Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iocju/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Hey guys! I'm back from my training op, and I have a lot of really interesting stories to share with you. I've got enough that I'm going to break them up into two parts, this being the first. I'd love to put them all in one entry, but I just haven't had a chance to write them all down yet. I didn't have anything too crazy happen while I was out there, but we did have one incident with a rookie that I found relevant. Since I'm sure you guys have been waiting for these, I'll just get right into the stories. I'll assign each batch of stories to the person who told them to me.

K.D: K. D is a vet who's been an SAR officer for about fifteen years. She specializes in high elevation mountain rescues, and is widely considered one of the best in her field. She was one of the more enthusiastic storytellers, and since we were together a fair amount during exercises, she ended up telling me about four that really stuck with me.

The first she told me in response to my asking about her most traumatic calls. She shook her head and told me that really bad calls happen more frequently on the mountain, since the potential for nasty accidents is higher. About five years ago, one of the parks she worked at had a string of disappearances. It was a bad year, she said, one of the worst on record as far as weather went. They were getting about a foot of new snow every couple of days, and there were a few avalanches that killed some climbers. They'd warned people about staying on the mapped areas, but of course there's always those who don't listen. In one particularly nasty case, an entire family got wiped out because the father decided he knew better than the officials, and he took them out into an area that wasn't safe. They were snowshoeing, and as best K.D could figure, they'd walked onto a shelf of snow that looked solid, but actually wasn't. It gave way, and this family went ass over teakettle almost three hundred feet down a slope. They landed on the rocks at the bottom, and the parents died instantly. One of the kids did as well, but the other two survived. One had a broken leg and fractured ribs, the other was almost unharmed save for some bruising and a sprained ankle. The uninjured child left his sibling behind and set out to find help. K.D said the kid didn't make it more than half a mile before a storm overtook him. Kid stopped to try and get warm, or maybe just to rest, and ended up freezing to death. They ended up finding the family with the help of some witnesses who saw them heading out into the wilderness, and she was the one to find the kid who'd frozen to death looking for help. She said it had started to snow, just enough to obscure long-distance vision, but not enough to make searching impossible. She saw a figure sitting in the snow up ahead, and she got to it as quickly as possible. She described, in detail, how as she got closer, she realized first that it was a child, second that they were deceased, and third that they had frozen in one of the most pitiful positions she's ever found a corpse in. The kid was sitting upright, with his knees tucked up against his chest. His arms were curled around them, and his head was tucked up in his coat. When she moved the coat to look at his face, she saw that he'd died crying. His face was twisted, and the tears were frozen on his cheeks. She said it was painfully obvious that the kid was terrified when he succumbed to hypothermia, and as a mother, it broke her heart. She told me, repeatedly, that she hopes the father is burning in hell as we speak.

The other traumatic story she told me that stood out, in my mind, was one that happened when she was a rookie. Her team got a report of an experienced climber who hadn't come home the previous day. His wife was convinced that something bad had happened, because he'd never failed to come home on time. They went out looking for him, and had to climb what sounded like some very technically challenging parts of the mountain. They got to a relatively flat area, and K.D started seeing blood in the snow. She followed the trail, and as she went, she started seeing little bits of tissue. She wasn't sure exactly what body part it had come from, but the farther she followed it, the more there was. She follows this blood-and-tissue trail to a sheltered area under a cliff face, and she finds the climber. She said there was so much blood, more than she'd ever seen before. He was lying face down, one arm stretched in front of him, as if he'd died crawling. She looks closer, and sees that he's been partially disemboweled, which is where the tissue she'd seen had come from. The guy has an ice pick tucked into a hip holster, and it's covered in blood. Of course, they'll never be sure exactly what happened, but she said as best she can figure, this is what went down: The guy had been attempting to climb up to the next area, and had been using his ice ax to ascend. He'd probably hit a loose patch, and had fallen. On the way down, or possibly when he landed, he'd gotten impaled by the ax, and it had disemboweled him. He'd drug himself along, tearing pieces of himself out as he went, and had died under the cliff face. She isn't terribly bothered by gore, but I guess a few of the guys who came to help her remove the body threw up when they turned him over and a good portion of his intestines spilled out.

I mentioned to her that I was interested in hearing about any experiences she had with people completely disappearing. Her eyes light up, and she leans in close to me. 'Wanna hear a real doozy?' She asks. She tells me about how, when she first started, there was a case that got a lot of attention in the media. A family had been out berry picking in an area of the forest very close to the entrance of the park. They had two little boys, both under the age of five, and at some point during the day, one of them vanishes. There's an absolutely massive search, and they find absolutely nothing. It's another of those cases where it's like the kid was never there in the first place. The dogs just sit down and don't pick up on anything, no trace of the kid is found. The search goes on for about two months, but is eventually called off. Fast forward to six months later. The family comes back to place flowers at a memorial that's been set up there for the kid. They bring their other son. While they're placing the flowers, they lose sight of the kid for about three seconds, and in that span of time he vanishes into thin air. Now obviously, the parents are beyond devastated. It's awful enough to lose one child, but to lose two is beyond imagining. The search is huge, one of the largest in state history. There are about three hundred volunteers combing every inch of this park, looking for the kid. But again, there's no trace of him. The search goes on for about a week, with people looking miles from the part of the park he vanished from. And then, almost two weeks later, a volunteer almost fifteen miles from the designated search area radios in that he's found the kid. They assumed that the kid was dead, but the volunteer says he's not only alive, he's in good shape. K.D and her team go out to recover the kid, and when they get there, she can't believe that this is the kid that's been missing. His clothes are clean, there's no dirt on him anywhere, and he doesn't appear traumatized. The volunteer says he found the kid sitting on a log, playing with a little twig bundle that's bound together with some old rope. K.D asks him where he's been, who he was with for those two weeks, and the kid tells her that he's been with 'the fuzzy man'. Now K.D firmly believes in Bigfoot, so she gets all excited and asks what he means by fuzzy. Was he hairy? But the kid says no, he wasn't hairy. He was a 'fuzzy man', and he describes a man that's blurry, 'like when you close your eyes but not all the way closed.' He says the man came out of the trees and took the kid with him deep into the woods. The kid says he slept in a hollow tree, and the fuzzy man gave him berries to eat. K.D asks if the man was mean, if he scared the kid, and the kid says 'no, he wasn't scary. but i didn't like how he didn't have eyes.' K.D says they get the kid back to headquarters, and a cop takes him into town to talk to him more about what happened. She's friends with the cop that talked to him, and she said the kid described being kept in this tree by the fuzzy man, and given berries whenever he was hungry. He was allowed to wander around a very specific clearing, but when he tried to go further, the fuzzy man would 'get mad and yell real loud even though he didn't have a mouth'. When the kid got scared at night, the fuzzy man 'made it go brighter' and gave him the twig bundle. He said the fuzzy man was going to keep him, but he had to let him go because the kid wasn't 'the right kind.' He either can't or won't elaborate more on that. The cops are just sort of left scratching their heads, and the search for his brother is renewed with no results. The kid has no idea where his brother might be, and they never find him.

The last story that K.D told me was of something that happened to her when she got separated from her training group when she was a rookie. They were learning the basics of high elevation belaying on a well-mapped side of the mountain, and she had to use the bathroom. She went off about fifty yards from the group during a meal break, and did her business. I'll tell the rest exactly as she told it to me' 'So I go to take a piss, and once I'm done, I start going back to the group. But I've only gotten about five feet when I realize that I have no idea where I am. And this wasn't a 'oh, I got turned around' lost. I mean I had literally no fucking clue where I was. If you'd asked me, I don't even think I'd have been able to tell you what state we were in. It was sort of how I imagine people with amnesia feel, you know? You're completely lost, and you have no idea what to do. So I stood there for a while, just trying to figure out where the fuck I was and what I was supposed to do. But the longer I stand there, the more confused and turned around I get, so I started walking. As I recall, I just picked a random direction and went for it. And as I'm walking, it's just getting worse and worse to the point where I have no concept of why I'm on the mountain in the first place. I'm just trudging through the snow, and then I start hearing this voice. It's kind of inside my head, almost. Like if a frog could talk, all low and croaky. And it's telling me over and over 'it's okay, it's okay, you just need to find something to eat. Find something to eat and you'll be okay, just keep walking and find something to eat. Eat. Eat.' So I start looking around for anything that I can eat, and I swear to god I've never felt that hungry in my whole life. It was bottomless, and I think I'd have eaten just about anything you put in front of me right then. I had no concept of time, so I had no idea how long I'd been out when I hear an actual voice coming toward me. I go toward it and see one of the other SARs, and he looks fucking terrified. He's running toward me, asking if I'm okay and what the hell I'm doing out here. And the scary thing was, as he's running toward me, I kind of see myself reaching into my belt for my hunting knife. I'm not even really thinking about what I'm doing, but what I am thinking is that I have to eat. If I don't eat, I'll never be okay again, so I just have to eat. He sees me doing that and he backs off right away. He yells at me to put my knife away, that he's not gonna hurt me, and that kind of snaps me back. All of a sudden, I know exactly where I am, and I put the knife away. I run to him and ask him how long I've been gone, thinking he'll tell me I've been gone for half an hour or so. But he tells me I've been gone for two fucking days. I've gone over two peaks and ended up almost on the other side of the mountain, and if I'd kept going, I would have ended up wandering into about three hundred miles of wilderness. They'd never have found me. He can't believe I'm not dead, and of course I don't know what the fuck to think. To me, no time has passed at all. I don't say anything, I just go back with him to a rendezvous point and I'm taken back to HQ to be airlifted to the hospital. When I get there, they do all kinds of tests, and try to figure out what happened. As best they can guess, I had some kind of weird fugue state, which is kind of like amnesia, or a weird seizure that knocked my brain out of whack. But the truth is that we really don't know. It's never happened again, but I'll tell you, ever since then I never go out there alone. People rag on me for making them come with me when I have to leave the group, but I just tell 'em that listening to me piss in the snow is better than losing me for two fucking days on a freezing mountain.'

EW: The next person I talked to was E.W, a former trainer who now works as an EMT. He still comes to ops like this to help out, but doesn't work full-time for us anymore. He specialized in finding lost kids, he just seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to knowing where they'd gone. He's a legend among the more senior vets, but he gets embarrassed if you compliment him on his work. He sat down with me at dinner one evening, and we ended up swapping stories. Most of them were just casual, but when we got on the subject of our weirder calls, I mentioned that I'd had a buddy who'd gone up a set of stairs. He got kind of quiet and asked me if I'd heard of a little boy who'd disappeared from his park a few years back. I hadn't, so he told me this story.

They were out looking for this eleven-year-old boy, Joey, who'd gone missing near a river. Of course, the first thought was that he'd fallen in and drowned, but when they brought dogs out, they led SAR officers away from the river and up into a very densely forested area. When we do searches for people, we search in a grid pattern, and we search every 'box' of the grid incredibly thoroughly. What E.W's team noticed right away was that a very strange pattern was emerging. Dogs in alternating boxes were picking up Joey's scent, but losing it when they overlapped with another box. If you think of a checkerboard, Joey's scent was being picked up in random black squares, but never in red. This, of course, didn't make any sense, because how could the kid bounce from area to area without leaving a scent in each place he passed? E.W and his partner pass into a new box of the grid, and E.W notices a set of stairs about fifty yards away. He tells his partner that they need to go check near it, but his partner flat-out refuses. He tells E.W that he's made it a point never to go near any stairs he sees, and that while it may be routine, he's not to pretend that it's normal. He tells E.W that he'll wait in sight while E.W checks. E.W says he was irritated, but he felt for the guy, and didn't push him on the subject. 'I walked over to the stairs. They were small, kind of like stairs into a basement. I don't really feel strongly one way or the other about them, the stairs I mean, so I wasn't scared or anything. I guess I'm like everyone else, and I just prefer not to think about them too much. 'Anyway, I went over and I could see that there was something lying on the bottom step, sort of curled up. My hear sinks, because of course you always hope for the best. And we were confident that we'd find this kid alive, because he'd only been missing for a few hours. But I knew right away that it was him, and that he was dead. He was curled up in a little ball on the step, holding his stomach. It looked like he'd been in horrible pain when he died, but I didn't see any blood, except some on his lips and chin. I radioed in that I'd found him, and we got his body back to command. That poor family, they were devastated. The parents couldn't understand how he'd be dead, 'cause he'd only been gone for such a short amount of time. And on top of that we didn't have any obvious cause of death, which just made it worse. I figured he'd probably eaten something poisonous, since he was holding his stomach when I found him, but I didn't want to guess. It's hard enough to hear that your kid is dead, let alone have some stupid SAR guy guessing about what happened. They took him away, and I went home and tried not to think about it. I hate finding dead kids, man. I loved this job but it's one of the reasons I left. I've got two daughters, and the thought of losing them that way just...' He choked up a little here. I'm not great with emotional stuff like that, and it's always sort of awkward to see a grown man cry, so I didn't really know what to do. He pulled himself together eventually, though, and he kept going. 'We don't always hear back from the coroners about cause of death. It's not really our job to know, I guess, and sometimes if they think it's foul play they won't tell us because of legal bullshit. But I've got a friend who works for the sheriff's department, and he'll usually pass along any interesting info if I ask. In this case, though, I actually got a call from him about a week later. He asks if I remember the kid, and of course I do, and he says some seriously weird shit is going on. He tells me, 'E.W, man, you're gonna think I'm crazy, but the coroner has no idea what happened to this kid. He's never seen anything like it.' My friend goes on to tell me that when the coroner opened the kid up, he couldn't even believe what he was seeing. The kid's organs were like swiss cheese. Quarter-sized holes were punched clean through just about every single organ this kid had, aside from his heart and lungs. But his colon, his stomach, his kidneys and even one of his testicles, were full of these clean holes. My friend said the coroner described it as if someone had taken a hole-punch and punched holes out of everything, they were so neat. But the kid didn't have a scratch on him, no entry or exit wounds. The closest anyone there had ever seen like it was a guy who'd filled himself full of buckshot a year or so back while cleaning his rifle. No one had a clue what could possibly have caused it. My friend asked me if I'd ever heard of anything like it, or if we'd had similar cases in the past. But I'd never even heard of something like that, and I told him I wasn't going to be of any help to him. As far as I know, the coroner determined the cause of death as something like 'massive internal bleeding', but no one knows what really happened. I've never been able to forget that kid. I have nightmares about it sometimes. I don't let my kids go into the woods alone, and when we go together I never let them out of my sight. I used to love it out here. But that case, and a couple others, just sort of ruined it for me.' Dinner was over, so we started to clean up and go back to our cabins. Before we went our separate ways, he put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me really close. He tells me that there's bad things out here. Things that don't care if we have families or lives, or that we can think and feel. He tells me to be careful, and he walks away. I didn't a chance to talk with him again, but that story stuck with me.
PB: By pure coincidence, I got to talk to another vet, P.B who's been in the SAR field for years. We were partnered on a grid sweep during a training exercise, and we were chatting casually about how we liked the job, what kinds of things we'd seen, and the like. At one point, we passed an old set of stairs, though these were probably from an old fire lookout, given the area that we were in. I sort of casually mentioned that I was curious about the stairs, and that I wished I knew more about them. He got kind of quiet and looked like he wanted to tell me something, but wasn't sure if he should. Finally, he told me to turn my radio off. Obviously this is something we are never, ever supposed to do, but I did it, and he did the same.

About seven years ago, he tells me, he was out on a call with a rookie. They were in an area of the park that's had a lot of strange reports and events. Disappearances, stories about lights in the forest, odd noises, things like that. The rookie was totally spooked, kept going on and on about 'things out in the woods'. According to P.B: 'The guy wouldn't stop talking about 'the Goatman'. Just on and on, 'Goatman' this and 'Goatman' that. Finally, I told him that there was plenty else to be afraid of out here that was very real, and that he'd better get over this thing with the Goatman. The rookie wanted to know what kinds of things I was talking about, and I just told him to shut up and walk. We crested a little ridge and there was a staircase about ten yards ahead. The rookie stops dead in his tracks and just stands there looking at them. I tell him, 'See? That's something you should be afraid of.' The rookie asks me what the hell these are doing out here, and for some reason, I just open up and tell him the truth. Or what I've been told is the truth. I could have gotten in a lot of trouble for doing what I did, and I could get in a lot of trouble for repeating it to you. But you're a nice kid, and I want you to stop looking into this. Quit while you're ahead. So I'll tell you what I know, under the condition that you never breathe a word of this to the supes.' I told him I wouldn't say a word, and he double-checks that our radios are off. 'When I first started out, we were a little less tight-lipped about them, and other things that happen out here. We warned people before they were even hired that there was weird shit going on. I guess the Forest Service was tired of having such a massive turnover rate, and they wanted people to know what they were getting into. So they started having people sign these agreements that they wouldn't go to the media about what they were going to see. The FS didn't want to scare people away, so the last thing they needed were spooked rookies running off to the media with stories of ghosts and haunted stairs. But eventually, they found that the agreements weren't necessary. People not only didn't want to talk about what they saw, they wouldn't. A few times, media tried to talk to people when kids or hikers would disappear, and no one would say a word. I can't really explain it. I guess we just... don't really want to admit anything is wrong. This is our job, to be out in the woods every single day. We don't need to be spooked, and the best way to avoid that is to pretend like everything's okay. So I'll tell you everything I can think of, and after that, I'm done talking about it for good. And I expect you not to bring it up around me, ever. 'The stairs have been out here as long as the parks have existed. We have records going back decades describing them. Sometimes people go up them, and nothing happens. Other times... Look, I really don't like talking about this, but sometimes, really bad shit happens. I saw one guy get his hand sliced clean off when he got to the top step. He reached out to touch a tree branch, and it happened so fast. One second his hand was there, and the next it was gone. Completely clean wound. We didn't find his hand, and the guy almost died. Another time, a woman touched one of the stairs, and a blood vessel in her brain exploded. Literally exploded, like a water balloon. She sort of stumbled down and came over to me, and all she got out was 'I think something is wrong with me.' She dropped like a sack of flour, dead before she hit the ground. I'll never forget the way the blood leaked into the inside of her eye. Before she died, I watched it turn red. I watched it happen and there wasn't a single thing I could do to help. 'We warn people not to go anywhere near them but there's always at least one idiot who does. And even if nothing happens to them, something bad always happens. Kids go missing as we're on their trail. Someone dies the next day, cut in half in a completely safe part of the park. I don't know why, but something bad always happens. I don't know exactly why they're out here, but it doesn't matter. They're here, and if we were smart, we'd tell our new officers exactly what they're capable of.' We were both quiet for a little while. I was afraid to talk because I wasn't sure if he was done. He looked like he wanted to say something else. Finally he spoke up again. 'Have you ever noticed how you can't find the same ones twice?' I nodded, expecting him to continue. But he just stayed quiet, walking alongside me, and eventually he started a story about the biggest deer he'd ever seen in the park. I didn't bring up the subject again, and I didn't press him for any more stories. He dropped out of the op the next day. Apparently he left before the sun came up; he said he was sick. None of us have heard from him since he left.
I'm going to stop here for the time being. I'll try and post the next part in the coming days, but what with it being the end of summer, things are pretty busy here. Thanks for the continued interest, guys, you've really awakened this curiosity in me that I didn't know I had!

EDIT: Part Five is up: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3kd90k/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

[–]qwerto14 3163 points3164 points3165 points 2 years ago(87 children)

Man, this sub has ruined me. Fuck the woods, fuck nature, fuck being alone in it, FUCK STAIRS, fuck Bigfoot, fuck having kids, fuck mountain lions, fuck the dark, fuck being alone in it, fuck strangers, in fact fuck ever being outside in a group of less than 5 capable adults, fuck abandoned anything, fuck mysterious noises, fuck animals, fuck unlocked doors, fuck windows, fuck wide open clearings, fuck crying people, fuck everything I'm staying in my house on reddit.

[–]theFATHERofLIES 430 points431 points432 points 2 years ago(14 children)

Coming soon, a new, terrifying series, darker, and more twisted than any before: In Your House

[–]Malak77 184 points185 points186 points 2 years ago(8 children)

You mean "The Stairs in Your House" muahahaha muahahaha

[–]MattMisch 40 points41 points42 points 2 years ago(3 children)

Jokes on you! I only have one set of stairs! Making it singular! So I only have stair in my house!

[–]Malak77 57 points58 points59 points 2 years ago(0 children)

It only takes one, bro. ;-)

[–]adamdeluxedition 223 points224 points225 points 2 years ago(5 children)

I think it's illegal to fuck some of those things....

[–]guineapigments 150 points151 points152 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I'd like to see a King's army try to pry me from Bigfoot's warm, savory embrace.

[–]spork-a-dork 601 points602 points603 points 2 years ago(4 children)

Upvoted, because all the fucks given.

[–]sevenworm 235 points236 points237 points 2 years ago(3 children)

The right fucks were given. That makes all the difference.

[–]JandersOf86 39 points40 points41 points 2 years ago(1 child)

"The right fucks in the wrong place can make all the dif-fer-ence in the world."

[–]Socal7775 135 points136 points137 points 2 years ago(0 children)

You remind me of this gif... Thanks for the laugh! http://i.imgur.com/UyDuIoQ.gif

[–]nance511 84 points85 points86 points 2 years ago(2 children)

fuck reddit because it's just making everything worse.

[–]qwerto14 102 points103 points104 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I'm already this far in, how much worse can it get? IMKIDDINGIDONTWANTTOKNOW

[–]lizzybe 808 points809 points810 points 2 years ago(58 children)

Every time you say you're going to stop here I get disappointed.

[–]PriestlyMuffin 292 points293 points294 points 2 years ago(54 children)

I have completely avoided any staircases since beginning to read these. Just too risky IMO.

[–]street_philatelist 535 points536 points537 points 2 years ago(6 children)

Iv been stuck up in my room for days now

[–]Screw_The_Illuminati 202 points203 points204 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Welcome to reddit.

[–][deleted] 163 points164 points165 points 2 years ago(23 children)

I'm waiting for him to start opening up about the forest stairs that don't go up but down. Those are the scariest.

[–][deleted] 57 points58 points59 points 2 years ago(7 children)

There's a set of stairs in a park in nebraska that go down. Ive never been down them, but rumors are there always a different number of stairs! Eff no. Stairs in a forest Im not havin it.

[–]japanesefriday 25 points26 points27 points 2 years ago(0 children)

holes

Sounds like some House of Leaves mysticism..

[–]Naklar85 10 points11 points12 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Fellow Nebraskan here...what part of the state? Which park? Aren't these stories addicting? I read them all aloud to my wife...my voice hurts.

[–]music2walkhomeby 24 points25 points26 points 2 years ago(0 children)

that didn't even cross my mind and now I'm scared shitless

[–]John-ozil 31 points32 points33 points 2 years ago(7 children)

The ones that go down are the gates to hell

[–]lostinsurburbia 111 points112 points113 points 2 years ago(3 children)

It actually leads to Blackreach.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I actually wouldn't mind going to Blackreach. I just hope I don't run into any dragons down there.

[–]lostinsurburbia 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Damn Falmer gave me more trouble than the dragon did.

[–]nothehorsey 101 points102 points103 points 2 years ago(12 children)

saw this, freaked the fuck out of me http://i.imgur.com/qgLiC4t.png

[–]aeiouieaeee 111 points112 points113 points 2 years ago(0 children)

See, when they are concrete, it's not so scary. Maybe there was a wooden building there that burnt down decades ago? The concrete ones you can chalk up to foundations of burnt down/demo'd buildings or old fire lookouts. Even wooden ones might be from old buildings. It's the fact that OP has mentioned lots of them are carpetted or pristine that creeps me the fuck out. I mean how could anyone possibly explain a staircase covered in carpet in the forest?! If a building had been there, and been destroyed, the carpet would not be there.

[–]6feet 38 points39 points40 points 2 years ago(5 children)

If you think anyone's gonna click that now, you're nuts.

[–]pinckney12 15 points16 points17 points 2 years ago(4 children)

Man, why doesn't someone burn the stairs down?

[–]Lyzzaryzz 111 points112 points113 points 2 years ago(0 children)

On the other side of the park, the forest starts to also burn...

[–]Ohthisisnice 262 points263 points264 points 2 years ago(22 children)

It's like 'Lost' but better. I need a tshirt of a woodsy scene with a random stair case.

[–]JackGrand 147 points148 points149 points 2 years ago(10 children)

imagine a tshirt with a design stair in the front and forest in the back with quote "i wanna believe"...

[–]ion-fields 52 points53 points54 points 2 years ago(2 children)

Reddit needs their own Redbubble shop

[–]whothefuckthrewthat 31 points32 points33 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Id fucking buy 5 of them

[–]Rangermatthias 15 points16 points17 points 2 years ago(0 children)

This needs to happen!

[–]jewdiful 198 points199 points200 points 2 years ago(39 children)

K.D.'s story of being lost for two days, wandering around the woods... oh my god. You're a great storyteller, so I was immediately able to imagine myself in her situation and immediately got goosebumps and heart thumping. Then as soon as I read "two fucking days" I started shaking. Maybe it's because being lost and alone in a strange place is one of my worst fears, but I found that story to be the scariest one of the bunch.

As far as the stairs go, and the strangeness with the grid/alternating squares during the search with the dogs, and the kid found with holes in his organs... all I can think is, maybe there's something about remote areas that causes reality to function differently on some kind of quantum level. Like our physical world typically functions the way it does because of consensus reality, overlapping perceptions that reinforce the building blocks of matter... physical properties that work differently in remote, desolate areas.

Kind of creepy to think about it that way. I wouldn't go into any strange place alone, that's for damn sure. Even just to prevent myself from having a solo experience that causes me to doubt myself and my sanity. You are the best OP, a fantastic writer and I thank you for sharing your talents!! Doesn't get much better than this, I tell you that.

[–]brwntrout 81 points82 points83 points 2 years ago(7 children)

i come from an animist culture and it seems that people who live outside of civilization, "in the woods, hills, mountains", tend to have a tradition and culture of respect for the "essense" or "spirit" of all things nature. its kinda of universal all around the globe, that a lot of tribal people, living in the woods, hills and mountains practice a form of animism.

this lends me to think such beliefs are the product of our ancestors long ago living hunter/gatherer lives in the forests, hills and mountains. that being so connected to nature, they may have experienced many weird and strange phenomenons that eventually coalesced into a belief system we generically call "animism" today.

[–]VirginiaDa 46 points47 points48 points 2 years ago(5 children)

I agree, the way one could just feel her confusion was amazing and, quite frankly, scary as hell. I got something else out of it too, though: a sense of comfort. She didn't feel like she had wandered around for days, mind racing or feeling like she was slowly slipping away. One can only hope the missing people who were later found dead (and those who haven't been found but probably are too) didn't experience that anguish either. Of course, them never dying or getting lost (or taken?) would always be the best, but this way feels... kinder somehow. If it hadn't been one of her colleagues but some wild animal she had come across, she had probably been able to kill it and eat it no problem. Same with other people who otherwise would never be able to kill an animal. I think it both gives a greater chance for survival and when all else fails and they don't make it, they might not have been too aware of what happened to them. Almost like they had been drugged, like an animal at the vet that is to be put down. They don't understand it, it's terrible, but they didn't get the anguish. At least this is what I hope. Kinda like the people who have almost died of hypothermia and have told how they felt some presence comforting them, urging them to take off their clothes (possibly to speed up the process).

[–]TheReconRacoon 19 points20 points21 points 2 years ago(2 children)

The moment I read "almost like that had been drugged" I made the connection to his other story about the bear man taking a child while the mother turned around for a few seconds. The other kids in her group acted as if they had been drugged..

[–]VirginiaDa 6 points7 points8 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Ikr? And none of them were scared. Personally my biggest fear in life is probably knowing I'm about to die. As I said, thus just seems kinder (if not just a natural weapon to avoid struggling prey).

[–]_Poison_ 148 points149 points150 points 2 years ago(12 children)

Waiting for new parts of this series is like waiting for the next episode of your favorite TV show.

[–]Kitsune-Smirk 55 points56 points57 points 2 years ago(10 children)

This kind of stuff should be a tv show, not enough creepy/the unknown kind of shows are around. Sure there's Lost and X-Files, but nothing "new".

[–]iamvishnu 16 points17 points18 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Check out a show called Haven. It's based on a Steven King novel and has all sorts of this shit going on.

[–]LS240 116 points117 points118 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I haven't even finished reading this installment but I wanted to share my own little story before I forget. Now mine is pretty innocuous and may be a perfectly routine happening, but all these stories about being lured off and vanishing kids makes me uneasy thinking back on it.

A little background before I get to the event. As a little kid, my parents took me camping a lot, nearly every weekend during the summer probably from the time I was around 5 to 12 or so. We would nearly always go camping in the same wilderness area in Colorado, probably 10+ miles from the nearest town of Woodland Park. Now this isn't a completely remote area as there is easy access by vehicle, but it's not well-visited and even though we camped right off one of the main trails, it wasn't unusual to go the whole weekend without seeing another person or vehicle.

As a result of being out there so much we knew the area well, and my Dad had been teaching me some woodsmanship from the time I was little. I knew to always check for landmarks and never get out of sight of one landmark before noting another, so I could always find my way back. I was also a responsible, smart kid and I actually listened to my parents, so by the time I was 8 or 9 they had no problem letting me ride my mountain bike away from camp on my own. I also always had my dog with me, a very smart, loyal -80lbs mix breed I'd had from a puppy. That dog may have saved my life.

One morning when I was 9 or 10, I took off after breakfast on my mountain bike as usual, and I quickly split off on a trail that took me in a direction I'd never gone before. I had only traveled perhaps half a mile or so from camp, when I was biking along the trail in the bottom of a large natural bowl-shaped clearing, with a rise in the trail over a ridge just ahead.

Well my dog was eager and liked to run in front of me and she got to the top of the rise first, with me probably 40-50 feet behind. When she hit the top, she came to a dead stop and took the most aggressive stance I'd ever seen from her in my life. She was not prone to being aggressive at all and if she saw a small animal would playfully give chase at the most. But whatever she saw, she didn't like at all. Her ears pinned back, all the hair stood up on her spine, and she growled long, low and loud like something out of a movie.

I was terrified and as soon as I saw her stop suddenly I did as well. My curiosity about what was over that rise that I couldn't see was not nearly enough to overcome the fear. I turned my bike around and yelled for my dog to follow. She slowly backed away and then turned towards me.

When I saw she was following I pedaled out of there as hard and fast as I could and didn't stop till I was back at camp.

Now, whatever it was, it was likely nothing unusual. Maybe just a mountain lion, bear, coyote, who knows. But whether natural or supernatural, that dog likely saved my life. If I hadn't had her along that day, maybe I would have been one of the vanishing kids.

[–]ammiam 41 points42 points43 points 2 years ago(0 children)

This thread is kind of old now but almost the exact same thing happened to me, except I was on foot, in Australia, and I lived there. It was a huge area of land and I had permission from all the surrounding farms to explore. Usually I did so on horseback and nothing ever really happened, but one day I decided to go on foot with my dog, I'd never been to the area I went to without a horse or car but we enjoyed the walk.

We got to a part of the dirt road 2km from home that dropped steeply from a hill and made a quick turn into deeper forest. After the bend was a small river with an old wooden bridge.

I'm paranoid and always pay attention to the mood of any animals I'm around. My dog, a Labrador who was one of the friendliest beings I've ever met is jogging ahead of me, doing happy dog stuff. He reaches the bottom of the hill just before the bend and stops dead, ridged. I'm only halfway down the hill but I stop too and watch him. His hackles go up and hes staring down the path into the deeper bush, towards the bridge. From where I am I can't see any further down the path than where he's stopped.

Then without a word he spins and runs back up the hill as fast as he can, I'm running too by the time he reaches me and we don't stop until we reach our property border.

There were wild dogs in the area and dingo sightings but I don't know if those would have scared him as badly. He never reacted like that around other dogs, he was super chill.

It was pretty deep woods and our house was the furthest back from the main road (2-3 km). I learnt a lot of respect for nature growing up there. Once I got completely turned around on horseback within a km from home. I knew that place like the back of my hand, I grew up there and have a great sense of direction but I felt like I was in another world for a few minutes. It was so weird. I didn't recognize anything and the terrain was actually different. Like that half of our farm was very thick bush almost like a rainforest but the area I was in that day was covered in short dark grass and moss, I don't remember ever seeing that again in that area, it was all dirt, dead leafs, furns and small trees. No grass until the clearings over a km away.

I only found my way home because I let my horse take over and he immediately turned and went in a direction that I would never have gone in. Almost immediately we broke through this oval shaped meter and a half high break in a wall of trees and were home. Like literally at our front door. There is no terrain like that in the forest around our house. When I think about it the direction we came from is an area I spent a lot of time in that I've explored extensively about a km back from the house, I had makeshift horse jumps and a little pen I made out of sticks with a friend deeper than where I came out. I've never thought about how weird this was. But there is no part of that forest that looks like that.

Sorry for the rant but your post and op's post just brought back all these memories.

[–]saltypepe 103 points104 points105 points 2 years ago(12 children)

Those stairs are some night vale level shit

[–]dovemans 20 points21 points22 points 2 years ago(9 children)

i was almost gonna google night vale but decided sleep is best for me.

[–]Achruss 88 points89 points90 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Hello, dear listener...

We here at the Nightvale community radio station want to assure that there is nothing to be afraid of! No vague yet menacing government agencies, no strange desert otherworlds, and certainly no angels!

But be sure to avoid any wheat and wheat by products. Say hello to the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home [Hello Al, its me the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home. I was rummaging through the pantry, searching for those bees I lost the other day. I thought maybe they wanted some of those disgusting organic pistachios you like so much. Why don't you ever buy real pistachios anymore, Al? I guess I'll have to keep shutting off the DVR 3 minutes before catching up with the Kardashian's is over until you do. See you after work, from the dark corner of your closet next to your hideous salmon dress shirts while you fruitlessly attempt to sleep, Al.], and praise be the glow cloud (all hail.).

And don't forget: If you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget.

Good night, listener. Stay tuned next, for more strange chanting in a language you've never learned, yet somehow understand, that grows fainter... And fainter... And fainter... Until it's a half remembered dream from some forgotten childhood fever.

[–]GiveAHoot22 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago(0 children)

"And don't forget: If you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget."

.... Since no one will believe you anyway.

[–][deleted] 670 points671 points672 points 2 years ago*(83 children)

Okay, I've been sitting on this story for almost a year, and I feel like this is as good a place as any to tell it. I know everything on /r/nosleep is "true," but this is actually true and can be partially verified by my posting history.

I spent about six months last year WWOOFing, which is essentially volunteering on organic farms in exchange for room and board. One of the farms I stayed at was actually an off-the-grid homestead near Mt. Hood, Oregon, populated by shamanic hippies (who had some wild stories, themselves!) and while not remote, was deep enough in the mountains that we had no neighbors for at least ten miles in every direction. Beautiful, forested land with an amazing view of Mt. Hood from the garden. I was camping every night for about two weeks before weird things started happening.

The first bizarre occurrence happened not to me, but to a fellow WWOOFer, who I'll call J. Now, I am not particularly outdoorsy-- I grew up in the woods in north Florida and spent my formative years getting lost in places I shouldn't be, but I don't have a great deal of camping experience and only the most basic survival skills. I am comfortable in the woods, but only until sunset. J, a true outdoorsman, had been a forest ranger in the Alaskan bush for two years prior and frequently went on weeks-long solo-backpacking trips. He had shown up at the farm a few days after me and had set up camp over a mile further down the mountain than I had, which I initially thought was a dickish move but later came to appreciate because he played his harmonica at all hours and nobody needs to hear that shit. He was a slow-talking Minnesotan that favored all things logical.

One morning, we met up for breakfast and he asked me if I had heard "all that screaming" the night before. I hadn't. He told me that he had been laying in his tent with his headlamp on, reading a book when he heard a deep, rumbling scream just outside his tent. He turned his lamp off to listen more closely, and realized that his entire tent was illuminated from the outside, as if someone was aiming a floodlight at it. In the few seconds after he turned his headlamp off, two things happened in rapid succession-- the screaming cut off as if someone had flipped a switch, and the light from outside clicked off. He listened for footsteps, but heard nothing. After a few moments of silence, he turned his headlamp back on and left his tent to investigate, because I guess he had never seen a horror movie in his whole goddamn life. He said that there was nothing in the clearing and no movement from the surrounding forest, even though he hadn't heard anything leave and the scream had been very close to, if not within, his camp. Then he apparently shrugged to himself and went to sleep, or maybe he passed out in fear and was too much of a man to admit it.

He told me this over breakfast and I was horrified. He said he'd never heard an animal that sounded like that and could not explain the light, except that maybe a hunter had found their way onto our land. But then where did they go? He listened for footsteps and heard nothing. He didn't seem worried, just a bit perturbed. It was very Minnesota of him.

Everything was quiet for a few weeks after that incident. J left for another farm, and I remained in my old campsite, only about 3/4 of a mile down from the main cabin. I was comfortable in my tent and no longer jerked awake at broken twigs or animals moving through the brush. I was very proud of myself-- look at me, an outdoorswoman!-- which was, of course, when the screaming started.

I was laying in my tent, just on the edge of sleep when it started. It was a deep, low roaring-- unlike any animal I knew to live in the mountains in that region. I consoled myself by saying it was an injured black bear, a fucked up wolf, some kind of Lovecraftian mutant elk. Then, from farther down the mountain, something else began screaming, answering. The two whatevers shrieked at each other for the better part of an hour. I laid in my tent, trying to psych myself up to hike back up to the main cabin, but couldn't quite commit. I laced up my boots and put on my headlamp in case I had to make a run for it. Eventually, the screaming stopped and I somehow managed to sleep.

I woke up somewhere around 4am to something very large shuffling in the bush directly behind my tent. I laid in the dark and listened, absolutely terrified. Elk, bear? It was too large. I could hear it ruffling branches of trees at least six feet off the ground. I heard it take a step, and then another. Bipedal. Human? Hunter? A hunter would never be as loud as this thing was, and I seriously doubt they would disturb an obvious camp site. Besides, in the month I'd been on the homestead at that point, I'd never heard a gunshot. I'd never seen anyone other than the people I was working with this far up the mountain, for that matter. I laid there, considering my options. It moved slowly, like it was picking through the bushes behind me-- which, in retrospect, of course it was, I'd camped right next to wild blackberry. I laid and listened and waited for a long time, almost until sunrise. It was moving slowly down the mountain. I laid in my tent long after the noise died out.

When I finally managed to rally my nerves and leave my tent, the brush behind my tent was obviously disturbed. I thought about investigating, looking for prints, droppings, but decided I'd rather just repress the whole thing and deal with it when I was far, far away from these woods. At breakfast, I asked my host, A, about the screaming. She was delighted that I'd had a run in with the "forest people." She said that years ago when they'd moved onto the land, the forest people would get into their garden and make a mess of things, so she'd started leaving baskets of produce for them as a sign of goodwill. They'd left the garden alone since then.

I camped out for another week before it got too cold and I moved into the main cabin, and never heard anything weird again. Pretty anticlimactic, but I guess real life usually is. Still very bizarre and interesting-- as a lifelong student of all things esoteric, it verified a lot of suspicions I had... mostly that weird shit happens in the woods. It's also pretty telling that everyone I met in the Cascades-- granted most of them were of the shamanic, metaphysical persuasion-- had a Sasquatch story.

There were a few other strange things about that place, but this story is by far the most interesting. Oregon is a weird place.

[–]hinklefinkledinkledo 240 points241 points242 points 2 years ago(3 children)

Man, Bigfoot is kind of a dick.

Real nice garden here. Would be a shame of something... happened to it...

[–]Inotalaslin 115 points116 points117 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Or maybe he's part of a Bigfoot mafia

"I'll fuck with your shit until you pay me for protection! You don't want anything to happen to your carrots........ do you?"

[–]Idiotnextdoor_2 210 points211 points212 points 2 years ago(6 children)

One thing I love about the series is the stories. The second are the comments! Everybody narrating their camp experiences.

[–]famoushorse 38 points39 points40 points 2 years ago(5 children)

Reminded me off an old series I saw on here a few years back but it never concluded https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/123woj/a_strange_phone_call_from_the_wilderness/

[–]welchplug 12 points13 points14 points 2 years ago(3 children)

I wanna know the strange shit.

[–]RelativetoZero 89 points90 points91 points 2 years ago(3 children)

Well, thats it. Im done with this thread. I can only solo multi-day/weeklong trips because I have either rationalized, or erased the fear of the woods from my brain. This is corrupting my mental state and will lead to paranoid, sleepless nights and/or terrified power hiking at night while clutching my knife and bear spray.

I'm sorry for your experience. Good evening to you sir and good night noelsleep.

[–]chateaumojo 42 points43 points44 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Yeah? You'll be back.

[–]Nerdfighter1174 73 points74 points75 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I went camping near Mt Hood, with three other friends. The set up was two friends near a gap between two trees where they made a raised platform and me and a friend on a bed we made on an old fallen log. About 1 in the morning I was awoken to the sound of leaves cracking. I listened carefully and I swore I could hear the low end of a conversation but then when I'd try to focus on it i would stop hearing it. I assumed I was imagining things. That is, until my friend prodded me and asked if I could make out what they were talking about. I quietly said I couldn't. I fell asleep about 30 minutes later but my friend stayed awake and swore he could hear the cracking of leaves come into our camp, stop, then stop moving for about 10 minutes. When we woke up we saw no sign that any of our campsite was disturbed and our friends still don't believe we heard anything.

[–]pleasesir1more 23 points24 points25 points 2 years ago(12 children)

Oregon is a weird place. I love it! I was actually looking into wwoofing for the first time this summer and had seen a few places up there near mt hood. Woulda been crazy to have worked in that same area. Fuck that now :)

[–]dontknowforsure 36 points37 points38 points 2 years ago*(5 children)

My son and daughter, who are in their early 20's, travel the country backpacking and hitchhiking. They do a lot of WWOOF'ing and spend time in various intentional communities/communes across the country, many of which are in very rural/wilderness areas. I was able to speak to them recently and warned them about stairs in the woods...they think I'm nuts. I hope they will read these stories and take heed. I never really worried about them spending so much time in national forests and wilderness areas until now.

[–]ASongInSilence 32 points33 points34 points 2 years ago(9 children)

Thank you for sharing! This was well written and a lovely addition to read on top of OPs story. I love creepy, paranormal, horror, or just downright crazy woods and forest stories. I don't know why but they are by far my favorite to read.

I'm glad whatever you had the (mis)fortune to run into was peaceful and didn't disturb you. I really like the idea of docile and gentle creatures/entities/etc lurking around in the trees. Not all things are evil! They have to balance themselves out, right?

Again, thanks for sharing!

[–][deleted] 22 points23 points24 points 2 years ago(3 children)

Thanks! There's definitely some weird, benevolent creatures in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. My host family had a lot of stories about fairies and forest spirits, and we always left offerings after harvest.

[–]sevenworm 32 points33 points34 points 2 years ago(0 children)

he turned his headlamp back on and left his tent to investigate, because I guess he had never seen a horror movie in his whole goddamn life

Haha! Legit LOL.

[–]Fngrlnglnggd 362 points363 points364 points 2 years ago(37 children)

I am so damn addicted to this series, it's ridiculous! Bravo sir! And more ASAP :) Nevermind the fact that I will never be able to camp again without being scared shitless.... Thank you anyways for your stories

[–]marya-morevna 70 points71 points72 points 2 years ago(1 child)

It's the first series - or even single posting - to actually scare me in nosleep for so long! I live in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woodland, so even more freaked out with every update. I spent last night reading it in my bed, with my back to the room, and ended up so freaked I didn't want to turn over again.

Please give us the next update ASAP, and, you know... never stop.

[–]Zaiya53 36 points37 points38 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I'm sitting here in the garden center of my home improvement store chashiering, surrounded by flowers & pretty fountains & shit, & I'm scared out of my mind lol!

[–]BlondieBomb 30 points31 points32 points 2 years ago*(0 children)

I'm right there with you in every way!

These stories are so good, and a decent chance that I'll never step foot in the woods again!

[–]outlawsix 60 points61 points62 points 2 years ago(14 children)

http://pre01.deviantart.net/d874/th/pre/i/2013/138/c/8/stairs_to_the_past___madam_sherri_s_forest_by_alpoarts-d65fshl.jpg

Uuuugggghhhh jesus christ

[–]RilynnRae 26 points27 points28 points 2 years ago(0 children)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEE.

[–]Kitsune-Smirk 15 points16 points17 points 2 years ago(10 children)

I thought it was bad enough I got scared of going into the wilderness after watching an Until Dawn playthrough, but after these stories I'm going to have trouble taking a stroll in the woods by my house!

[–]iamtoastshayna69 15 points16 points17 points 2 years ago(5 children)

I live in the upper peninsula of Michigan, all we have are woods!!!

[–]69Fartman69 12 points13 points14 points 2 years ago(0 children)

You know, I lived in WA state last year and worked in a really wooded, secluded areas fixing up rental cabins. Anyways, even though I was all alone, it still felt super creepy out there and almost like you could be watched and not even know it. Something about being in a super quiet place like that, creeps me the hell out. So I totally agree with ya.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points12 points 2 years ago(4 children)

I'm kind of waiting for a guy named Sam or Dean to pop up in his stories....

[+][deleted] 2 years ago(5 children)

[deleted]

[–]AldoDude 14 points15 points16 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Fuck yes! Me and the Gf are loving this shit, I don't know who is more moist!

[–]Chance0809 143 points144 points145 points 2 years ago(7 children)

Finally something about the stairs. I can say that i was defiantly not expecting exploding brains, cut off hands or Swiss cheese organs

[–]9voltWolfXX 30 points31 points32 points 2 years ago(6 children)

I feel like the Swiss-cheesing is related to how that guy got his hand cut off.

[–]dovemans 126 points127 points128 points 2 years ago(5 children)

It makes me think it's some sort of teleporting device. The kid got only half teleported. the guy's hand got teleported away from him. Maybe explains the kids ending up in parts where it would seem impossible for them to get.

[–]9voltWolfXX 22 points23 points24 points 2 years ago(3 children)

That makes some sense actually...

[–]MysticMagicks 43 points44 points45 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I know this was from a month ago... but it would also explain why the dogs only smelled the scent in certain 'checkerboard' squares. Maybe the staircase teleports in a pattern..?

[–]thelastzion1 14 points15 points16 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Yea I'm thinking the same thing. This also supports the theory that the stairs come from other dimensions or are doorways of some sort.

[–]Denizuela 125 points126 points127 points 2 years ago(10 children)

First of all, OP, these stories are amazing. Thank you for taking the time to post such well written and detailed stories.

The first and only time I went backpacking I was with my boyfriend on the AT. The weather was beautiful, I got a new pair of boots I was excited to break in, and we climbed a successful 10 miles up the trail. Now, I'm not a fan of the dark, or nature for that matter (I know I'm the worst) but my BF, an experienced hiker, convinced me that there was nothing better than sleeping outside. Much to our dismay, right before we went to the tent to sleep, a lone hiker wandered into our campsite to sleep in the covered shelter about 30 feet away. A little annoyed, we reluctantly went in our tent and decided to ignore him. Exhausted from the long day I fell asleep remarkably fast.

Next thing I know, I wake up to the sound of a large branch breaking about 100 feet away. My BF and I are wide awake looking at each other and listening. The sounds of the bugs were gone and we distinctly hear what sounds like a person walking deep into the woods surrounding us. Now, we assume that its the lone hiker wandering in the woods to take a leak but all of a sudden the steps change direction and head directly towards our tent. We hear step step step through the leaves and it stops about 5 feet away from the tent. I'm absolutely petrified, afraid to even breathe. My mind is racing, was it a bear? We had put up a bear bag so it should have been fine. However, the steps sound distinctly like a person. By this point I'm thinking, "Dear Jesus its the AT murderer. Just my luck, I hate nature and now I'm gonna die out here." Whatever it was stood outside our tent for about 5 minutes until finally it slowly made its way back into the deep woods. The next day we woke up to heavy rainfall and the woods covered in a thick fog. The hiker from the night before was sitting in the shelter with his sleeping bag zipped up around his head, blankly staring at us. Needless to say we both packed up our stuff and got the fuck out of there as quick as possible.

Now, all this being said, I'm not saying that the creature outside our tent was the Goatman... but it was probably the Goatman. Moral of the story: never camping again. Thanks, OP. :)

[–]lostinsurburbia 36 points37 points38 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Nope. Fuck that. Call in the helicopter cause I ain't walking anymore after that.

[–]ceramichornets 62 points63 points64 points 2 years ago(8 children)

I thought I'd share my story with you because I can't sleep and it's either baffled or creeped out serious, experienced hikers. I'm wondering if you might be able to lend some insight.

I've been hiking and enjoying the outdoors for most of my life, but didn't start regularly hiking until I was fourteen. My best friend, her parents, her little brother, and I decide to go hang out by this "lake" (it was more of an oversized pond) to fish. My best friend and I are the same age and decide to go hiking up this mountain that's alongside the lake with no discernible trails. Smart, I know.

We're about half an hour in when it starts hailing. This is kind of weird because 1.) it was fall, and 2.) it didn't really hail in this area. My best friend has lived here her entire life and it was the first she had ever experienced hail.

It quits after a while, and we keep going, but I notice something weird. The forest just seems a little darker, and I get the vague feeling of someone watching me. That's when I realize it's dead silent in the woods. My dad always taught me to be wary of that shit, but we pressed on anyways.

At one point, my best friend gets excited and runs forward, claiming to have found a "sleepy hollow tree". It's a large tree whose bark wraps around it like maypole ribbons. It's the only tree like this I've seen out here. I start to circle it, and find blood smeared all over one side. Becoming more curious, I dig around the leaves, and under a thin layer of them are bones. Clean, white, various bones of all types. I was not and am not a medical student, so I can't say if they were animal or not, but there was A LOT of them. Like idiots, we keep going forward.

Not too far from a tree, I see a shape like a house. I think my eyes are playing tricks on me until we come across a very small, very dilapidated shed. There's a fence that surrounds it and the area about ten feet from it, and the fence is made of all these different types of branches and wood and strung together with different materials. At this point my gut is screaming at me to turn around. I mention almost wanting to investigate it, but my normally very adventurous friend begs me not too. It's still so silent out there, we're the only things making any noise.

We turn around and find our group again without any trouble. We don't mention anything to her parents and we don't know what to think. I told some friends a few days later and one of them said he and his buddies have been out in that area. Last they were, they saw all these dummies strung up in the trees, made to look as if they had been massacred. They never went back. I can't verify it though as I'm pretty sure he was just pulling my leg.

It's one of the many weirder incidents I've had in the forest, although it's probably the more explainable one.

[–]hinklefinkledinkledo 16 points17 points18 points 2 years ago(2 children)

It's still so silent out there, we're the only things making any noise.

God that's so unnerving. And every little sound you make is deafening.

[+][deleted] 2 years ago(1 child)

[deleted]

[–]Pawn_Raul 9 points10 points11 points 2 years ago(2 children)

For the love of Goatman, what are some of your less explainable ones?! :)

[–]ceramichornets 24 points25 points26 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I have a few haha. People that go hiking with me say that something weird always happens.

Once, while hiking through the desert around sunset, I decided to hike through a riverbed to get back to the trail home. I'm not sure why, but I think part of it was the cover the riverbed offered - the walls of it come far over your head, and it can be easier to hide from coyotes and mountain lions that way. I walked this way for a while, the sand making me regret my decision, and was about to say "fuck it" and scale one of the walls around the next corner when I heard a few very distinct, loud growls. I dropped down low on one side of the wall - it had split into a V - and pulled out my knife. I debate going up the wall on the other side in order to avoid whatever animal is there, but the canyon's thin enough that I'm worried I'll just scare it, and chances are it's not alone. Keep in mind that I've never stabbed anything, let alone an animal, and the only reason I have a knife was because it was given to me by a friend in case of humans. I start to feel pretty fucked by this point.

The growling continues. It's getting dark, fast, which means that the wind is picking up the night chill. Coyotes are sounding off in the distance, but just close enough to make me nervous. Being a stupid teen, I decide I'd rather have a face off with an animal than wait for whatever it is to make it's next move.

I slowly move over. The growling gets louder. I put myself in position, jump around to the other side -

and there's nothing. The noises disappear. The canyon doesn't go much farther and I can tell that there's no animal in sight. I scale up the dirt wall and look around for a while; I'm in an open area, devoid of life. I listen for a while longer, just to be sure, and then I run until I'm out of the desert and on paved roads again.

Also, while driving through the forest, I almost hit a turkey as it was bumbling down a hill. A full-on, huge, feathery fuck. It was pissed at me for scaring it.

[–]CleverGirl2014 59 points60 points61 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I would give you another upvote just for the phrase ass over teakettle. It always makes me giggle a little.

These are amazing and well told, like the best true campfire stories ever.

[–]leo813 162 points163 points164 points 2 years ago(5 children)

I never did any SAR stuff, but I did do some volunteer stuff with a community outreach group that I was with about 3-4 years ago. We had to cut up invasive weeds in the woods and stuff. The officer that was teaching us what to do had said something along the lines of "If you see any staircases in the woods, ignore them, please don't go towards them, just ignore them and act like they don't exist. If you touch or go near them there will be a personal fine for you if you do." I thought it was like if we see a storm cellar or tool sheds or emergency rendezvous point or something... I never thought about it till I read your stories.

[–]stridernfs 16 points17 points18 points 2 years ago(2 children)

Don't fines get written down somewhere? I wonder what they put for the reasoning, and I wonder if maybe there is a law somewhere in the US that mentions pristine, carpeted stairs in the woods...

[–]Jordan1invest 194 points195 points196 points 2 years ago(44 children)

Great read, all of them. I have to share an experience my brother and I had growing up.

I live in Indiana and we don't have much wilderness outside of some state parks and the "Hoosier National Forest," which is about 300 square miles of wilderness. There are around 250 miles of trails that run throughout. There have been some odd things happen there, but no one talks about it much.

From what I gathered over the years are multiple reports of cars simply just dying when driving around the boundary roads for no reason only to start like normal just a few hours later. There are also stories of a man (in black of course an hooded) who has been seen sitting on a tree stump near a cemetery that exists deep in the wilderness which has no known historical name (it's unofficially called "step cemetery" go figure) and no one knows who is buried there outside of a few stories from the 20s and 50s of children and park workers who had bad accidents, vanished, etc.

The most recently known thing to happen was in the 90s. A plane was spotted flying low at the tree line heading south over a retires cabin deep in the woods and looked as if it were going to eventually crash. A few seconds after it descended over a ridge into the tree line the retiree and former Vietnam fighter pilot heard a "boom" and fire ball engulf the sky seconds after he saw it flying too low. There were several witnesses who saw the same thing fishing in a lake on the other side of the crash. Firetrucks, volunteers, police and the FAA searched for the plane and never found it. There were several credible witnesses who saw it go down including policemen and park rangers. The crash site was never found and the plane was a mystery flight as the authorities and FAA said there was no plane in the exact area or missing anywhere in the US that night. There was talk that a three letter agency came out and blocked off an area but the media reported that this wasn't true of course so now it's a conspiracy of sorts.

So, on to my experience.

My brother and I are 3 yrs apart in age. I was 8 at the time and he was 11. We were camping with our parents and several family members and friends . There were trails behind our campground that led out into the wilderness and one trail that went around a small lake and back in a perfect loop with no trails leading off or into the loop which was maybe a quarter mile. The lake was in a deep gully with high ridge lines that surrounded it so going off the trail was nearly impossible. It was small and our parents allowed us to use the trail to go fishing of which we had done all week. The wilderness trail was about 100 yards away from the entrance of our loop and on the opposite side of the campground.

So, we went fishing and after taking this same trip many times before it started getting dark and we headed back to the campground. We ended up getting lost (we never went off the trail) for the remainder of the night and at first light we appeared at the entrance of the wilderness trail 100 yards away.

Our parents were flipped out, the entire county had been searching for us and neither of us remembered anything other than walking up to the trail head in near dark, but we had lost time because to us it never got completely 100% dark at all and felt like dusk the entire time we were lost trying to find our way back. It only only felt like a couple hours. It was dawn when we were found. We estimated that we were gone for 10-11 hours or so. My brother claims to remember some details like falling down a cliff running from someone or something literally dragging me as he ran through cobwebs, etc. Ever since he's had bad dreams of bright lights in the woods, a cave, shivering, rushing loud water or engine sounds, etc. I haven't had any memories from it. We were camping at Deam Wilderness Area and there is a well known cave a few miles away. We recently went back to the area to go fishing together and decided to take a look around where we were at the campground almost 30 years later. We then realized it would have nearly been impossible for us to end up on the other trail as the cliffs and revenes were just too high, there was too much distance between the two trails and we would have had to make it through impossible odds to end up back at the entrance to the opposite trail waking in thick untouched forest.

[–]KilroyTheKiljoy 49 points50 points51 points 2 years ago(8 children)

At first I thought I was noticing a pattern emerge with these mission children, because a majority of them were found far from where they were taken missing their shoes. You normally take your shoes off when you go inside, so I figured someone was kidnapping them and holding them in a cabin.

This is the second time we have heard about the man with no face, once from the climber and again from the kid, who added the fuzzy discription. I assume that your friends who you transcribed for work in the same national park as you?

There appears to be a pattern with the missing kids though, one where they turn up alive miles from there they "disappeared" with no ailments and where they inexplicably turn up dead on discovery.

[–]aeiouieaeee 10 points11 points12 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Yeah David Paulides studies this pattern. It happens with adults as well. Some people try to explain the no shoes thing as paradoxical undressing caused by hypothermia but the clothes/shoes are often found so close to where they went missing that it would be impossible for them to have had such serious hypothermia at that point.

[–]JackGrand 47 points48 points49 points 2 years ago(9 children)

when this series get to part 5, we need somebody compile all of this stuffs and make a e-book WITH ILLUSTRATION (as creepy as a human can do). that would be awesome i will read the crap out of that

[+][deleted] 2 years ago*(1 child)

[deleted]

[–]Gem420 14 points15 points16 points 2 years ago(5 children)

So art done by the guy who did the art for "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark"? I'd be fine with that.

[–]BlademasterFlash 51 points52 points53 points 2 years ago(0 children)

KD's story about the "fuzzy man" reminds me of the Mitch Hedberg joke "maybe Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem, it's not the photographer's fault. And that's extra scary to me, because there's a large, out of focus monster roaming the countryside"

I love your stories! Keep em coming

[–]MatkaPluku 46 points47 points48 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I both love and dread your updates, OP.

[–]Kitsune-Smirk 23 points24 points25 points 2 years ago(0 children)

And that's the sign that you have become terror-hooked on the stories! Congrats, me too!

[–]GGGilma87 88 points89 points90 points 2 years ago*(7 children)

In the woods, things can just sneak up on you, some people don't realize how isolated it can be out there. I can see running across something suddenly, including the mysterious stairs.

I was on a hike with a couple of pals some years ago, we were making our way through some woods in Texas. There were three of us, myself, my friends Javier and Mike. Mike had also brought his dog along on our trip, a blue heeler called Bismarck.

Suddenly, we came across something that raised the dog's hackles. Out in the middle of nowhere was the ruins of a house. It was a two story building, sort of narrow, the top story a bit smaller than the bottom. Warped planks gone gray from years of exposure made up the walls. There had been a small front porch with a railing and an overhang, but there were no longer any support posts to hold the overhang up so it had flopped down and hung so that it covered up the first top feet of the front door. The porch had fallen in on itself and grasses and weeds grew through the gaps.

Now what we really noticed was that all of the windows and doors were boarded up from the outside. Every single one. Top and bottom. 2x4s had been nailed and placed and lined up neatly so as to completely cover each opening. It was no rush job where somebody just slapped the 2x4s on and haphazardly.

Time and the elements had worn away at the boards as well but they were still mostly in place. Even from a distance we could make out markings on these boards but they had faded into unreadable blurs.

However, even though it appeared to be just one more pile of lumber that had been left alone in the wild, the dog was not liking this house at all. Bismarck was standing stiff at Mike's side, growling at the house. Snarling and baring his teeth at it. A feeling of unease came over me and the other fellows appeared nervous themselves.

I'd like to say we stuck around to pry into the house and maybe uncovered a mystery but we continued on our way, dragging the dog with us by his leash. Just, you know, "ha ha, not going to poke around that place."

Uneasy feelings still lingered with us as we walked on, even well after the building was well out of sight.

Perhaps there was nothing to it and it was just our imaginations getting worked up over the dog's reaction, but whatever Bismarck picked up on I think we picked up on it as well, something just below the level of our direct awareness, but it still made an impression anyway.

[–]XCorneliusX 38 points39 points40 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I have a belief that people, places and things carry a balance of impression that carries into how they are and what kind of energy they express.

For a house, if it was simply built and no tragic events had occurred there, it is a good home to have. If the occupants were bearing strong negative emotion or fear, the house gets spoiled and rotten as to how it is. Not a good place to be.

[–]ion-fields 21 points22 points23 points 2 years ago(0 children)

It might have been that there had been an outbreak of disease at the house and it was abandoned because of that, cholera, typhoid, the like. Back when there was no cure for such infectious diseases, the whole house would often be abandoned, they would board up the windows and put a certain mark on them to let others know that the house was unsafe. People that died there would usually be buried on the property in a family plot, again, so as not to spread contagion. (This is what I know from knowledge of European disease outbreaks, I'm not sure if this was common in Texas.) That would explain how it was so neatly boarded up, as well as the marks on the windows. Just a theory, though.

[–]asianfatboy 39 points40 points41 points 2 years ago(2 children)

Just finally finished reading it all. Something that got me thinking is the fugue-like state you mentioned and just the general mystery of the forests and wilderness reminded me of something weird I personally experienced.

Way back in elementary school. Now, we've heard rumors that the above ground basement/cellar(if that makes sense) of some of the older buildings were once used as torture chambers by the Japanese occupiers, I live in the Philippines btw. And the older and bigger playground that the kindergarten use used to be mass graves. My friends and I always felt something weird when we walked by/explored them. The creepiest one though was when I was waiting for my dad to come pick me up and instead of the usual where I wait for him in front of the school we decided beforehand that he'd come pick me up at the back of the school. This was a bit of a Rural-ish part of my hometown. Basically the back of the school consists of a dirt parking lot, beside it is a depot for construction trucks and equipment. Only one road leads to this part of the school. Beyond the road seemed to be abandoned farmland. It was my first time being there and I was soon alone as the other parents and kids have left by that time. The sun was setting and I started having this weird 'twitch' inside my head, that's the best I can describe it. And every twitch I get weaker and I start losing balance. Then I start seeing shadows in the abandoned farmland, not really human shaped but just faint apparition of shadows. My vision starts blurring and the twitches keep getting frequent and it's making my ears twitch now too. It was really freaky. I only got out of it when I hear our car's horn and realize my dad had arrived.

I know this didn't happen in a forest but, all this talk of an unknown predator who lures people and make them forget or something reminded me of that experience. I can't forget it, and when I remember it I always get chills because I can't fucking explain what was happening.

[–]filius_rebelle 41 points42 points43 points 2 years ago(4 children)

A few years back...there was a report in the local news about a pair of siblings who had been missing since childhood. Years later,they were found in another town, all grown up. Apparently they were abducted by a "Big Black Man". According to them, they could see the people serching for them, they were literally right next to them as they shouted their names, but while the man was with them they couldn't physically interact with any of them. Now, according to my grandparents, this wasn't that uncommon way back before Christianity reached our lands. Apparently people would get spirited away like this while they were hunting or working on their farms, sometimes bever to be seen again and sometimes they end up in places otherwise unaccessible, within extremely short periods of time. They usually recall being fed worms and rotten tree barks but during their abduction apparently it seemed like the most delicious feast ever. (They only remember that it was worms when they were found, and say that they though it was chicken or pork or something ). The Big Black Man description is always common . I live in a tribal state in Northeastern India btw

[–]yognautilus 39 points40 points41 points 2 years ago(2 children)

Updates from you are like Christmas. Also, seriously thank you for actually finishing your stories instead of stopping mid-tension to do the annoying, "I'm so sorry I'm too spooked to continue maybe tomorrow maybe not teehee (please upvote me)" to be continueds.

[–]UhmmmNope 10 points11 points12 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Omygod this sub is particularly full of those stories lately. I think it's mostly shameless and people who call out the Op just get down voted. Like 'oh I'll continue this some other time when I get enough courage" FUCKING UGH

[–]yognautilus 27 points28 points29 points 2 years ago(0 children)

It's the equivalent of selling out, except they're selling out for internet points that literally don't mean anything, and they do it at the cost of cohesion and story quality. Fucks sake just get to-

Sorry, I'm too angry to finish this post. I'll finish it tomorrow. Maybe.

[–]TheScaryFaerie 76 points77 points78 points 2 years ago(9 children)

I think the worst part of this all is there is a little wooded area on the edge of my hometown. My sister, a photographer, goes out there for photo shoots because there's a trail and it's pretty. Know what else is in it? A stair case. Black, iron, just sitting there, like someone tore down and removed a whole house except for it. I swear it moves sometimes, but at least it's the same stair case.

[–]Raencloud94 26 points27 points28 points 2 years ago(4 children)

Ever get a pic?

[–]xxsummsxx 12 points13 points14 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Pic or google ordinates

[–]ZiggySmalls91 37 points38 points39 points 2 years ago(2 children)

The story were the man was disemboweled, did anyone else find that the man may have been dragged by something since he was found with his arm outstretched in front of him. That whatever was dragging him may have been the one to disembowel him, and that because this thing was attacking this man that the man tried to you his pickaxe to try and fight off or defend himself and that may have been the reason for the blood on it? Did they ever test the blood? Curious...

[–]newsagg 12 points13 points14 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Probably assumed it wasn't an animal attack because they didn't eat him or leave bloody paw prints.

[–]amyss 31 points32 points33 points 2 years ago(1 child)

This is seriously the freakiest, most entertaining and captivating series I've read here. Also the only one ( I know the rules) I deep in my gut believe, every word. Give me city life a/c and stairs that take me to my second floor apartment where I can read all the stories you have!!

[–]jpigeon716 35 points36 points37 points 2 years ago(8 children)

what if the staircases actually lead to the entrances of cloaked UFO's or some sort of ships that aren't entirely in our dimension? Maybe these types of craft need to have stairs from our dimension to fully enter our world. I'm just thinking what if when the guy climbed the stairs and got his hand chopped off he was actually bringing his hand close to the entrance of an alien ship he couldn't see....

[–]jpigeon716 29 points30 points31 points 2 years ago(5 children)

what if his hand was chopped off by the door of the craft as it closed? They couldn't find the hand because it fell inside the ship behind the closed door.... alright I'm done for the night....

[–]RelativetoZero 32 points33 points34 points 2 years ago(6 children)

Yea... Ive done quite a bit of mountaineering alone... I'm gonna have to forget this to keep doing it. Just know I carry a 406 MHz paired with a 121.5 MHz, so as long as I don't get possessed by a mountain spirit and wander off, or abducted by a fuzzy alien/demon/sprite, or knock myself out and die, Ill be relatively easy to locate.

This was a good read, but seriously, thanks for the nightmares and the lost sleep as I lay, unarmed, miles away from anyone else under my tarp in the middle of the woods... I probably needed a gun anyway.

[–]rflownn 27 points28 points29 points 2 years ago*(0 children)

I've heard of steps in the woods before. This guy used to hike up this well known trail, and he uses this one man made structure, like a small box, as his landmark of how far he's gone up. One day he notices the landmark had fallen to the ground and he stops and takes a look. As he looks he sees between the leaves of the bushes a set of steps on a downwards slope going up. It had carpeting and everything and just seemed to stop after a few steps. He said it was no more than a few feet away from the trail he was walking and he figured they (parks services) were going to use it to build some kind of other structures or for trail maintenance and didn't think much of it. He just thought it strange and walked off.

edit: The reason I remember it was because he was angry since he suspected it was home developers trying to encroach on the national parks.

Also, the proximity of the stairs and attacks in the woods in the area, like people getting assaulted, and some women were assaulted etc...

Like some other person said, it's likely traps by the not so good people of the world who use familiar objects in the wilds as traps of other people.

[–]ThriceSquared 31 points32 points33 points 2 years ago(9 children)

I grew up in Northern California and by northern, I mean, it might as well have been Oregon. Almost everyone from that area who hasn't recently moved there, at least one strange story of something happening to them in the woods, etc.

I was right around 19 or 20 and really enjoying the whole do-whatever-the-hell-I-want thing. I had heard a story about a "super rad" graffiti painting deep in a cave about 40 minutes away from the town I lived in. I've always been a lover of things that are strange or give me the creeps, so I gathered three friends and we made off into the wilderness with plans to be gone at least over night.

The caves we went to were a place where all of us had been before. They're lava caves, so they are not out of a mountain or hillside, but instead run beneath the ground. The area is pretty desolate. Mostly brush and that fine mud-dirt that you can never get out of your car.

The first half of the caves are very... uh... beginner? I mean this to explain that they are not deep, they have skylights (where part of the roof had collapsed and allows light to filter through) and aren't particularly long. You can travel through them quickly and without worry of needing a flashlight. When you exit west out of the last cave, you come into a clearing where you're technically still in the cave, but the ceiling has completely collapsed to show you a wide opening of the sky. You're met with thorny bushes that mask the opening of the other side of the cave.

We ventured on. None of us had ever been this far into the caves before. We had come well prepared with our back packs, head lamps, extra flashlights, water, rope, etc. I remember walking into the cave and feeling an instant heaviness. I do want to point out that the heaviness wasn't anything daunting yet. It's just that feeling when you enter into a large open area completely underground with no form of natural light or much air flow. It becomes harder to breathe.

None of this was alarming so we trekked on. We climbed through large bolders and crevices that I'm sure my dad would still slap me upside the head for doing. As we went on, the space around us grew smaller and smaller, until we were hunched over and scrambling on rocks like animals. We continued to call out and mock each other.

I reached a point where I knew we couldn't go much further and was beginning to feel disappointment at not seeing the "super rad" graffiti. We were starting to talk about turning around when I sort of hopped down from the bolder I was on to one just below it. When I straightened, I felt the true heaviness of terror. Everyone fell silent. In an instant, my heart was beating in my throat trying to choke me and I felt the most intense form of fight or flight. It was as if something was screaming at us that we had disturbed it. I had never felt so terrified or so sure that something terribly awful was going to happen to me before.

We scrambled out of the cave as quickly as we could, trying our best not to fall and break a limb. We didn't camp for the night. We got into my car and drove as fast as we could away from those caves.

We never spoke about it. And to this day I refuse to ever go back.

[–]micDiz 79 points80 points81 points 2 years ago(19 children)

This is interesting!!! These stairs! I must look into these.

After a few searches through a few different sites, i found this: http://i.imgur.com/hR5iRUV.jpg

Its actually kinda hard to find any images that fit your criteria... but your story does account for them being difficult to find.

I'm a software engineer btw, would you be interested in an anonymous way for your fellow SAR officers to document their experiences, (and potentially share photos of these mysterious stairs?)

More than anything i'm interested in specific locations of the stairs. Lat/Lon Cords from a phone or camera should do.

Also, what kind of hardware do you guys usually carry with you? [Radios, Phones, Cameras, etc... ]

[–]Anon7309 43 points44 points45 points 2 years ago(3 children)

Fuuuck, when I was a kid I used to have a recurring nightmare about a staircase that looked just like the one in that photo. I'd completely forgotten about it. I'd be stuck halfway up the stairs, and then I'd suddenly just collapse, like my body weighed 10 times as much as it did before, then everything around me would just fade away, like it kinda just fell away into nothingness, revealing storm clouds in their wake, it was like being stuck in the middle of a thunderstorm at sea, where the sun is completely blotted out and the noise just becomes completely deafening. Never really thought about the staircase itself too much until this story, but I know that I would always start feeling that "heaviness" whenever I got near water, for a long time afterwards. Not sure if it really has any relation to OPs stories, but figured it was worth a mention.

[–]Artistic_Witch 12 points13 points14 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I have stair dreams sometimes when I'm really stressed out. Ill be walking and walking down this huge, spiraling stone staircase and though it'll be lit around me, the shadows I walk towards get darker and darker. I know that the stairs are endless and there is never an option to turn around.

Spooky shit.

[–]BALONYPONY 33 points34 points35 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I would sincerely dissuade you from pursuing this. I spent months at a time backpacking in Western Slope CO (usually 1-2 weeks solo) while I've never seen one, I have heard the accounts and none of them bode well. Believe me, the less you know about this phenomena the better. Think of it as an animal you would never want to uncover on the ocean floor.

[–]Badfiish 28 points29 points30 points 2 years ago(2 children)

They never go near them and they never see the same case twice. I doubt there is a specific place for a specific set of stairs.

Dude fucking hand went into the 4th dimension on one of them. Who knows Taking a picture might be suicide

[–]Ivyleaf3 27 points28 points29 points 2 years ago(10 children)

Hey there. Firstly I wanted to say thanks for sharing your stories. As a keen outdoorsman (outdoorswoman?) myself, I know the woods are a bloody scary place, even on sunny days. Anyone who thinks terror is defined by a bloke in a mask with a knife needs to get out of doors at night for a refreshingly terrifying experience :)

I also wanted to ask, re the stairs, if you've ever heard of 'devil's pulpits'. Typically an ancient tree fitted with stone steps, they seem to be a particularly British phenomena (or at least, European). I can try to find some pics later if needed, but google should furnish the necessary. I'm thinking about a possible connection between these trees from which the Devil is said to preach and your stairs.

[–]CryptKeeper845 24 points25 points26 points 2 years ago*(8 children)

Awesome story! I love the woods and all things creepy, this has been definitely peaking my interest. I have a story to tell. it's not much but it happened to me and a few of my friends. I live in upstate NY, Newburgh area. I was on antibiotics one friday night for a cold and some of my friends called me telling me that they wanted to smoke inside of a restaurant ( we were young and the idea of sitting in stagnant smoke sounded enticing I guess ) so we headed to Pennyslvania where it was still legal at the time. Me as the designated driver. We were listening to music, they were in the backseat yelling and being drunk. My friend Stephanie tells me that she needs to use the bathroom. If you have ever been to PA you'll know that it can be extremely rural. So okay, there's a dirt road a few hundred feet down the road. We hadn't passed anything substantial in quite some time ( and actually couldn't make it to a diner in time anyway because everything closes like clockwork at 8pm like the Mormons ) I turn onto the dirt road and everyones still yelling and having a good time. Stephanie is basically jumping out of the backseat of the moving car with liquor bladder. I pull up to an old rusty fence with a decrepit "SHOOTING RANGE" sign. It peaks the interest of everyone in the car, so naturally everyone jumps out and we head towards it. My friends and I made quick work of finding a way around the fence and with camera phone lights we're trespassing in this very old shooting range. This place looked nothing like a shooting range. Inside of the fence were more fences all in small rectangles about 10ft by 10ft like some kind of weird Pennsyltucky zoo. Stephanie comes out of the woods and we are all talking and wandering around and all of a sudden we hear the most terrifying fucking sound imaginable it was like a mountain lion through an enormous speaker it was almost deafening and we started to hear rustling in the woods from somewhere in the darkness ahead of us. IT started screaming, we started screaming and we ran like we have never run in our lives. I spend a lot of time in the woods and I have never heard anything that loud, EVER. It was horrifying, I have no idea what that place was but it concreted the fact that I don't like pennsylvania nearly as much as I don't like New Jersey. We all hardly talked at all on the drive home and we still bring it up from time to time. I was dead sober and they were all quite drunk but we all agree that it was NOT something that we should have experienced in the natural world.

[–]milandin 49 points50 points51 points 2 years ago(8 children)

I have two quick stories to recount that the OP's stories got me thinking about. One is hiking-in-the-woods related, the other is just backyard related.

I have two teenage boys and when my first born was about three years old he would frequently stare at corners of the house or spaces in the rooms where there was nothing. Just air. This wasn't a creepy old house. It was a modest home in a nice subdivision outside of Seattle, built in the 80s. And my son wasn't some loopy kid with imaginary friends and whatnot. He has since grown up to be a level-headed, straight-A, rational atheist. One day he's staring out the back sliding glass window at a bench that was built into our deck. Just staring at it. I watched him for a while not wanting to disturb him because when you have a three year old and a one year old, silence is truly golden.

After he wandered away from the window I asked him what he was looking at. He said, "A leaf ginkin". In my best bored parent tone I asked, "What does a leaf ginkin look like?" He said, matter-of-factly, "He has one eye, one leg, and he is eating a stick."

Surprised at how specific my youngster was being, I went and took a look. There was nothing on the bench or the deck. No squirrel or anything. I asked him if it was still there. My son glanced out the window and looked at me like I was an idiot. "Yeah, the leaf ginkin is there."

"Is he still eating the stick?" I was running out of questions.

"Yes."

"Does he have arms?"

My son looked at me, quizzically I guess, and said simply, "No"

I periodically asked my son about the leaf ginkin. If he remembered it and such. I got an affirmative for a year or two then it faded from his memory.

Second story: I was off hiking in the Cascades, I think up near Steven's Pass headed to an old lookout tower that was climb-able. Right after a fun tryst in the tower with my girlfriend at the time we had taken about 10 steps towards the trail when a single column of rain about a foot in diameter moved pass us. Is this something other people have heard of? I could see it and hear it. The sky was almost cloudless. It moved at about 5 MPH towards me then past me. It went past the lookout tower and disappeared from sight. As I exclaimed over how weird it was I saw a stairway I hadn't noticed that was on the edge of the woods that the rain column disappeared into. With nothing but time to kill I wandered over to the stairs. They had wood sides and carpet on them, which I thought was strange. I hadn't heard any admonitions to stay away from stairways in the woods so I went right up to them to check them out. There were probably six steps. What do you do when you find stairs at the edge of the forest? You climb them, right? As I approached them it started to rain. This is the Pacific Northwest. The rainy side of the Cascades, so if you don't hike in the rain you don't hike. So I didn't care that it was raining a little. I'd get my shell out later.

As I approached the stairway something felt wrong. Like the world tilted slightly and the sounds changed. I didn't hear different sounds, just the same sounds in a different way. More "tinny" maybe. As I went to put my foot on the bottom step I decided I didn't want to. I had every intention of climbing the steps but I just didn't want to put my foot on the carpet. I stood there staring at the bottom step for a little while. My girlfriend was behind me following me over. She had originally intended to wait for me but since I was taking a while she headed over.

I still wanted to be on the steps, but I didn't want to step on them. I sat down on the bottom step. That felt OK. As my girlfriend walked up I asked her if she wanted to climb the steps with me. She looked at me like I was an idiot. Curious to see what she would do I said, "Hey, can you step on the bottom step?"

"No. I don't want to", she said.

I kicked off my boots. The carpet was comfortable. That's when I noticed the last really weird thing which was that it was dry. It had been raining for a few minutes now but the carpet was dry. I stood up and took a step away and I was in the rain. I sat back on the steps and it was dry.

I climbed to the top of the stairs in my socks. That was fine. I just didn't want to put my boots on the clean carpet. At the top of the stairs the sound of the rain changed. The sound of everything made it seem like I was in one of those concave dishes at science expos for kids where the sound focuses into a point. I could hear everything around me like it was focused into a point at the top of the stairs.

I went back down and we left. Nothing bad happened.

I wanted to take my kids to the weird stairs a few years ago while it was raining but I couldn't find them. I was super bummed. I have asked other people that have done that hike about the stairs and nobody else has noticed them.

Cheers!

[–]vertigo01 12 points13 points14 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Thankfully you didn't get to take your kids up them stairs.

[–]Waltzeswithcats 7 points8 points9 points 1 year ago(0 children)

You removed your shoes? And so many people in the op's stories were found with no shoes. I'm not saying there's definitely a connection but it's something to consider

[–]iceicebailey 20 points21 points22 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Oh thank Jesus I've been checking this page religiously since Thursday

[–][deleted] 22 points23 points24 points 2 years ago*(3 children)

2 stories that can relate!

My grandparents lived right next to core land by Truman lake in Clinton Missouri and theirs was the only house for miles and it was literally in the middle of the woods. Their drive was the last and only house on the road, but it would continue on down to the lake. We never really went down the road much, but two times I can remember.

The first time was with my aunt who was equal parts crazy and cool. She led us down a trail off the road with hopes of finding an old house/foundation she came across once.
After reading these stories...praise Jesus we didn't find it.

Another time all us cousins ranging age 8-15 all hopped up on our bikes and set off down the road, you know since we've never been down that way. So we go and go then come across a trail ( I guess. I can't really remember why we got off the road, but we did.) and took it. We zigged and zagged our way through the woods for a while and eventually came to the lakeshore. We skipped a few rocks, threatened to throw each other in and so on. Then decided to head back. Somehow we managed to find our way back to the road and back to grandmas to find all the parents worried sick. Turns out we were gone for 5 hours. It seriously felt like 30 min. They all got in the cars and went down the road honking and screaming looking for us, never heard em once.

Very strange looking back at it now.

[–]allthingsweird25 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Wow that totally made me remember when like the same thing happened to me as a kid. I lived in a house that backed right up to an uphill slope and I never really went up there because part of it was my neighbors land and part was ours and I never knew which was which. Well one day I had my friend over and she always loved exploring the woods near her house so she wanted to check out mine and so we did. We climbed the hill and walked through a clearing a ways, seemed like maybe half an hour, and I heard my mom screaming at the top of her lungs. We ran back to the house and my mom was crying asking where we went for so long. I always thought she was over exaggerating when she said we were gone for hours...She's a real hover mom, I'm her only child and she was super protective of me so I guess she would really know how long I was gone...weird to think about that because really all we did was walk around for a short time...

[–]TheKnightsWatch 43 points44 points45 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Wow. Alright then. I guess that settles it. The #1 priority for human kind is now officially: to find out WTF is going on with these stairs. Forget colonizing Mars. Until we figure out what the deal is with these murderous stairs which are in cahoots with the magic of the woods, we will never truly understand the world in which we live. We would call the stairs, and stories like the two day time warp teleportation piss "paranormal", but that's a misnomer. In cases like these, I think it would be better to say we have a "sub-understanding" of what normal really is.

[–]FQQLISH 40 points41 points42 points 2 years ago(1 child)

" He said the fuzzy man was going to keep him, but he had to let him go because the kid wasn't 'the right kind.' He either can't or won't elaborate more on that. "

To me this is the most interesting part of everything so far and no one is talking about it! And of course its the one thing that won't get elaborated on. :(

[–]darkehawk14 41 points42 points43 points 2 years ago*(15 children)

I've spent an hour or 2 searching for staircases in the wilderness. But, the only hits I get are for Devil's Stairway Wilderness Area.

As the last guy shows: SOMEone out there would have talked about them. There should be a book, or something, somewhere, with this information.

I hate to say it, but I might have to dive into the Deep Web tonight and see if I can find anything.

Also, these threads have hit 4chan. Someone was asking if anyone had seen staircases in the woods. They made it seem like someone told them about it. But, a Redditor put him straight and asked about this thread.

Edit: Outside source citing this thread here

[–]Wrekt_Ahl 13 points14 points15 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Quick! What did you find, for us shallow web kind of folks?!

This is the most important question since this OP started his stories!

[–]micDiz 12 points13 points14 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I too was going to look into the deepweb. But if you are, you have to tell me what you find.

[–]darkehawk14 10 points11 points12 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I found jack chit. I hate the engines there.

[–]firead 9 points10 points11 points 2 years ago*(0 children)

This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy.

If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension GreaseMonkey to Firefox and add this open source script.

Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.

[–]newsagg 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I've heard stories of stairs from camp counselors, but all stairs I've encountered in the woods were very clearly attached to a building foundation.

[–]dumdum80 57 points58 points59 points 2 years ago(16 children)

As several people here have pointed out, we're starting to see multiple occurrences of very similar things. As David Paulides would say, "Clusters". What strikes me the most are the survivor stories. The fuzzy man (not hairy), man without a face have been reported several times, but the thing that sticks out the most for me from the brother that survived and was found 15 miles and two weeks later is the TREE TRUNK, and having been fed berries (like the Down's syndrome girl that was found - although she was deceased).

Anyone else remember where we've seen the tree trunk before? The 1 year old baby in the very first post. The baby was found frozen inside a tree trunk. Also a girl was found in a log I think. My question for op — is this info being utilized? If another case of "complete disappearance" shows up, does SAR think back to previous cases like this, and tell rangers, the volunteers, etc., to look for hollowed out dead trees? Is there a map that exists that compiles all hollow/dead tree locations in these "areas of frequent disappearance"?

I believe in human beings and their capabilities. I'm a humanist. And using our brains and intellect, I think we can accomplish anything. We can beat this thing stealing parents kids away from them. This is the thing that gets me about SAR not keeping accessible record of disappearances, is that there's nothing to study to prevent total loss again. Let's start being transparent, and maybe someone will solve this mystery, and people will stop going missing, or at least give them a better chance of being found.

TLDR; When searching for kids, look inside tree trunks.

[–]thewizardofcheez 28 points29 points30 points 2 years ago(9 children)

When searching for kids, look inside tree trunks.

Okay, a few years ago in my rural Midwestern county known as the western edge of notorious Bigfoot country, but also known for just weird stuff happening as well, lots of crap went down here historically since it was a Native American holdout until the late 1870s, and now there's lots of manufactured drugs in the area--meth and heroin, mostly.

Well, there was a single mom on her late 30s, female family friend around the same age, and two older children, boy around 10 and girl around 14, that went missing for a week. They found the girl in a rental home tied up in the basement, unharmed physically, just freaked out. A 20 year old man sleeping on the couch on the first floor living room, beside a huge pile of leaves on the carpeted floor. The SWAT member who was first in through the door said the pile of leaves just messed him up on top of everything else, why was it there?

The young man told them where to find the other missing ones, about ten miles away along an empty county road, all of them dead, horrifically murdered, the corpses stuffed into, no lie, a freakin' hollowed out oak tree trunk.

Officials said there is no way the bodies would have been found without the confession of the accused who is now in prison.

[–]MariMother 19 points20 points21 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Forgive me if I've done this all wrong, I'm fresh to reddit. This series is the first thing I stumbled upon on reddit, which I find to be a huge coincidence...especially the people talking about their experiences at Mt. Hood, which is where I am moving my family to in order to pursue my career in mortuary science. Okay, now that that is out of the way I would like to share a couple of things. They're short and relatively benign, but I would like to throw them in anyway. I'll start with the non-forest telling. I was very young and my mother had a habit of doing some strange things (she was a substance abuser and alcoholic). One time I remember sitting in the backseat of her car and it was the middle of the night. Pitch black. We drove for what seemed like forever and finally pulled onto a dirt road with like three houses kind of spaced far away from each other, and parked in front of this huge stone church. It was already creepy (I was like...four or so, I'm guessing. Really young. I didn't know anything about anything consciously. ) So anyway, she parks and gets out of the car where a guy had pulled up and they go to greet each other or whatever. I don't know what they were doing because as soon as they met each other these cats came out of nowhere. DOZENS. Dozens and dozens of cats just came out from behind the church, behind the houses, out of the fields...everywhere, and started toward us. Logically, cats shouldn't be too scary; they may have just been strays looking for food, I guess. But it was terrifying. They were all sillhoutted in the pitch black and moving slowly. Deliberately. My mother suddenly bolts to the car, jumps in it and says we have to go. She started that vehicle with a vengence and tore out of there like our lives depended on it. We kept driving and driving until she finally veered off the road and got us stuck in a muddy field. Miraculously, there was a man out there who helped her get out and I guess I probably eventually dozed off because that is where my memory ends. The next one is much shorter, but it involves the woods. I love to hike and camp and have been doing it all my life. I found a trail for my family to hike in this new town we're living in (which, I have some creepy theories on as well), and so we spend a good deal of time out there hiking it. This trail is beautiful, but has some....weird things about it that I won't go into. The thing I want to tell is about one day while we were out there we had got to the back half of the stretch and suddenly in the middle of the trail I saw what looked like a poop. It wasn't a poop. It was a rabbit fetus, and about a half a foot away from it was one thumb-print sized scrap of fur. Nothing else. No blood, no disruption of the dirt, no broken twigs. Nothing. Just a fetus (whole, not chewed or anything) and one scrap of hide. It was really unsettling and I could not think of a logical reason for it. Sorry if those were boring or non-related, but I really wanted to share.

[–]M4nuel20 21 points22 points23 points 2 years ago(15 children)

Wow I wonder what power is behind the staircases. Very odd how something bad happens when someone climbs them.

[–]BraveSpear 18 points19 points20 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I live in the woods. I'm at work now but reading these stories makes me not want to go home.

[–]ShaftRaptor 20 points21 points22 points 2 years ago(1 child)

So basically, Satan, Cuthulu, Goatman, Skinwalkers, Fuzzy men who abduct children and a multitude of other scary ass shit live in the forrest and are constantly trying to kill you. I'm just gonna go shit my pants and cry in the corner.

[–]M0n5tr0 16 points17 points18 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Askreddit: What is your favorite series ever written on reddit? THIS ONE RIGHT HERE!

[–]PrettyKitty18 17 points18 points19 points 2 years ago(1 child)

The thing about people re-appearing where they have no business being, coupled with the rescuer's story of being lost for two days and having no idea how far she had wondered in that amount of time, reminds me of the story of when my ex and I got lost in the Medicine Bow's in Wyoming. We got lost because we were stupid, nothing supernatural there. However, we probably left camp at about 11am, and probably stopped when we stumbled upon a cabin around 5pm. That's only about 6 hours of travel time. When we found an old road the next day, we had probably only walked 2 - 5 miles away from the cabin. The people who found us were locals and were a family on their way back from their vacation cabin. They knew the area well, well enough to take us straight back to our campsite. When we told them where we were camped, and how long we had been in the woods, they looked shocked, and told us we had travelled almost 50 miles...

[–]MarthasFoolishGinger 17 points18 points19 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I live in the woods way back in rural Alabama. As if there weren't actual PEOPLE around here that are scarier than running into some types of woodland monsters, these stories have totally changed the way I look at my surroundings. We hear things all the time that my husband always has some kind of answer for but now I'm seriously doubting him and think he's just been trying to keep me from freaking out all these years. He works at night and I'm here with my four small kids alone. I saw this update last night and couldn't even read it even though I've been waiting for each of these updates impatiently! I waited till the sun was high in the sky to read this but now the only problem is that in a few hours the sun will go down again.

[–]Baalphire81 38 points39 points40 points 2 years ago(2 children)

Hey all, I, like many others here just made an account so I could post my experience. I live in Eastern Massachusetts, there is an area here known to be haunted, UFO infested, and cult frequented. Not only is it currently part of a Wampanoag reservation, it was the site of one of the first conflicts between Native Americans and colonists, known as King Phillips war. This part of the forest is thought to be home to Puckwudgies, they are kind of a trickster spirit/gremlin, they will play into my tale.
I was walking alone on a little used trail near where a lot of off road motorcyclists ride, I heard the sounds of bikes approaching so I hauled ass up a side trail running pell mel through low hanging branches and spiderwebs. I thought I had run far enough up this trail so I wouldn't get run over, however I thought it odd that a marked trail (I saw the blue plastic piece nailed to several trees) would be so over grown and unused. I walked on figuring i could make my way to a mill pond several miles away, and I came upon a quite large glacial erratic (basically a huge boulder left by retreating glaciers) I climbed up and found quite a few stones placed in patterns, as well as stacked rocks. Looking around for a while I climbed down a continued on my way through the woods in the general direction of the mill pond. A few hundred yards down I started seeing odd symbols spray painted on trees, I also started noticing any rocks on the trail tended to have a large amount of white scratches on them. I was very well aware of the murders in this forest and that they were mostly linked to some sort of long operating cult, so I started getting a bit nervous. A few trees had symbols as well as arrows and I started taking the opposite direction of the arrows. Quite a bit deeper into the walk I found the trail skirting a small depression and clearing in the woods. This area didn't feel right, it felt as though something lived there, this is when I started having the feeling I was being watched, I also realized that there were no sounds in the forest aside from the sigh of wind through the trees. I kept walking and to this day I'm not really sure why. Soon after the clearing I came upon a deadfall across the path and I had to go quite a ways around to get back on the path. I took a closer look at the trees and there were more of the long (4-6 inch) scratches not only in the rocks on the trail but up and over the fallen trees as well. The trail soon turned into a seasonally dry stream bed (a lot of scratches on the rocks here) and after a few hundred yards dead ended into a flooded swamp. It looked as though the path continued on around a corner, but it was submerged in several inches of brackish water, finally realizing maybe it was time to turn around and head back I had an intense feeling of being watched. I started walking briskly back and made it maybe 100 feet before I heard what sounded like a tree falling not to far away, now as anyone who has spent time in the woods can tell you, often times the forest floor is very good at transmitting vibrations, be it a deer or horse galloping that you can feel before you can hear or see them, or trees falling. I could feel this through the soles of my shoes. Then the sound came again but louder and closer, then again, and again, until it sounded like the forest was being torn down tree by tree. At this point my boss called me on my cellphone and I reluctantly answered. The noise stopped immediately as soon as I began talking on the phone. At this point I was terrified but not trying to let on to my boss, so I started quickly walking back down the trail while answering all of his questions. When I hung up the feeling started again that someone was just out of sight behind me on the trail, every once in a while I would quickly look behind me to check, however when I would do this the small sounds of leaves rustling and twigs cracking would stop. Several times on the way back I smelled several distinct scents that were out of place, at one point I smelled Ketchup, and not just a slight whiff! It was such a strong smell I could taste it. On another occasion further down, near the glacial erratic I smelled what can only be described as women's perfume, but again so strong I got that terrible taste in my mouth that a perfume will give. The rest of the trip the feeling of being followed gradually eased up the closer I got to the main trail, and eventually I made it back to my car unharmed. I have told this story to several people in the area and the overwhelming consensus was that I was an idiot for hiking through there alone.

[–]NoSleepSeriesBot 46 points47 points48 points 2 years ago*(2 children)

1993 current subscribers. Other posts in this series:

Clickhere toreceiveamessagewhenthisseriesisupdated.Send<3

[–]DoublePlusGoodly 27 points28 points29 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I've never subscribed to anything on Reddit before subscribing to this series. Thanks for the awesome stories, OP.

[–]God_Damnit_Nappa 17 points18 points19 points 2 years ago*(0 children)

Note to self: if I see a staircase in the woods, set that fucker on fire. Half the state is burning anyway.

Also I think the best part of these stories are that not everything is spooky. Some things are weird, some are funny, and some are just really sad but don't involve the supernatural at all. Well done OP.

[+][deleted] 2 years ago(1 child)

[deleted]

[–]SophiaNichole 14 points15 points16 points 2 years ago(2 children)

Does anyone else want to go stairs hunting?! I work in yoho/banff/jasper national parks and it's tempting. (With a buddy or two of course)

[–]BlewLikeCandy 50 points51 points52 points 2 years ago*(11 children)

Everything about your stories is fantastic. If you keep posting, I'll keep reading. Just know the vast amount of power you have in your hands: if you ever stop, thousands of people will be upset because of the quality of this stuff. Thank you.

Edit: if anyone with supreme Google-Fu can find a link to a story about that family with the two missing children, I'd be very interested in getting a media take on that event.

[–]lingualetariat 32 points33 points34 points 2 years ago(1 child)

if you ever stop [posting]

Fucked with the stairs.

[–]ricksmorty 27 points28 points29 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Wouldn't that be awfully close to doxxing OP? I'm assuming that he could get in quite a bit of trouble at work and with the co workers and associates that shared these stories with him if they found out he was posting them to Reddit. I'd rather have OP's stories without the verification than potentially lose them because we had to go sniffing about....

[–]GreenSmokes 16 points17 points18 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Makes me want to become a SAR officer

[+][deleted] 2 years ago(2 children)

[deleted]

[–]Lanfear00 14 points15 points16 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Jesus, I teach an environmental ed class with high school kids in the Rockies and I don't think I want to go to work anymore.

[–]eruantien_h 14 points15 points16 points 2 years ago*(8 children)

These are blood-chilling. Please tell us more. (I am never going camping.)

It's extremely creepy if you consider the possibility of hostile beings in remote areas of the wilderness, things that feel no compassion or hold us as completely insignificant, but which still interfere enough to hold us in fear of them. And even more so, if it was the wilderness itself that brought such calamities on those who go into the wilderness.

... but this is all just wild speculation. Right guys? Guys...?

[–]KilroyTheKiljoy 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(7 children)

There is a pattern beginning to emerge with these missing persons cases, seems like two people or entities are involved. One that is malevolent and the benefactor. It's also the second time the man with no face has been mentioned.

[–]eruantien_h 13 points14 points15 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Hm, perhaps not so much 'benefactor' as 'not completely hostile'.

Also, the first time the no-face man was mentioned was on top of the glacier (?) and caused that one guy to lose it. Whereas for the second occurrence it took a child for some time, but returned it as being not the right kind.

And, yeah, there's likely a(t least one) malevolent entity. These sorts of events are way too connected overall... I agree with respect to it being a pattern.

[–]csmrh 6 points7 points8 points 2 years ago(4 children)

The man with no face is probably the blurry/fuzzy man, right? But what about the guy with the "scary face." And that one kid was still found dead with berries in his stomach. Wait, who's the good one? Fuck.

now I have to read the whole series again.

[–]Kaceytbh 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(2 children)

I'm interpreting the blurry/fuzzy man as something from another dimension that we can't see properly/it doesn't know how to fully come into our dimension.

[–]XarabidopsisX 14 points15 points16 points 2 years ago(4 children)

Summoning /u/Pope_Fenderson_II

Given your cultural familiarity with the stairs, I'm wondering if you have any insight into this section. I'm basing this question off your comments made to Part 2 of this series.

'We warn people not to go anywhere near them but there's always at least one idiot who does. And even if nothing happens to them, something bad always happens. Kids go missing as we're on their trail. Someone dies the next day, cut in half in a completely safe part of the park. I don't know why, but something bad always happens.

[–]Simonthefish 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(1 child)

Here are some links we found about the stuff that goes on in Seneca. specifically the part about the deers walking on their hind legs, crazy spooky shit considering all the natives in the area are of deer clan, and most won't kill or eat deer.

http://buffalorising.com/2015/05/witch-lights-part-2/

http://www.masonwinfield.com/Journal/tabid/58/EntryId/244/The-GOLD-of-GAHAI-HILL.aspx

[–]Lily_May 13 points14 points15 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Fuck the stairs and fuck the woods, man.

[–]dankcomment 11 points12 points13 points 2 years ago(2 children)

Well that explains why in your previous post, the senior SAR was like "you went up the stairs didnt you?" when the boys body was found dead. Every time the stair is climbed someone dies/get injured/goes missing?

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points12 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I made a reddit account because of you. This is my first comment! Really good stuff to read! But considering that I have a mountain house I regret reading this hehe...

[+][deleted] 2 years ago*(4 children)

[deleted]

[–]allthingsweird25 19 points20 points21 points 2 years ago*(10 children)

So I literally just got a reddit account because of these stories. I've been hooked ever since my friend shared them with me. She knew I loved all things weird (ha) and thought I would enjoy. She was absolutely 100% correct. I am now hooked and doing my own research, trying to find photos and coordinates if at all possible. I've found a couple pictures that might be something... https://fbcdn-photos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/t31.0-0/p600x600/11040599_10153145632412549_3819578515078143357_o.jpg That could literally just be a lookout somewhere but I thought it was interesting. But then theres this one...

https://scontent-lga1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/11949370_10153145632652549_7225863177531992054_n.jpg?oh=6c6c61630b56f6f72957d49746282739&oe=56780D86 I found this on a Mom's blog about how her and her family went geocaching and found them. Apparently nothing strange happened but it's the best I could find so far. That was on my phone, I just opened my laptop which I never use to try and search more.. I thought it would be interesting to bring up the Winchester Mansion. For those who don't know it's this huge mansion built by the widow of the guy who made the Winchester Rifle? Supposedly a curse was put on him and his family by everyone who ever died because of those guns. At least, that's what a fortune teller told the wife when she went looking for answers. The fortune teller also told her she had to keep building on to her house for the rest of her life or the spirits were going to kill her just like they killed her husband and child. So she did just that, for over 20 years, 24 hours a day she had workers building random useless rooms, doors that led to brick walls, and here's where it connects, sort of, stairs that literally went to nowhere. Like you can find pictures of these stairs that just go to the ceiling. Not really sure what they could both mean, but maybe she knew something about stairs and spirits that we don't. I'm about to go search for what that might be. I'll come back here if I figure anything out. P.S. Sorry if this isn't formatted correctly. Like I said, literally my first day on here, I'm normally a tumblr girl but I needed to comment and share the pictures and ideas.

(I think I'm just going to reply to this with links that might be relevant just so I have one place for all of them)

[–]BlackRaven101 9 points10 points11 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Can't wait for the next one! :)

[–]allysabravosi 19 points20 points21 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I am certain this series is being written by a technology based demon that is laying the framework to keep everyone out of the woods and glued to their computer screens.

[–]IHaveATurtleOnMyDesk 17 points18 points19 points 2 years ago(6 children)

As someone who grew up in the woods.. These hit particularly close to home. There are places where the atmosphere changes, the hair on the back of your neck stands up, you can feel something there always just out of sight, always moving, always waiting. Growing up we all had experiences we couldn't completely explain.

[–]ScottRikkard 12 points13 points14 points 2 years ago(5 children)

THIS if anything, is true. Same here, grew up by the forest, went to play there every day almost. Some days I felt like at home, some days I felt I shouldn't be there. Weird stuff.

Few times with a friend had moments of intense fear/panic. At times we could go really far and be cool. At times we weren't that far, but we felt uneasy.

[–]BigOldJudy 9 points10 points11 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I usually second guess a majority of the posts in NoSleep.. But yours make me question the deep woods more. I'm really liking your stories/experiences

[–]permantentlyconfused 6 points7 points8 points 2 years ago(0 children)

This is becoming a huge obsession of mine... I can't stop researching and speculating about all these things. Between these (amazing) stories and David Paulides it's a miracle I get anything done. Keep 'em coming!

[–]dylmatik 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago(1 child)

We need our pals from True Detective to solve these mysteries. And I mean detectives from Season 1 not Season 2, Season 2 detectives will just attempt suicide by running up those stairs..

[–]atribecalledbaked 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago(0 children)

It's 2 am, I just read all your stories, and now I'm fucked. Thanks for being so talented, you talented hack.

[–]Devious_Dave 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I've been thinking this for some time now, since part one even, but i'm just going to write it down. Everytime I've read about the staircases I can't help but wonder how they got there. I've speculated a few different scenarios in which they could/should be there but none seem too likely. The one I keep falling back to though is a "philadelphia experiment" type of scenario, where for some reason the test targets are staircases. Maybe they are being sent forward in time, maybe they are sent backward in time, destined to return or bounce to another location/time (since they don't stick around indefinitely).

Doesn't make much sense, I know, but it would at least seem to tie some loose ends together. People being violently injured in such a way could be explained if certain areas around the stairs were constantly coming and going from this plane. The staircase remains but the space around them is still involved, so maybe that fella's hand got "teleported" somewhere else while he remained.

Just food for thought. These are so interesting!~

[–]jennie-420 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I love your stories and I am so interested in what ever the fuck is taking these people! Please keep em coming. Your really brave I don't know how you keep your shit together.

Found this online after looking into David Paulides ... he's making a movie about thousands of people across America who have gone missing in national parks.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1032329905/missing-411-the-movie/description

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago*(1 child)

My parents loved ghost stories and used to tell us stuff that happened to them when they were kids. We would be on our way home from some outing on a long dark country road riding in our station wagon in the middle of the night. Our mom said when she was a kid they used to live way out in the country. She had a cousin that lived with them and went fishing all the time at a some fishing hole he knew about. That day he stayed out there a little too long as it was getting dark so he started his way back home walking along this trail he used all the time. It was getting so dark he could hardly see the path he was walking on, about halfway back, he heard these footsteps behind him following him, every time he walked it would walk and when he stopped it stopped, by this time he was scared out his wits and started running. Seeing this tree with a low slung branch in front of him, he jumped up as fast as he could and waited to see what was following him He heard it but never saw anything run past, right underneath him Jumping down and running away in different direction himself, he was sure it was running right behind him all the way back home. Getting closer to the house as fast as he could never slowing down, he burst through the screen door! falling down onto the floor in front of everyone sitting in the living room, so out of breath he couldn't explain what happened to him. "What was it?", I asked mom ,they never knew ,but it sounds like another incident found in these stories here.

[–]Special_Agent_Scarn1 9 points10 points11 points 2 years ago(1 child)

This series has to be one of the most harrowing things I've read in months. The crazy thing, is, deep down, I believe every last word. Look, I know the rules, but there is something exceptionally authentic about your stories.

I have had one experience while camping that I'll share. When I was about 17, me and my family drove to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to spend a night out in the woods. Really beautiful country, at least for Oklahoma. We had rented a small cabin to spend the night in. It was probably about 800-1000 square feet, consisting of a kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom. The exterior was stone. I don't know the age of the cabin, but I'm guessing it was very old as about half of the other ones around were completely decayed. One of them looked burnt down, just spare stone walls and charred wood on a concrete foundation. Anyway, it was a cool little campsite, nothing sinister or scary about it. Around 9 o'clock we all went inside and got ready for bed. Me and my dad slept on the pull-out couch, my mom and three little brothers on the inflatable mattress. Here's where shit gets weird. At about 1 AM, the absolute dead of the night, I woke up. Suddenly, but not violently. Standing in the middle of the room was a silhouette, looking down on me. I thought it was my dad. The thing just stood and stared at me. I looked beside me, and there was my dad, totally asleep. Bewildered, I glanced back up. "It" was still there...and then...it literally vanished, right before my eyes.

I have no explanation for what happened. The craziest thing is that I remained calm. I looked at my family asleep around me and felt totally safe. I went back to sleep and never told them what happened, as I simply didn't see a reason to. I still think about it sometimes.

[–]xxsummsxx 15 points16 points17 points 2 years ago(0 children)

omg.... I know you said you were going away for almost a week but I have been stalking Nosleep waiting for your stories. You're awesome... Marry me please lol

[–]iamkindofodd 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(0 children)

Good God, I just finished part three and was counting back the days to try and figure out what day you meant you would post when you said "earlier next week". So excited right now.

[–]Haz_Matt_ 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(1 child)

I immediately stopped playing MGS V when I saw this was uploaded just to read it

[–]iamkindofodd 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago(7 children)

Love how everything is starting to make sense, yet still doesn't really. The stairs are beginning to sound more and more like portals now. I also wonder if it's connected to the fuzzy man and if so, how?

[–]eccofire 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago(6 children)

"Men that are not men, men from a different place" who am I quoting on this?

[–]rathryon 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(1 child)

This is probably my favorite no sleep story, ever. I love the woods and my dad does too. We've experienced some weird things out there. Once you leave civilization, you're no longer in charge.

[–]Cleverthough 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(0 children)

I was scrolling through new posts, saw the title and almost jumped out of my chair. I love the stories man, keep them coming. Stuff like this is what /r/nosleep is all about!

[–]Dawg1shly 9 points10 points11 points 2 years ago(4 children)

OP- I had never heard of the Missing411 series or David Paulides before someone wrote earlier that your stories are similar. I just ordered 4 books from him so you're doing David a service telling your stories.

[–]astral-mystic 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(9 children)

Do the park rangers warn hikers to avoid the stairs? wouldn't that certainly decrease the amount of missing persons?

[–]Druvilista 11 points12 points13 points 2 years ago(2 children)

Just LOOK at all the comments on these stories people going "Who wants to to look for stairs?!?!" after literally just being told so much as looking at them too long as get you/someone else killed. if they put up signs and told people, it's be the same.

[–]aeiouieaeee 9 points10 points11 points 2 years ago(0 children)

That might make some people want to use them more

[–]ion-fields 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(0 children)

There are like three staircases in Edgar Evins State Park in Tennessee. They /say/ they're left over from old homesteads that used to be there. Nope. Nope. Nope. So glad I didn't try to climb them.

[–]NoSleepWthoutNosleep 6 points7 points8 points 2 years ago(0 children)

You, sir, have just convinced me to continue with my indoor lifestyle! Too many spooky things out there. Can't take my safety blanket everywhere!

[–]alfanie 7 points8 points9 points 2 years ago(0 children)

This happened very recently: A 5-year old boy who went missing near the Grand Canyon was found dead after he vanished while 'chasing grasshoppers' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193159/Body-five-year-old-boy-went-missing-chasing-grasshoppers-near-Grand-Canyon-five-days-ago-found.html

The grasshoppers sound exactly like a lure.