I Dare You To Read This Book.

I'm a SAR Officer for the US Forest Service, I have some stories to tell Part 7

u/searchandrescuewoods
One of the topics that I get asked about a lot, here and in real life, involve things like The Rake, the Wendigo, and other related legends. I can't honestly say that I know a lot about any of them, but based on some light reading I did I can say that I've heard stories that seem to be loosely related to them. You've heard the old adage that legends like that come from somewhere, and I'm sure that's true, but as you all know I do try to take things with a grain of salt. You have to, out here. It's sort of like working in a hospital, I'd imagine. You could spend all day thinking about how many people have died there, and how there are probably ghosts, or whatever you want to call them, all over the place, but it doesn't do you any good. It just makes it harder to do your job. I think a lot of us feel that way, and that's why we try to just go about our work like everything is fine. Once you get paranoid, there's not really any going back, and a lot of cadets quit because of it. My park especially seems to have a high turn-over rate because the cadets graduate and get so freaked out about everything, and they can't seem to let it go. You have to learn to internalize things and shut off.
I've talked to K.D a bit about her experience, because I wanted to know what she thought about the Wendigo. She didn't really have anything in particular to say about it, aside from that she didn't want to think about it that much, but she told me a friend of hers had had something similar happen. I contacted this person, H, over Skype, and they agreed to talk to me a bit. They're aware of my work here, and they're fine with me posting the story exactly as they wrote it:
"I grew up in Central Oregon, and there's a reservation called Warm Springs about two or so hours from where I lived. I only mention that because a lot of people in my area have friends there, and a lot of the land in that area belongs to that tribe. When I was a kid, we used to go camping up there. Not on the res, of course, but in that area, and I met a lot of kids who grew up there. I got to know one kid really well, his name was Nolan, and we ended up hanging out a lot when our families were in the area. Our folks got to know each other so we'd all get in touch and camp out around the same time. We'd camp for about two weeks, so we were out there for a long time. [I asked him if he camped in an RV.] Yeah, my dad had one, so I guess it wasn't really camping but we'd take our tents and stuff and set them up out away from camp most nights. I didn't like sleeping in there because I like being outside. [We talked for a bit about camping]
So anyway, sorry, one year Nolan and I were out there, I think we must have been like twelve or so. We wanted to go out and camp near the river because we wanted to try night fishing, I think we must have been about a third of a mile from the main camp. Far enough away that we couldn't hear or see anyone else, I remember that. We were messing around most of the day, I don't really remember much about it, but we ended up building a fire at some point and I was really impressed because he had this flint or something that he used to start it. I'd never seen anyone do that before so I thought it was pretty cool. I got him to teach me how to do it and we lit some stuff on fire, which looking back was really stupid because it was the middle of fucking summer, and if I remember right the fire warning was either at yellow or orange. But thankfully we didn't start anything major, and when it got dark we sat around and talked about whatever it is twelve year olds talk about, I don't really remember. What I do remember is that at some point, he looked over my shoulder at the river and asked me if I could see something.
The way our camp was set up, we were about ten feet from the river, and we were at the widest point, so it was probably about twenty feet to the other bank. It gets hot up there in the summer but the water's still cold, which is important.
I look over my shoulder and I could see something wading into the river on the other side. From where we were it looked like a deer but we couldn't really tell because of the fire. I got up to look closer and I saw a pair of antlers, so I figured it was a buck. But I thought it was weird that it was wading into the water, and it was definitely heading for us, and I asked Nolan what he thought we should do. He's looking at the fire with this weird expression and he tells me to sit down and shut up, so I do, because I'd never seen him act that way before. He's whispering at me to ignore it, and to just keep talking like we were but I couldn't think of anything to say. He was saying something about an episode of some show, but I could hear the deer coming through the water, so I wasn't really paying any attention, and I kept trying to see over his shoulder, but every time I did he'd sort of hit me on the arm and make me look at him. I wasn't really scared, I remember, I was just sort of confused. But then I hear the deer come out of the water, and I could kind of make out what it looked like, and I realized it wasn't a deer because whatever it was was walking on two legs. I started to get up, I was super freaked out, but Nolan just yanked me back down and talked louder about this television show, and I could tell he was just as scared as I was, probably even more. He leaned in and poked the fire with a stick, and he whispered that whatever I do, I can't speak to it. I could see it come closer, and it stood right behind Nolan's back. I was about ready to pee my pants, and I think I'd probably have run if I'd been alone, but I didn't want to leave Nolan, so I kept sitting really still and sneaking glances at it. It wasn't that tall, but the way it carried itself was just wrong, like its center of balance was screwed up. I can't really describe it, but it was kind of like it kept shifting too far forward. It just stood there behind Nolan for a long time, and eventually Nolan ran out of things to say and we just kind of sat there for a second. The fire was making noise, but I thought I could hear this thing talking in a really low voice. I couldn't hear what it was saying, and I leaned forward a tiny little bit, and I actually DID pee my pants when it leaned forward too. I couldn't see its face, but I saw its eyes.
They were cloudy and milky, and if you want to know what they looked like, find that scene from Lord of the Rings where Frodo falls in that lake and all the dead people are floating toward him. That's what its eyes looked like. So all I saw were these two white eyes floating above Nolan's head, and the really vague shape of the antlers coming out of its head. I don't know what my face looked like but at exactly the same time Nolan and I fucking booked it out of there, and we ran non-stop until we got back to the main camp. My pants were soaked with pee, so I took them off as we were running and threw them in the bushes. We both stopped once we were in front of my dad's RV and we couldn't see anything chasing us, so we stood there and caught our breath. I asked him what that thing was but he said he didn't know. He said his grandpa had only warned him that if anything ever came up to him when he was out in the desert, he was never, ever supposed to talk to it or listen to anything it had to say. I wanted to know if he'd heard it talking too, and he said that the only thing he'd been able to understand was 'help you'. I think we ended up sleeping in the RV with my parents, and the next night we went back out and didn't see anything.
That does remind me, in a lot of ways, of the Wendigo legend. There's a phrase used to describe it that I think fits perfectly, which is that the Wendigo is 'the spirit of the lonely places.' I know sometimes when I'm out in the wilds, where I know there's no one around me for miles and miles, I get this weird kind of craving that I can't really explain. I don't know if it happens to anyone else, but it's this desire to consume. It's not like I crave anything in particular, but more of this weird, distracting hunger that comes from every part of my gut.
I also wanted to find out more about the faceless man, if I was able, and found a few similar things. I asked around my circle of friends, and one of them said when he was out doing repairs at a park in his area, he saw something kind of like that.
We were having dinner in town, five of us including myself. This guy, he was re-painting an information booth and heard a man ask him for directions to the nearest campsite. He didn't turn around because he was up on a ladder, but he informed the man that there weren't any campsites nearby, but that if he headed down the road about four miles, he'd find one at another park. He asked if he could be of any other help, but the man said no, and thanked him. My friend said he kept painting, but he was listening, and never heard the man leave.
"The second he came up and talked to me, the hairs on my neck stood up, but I wasn't sure why. I just had this really uneasy feeling about the whole thing, and I wanted to finish painting and get out of there. I figured maybe part of it was that I couldn't turn around to look at him, but something just felt off. There was also this weird smell floating around even before the guy talked to me, kind of like old period blood. I had looked around to see what was causing it but I didn't find anything. So I waited for the guy to walk away, but I didn't hear him leave, which made me think he was just standing there and watching me, so I asked again if I could do anything for him, and he didn't answer. I knew he was there though, because I hadn't heard him leave, so I did this awkward turn on the ladder to look down and see what he was doing. Now I admit it could have just been my brain fucking up, but I swear to you, Russ, for a split second when I turned around, that fucker didn't have a face. Like he had no face. It was almost concave, and totally smooth, and I just about had a fucking heart attack because I couldn't even wrap my brain around what I was seeing. I think I started to say something but there was this kind of 'pop' inside my head and suddenly he was just a normal looking guy. I must have looked weird because he asked me if I was okay, and I was just like 'yeah, I'm fine.' He asks about the campsite again and I point to where he has to go, and he's like 'I'm not from around here, can you help me get there?' Now this is when I know something is really up because there's no way this guy got out here and didn't know where he was. And for that matter, there's no car around, so how'd he get here in the first place? I said I was sorry but that I couldn't take him anywhere in a company vehicle, and he's like 'please? I really don't know where I am, can you come with me and help me get there?' So now I'm seriously weirded out, and I start wondering if this is some kind of ambush or whatever. I told him I could call him a taxi to come out and take him where he wants to go, and I pull out my phone and he just goes 'no' and walks away really quickly. But he doesn't walk out of the park, he walks back into the fucking trees and I got right in my fucking truck and start to get out of there, fuck the paint or whatever. I looked in my mirror to see where he was as I was leaving and he was standing right at the tree line again, I don't know how he got there so fast, but this time I know that fucker didn't have a face. He was just watching me leave, and right before I turned the corner he took a big step back into the trees and kind of dissolved, I guess. Maybe it was just dark so he blended in, but it felt more like he just melted away."
Interestingly, right after this guy finished his story, someone else, piped up with another one, but with a slightly different twist.
"You know actually, I had something sort of weird like that happen a while back. I was out doing some trail scouting, and I was out in the middle of nowhere figuring out where we were gonna have this trail run through. I hadn't seen anyone else for probably a good two hours, so I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going, I was just looking at the ground for the most part. Then out of nowhere, I crested this little hill and almost ran into this guy. He was older, probably in his sixties, and I started to apologize to him for running into him. And then I noticed his face, and I probably looked like a complete douchebag because I stopped and just stared at him. It took me a second to figure out what was wrong, but this guy's face was huge. I know that sounds weird, but that's the only way I can describe it. His head wasn't big or anything, it was normal, but the amount of space his face took up was just way too much. Like if you took someone's face and enlarged it all by about two times. He doesn't say anything, he just kind of looks at me, and I backed up and was kind of stuttering and saying I was sorry, and I went around him and fucking got out of there and did what I needed to do. The whole time, I kept looking behind me because I was so freaked out that he'd pop up behind me or something. I know it sounds ridiculous but I swear to you it was one of the creepiest things I've ever seen."
I switched the topic to the stairs a little later, and there was a definite shift in enthusiasm. No one spoke up at first; there is a real stigma around discussing them, even when we're away from work. But I broke the ice with a story of my own, and the guy who told the story about the faceless man told this one, albeit very quietly.
"Couple years ago, I was camping with my girlfriend, and were out about two miles from the road at this site I know. We went to bed that night, but we couldn't sleep because-"
Someone interjected a funny comment, and we were dangerously close to going off on another subject, but I got us back on track.
"-yeah, really funny, you fucker. No, it was because we kept hearing that grinding noise. My brother used to grind his teeth in his sleep, and it kind of reminds me of that. My girlfriend was freaking out but I just kept telling her to ignore it because I've heard it before and you just have to ignore it. It goes away eventually, you guys know what I mean."
We all knew what he meant.
"So eventually I got her to go to sleep, but I woke up probably two hours later because something was just off. I rolled over and she wasn't there, and I kind of freaked out, because..."
He thought for a second and then he took a very long drink.
"Anyway, I ran out of the tent calling her name, but I didn't have to go far. She was standing at the edge of the camp looking at something in the trees and I could see she was really pale. The fire was low but bright enough to see her. Anyway, so I ran up to see what was going on and she was dead asleep, but her eyes were open. She had this real spaced-out look, y'know. So I put my arm around her to lead her back, but she wouldn't move. She just said really quietly something like 'I have to go now, Eddie. I have to go, it's here.' I was like 'you're just sleepwalking, come back to bed' but she wouldn't budge. She just kept standing there and saying that she had to go. And I looked where she was looking, and there was a fucking staircase right there about fifteen yards away. Grey one, concrete. And she started to walk toward it but I yanked her back and that woke her up. She looked at me like I was fucking out of my mind, and she asked what the fuck she was doing out of the tent. I didn't tell her anything, I just told her she was sleepwalking. The grinding was gone, so she just went back to the tent with me and fell asleep again. I don't know... I don't like thinking about it, y'know?"
We all knew.
"You guys remember that kid with... I can't remember what it was, some kind of brain fuck-up, not Down's but something like it." Someone else brought up. "Well I got to read the report he gave when they found him a week after he went missing and it was fucked up beyond belief. I mean you have to take it with a grain of salt because who knows what that kid actually thinks is real, but some of this stuff, I don't think he could have made up."
"Like what?"
"Well first of all, he talked about the stairs. He said he'd been watching his dad build a fire and the stairs 'came up to him', and he had to go up them or something bad would happen. The cops couldn't really understand what he was talking about after that, because he just kept saying 'like the campfire' over and over. And he kept mentioning sounds, but he couldn't say what sounds, just that it was loud and he covered his ears so he couldn't hear them. But the thing I remember most is that they asked him where exactly he'd gone, and he just said he was right there. He kept pointing at himself, and they said they thought that meant that he thought he'd never left. He said he wasn't scared because the stairs were there and he said they talked to him, but not like people talk. Like I said, it was really convoluted and hard to understand, and I have a feeling the cops didn't take most of it down. They ended up just saying that the kid had some kind of amnesia or fugue, and that they didn't think foul play was involved. Doesn't really explain why he came back a week later perfectly fine without a speck of dirt on him and well fed, but hey, what the cops say goes."
There's still a lot of questions I want to answer. I'll continue to ask around and find out whatever I can. The next update should be soon, thanks for being so patient. You can also find me on Tumblr, at searchandrescuewoods.tumblr.com