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So saying twills. You ever drive by a wall of
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trees at night and feel like the darkness is not
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behind the trees but inside of them, Like the headlights
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only go so far, and after that the woods just
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absorb everything, the road, noise, your music, that little voice
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in your head that says, come on, man, it's just trees.
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That's the thing about the wilderness. It doesn't have to
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prove anything to you. It doesn't need a ghost in
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a white dress, or a cursed mirror, or a demon
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crawling across the ceiling. Sometimes the scariest thing in the
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woods can be when they go quiet and tonight. I
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want to talk about the kinds of stories people bring
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back from those places. Not polished legends from a book,
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not official case files, just the stuff people post online
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after a hike or a camping trip or a park
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shift because something happened out there and they still don't
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know what to do with it. Are they all true? Well,
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I have no idea. That's not really the fun of it.
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The fun is that they sound like the exact kind
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of story a friend would tell you at one in
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the morning, while the highway is empty and those trees
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are pressing in on both sides of the car. This
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is Thursday Thrills, a quick weekly ride into the creepy stories,
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haunted place, weird obsessions, and eerie little corners of the
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world worth talking about. I'm your host, Enrique Kuto, and
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Tonight deep woods horror stories, campers, hikers, park rangers, strange
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people in the dark, animals that sound a little too human,
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caves that should not have drummers in them, and before
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we're done, a river monster from North Dakota that you're
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not supposed to look at in the daylight. So lock
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the doors, keep the high beams on, and if the
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woods suddenly go silent, maybe don't ask why. A lot
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of wilderness horror starts with one uncomfortable realization. The scariest
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thing in the forest may not be an animal. It
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may be another person. One backpacker described being dropped off
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after dark at the tacumsa trail in southern Indiana. There
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was an old truck nearby, and, according to the story,
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it slowed down while he was getting his gear. He
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couldn't find good trees at the campsite, so he set
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up his hammock about seventy five feet away, which sounds
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annoying at first, until later that night he wakes up
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to headlights pouring through the trees. People are moving around
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the campsite. They aren't exactly whispering, but they're not exactly
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announcing themselves either. And the part that really sticks is
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the idea that these strangers seemed to be looking for
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the person who had been dropped off there. He wasn't
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where they expected him to be. He was in the dark,
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off to the side, hanging silent in a hammock. That's
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the whole story. Nobody jumps out, nobody chases him. But
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tell me that that is not worse in some way,
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because the question isn't what happened. The question is what
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might have happened if he had picked a different spot,
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an obvious spot. Another camper, this one in West Virginia,
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told a story that feels like a perfect campfire nightmare.
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He was deep off the trail with his dog tucked
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near a cliff face, far from anything scenic or popular.
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No water feature, no overlook, no reason for another person
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to wander right up on him after dark. The dog
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notices first, that's always how these things go, right. The
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dog goes alert, then growls. The camper shines his light
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up at the cliff and there's a man standing above him,
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wearing a camouflage poncho, hood up, not raining, not moving,
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just watching. He calls out and the man doesn't answer.
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He stands there a little longer, then turns and walks
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away into the dark. That's the whole monster. A man
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with no explanation, no dialogue, no purpose, and no concern
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that he's just becomes somebody else's campfire story for the
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rest of their lives. And honestly, that may be the
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reason these stories spread so well. They leave a person
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shaped hole in the middle. A bear wants food, a
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cougar wants distance, a storm wants to be a storm.
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But a silent man in a poncho on a cliff, well,
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the woods can keep that explanation to themselves. There's a
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similar account from a big provincial park where a couple
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canoes out to an island campsite. The ranger tells them
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the place is basically empty, which sounds like a dream
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until they paddle back one day and see another canoe
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pulled up on the shore. Three strangers are going through
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their campsite, not stealing, apparently just poking around looking at things,
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and when the couple gets close, the strangers rush to
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their canoe, push off, and then sit out on the
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water staring back at them. Nothing violent happens, nothing supernatural happens.
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But I love the detail that they slept with a
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hatchet in the tent that night, because that is exactly
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the kind of fear the wilderness manufactures. It doesn't always
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give you a threat. Sometimes it gives you a question
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and then makes you sleep beside it. When we come back,
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we leave the creepy people behind and get into the
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really old fear. What happens when the entire four seems
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to notice something before you do. What happens when the
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woods go quiet? If you spend enough time reading camping
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and hiking stories, one detail shows up again and again.
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The sudden silence. Not a normal quiet, It's not peaceful,
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it's the wrong kind. One person described fishing a little
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lake with a cousin, only about a half a mile
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from the road, a bright day with birds and breeze
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and bluegill, everything ordinary. Then the woods seem to just
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shut off. The birds stopped, the air felt like it
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stopped too, And after that they heard footsteps slowly crunching
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through the trees. That is such a simple image, but
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it gets under the skin because you can feel the
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order of operations. First the world notices, then you catch up,
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and whatever's out there starts walking. Another camper on Vancouver
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Island described something similar. Frogs had been loud all night,
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keeping them awake, making it hard to fall asleep, even
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though it was a delightful natural ambience. Then suddenly dead silence,
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not for ten seconds, not for a dramatic movie beat,
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but for half an hour, long enough for everyone around
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the fire to become aware that the silence is now
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the main guest at camp. People always say it means
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a predator is nearby. Maybe cougars, bears, coyotes. All of
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that is real and scary enough. But one older woodsman
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in that same online conversation pushed back on that easy answer.
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He said, sometimes the woods just stop. Everything pauses at once,
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and nobody knows why. I like that better, honestly, not
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because it's more scientific, but because it's creepier. A predator
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is an answer, sure. The woods deciding to hold its
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breath is a story. It gets to live. A park
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ranger in another thread said the most unsettling thing was
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walking into the woods and hearing absolutely nothing. No bugs,
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no leaves, no small animal movements, just blackness and stillness.
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That person had also dealt with coyotes moving strangely near
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the ranger base, possibly defending a kill, But the detail
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that really stayed with them was the silence, not the teeth.
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The silence, and that makes sense. Sound is how the
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woods tell you it's alive. Bugs, frogs, wind, branches, birds, water,
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little things scurrying around under the leaves. When all of
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that drops out, your brain starts filling in the details
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with whatever it fears the most. Maybe it is a cougar,
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Maybe it is a bear. Maybe it is some guy
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standing on a ridge with a poncho over his face.
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Maybe it's nothing at all, but nothing at all can
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be terrifying when it has footsteps. The funny thing is
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a lot of these wilderness stories do have reasonable explanations.
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The explanation just doesn't make them less scary. One person
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working as a park ranger and archaeologist was surveying a
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rock shelter near a known mountain lion area. They kept
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getting this primal panic feeling, a raw animal level alarm
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going off in their body, they pushed through it, finished
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the work, moved back and forth across the area, and
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only later realized they had been walking within a few
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feet of a mountain lion den. That one gets to
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me because it suggests your body may know the woods
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better than your mind does. You're standing there trying to
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be rational, thinking why am I so freaked out? And
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your nervous system is in the back seat screaming because
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something with claws lives right there, you idiot. It's like
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evolution is trying to protect us, even though we believe
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we've outgrown it. We don't need that, I mean, we
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have iPhones. Come on. Another camper in the bad Land
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told a story that plays like a monster movie until
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you realize the monster is completely real. He's alone in
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a tent in the middle of the night when the
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ground starts shaking every few seconds. He freezes. He thinks earthquake,
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military test, volcano, end of the world. Finally, he takes
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off his headphones and hears breathing right outside the tent.
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Not ghostly breaths, not deep demon breaths, Bison breaths, huge,
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heavy animal breathing, the kind attached to a body that
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can step wrong and erase your whole camping trip from
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the planet. That is what makes nature so terrifying. The
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real answer is often worse than the fake one. A
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ghost might want to scare you. A bison doesn't want
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anything from you. It just exists, and if you happen
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to be in the wrong little nylon bag near its hoof,
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well that's your problem. There's another little account I really
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love because it's almost comedy, but the bad kind of comedy,
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where your soul leaves your body. A person in the
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woods has a deer sneak up right behind them, and cough.
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Deer can make weird noises, almost humanish sounds, And when
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you're alone and you believe you're the only person nearby,
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a sudden cough from two feet behind me is enough
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to turn Bambi into a home invader. That may be
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the purest wilderness horror of all nature, doing something totally normal,
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but doing it at the exact wrong distance from your spine.
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Woods are bad enough. Caves are worse because caves feel
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like the Earth made hallways and forgot to include mercy.
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One account from New Zealand starts almost two perfectly. A
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hiker is alone in the bush listening to a Lovecraft
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audiobook complete with chanting and screaming sound effects. That is
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already quite a choice. Then he decides to camp in
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a huge, old sea cave, the kind of place that
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used to be close to the ocean and apparently once
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had people dancing in it on weekends. He sets up
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at the back of the cave. A guy comes in
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and says he and some friends are gonna play drums
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for a little while. Weird, but all right. Caves have
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great acoustics after all, so that checks out. Then the
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group comes in, sits in a circle between the camper
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and the exit, and just stays silent. Then they start screaming,
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then chanting, then standing in silence, then screaming and laughing
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one at a time. Then after about an hour they leave.
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Now they're probably is is an explanation, some kind of
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music practice, group therapy, ritual performance, or a college art
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thing whatever. But if you're alone in the back of
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a cave listening to cosmic horror and a circle of
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strangers starts screaming between you and the only way out,
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I don't care how reasonable you are. You are now
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in a folk tale, that's what these accounts keep doing.
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They take normal human stuff and let the wilderness frame
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it wrong. A person in a poncho becomes a watcher,
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a deer cough becomes a stranger, drummers in a cave
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become a cult, Silence becomes a warning, and once the
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woods have framed something wrong, good luck shaking that feeling
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from your lizard brain. Now, Well, before we pull out
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of the trees, I want to end with something older
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than redit, because all these modern online accounts are really
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just the newest version of something people have always done.
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Come back from the wild and try to explain why
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it felt alive. Along the Missouri River in North Dakota,
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there is a legend called Mini Washitu. The story is
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associated with Mandan tradition, and like a lot of water
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monster folklore, it turns a dangerous landscape into a creature.
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You can imagine winter on that stretch of river could
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cover the Missouri and heavy ice. Spring did not simply arrive.
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It had to break its way in, and in the legend,
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Mini Washitu is the being that does it. Red buffalo
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haired water monster with one eye, one horn, and a
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jagged backbone like a giant saw. It swims up the
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river roaring, breaking the ice open. As it goes. At night,
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you might see it as a streak of red in
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the water. By day, the warning gets darker. The old
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version says that seeing mini Washitu in daylight could drive
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a person mad or kill them soon after. I love
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that as a final note for this story, because it's
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not just there's a monster in the river. It's the
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river has a face, a visage its own, and you
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are not allowed to look at it. That is wilderness
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horror in its purest form. Nature is moving, Nature is
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changing seasons. Nature is doing something enormous and necessary. And
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your role, tiny little human, is to keep your eyes
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to yourself. That is the thread running through all of
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these stories. The woods, the caves, the rivers, the back
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county roads, they all seem to have rules. Don't camp
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in the obvious spot. Don't ignore the dog when it growls.
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Do not assume silence equates to peace. Do not follow
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the footprints, do not laugh at the cough behind you.
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Do not sleep too deeply in a place where the
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ground itself can start breathing. And if something red moves
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under the river ice in daylight, maybe let it pass
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and look away now before I leave you, remember that
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most wilderness horror starts with a very simple thought. Something
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is out there, and the worst part is not knowing
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whether it's hiding from you or waiting for you. Come