bears and snakes
you got to worry about out there I learned that the hard way and you can gather that I kept my survival knife on hand whenever I went to sleep for the whole rest of that Tennessee hiking trip [Music] back during the summer between my sophomore and junior year in college my study buddy and I turned best friend for life decided that we'd like to hike the Vermont section of the Appalachian Trail it started off great we'd hike together a few times before so we knew that we could tough out the rougher portions of the trail
together so by day three we were still in High Spirits and we were still looking forward to our final two days hike but then during the early afternoon of that first day we saw something that made us cut our trip short by two whole days we were walking along praying to The trail Gods to keep the rain away when my friend suddenly stopped and pointed towards something in the trees off Trail it looked like a bright red piece of cloth of some kind barely visible but there it was hanging from a tree branch about 20
to 30 yards off the trail the both of us said something like who the hell does that as in who the hell just tosses their dirty clothes over a branch instead of carrying them Home again because that's honestly what we figured it happened and so off we went marching off in the direction of this random shirt figuring that we could take it down and toss it in the trash once we got back to civilization but the more visible the red cloth gets the more realized that it's not just been thrown there randomly it's a marker
for what lay underneath right there in the dirt beneath what turned out to be a red Shirt were what looked like two empty Graves my friend and I just about freak the heck out mainly because there were two graves and two of us we didn't bother grabbing the shirt we just moved as quickly as we could down the rest of the glastenbury section of the trail and then turned down the road towards Bennington so we could report what we'd seen to the police some people have asked me why we just didn't call 911 from there
on the trail but honestly There's not much that would have been achieved even if I had been able to get a connection the most important thing to us in the moment was putting enough distance between us and those Graves as possible I get that we could have relayed our last position or something on the off chance that we were attacked by someone but if that actually happened we'd have been just as screwed and calling 911 wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference if we needed to Sprint Down some section of Trail away from some
homicidal maniac after we got to the nearest town we found a phone and then called 911 to get connected with the local cops I told them everything and the cop I spoke to took the whole thing very seriously and then thanked me for calling it in he also gave me his personal contact number in case I wanted to check in and see how things were progressing I thought that was a very polite thing of him to do Trying to give me a little peace of mind and make me feel like I was being taken care
of but then it came to decide if we wanted to actually continue the rest of our hike and at first we were at an inass my best friend was adamant that we could just skip ahead of the trail a little and maybe catch a ride into the next town over then hop back onto the trail for the rest of our journey I wanted to I really did and I wasn't using those Graves as an excuse to cut The trip short but I couldn't go walking back up into those Hills in good conscience knowing something that
dark was going on in the area the way I saw it and this is what I said to my friend those might not be the only two graves set up there might be others all along this section of the trail and someone just Waits by them waiting for either one or two hikers that he can murder and bury in less than an hour and we agreed to stay in a motel That night then we'd call the sheriff again the next day if some innocent explanation had been found for the graves then we'd move on as
planned but if not then I couldn't continue I just couldn't the next day what do you know the sheriff hasn't even gotten around to checking the graves out but he assures me that he'll get around to it that same day I thanked him in as polite a manner as I could say but the lack of action on his part just marked the end of our Trip my friend was pretty angry at the time because our hike along the Tennessee section of the Appalachian Trail was something she'd been looking forward to for a hell of a
long time but as I explained to her on the ride back home over and over again it was something that I've been looking forward to as well I didn't just throw in the towel because I heard a few spooky nighttime noises and wanted an actual shower I quit because I was scared for My life having someone hang a few Blair Witch stick figures in the trees along the trail is one thing an obvious prank an or just a tribute to an objectively awesome movie but two graves marked out by a bright red shirt like that
someone put way too much time and effort into them for it to just be a prank or at least it's not something I'm willing to bet my life [Music] on a few years back a few friends and I Were hiking the appalachin trail not far from in Town Pennsylvania when we found something that scared the crap out of us we were taking a break at the small collection of rocks that sort of served as little chairs for us when a friend of ours stood to stretch his legs a little and walked around his Rock and
then noticed something sort of jutting out from the base he reached down and pulled out what looked like an old-fashioned sort of tin Of candy the metal kind with the lid on a hinge we start making jokes about how he's found someone stash but when he opens it all he finds is these two dirty pieces of paper he takes them out sets that tin down on the Rock and then unfolds the first of the two pieces he takes a look at one side and then turns it around to show us that it's just the sort
of crude drawing of some rocks and some trees presumably the same rocks and trees that we're at right Now but then as he turns the piece of paper around to show us he reads what's on the back of that paper and his face just seems to drop we ask what's wrong and he reads the short message aloud this was the last thing Sarah ever saw he said and we all respond what no way dude show us and he wasn't lying they really did say that but then I asked him to unfold the other piece of
paper but he Refuses so another one of my buddies gets up and walks over and takes the unfolded paper from him and then after unfolding it and briefly taking a look at what was written his expression drops as well list of people I want to apologize to he read aloud and then went on to list a bunch of people that someone had apparently stolen from my first thought was that it was maybe a note that someone leaves before They take their own life written by someone who liked to draw and refer to themselves in the
third person or something but the than hearing how they stole from someone that made me think that it was written in the third person because it truly was written by someone else this sparked a lot of debate between us because obviously theft didn't exclude the possibility of someone dying and Sarah could have stolen a bunch of money regretted it and Then walked up into the hills to take her own life but then surely a note like that would have included an apology to her parents or something at least that was my take on it why
only list the people you stole go from it took a minute before one of us thought to compare the handwriting on each note but even then we weren't all decided the apology note was 100% written with a different pen but the handwriting was so shaky that it's not out of the question That it was written at a different time when the writer was feeling extreme emotions and all that in the end we stopped arguing over it and decided to look around for any signs of a body or anything there was no chance of us just
sort of slipping the notes back into the tin sliding it back under the Rock and just walking away after finding something like that even if it was just someone's idea of some sick joke then it was worth our peace of mind to make sure That we weren't leaving someone rotting in the woods and we walked around for a while but didn't find any bodies we didn't find anything suspicious or anything either and if I'm being honest I didn't even know what I was looking for I kept telling one of my buddies to watch out for
Disturbed Earth thinking there might have been a shallow grave under our feet but then we were in the woods all the Earth is Disturbed and after that we got to Thinking on what we should do again and we decided to take the box and the notes into the next town and then drop them off at the precinct or the department of whatever kind of law enforcement related place they had in town and when we got there we told the cops the same thing I just told you it might be nothing just a dumb joke or
something but we couldn't just walk off and forget that we ever found that tin and those notes and to this day it Remains the creepiest thing I've ever come across while hiking hey friends thanks for listening click that notification Bell to be alerted of all future narration I release new videos every Monday and Thursday at 700 p.m. EST and there are super fun live streams on Sundays and Wednesday nights if you got a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit r/ letre official and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video
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