Episode Transcript
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0:00
So I'm in this booth set
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to record a pitch
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for you to join the Diaries Plus. Diaries
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Plus, if you have not heard of it,
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is the way that we will keep the
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show running. We've got enough money to keep
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it going through the winter. Beyond that, we
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do not know. So many of you have
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responded and stepped up. It's given us hope
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in a year where we have not always
0:21
had a lot of hope. So
0:24
I need to ask you to do this. The one problem
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right now is the light bulb above me just
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burned out. Seriously, it's like a
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metaphor or something. I need
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a new light bulb. You have allowed me to
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do this for so many years and I have
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to come back and ask you to do it
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more because I believe the show matters and many
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of you have too. We need 3,000 people to
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Right now we have 1,200. We think we
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can, we can keep this
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show going, right? And so if
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you're one of the people that we have
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connected with, one of our stories has meant
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something to. If a story has made you
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think, if it's made you laugh, it's made
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you believe, if it's connected you to your
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gotta ask. Please pay it
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forward. I think we're close and I'm going
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to believe. I'm going to believe that we
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can do this and that is scary, frankly.
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It's scary to ask but I'm gonna do
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it because I want you to have a
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choice. And so far
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you've encouraged that belief and we are so thankful
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through the numbers the other day and 47 states.
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If you live in
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Delaware, Mississippi or South Dakota, help us get
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to 50. I believe we can do this.
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I believe I can get a new light
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bulb in here. That I've
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got covered, I promise. But I'm
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in the dark here. Put me in
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the light, help me out, join Diaries
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Plus. The link is in the show
1:49
notes. There's more stories, there's ad-free, but
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more importantly, you become
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part of the Diaries future.
1:56
Thank you for stepping up. So,
1:59
funny story. Six weeks ago, we
2:02
were organizing our annual Tales of Terror
2:04
show. And we're talking, you
2:06
know, figuring out what we're gonna do, et cetera,
2:08
et cetera. Becca asked like, what are
2:10
you gonna write for the intro? And
2:13
I'm like, I just can't think
2:15
of it. I'm like, whatever. We'll figure it
2:17
out, Becca. And it
2:19
was our anniversary. Our anniversary was an
2:21
awesome day. Typically we go out and
2:24
do something fun in the mountains that afternoon and
2:26
kind of stay out till dark instead
2:29
of going out to a nice dinner. That's how we roll. It
2:32
was the first nice, crisp fall
2:35
day. And so we
2:37
headed out to go do this sizable mountain bike
2:39
ride. It's just this perfect day
2:41
to be in the woods. It's
2:43
sunny. We're chatting on the ride up,
2:46
laughing, having a good time. We're
2:49
like rolling through, you know, nice forests
2:51
and into these like clear cuts and
2:53
then fire weeds going off. And
2:55
then all of a sudden we like kind of like roll
2:57
into this fog bank, temperature
3:00
drops and we leave
3:02
the clear cuts with all the wonderful
3:04
wildflowers and we roll into this deeper,
3:08
darker forest. And
3:12
there's this spot on
3:15
the trail. There's a natural stopping point,
3:17
like an obvious place before you do
3:19
a big downhill to
3:22
pull over, grab some water, eat
3:24
some food and regroup. The
3:28
trail we're about to go is called
3:30
no service. Sort of this
3:32
playful reminder that there's no cell
3:35
coverage out there and that you're 10
3:38
miles away from the trailhead at that
3:40
stage. So you're
3:42
on your own. There's no
3:44
help. Can't do anything
3:46
out there. So we sit down and,
3:49
you know, like we're having a good time talking and like going
3:52
through and I look
3:54
past Becca and. I've
4:00
clearly seen something super
4:03
disturbing. And in my head, I'm like,
4:06
this cannot be happening. Like
4:09
you've just gotta be kidding me. This is not
4:11
what I had in mind when
4:14
we said we figure out the intro to the
4:16
tales of terror. The goal is not to be
4:18
in the tales of terror. And I'm like, oh
4:20
my God, I keep talking to Beckhead. I'm like,
4:23
I'm gonna look again. See
4:25
if that really is what I thought it was. No,
4:30
no, no, no. I
4:34
am freaking out. And
4:38
Beckhead, I think she can tell at this stage
4:41
something's changed. Like maybe my face has gone white.
4:44
Clearly like, you know, the hair
4:46
on the back of my neck is standing up.
4:48
And I say to Beckhead, Beckhead,
4:51
turn around. Do you
4:53
see what I see? And
4:55
she looks and I can tell, by
4:57
the way her head snaps back. And
5:01
she sees it too. In the dark understory
5:05
of the woods, a hundred feet
5:08
away from us is a man, a
5:11
figure. Arms outstretched,
5:15
face shrouded by a hood. I
5:21
look again. There
5:23
was a little brief moment where I thought, should
5:26
I turn on the recorder on the phone? You know,
5:28
the voice memos like right now and sort of narrate
5:31
this through. And I'm like, nope. That
5:33
would be clearly a bad idea. That would be
5:35
breaking some sort of law of
5:37
the universe or at least law of
5:39
tales of terror universe. I
5:43
looked again, no movement. Just
5:46
a steadiness, menace,
5:48
staring straight towards us.
5:55
He's not moving, Beckhead. We
5:57
summon the courage to look a little longer, studying
5:59
the old. The
6:02
hooded rain jacket had been draped over
6:04
a small tree. Branches
6:07
inserted into the arms provided
6:09
structure. We laughed
6:11
nervously. We
6:14
were ten miles from the trailhead and
6:17
the scarecrow had done its
6:19
job. That's the dupeka. Should we
6:21
go? Definitely. Definitely. And
6:25
just like that, we were gone. Moving
6:27
as quickly away before
6:30
we could think of the next question. Who
6:34
had made it? Why would anyone
6:36
want to put in the effort to
6:38
scare people that
6:40
just want to have a good time, that want to
6:42
enjoy the woods? What kind
6:45
of evil mind would
6:48
do this? Today
6:51
we bring you three stories of
6:53
looming darkness. You
6:55
have been warned. Welcome to
6:57
the annual edition of Tales of
6:59
Terror. I'm Fitzcahall. You're
7:02
listening to The Dirtbag Dairies. When
7:20
I was in high school, my mom and I flew
7:22
out from California to New England for a week of
7:24
exploring back roads and quaint college towns. We
7:26
embarked on the road trip not just to seek out
7:29
a place for me to spend the next four years,
7:31
but also to spend some uninterrupted quality time together before
7:33
I made my way off into adulthood. With
7:36
a tight itinerary, we spent several late
7:38
nights driving through unlit back roads, under
7:40
swinging stoplights, and passing quiet towns with
7:42
darkened windows until we reached a place
7:45
to stay. Usually, that
7:47
meant a place too close to the Bates Motel
7:49
for comfort. Having grown
7:51
up in San Diego, I was not accustomed
7:53
to thick woods or creaking old houses. I
7:56
marveled at the forest and surrounding landscape. of
8:00
it was haunted. From a young age
8:02
I've had interactions with what I can only describe
8:04
as things beyond our world. From
8:06
my late grandfather's locked cabinets swinging open next to
8:08
me, to my skirt being tugged by what felt
8:10
like the hand of a child on a tour
8:12
of a haunted house. I never
8:15
felt front under scared. The things
8:17
I interacted with always felt peaceful and
8:19
trustworthy. We
8:39
didn't plan to stay long in Ithaca, New York,
8:41
but after seven schools and three days, I begged
8:44
my mom to make a pit stop at one
8:46
of Ithaca's famous waterfalls. After picking
8:48
a random trailhead on the car's GPS, my mom ushered me
8:50
out of the car and encouraged me to go on my
8:52
own. Be quick! I
8:55
hopped out and started along the three mile trail. A
8:58
damp, low-hanging fog clung to the trees in
9:01
the soil. The temperature dropped, getting
9:03
nippier as I neared the river. The
9:05
ground was covered in rotted leaves, long falling from
9:07
the bare branches above. I
9:10
often hike alone, but something about these woods made
9:12
me uneasy. I
9:15
shoved my worries down and kept ascending the
9:17
overgrown path. The growing roar of water cascading
9:19
over rocks indicated that I was headed in
9:21
the right direction. But as
9:24
I reached the falls, I realized we clearly weren't
9:26
sent to the main trailhead. The
9:29
main trail, it seemed, was unreachable across
9:31
the massive gorge before me. This
9:34
trail ended at a crumbling stone wall
9:36
that overlooked the waterfall and the rocky,
9:38
icy cliff below. I peeked
9:41
over the ledge, took some pictures and
9:43
some videos. The
9:45
moment I turned around to leave, I
9:47
froze. Someone was watching me.
9:55
I tried to coast myself forward, but I was
9:57
held captive by a growing sense of dread. The
10:00
feeling of terror, death, and darkness swept
10:02
over me. My eyes
10:05
darted around, trying to spot something out of place,
10:07
something moving, but the air was dead. No
10:09
breeze, no flutter of bird wings,
10:12
no scurry of a squirrel. It
10:15
felt like a lifetime before a new sensation demanded
10:17
my attention. A figure, tall
10:19
and looming, creeping up behind me.
10:21
But how? My back
10:23
was to the torrent water in the jagged gorge, and
10:26
no sound of footsteps broke the silence.
10:28
Still, I felt it come closer. The
10:31
hair stood up on the back of my neck as I
10:33
felt it lower next to my ear. I
10:36
thought to turn and look, but I still
10:38
couldn't move and didn't necessarily want to. I
10:41
knew that whatever it was, it was not
10:43
human. Completely
10:47
enshrouded by this mass, I was held
10:49
in place by anticipation, and then it
10:51
happened. In my right ear, clear
10:54
as day. At
11:05
the moment those words were spoken, I
11:07
was released, and I fled. I
11:10
tore up the hill, slipping and clawing over leaves
11:12
and brush. I didn't look back,
11:14
didn't think. I just ran, ran, ran to the
11:16
car. Imaginary walls, some terrible
11:18
foe were closing in on me, and I
11:20
pushed myself a little harder. Run,
11:23
run, run. The
11:26
car was in sight. I jumped in,
11:28
slammed the door, and screamed, drive! My
11:31
mom scrambled for her keys and
11:33
hit the
11:35
gas. As
11:39
we fled down the road, flanked on either
11:41
side by woods that ooze dread, she stoically looked
11:43
at me and said, you look
11:45
like you've seen a ghost. Bewildered,
11:47
she asked me what happened, but I couldn't talk.
11:50
You see, the tone of its
11:52
androgynous, static, disembodied voice, the snarky
11:54
way it uttered those words, and
11:56
the oppressive presence it carried screamed
11:58
one thing. It wanted to
12:00
scare me. I
12:03
feared that if I told her, it could follow us and
12:05
do something worse. I knew in my
12:07
heart that it was evil. In only two
12:09
syllables, whatever that thing was, sent a message that
12:11
I'd never forget. That
12:32
was Emma Palmer. And yes,
12:34
that is terrifying. Next
12:37
up, we head to Alaska, where our
12:40
producer and long-time collaborator, Evan Phillips,
12:43
goes to climb a mountain. That
12:46
ice axe is gonna come in handy. I
13:01
believe it was August or September
13:03
of 1993. I
13:06
was 18 years old, and I was... This
13:09
is when I was first been exposed to the outdoors. I
13:12
had met this group of young guys we had
13:14
all been in trouble in high school. So
13:17
I had met a couple of these guys
13:19
in like a behavioral drug and alcohol treatment
13:21
facility. We'd basically
13:23
gone through like what they used to call like a
13:25
Hoods in the Woods program. And it changed our lives.
13:29
I hadn't really done any like serious mountain climbing up
13:31
to this point, but I wanted to. So
13:35
we headed up about two
13:37
and a half hours northwest of
13:39
Anchorage into the Talkeetna Mountains. We
13:42
wanted to go climb a mountain called Mount Monarch. It's
13:45
about a 7,000 foot mountain, non-technical, but
13:47
a beautiful mountain in a wilderness setting.
13:51
All we knew is that it would be an adventure. So
13:54
we left in the evening because when we
13:56
got there, we got there in the dark.
14:00
The plan was to hike in as far
14:02
as we could camp, climb
14:04
the mountain the next day and hike out. We
14:07
got there and we just, we started hiking
14:09
in the dark. Everything
14:12
was going good, we're laughing, we're having fun, you
14:14
know, we're young kids, like we're just having a
14:16
good time just being young dudes hanging out. And
14:18
we get to this, what seemed
14:21
like an alder patch, it was really dark
14:23
and we're on like a muddy ATV trail.
14:26
And I remember we stopped and like one of my buddies
14:28
was like, dude, there's eyes. You
14:32
could see eyes glowing off our headlamps.
14:35
You know, we didn't know what it was and then we saw
14:37
another set of eyes on the
14:39
other side of the trail. They
14:42
weren't really moving, they weren't making a lot
14:44
of noise. So we all held hands and
14:47
we just walked right through the middle of them together.
14:51
At that moment where you see
14:53
those eyes, like do you remember the hair standing up
14:55
on your neck or anything like that? I
14:58
know what you're trying to do here. I
15:02
mean, honestly, like, yeah, it was
15:04
spooky. Seeing those eyes pop through
15:06
the alders. This was kind
15:08
of a spooky place in general, but we're like,
15:10
we're trying to get to where we're going. And
15:13
the way we're gonna do this, four
15:15
young guys wanting to be tough, decided
15:17
to hold hands and walk
15:19
through them together. What
15:22
happened next? We made it through the creepy eyes
15:25
and we're walking by headlamp
15:28
and we're just kind of making our way up this trail. Don't
15:31
really know where we're going. None of us had been here, but
15:33
we're just kind of on a faint trail. Did
15:35
a little bushwhacking. And
15:38
I just think that we ended up making camp just
15:40
in a little bit of a clearing that night and
15:43
went to sleep and we're getting
15:45
ready for our next day to go try and tackle
15:47
this mountain. So we wake
15:50
up the next day. I remember it
15:52
being like a really beautiful, like a
15:54
fall morning, you know, like the colors
15:56
are changing. It's a
15:58
little crisp in the air. you know, it's
16:01
beautiful, it's inspiring. And we were
16:03
excited, you know, we're going on this adventure.
16:06
So we just we keep heading up this trail.
16:09
And this is like really beautiful
16:11
country. You kind of get
16:13
up over this ridge and you look down and
16:15
it's almost like there's a big beautiful pass that
16:17
runs down there. You could tell
16:19
that this was like, there was
16:21
glaciers that covered this way back in the
16:24
day because there's lots of kind
16:26
of rolling hills and open valleys and some
16:28
really rugged peaks in the distance, but no
16:31
like pinnacles or any like spires or anything. But
16:34
so we make our way up this valley and
16:37
you know, we kind of make our way up
16:39
under Mount Monarch Peak. There was like a lake,
16:41
I remember there was a little lake there under
16:43
it. We didn't know what way to go up.
16:45
It looked like there was a bunch of options.
16:48
It was really windy that day, like constant wind
16:50
with big gusts, maybe 20 to 30 mile
16:53
an hour wind. And we just kind of started making
16:55
our way up this peak. At
16:58
one point in time, one of the guys, Brant,
17:00
I think we were going kind of slow and
17:02
we were being like
17:05
kind of cautious and he's like, man, I'm going to go climb this
17:07
thing on my own. So he takes off close
17:11
to the top and we're like, well, I guess
17:13
we'll meet up with Brant later, you know, we end up for whatever reason or like,
17:16
yeah, this is as high as we're going to go. We kind of
17:18
get to the base and we're waiting for
17:20
Brant. He ends up kind of coming down and
17:23
meeting us. He's like, yeah, I went around the
17:26
backside and summited. So,
17:28
you know, we're like, well, good for you, man.
17:31
I guess you're the you're the climber out of
17:33
the four of us. We're heading
17:35
down and it was so
17:37
windy that like we were basically
17:40
having to yell to talk to each other. We
17:42
kind of get into this divot, this kind of
17:44
hole. It almost was
17:46
like it seemed like a kettle lake that was left
17:48
from a glacier had once been in this hole
17:52
because it was literally just a
17:54
divot and we were able to go down
17:56
in this and get out of the wind. And
18:00
we're just down there like taking a
18:02
break probably eating like power bars or
18:04
something And we're just
18:07
talking and then all of a sudden one of my
18:09
buddies goes guys
18:12
Look up And
18:15
we look up a probably about a hundred
18:17
and fifty feet above us is A
18:20
lone head of you know what appeared
18:22
to be a dog type animal You
18:25
couldn't tell you could just see the silhouette of it And
18:27
it's just kind of it's just its head poked up We're
18:31
so we're looking at this thing and then all of a
18:33
sudden like ten seconds later Maybe
18:36
about 50 feet off to the left another
18:38
head pops up and
18:41
and then we're just like oh dude, there's
18:43
another one and then all
18:45
of a sudden in between those two another
18:48
head pops up and then another and
18:50
another and another And
18:53
at this time like we're looking at each other
18:55
like dude, this is a pack of wolves We're
18:59
teenagers. We don't know anything about
19:03
Wolves, we don't know anything about the
19:05
outdoors. We're total rookies all we have
19:07
with us are ice axes Like
19:10
what are we gonna do like we're surrounded by wolves
19:13
and I just remember we just were all
19:15
gripping death grip around our ice Axes we
19:18
all just got quiet and
19:20
we just sat there and we just stared at
19:23
these wolves that were staring right back
19:25
at us It feels
19:27
like it lasted like a couple
19:29
minutes. This probably lasted 30 seconds
19:33
I've been in a couple of like near-death
19:36
experiences in my climbing
19:38
career one of
19:40
which was Crossing a river,
19:42
you know and I and I got swept away.
19:44
It was one of those times Where
19:47
you see your life flash in front of your eyes that
19:50
happened to me and I remember being like wow
19:52
That's that's what it must feel like
19:54
when you feel like maybe you're about to die You
19:57
know, the other experience I've had is, you
19:59
know getting caught in an avalanche. Same thing. I mean,
20:02
just your life flashes in front of your eyes like
20:04
this is it. And
20:07
I don't remember if that happened, but I
20:09
remember just feeling like this like fear of
20:11
like, this is out of my control.
20:13
I mean, if these wolves want to
20:15
come get us, we have no way to defend
20:17
ourselves other than these ice axes. I think
20:20
what happened is just kind of a collective
20:22
calm just came over us. I
20:24
think we were just in awe that we
20:27
were like having this moment with these wolves.
20:29
This probably lasted about a minute. And I think like
20:32
the first 15 or 20 seconds, we
20:35
were panicking because we knew like,
20:37
I mean, if they come down here and like come
20:39
after us, like they're
20:41
going to win. Yeah. How many were
20:43
there? I think there was like
20:46
six. Uh-huh. And then
20:48
after about, you
20:50
know, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, the
20:54
first one that had popped up, its
20:57
head just pops down and it disappears. And
20:59
then a few seconds later, another
21:01
one disappears and another one
21:04
disappears and another one disappears and
21:06
another one disappears and another one disappears.
21:09
And we just looked at each other and
21:11
just like burst out laughing. Just like for
21:14
screaming, like we were just surrounded
21:17
by a pack of wolves in
21:19
Alaska. Like, I mean, I don't
21:21
know how they make their decisions, but you know,
21:23
this was like, this was hunting season. So
21:25
there was like herds of caribou going through there.
21:28
There's moose. So these wolves were,
21:30
they were out hunting and
21:33
there was something about the
21:35
group of us that they were like, we're
21:38
not going to mess with them. Or there was
21:40
something about earlier. They were like, maybe we can
21:42
mess with them. Yeah. Like, I guess in hindsight,
21:44
like they could have been stocking us all day.
21:47
They probably were. Like when you think about it, like
21:49
the fact that you guys were just like out in
21:51
the open and then you ditch into this like, like
21:54
hunting terrain trap. It
21:56
totally makes me think that they probably were aware
21:58
of you way. longer before you
22:00
were aware of them. I've had
22:02
a lot of amazing
22:05
wildlife encounters in Alaska. All
22:10
of these experiences when I think back, those
22:13
are vivid memories, just these interactions
22:16
with the animals and stuff. That's
22:18
how I feel about the wolf encounter. It was like those
22:22
experiences, as scary as they
22:24
are, they were part of
22:26
just this rich tapestry of
22:28
life that I lived
22:30
for many years of my life. And it's pretty cool
22:32
to look back and be like, man, I
22:35
was surrounded by a pack of wolves in Alaska.
22:59
After the break, we dig up
23:01
one of the most haunting tales of
23:03
terror of all time. Jeremy
23:05
Allen takes us into the dark
23:08
part of the Cascades. Support
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overlanding truck bed. I
24:01
love biking to work. I
24:03
don't get to do it all the time, just sometimes
24:05
we got to go places, but the days that I
24:08
can, I always take the opportunity to get on the
24:10
bike and reset my mind as I move between the
24:12
chapters in my day. I love it.
24:14
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24:17
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25:12
It was kind of another experience in
25:14
a string of previous
25:16
experiences and stuff that happened in the
25:18
future that surround
25:21
this one area in the
25:23
Upper Baker Lake drainage. It
25:29
scared the shit out of me. So
25:37
around the year 2000, I was
25:39
living in the small town of Marble
25:42
Mount, Washington in the
25:44
North Cascades National Park, and my
25:46
girlfriend at the time, Jeannie, was
25:49
a geologist
25:51
working for the park, and
25:53
I just started guiding out
25:56
of the guide service in Bellingham, Washington.
26:00
It's a great place to be
26:03
in the spring months, in the
26:05
summer months, but in the winter you're
26:08
definitely marooned. And so I
26:10
was poking around trying to find places to ski tour in
26:12
the area. And
26:15
I'd been going out kind
26:17
of in this pretty remote
26:20
area between Mount Baker
26:22
and Mount Shuckson quite a lot. And
26:25
there's a kind of a burly little switchbacky
26:28
Forest Service Road, and I rallied up
26:30
that for a bit, but then quickly
26:32
got bogged down and parked the truck
26:35
and started skiing. And
26:37
clearly no one had been up there for
26:39
a number of weeks. There
26:42
was no tracks, ski, or foot
26:45
traffic. Not
26:48
really a place that anyone
26:50
but climbers or skiers tends
26:53
to go. Skied
26:55
up a road for maybe an
26:57
hour or so. And
27:00
then I started to go cross country into this small
27:03
mountain range. Kind of working my
27:05
way up through this mature
27:07
forest. And
27:10
I had my head down and I was, you
27:12
know, I had pretty ambitious plans that day. I
27:14
think I don't really remember exactly how
27:16
far I intended to go, but I wanted to try
27:18
to poke out into the
27:21
kind of the Western flanks
27:24
of Mount Blum. And
27:26
I was kind of on a very, very, very close to
27:28
a significant distance to travel. And
27:32
I was touring kind of through this
27:34
forested area. So I was
27:36
kind of concentrating on just what was
27:38
in front of my skis. And then
27:41
at one point I remember kind of just
27:43
feeling a little bit tense
27:47
and uneasy. And
27:49
I looked up and I had this kind of like
27:53
an auditory hallucination almost.
27:55
Where, you know, if you're in a movie,
27:59
the soundtrack would just go. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
28:01
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And
28:03
all around me were all these
28:05
things hanging from the trees, like
28:10
tinsel and silverware
28:14
and sticks, like big
28:16
sticks, small sticks, moss
28:21
hung up with twine. There
28:24
were some dolls, like raggedy end dolls,
28:27
really ragged looking. Big
28:29
bones, not chicken bones or
28:32
anything like that. One
28:35
bone that it could have been an animal bone.
28:37
I don't really know what a femur in
28:39
a human looks like, but big bones. I
28:43
looked up and I spun around. I stopped and
28:45
I did a 360 and there was
28:47
this, wah, wah, wah, wah. And then the light
28:49
was shining through the trees and it was picking
28:51
up all these reflections. And
28:54
I just instantly freaked out. I
28:57
started to rip my skins off and
29:00
then I stopped and I remember thinking, what
29:02
the hell is this? And
29:17
I took a closer look and the area was
29:19
extensive. It was, I mean, I'm
29:21
not talking about a couple trees and
29:24
hundreds of things. I mean, it would have taken
29:26
a group of people
29:28
a really long time to set this scene
29:30
up. And I
29:34
just decided that I didn't want to keep going. So
29:36
I just ripped my skins off and I hightailed out
29:38
of there and the whole time I just felt like
29:40
I was being watched. So
29:47
I don't know
29:50
what it was. I think probably it was some
29:52
sort of pagan ritual site. It
29:56
looked like it had been there for a
29:58
while, which kind of freaked me out. because
30:02
how that could be, you know, something that
30:04
extensive, how it could be that in that
30:07
place for so long, I think is really
30:10
odd. Yeah, I'm not sure. So
30:31
this is probably two years after, two or
30:34
three years after this. The
30:38
Baker Lake headwaters
30:41
are more remote parts of
30:44
the western North Cascades. And
30:47
my partner and another staff
30:49
member from the park had
30:52
been working in the
30:54
upper Baker Lake area, and
30:56
they were on, I think it
30:58
was a three to four day trip, where
31:01
they went up to the head of the lake
31:03
in a canoe when they had
31:05
waders and they were doing a
31:07
lot of landform mapping in the
31:10
aquatic zone, and then deep up into the
31:12
head of the river. And
31:15
so they spent a lot of time
31:18
bushwhacking and traveling through
31:21
water. They went
31:23
up about a day, probably
31:25
like 15 miles or so, and
31:27
then made a camp. And the
31:29
next day they kept going. And
31:33
at some point during the
31:35
morning, apparently they encountered this
31:38
sandbank and
31:40
kind of a gravel bar area, and
31:44
they found two graves
31:47
dug into the sand, gravestone
31:50
made out of sticks,
31:52
I believe, and rocks
31:55
kind of mounted over, you know,
31:57
big human sized graves. And
32:02
they told me that I heard this story,
32:05
when they got back, that
32:07
they felt like they had been watched this
32:10
whole trip. And keep in
32:12
mind that these are full on,
32:15
science minded people, very practical,
32:17
not prone to superstition. And
32:20
for them to come back, Jeannie was completely
32:22
beside herself. Like she just couldn't wait to tell
32:24
me and she was kind of still kind
32:26
of buzzing. Because
32:29
what happened later on, when
32:32
they traveled back through that area, is
32:35
that they went back and
32:37
there were two more graves,
32:40
at this point without headstones on them.
32:43
And there were just holes in the ground and
32:45
they were dug right next to the
32:47
previous two. And so I think that's what I'm going to
32:49
say. I
32:51
think that's what I'm going to say. You
32:54
know, don't you think that certain areas lend
32:58
themselves to scary stories
33:01
and superstition and weirdness and a lot
33:03
of my time in the mountains
33:06
have lived out here for 25 years. And
33:09
I've poked around a lot of deep
33:11
and dark nooks and
33:13
crannies of the range and
33:15
really consider myself to be a Cascadian. And, you
33:17
know, one of the things that I've done is
33:20
I've been a little bit more interested in a
33:22
Cascadian and, you know, one of the things
33:24
that kind of tends to keep
33:27
me on my toes and freak
33:29
me out more than, you know, exposure
33:31
or technical difficulty or weather or anything
33:33
like that are these kind
33:35
of low elevation, deep, dark,
33:39
secluded areas where, you know,
33:42
all sorts of stuff goes on. You
33:48
know, I've been back and poked around in
33:50
that area since and I'm
33:52
always on edge and I'm always kind of wondering
33:55
what weird thing I'm going to see
33:57
next. But I honestly feel like
33:59
I'm going to be back. like I've avoided it. Thank
34:04
you Emma, Evan, and Jeremy for
34:06
terrorizing us. Seriously,
34:16
it's going to be a lot harder to go out
34:18
into the woods this weekend and not be looking over
34:20
my shoulder. Special
34:23
shout out to all the listeners who have become members
34:25
of Diaries Plus. Thank you. We
34:27
are feeling the love. And you're making it
34:29
possible for us to keep putting out new episodes. If
34:32
you're interested in becoming a member, there's a link in the
34:34
show notes. Cause you know, we
34:37
really want to do a Tales of Terror next year.
34:40
Uh, I think? Hopefully I'm
34:42
not too scared. Music today
34:44
from Kayangle, Fields, Squarewave, Trove, BAM
34:46
Tone, Aiden Baker, and David Beer.
34:49
The tracks are courtesy of the artists, Free Music
34:51
Archive, or Track Club. Jacob Bain
34:53
and Nis Koto compose our theme song. You
34:55
can find links to the artists at our website,
34:58
dirtbagdiaries.com. Our stories
35:00
come from friends, from friends of friends, and from
35:02
you. If you have a compelling idea
35:04
for a guest or story lead, please give us a shout.
35:07
You can use the submission form on our
35:09
website. This episode was produced by Skyler Perwins
35:11
with additional production help from me. Illustration
35:14
by Walker Cahall. Fitz Cahall
35:16
is our creative director. I'm Becca
35:18
Cahall, filling in for Fitz, and you've been
35:20
listening to the Dirtbag Diaries. Thanks
35:22
for tuning in.
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