Your Scary Stories Episode #3: This is What Happens When You Step on the Stairs in the Woods

All right, all right, welcome to your scary stories. We already have some people filing in, some comments coming in. One from TikTok Wrestling soap Opera. I thought the show was at ten thirty. It startly my fault. The dog had to go out and held us up a bit crazy. Thing is he actually doesn't have a dog I do. He's a golden doodle. That's the that's the part that I really can't get over here. But he's the scariest part, a real big puppy. And if I post a picture, we'll probably get more followers. So someone said, I thought Luke was searching for a fan to blow onto the microphone for the show. No, but two seconds before we the thing came on, we ran and turned off the air conditioner. That is so great. Somebody said that, oh man, you're using an air conditioner and the winner. Man, people are all over you, guys, people are all it's he is now being critique. It's a heat pump, so it does both air conditioning and heatings depending on what you wanted to do. So an air commissioner because it looks like one. It sounds like a noisy fan all the time. So I could have said the furnace. Yeah, yeah, well all right, so let's get go in here. We've got several people watching live, so we don't want to let them down. This is your Scary Stories Live the podcast. These show where we share your scary stories or various other scary stories across the Internet. And last week Jackie Moon shared this story about these stairs in the woods that magically randomly show up in the wood. So I was so intrigued by this story that I went out and I was talking to them the whole time. I looked and I looked, and I read and I read, and I was so intrigued by it. And I found a story about what happened to an individual that's stepped on or what I guess a dominos to things that happened when then an individual stepped on these stairs in the woods and like a search and rescue guy, I believe jack was who yes, parked of this story that made me keep researching. That was your story right at Search and Rescue guy. Yeah, it was Search and rescue guy. He had he had a few stories. We may revisit his stories in the future, but this story, again is about what happens if you step on those creepy stairs in the woods, and you guys, I'm gonna go ahead and go ahead and get it going. We got people waiting, we're a little behind, so we'll go ahead and take off here. And this is going to be told and kind of a I'm going to be reading front the individual that shared this story. So okay, So me and my friend Sam went to Michigan together on a hiking trip. When you pull up, you see a lodge. When you hike to the campsite, it's a very woodsy part of Michigan. The trail is like ten feet wide, and then around you is pretty much all woods. There are park guides that take you to the lodge to the camp site. You're allowed to spread out because everyone is on the same trail, but everybody's within a couple miles of each other. That's that's how the size of this is. There's always a park ranger falling along sometimes in the distance. Because of the size of the park and the amount of people. We're technically with a lot of people, but it's just me and Sam. The lining of the trees on the side of the trail are like really really dense. You couldn't see a deer if it was ten feet in front of you. I look off to the right and there's a gap in the trees. I see a staircase one hundred yards into the woods. It sticks out completely. It's so out of place. It looks like it got plucked up with a mansion. It looks like something you were building, like a sim's house. You chose the staircase, but then you put the staircase there. Then you deleted the rest of the house. But at the top it just stopped, doesn't really go anywhere. It's like ten feet high than nothing, which is so weird. Sam and I look at each other. We didn't see the park ranger around, but we decided, hey, let's go check these stairs out. So we started walking towards it. And the closer we get to it, the more eerie things start to feel. I started to get the feeling that this isn't like your local forests preserve. We're in the middle of deep woods, like we're on a long nature adventure or something. Then you see something so clearly man made out here. It sticks out. It's weird. Why is it here? The stairs were glowing as if it's trying to attract me. I started getting intrusive thoughts. Everything in my head is saying, go up these stairs. I run up and just hop on the first step. I have my hand on the railing and it puts up my feet on the first step. This is where things start to get weird. The second I got onto it, it almost felt like it had a light, little vibration to it. I felt it on my feet, this vibrating, and on my hands. They were tingling a bit. I'm like laughing and giggling, like, oh, this is really weird. While I'm expecting the staircase. It has carpet on the stairs. The railings are white. The carpets are blue, like a royal blue. And there's no debris. There's not a leaf, not a sprinkle of dirt, not any bugs or leaves or anything on it. Strange. It's almost starts to feel like a trap. Part of my head is saying keep going to the top. And then before I climbed to the top of the stairs, I look back at my friend Sam. He's looking at me like he's horrified. He's looking at me like something is wrong with me, Like I'm clearly in distress. Then I look back at the top, and I'm thinking should I go to the top? Sam then grabs me by the hood and he yanks me off the stairs really really hard. Next thing I know, I'm on the ground laying face up. He immediately comes up to me and says, are you okay? Yeah, dude, why did you pull me so hard? He asked me again, Are you sure you're okay? I replied, what are you talking about? This is when the conversation turned weird. I thought I was on there giggling and having a good time, and he told me it seemed like I was actually standing there having a standing seizure. I don't remember that, because my perspective is I was laughing and the staircase is vibrating, and I'm having a decent time, just really trying to figure out what it is because we have this immaculate staircase in the middle of the woods. And he says, my eyes are actually rolling in the back of my head and I'm having a seizure. So he yanked me off as soon as he started to realize that I was having a seizure. He said, no more than a few seconds past. Honestly, I felt completely fine. No type of side effect or whatever. He helped me in my feet and asked if I'm okay to walk and if he needed to go get help, and I told him I'm fine and absolutely do not need help, and let's get out of here. We hustled back to the trail and nobody's around. It's all good. We've talked about it for a little bit, but I have to convince him that I'm actually fine, fine to continue on and head back to the campsite. We finished up the hike, and when we got back to the campsite, everybody's there. It's all good. Nobody noticed anything or saw anything. Nothing dispersing going on. There's food being made. It's been a long hike. Everybody's tired. While we're finishing up eating and everybody else is dispersing. I see the park ranger looking at me with concern. I was debating with Sam if I should tell the ranger what happened. Sam thought I should tell him, but honestly, I felt too embarrassed. Sam goes up to the tent and I decided to go to the bathroom before heading to the tent. After using the bathroom and on my way to the tent, the park ranger stops me. He kind of looks pissed off off. He looks me in the face, looks me right in the eyes, and he says, please tell me you didn't touch the stairs. He repeats it again, Please tell me you didn't touch those stairs. I told him I didn't break anything, and I didn't mess with them, because I'm thinking maybe they are like a national landmark or something important. He said, it's not about the stairs. I don't care that you damage them. Did anything happen to you? I started to think he was concerned about my health. I tried to downplay it, and I told him my body threw a little bit of a fit. My friend said, but I'm fine. Now I'm fine, because I'm thinking he's wondering, do I have this guy who's a liability on my campsite. He seems upset that I'm okay. He then tells me if something didn't happen to you, something's going to happen to someone else. I thought, that's weird. That's not where I thought he was gonna take this. He starts guilting me, telling me there are women and children here, so if something didn't happen to you, something might happen to them. I can tell by the way this guy is talking that he is absolutely positive that something horrible is going to happen because I touched the stairs. I started pressing him because I'm wondering, why are you actually like the stairs are so ominous? I start asking, why would you take us on this hike by this dangerous staircase. He explains a little bit, kind of like I should be in the know about these stairs. He starts saying stuff like they pop up randomly, And suddenly I'm thinking this guy is absolutely tripping. He's making things up. He's trying to talk to me about touching this random staircase make it seem like something horrible is gonna happen. I leave this weirdo by himself because I'm gonna go to bed. I want to try to enjoy this trip for the rest of the time we're here. The next day, we have a great time. You know. It's Campsite's got a great lake. We're spending time in the water. Nothing weird is happening. Everything's completely okay. In my head, that guy was tripping, he's super weird. Where fine. By the end of the day, I had completely forgotten about what happened. Sam's over it and we go to sleep because obviously when you're camping, you're spending so much time and energy outside you're exhausted. So we hit the Hey it's early the next morning when we hear something outside our tent, maybe around four am. The sun's gone an hour from coming up, and we hear this ruckous sound outside, someone crying. We take a look and it's this young boy. We're like, what's going on here? We all got our tents and there's already people around him. From what we could hear from people talking, his mom is gone, his tent is gone, and all their belongings are gone. They start questioning this kid and they're like, you know, where's your mom? This little kid just points towards the trees. Apparently this kid's mom packed up all their stuff went out on our own hike in the middle of the night. I'm thinking, this is, uh, you know, mom of the air material here? Why would someone do that? We formed a search party. Everybody's coming together, like, all right, we're going to go look for this lady. As we're walking towards the big group that's going on the search, the art ranger walks by me and Sam, and he says some slick comments to me, saying, you better hope we find her, because if we don't, it's on you. At this point, I'm pretty pissed because this is this strange guy, this is really weird guys telling me about this mythical stairs, and now he's trying to blame me for this mom packing up her stuff and leaving in the middle of the night. Sam asks why would he say something like that to you? Which I get his confusion. Why would somebody blame somebody for eating up and leaving in the middle of the night on me? So I filled him in on the mythology of these staircases this ark ranger had told me. Sam's face is expressing to me that he believes the ranger and not me. I was being a little sarcastic about it, but Sam seemed pretty serious. He tells me, I think we should probably check by the stairs. Luckily, the search party is kind of directed towards the area anyways, because we don't think this lady's going to go very far off the trail. So like, all right, maybe she went back to the lodge. Maybe she was done with the campsite there, you know, there's no sign of her. We didn't see anything at first. We're walking down the trail that we came in, but once we get to the clearing, this lady is sitting cross legged exactly where the stairs were. At this point, I'm a little freaked out. Well, I'm also like, of course she's sitting there, like is she in on this as well? Like what's going on here? Why is this lady sitting cross legged exactly where the stairs were? And the stairs aren't there anymore? Then my mind starts going like why am I in this weird situation? Where is this weird park ranger? Are they in hoots with each other? Something deranged going on? As this person crazy, Me and Sam jog up to her, there's already people next to her by this point, and as we're approaching her, I see their clothes are tattered. Mind you, she's only been going like an hour and a half stops and her clothes are all tattered. She looks like she got dragged through the forest. She looks like bear girls after a week in Siberia by himself eating earthworms. She looks sleep deprived. She looks like she hasn't had food or water in a while. Her eyes are giving like a psychosis kind of look to it. We get up to her and people already asking her a question. One lady's like, what happened? Are you okay? And she's just rocking back and forth. She says, what took you guys so long? And the guy that's there, he says, don't worry, it's only been like an hour. You need something to drink, and you're safe now, and she just starts mumbling, it's been days. It's been days. Right then, I thought, okay, she is she crazy. They're still question her, but she's not even answering their questions at this point. She's just kind of talking and mumbling to herself. I got a few sentences as she mumbled out, it told me you'd come. It told me i'd be safe by the stairs. Are you kidding me? It told me you'd come. It told me i'd be saved by the stairs. The stairs aren't even here. How does she even know that there were stairs here? At this point, starting to believe the park ranger, I started to feel guilty about this. Am I the reason this woman is in this deranged fit, sitting here in this clearing, the reality of the situation is starting to hit me, and we get this lady up. We have to take her back to the campsite because we can't take her to the lodge. We can't take it to the hospital. We have to get back to the campsite where everyone else is and that's where her kid is. All right, So that's the end of part one. Let's unpack what we just went through here. So they went camping. Sam and his friend with camping to Michigan an hiking trip and not their first hike out into the woods, they see this staircase perfectly Pristine's staircase. Some reason, he feels like he needs to go touch the stairs. He's getting this feeling. It's attracting him. It seems to be glowing. Even he runs up steps on the first step, his friend Sam pulls him off. He's like, why the heck did you pull me off so hard? What's going on? He said, you're having a seizure. But to him, he just felt like he was almost having this outer body experience with his vibration, saying, just a weird sense of feeling. As they're going back the park ranger somehow, he tells the park ranger about this, and the park ranger is very upset that he stepped on the steps. And at first he's confused, thinking, like, why is this guy so upset upset that I stepped on these steps? Like it's this a national landmark? Of these steps important? Are they significant? He says, I'm not worried about the steps. It's something didn't happen to you, something happened to somebody else. As we get into part two of this store, I mean, excuse me. As we got on the second part of part one, we discovered that the next morning and early morning, they found out I think it was before the sun rise, that one of the campers there was missing. It was a child's mom was missing. They went into the woods, and this is where I'm gonna I don't want to mix it up, Jack. They found her where the steps were, yes, right, but they weren't there. Now the steps are not there. What was she saying? She was saying some weird things about this. Yeah, you're saying, uh, you know, it took took forever to find her. It took several days to find her, even though it was only about an hour or so. She was saying that something told her she waked by the steps and that they'd be safe there, and she looked like you, she has just been dragged around and been in the woods for days, been in the wood for days, ragged, tired in Hungary. In reality, she's only been in the woods for a few hours at tops, and she wasn't far into the woods right now, not from where they were, because they had just gotten there from campsite. So that's where we left off here. We'll get into a party here in a minute. But what's your guys feelings here? When you first read through part one of this, I think that people are actually pretty rational, you know, like, yeah, if you see some steps in the woods, he'd be very tempted to be like, well, I want to get up on those steps. I kind of check those out. Unless you heard about this being a saying both different places like we have before, and so like this does make sense for them to do this, as he said. And also I feel like even the ranger, even though he's kind of like scared of this happening, he wasn't too aggressive with how he handled the situation. He was like, did you do this? Just tell me right now? The way we know what's going on next? And so I thought this is kind of a Yeah, like Jack said, pre rational reactions by everybody so far, you put yourself in the person's shoes. They had this happen to him, though. It probably seems like the ranger's acting a little bit odd and he's so worried about these stairs. Yeah, but the size of the woods and the amount of people there, the ranger couldn't be everywhere at once, so therefore he didn't able to stop that. But I guess that's something. Do you bring that up beforehand or is that actually going to make somebody step on the stairs? You know? Yeah, I would definitely, you know, increase the temptation, But also I do wonder, well, rather not wonder. But it does seem to line up with what most park rangers or search and rescue teams say, is it's like just kind of leave the stairs alone. They don't really get it into it too much. So and we're going to dive back into the story here. Luke's gonna pick things back up. Luke, are you ready we get this lady up started talking walking her back. Sam and I are a little bit ahead of the three others that had found her. As we're walking back, she's just rambling to herself in a really light voice, saying, it said this, It said that. People who were with her were just trying to console her. They were saying, hey, it's gonna be okay. Your son's at the campsite. A really light voice, she says, son. Everybody's being very gentle with her. She's been through a while, so nobody's saying, oh, she's a number, her son is. At this point, the lady doesn't even know her own name her Her eyes are absolutely deranged. One of the group says, yes, yes, your son. She just stairs and says, what's his name? Oh, your son? His name is Nick. He's just giving her the answers that she needs to get back to reality. She said. He's doing a great job consoling her. As we're walking back, the guilt of me is rising, and all I can think about is how much I want to apologize to this park ranger being kind of just earlier, I was brushing him off about everything he said would happened. It's a long walk. I have a lot of time to think about when I'm going to say to them. Right when I see him, he sees the woman and I swear to God, this man exhales for the first size as I met him. He's so relieved that she's alive. I walked right up to him. I just started apologizing. Tom. I fully believe him. I'm sorry I did this. That's what I can do to help. He just kind of apologized for being hard on me. As he's walking away, he says, I just needed you to know how serious this situation is. Sorry for taking out you. I just hate finding dead kids. That hit me like a bomb because he knew something horrible was going to happen. He didn't know if it was going to be an adult or a kid. He said it as if it's happened before, and that he's had to find kids like that, and the idea of finding a kid in the same state that she's in was absolutely heartbreaking. So at this point, we're trying to get this lady better before her kid comes back from the excursion that they all went on. We clean her up, get her food and water, and get her some new clothes, trying to get her back to normal so the kid doesn't come back and see his mom and this horror will stay. Afterwards, we're just sitting around the campsite. She's all cleaned up and looking a bit better. She's just sitting there at her hands folding her lap and her knees touching each other, just sitting very delicately. She kind of just looking around, still very spacey. She's not talking to anybody. She's mumbling to herself a little bit, but she seems a little bit more put together, a little bit more calm. She's pretty happy that she's back at the campsite. As the kids are coming back, the entire group is kind of expecting this big reunion moment. Everyone's expecting a warm embrace. We're all happy, everything's okay. And when the kids come back, the son walked up at the end of the camp everybody's looking at her, and everybody kind of goes silent for this embrace. She looks up and she kind of sees that everybody's looking at her. It's almost like she took it as a que and she scans the kids and says, Nick, just really gently, we go look at the kid, and the kid's scowling at his mom, like he's looking at a stranger that he doesn't like. He gestures kind of like a shrug and then she stops scanning kids and she locks in on him. She almost stands up like a machine, just very robotically, no waste of movements, and she lifts her hands slightly. She's inviting him to come give her a hug, instead of coming to give him her coming to give him a hug. The kids starts backing up, he starts crying. She says, that's not my mom anymore. What my dad runs off. Now. I look around the group. It feels so awkward and tense. Almost didn't unfold how we're expecting. And everybody has this kind of sadness on their face. And I look and I see the park rangers face, and he's looking at the woman like this. His world is being tore apart. He's more anxious that seeing this entire time. And the woman of the campsite immediately go up to the mom, trying to console tell her that the kids react to trauma in different ways. He'll get over it and it's gonna be okay. Her face is expressionless, as if she's not even hearing these women and just looking right past them, and her eyes are just falling the kid. Everyone else in the campsite starts dispersing because it's a very tense moment, except for the park ranger. I see him talking to the camp guide. I seek behind the east drop a little bit see what he's saying, and he's telling the camp guide to tell call the father, telling him to come pick them both up tomorrow. I can kind of tell that the camp guy is not in the know because the way he's saying it to him. He's saying, she does seeing fit to drive. He's talking as if he's not aware of the gravitiest situation. The camp guide says yes and walks off. I was still standing behind him, and he just sparks out come here. That's one of those moments where you're like when you're sitting in the back of class messing around and your teacher's writing on the white board and they call out your name without even looking at you. Sent chills out my spine. I just immediately walk up to the ranger and say, what do you want me to do? I'm in full soldier mode at this point in time, because this is my fault. I want to help, I want to fix things. He starts speaking to me very firmly. His eyes are completely locked in on the mom. He's not even looking at me. He then says, all keep eyes on her. You take care of the kid. The father can't get here until tomorrow. By no means that she interact with this kid until he gets here. Do you understand me. He doesn't want to lie to this kid. He has to entertain him. Mind you, He's been working with kids forever. So then he says, at this point, I know that I had to build up a comfortable relationship with the kid, which I wasn't worried about. When I get to Nick, he's playing bags with himself off to the side. I just walk up and I say, best two out of three. I start cracking jokes. It's easy to make kids laugh, It's easy to make kids forget what's going on. We're having a pretty good time until one of the other kids walks up and put both of his hands over his face. Are you gonna cry again? And starts laughing and runs off. I look at Nick and I ask what was that about? Nick says, I told him who my mom left with last night. I asked, who did your mom leave with last night? He told me he saw her holding hands with a man as she walked into the forest last night. What did he look like? And Nick just holds up his thumbs and rubs it and says, his face looked like this. I have no clue what that means, so I immediately start asking follow up questions. What color was his skin, what was he wearing? And Nick just goes he was completely pale. I said, did he have any distinguished facial features, like his eyebrows with a bushy, bright eyes, big nose, anything like that. He told me he didn't have any of those at all, no features at all. I'm thinking, apparently there's some weirdo walking around in a mask drawing women in the woods in the middle of the night. Inside I'm freaking out, but I don't want to. I don't want Nick to see that, so I start reassuring him, letting him know that he's safe and we're not going to let that man hurt you. He's not coming back. I want to keep distracting him and giving him a fun time, but I need to go report this back to Sam, so I make an excuse to go back to the tent. I give Sam a nods signaling we need to talk. The second the tent zips close and I'm about to start speaking about everything, all this new information I just learned about. Sam cuts me off. I go, I have so much to tell you, he said me. First, he has a guilty look on his face and says to me, I've been spying on her. And I know this is gonna sound weird, really weird, but I was in the group with her. And you know when people are in a group in that moment when everybody starts laughing and then one person is left laughing when everybody else has stopped, Well, that happened. She was a last one laughing, and I looked at her, and for a split second, she was still laughing, but her mouth was closed and she wasn't moving at all. Nobody else saw it but me, and it irked me so bad. I haven't been able to stop watching this woman, or leaf make sure she's not been left alone with the rest of the day. I've been spying on her the entire time. I'll be honest. I wasn't fully sold on this idea, so I asked, Okay, like Sam, what has she been doing? He replied, When there's nobody around her, she sits motionless, motionless, And I'm not talking about relaxing. I'm talking about this woman is not moving at all. I said, what do you mean if nobody's around, you've been following her around. He then holds up a pair of binoculars, and I could tell he was a little proud to show me of the commitment he had to do this spy work. And then he says, I've been watching her with these. I watched her for thirty minutes straight. She did not move, she did not blink, she was not breathing. She looked like an empty vessel. And then when somebody walks near her, she starts blinking. Then she forces out a weird smile. She starts looking around as if she's taking in nature, and then she starts fake breathing. Imagine a mime pret pretending like he's breathing, and then holding back saying anything more. So I told him, bro, just spit it out. I can tell you have something more to say. As he went quiet, he explained, you know, you know how she was saying, it's telling her to do this, it's telling her to do that. I don't think it's it telling her to do anything. I think she is the it. I don't even get a feeling Sam about all the smooth faced man stuff that Nick had told me before. He says, we got to tell the ranger right now. I got up and followed. We walked up to the ranger and Sam just starts pouring his heart out about all the evidence that he's found throughout the day, and the ranger was listening, patiently, nodding, And then right when when Sam finished, the ranger says, don't worry, boys, we're on the same page. There's no chance I'm letting that thing leave my park. There's no way I'm letting that thing leave my park. I'm thinking, did you just say that thing if she possessed? The ranger goes on, You guys have no idea how lucky we are that the kid doesn't trust her. It is critical, absolutely critical. We do not let it get out of the park and the only way you can get out of the park is if it manipulates a loved one to escort it out of the park. We have to keep Nick away from her. We have to keep them completely separated until the dad gets here tomorrow morning. I already told the camp guide to send all the kids paddle boating for the remainder of the day, so it has no chance of talking to him for the rest of the day. You need to monitor her. And then when that kid gets back before the sun goes down, you need to get him to his tent immediately. This is what we gotta do. We'll be home free once the father gets here tomorrow morning. So before I even get to really digest any of this new information that's just been my way, me and Sam hustle back to the common area just to keep an eye on her to make sure she's not running off. When we get back there, we see she's not dormant anymore. She's a little bit more active today, and she's walking around the campsite asking different group of campers they've seen her son. All the campers are still being nice and gentle with her because they kind of know what's happened. They're just telling her all the kids went pattle voating, it's fine, they'll be back later. But by the third time her asking each group, you could tell you could tell and kind of see that the campers were getting a little bit annoyed to frustrated with her. She goes back up to this one group to ask them for the fourth or fifth time and one burly country looking dude kind of blurts out, kind of in a jokingly manner, that dad getting here tomorrow won't come soon enough, Am I right? Then his wife or girlfriend hits him on the shoulder and told it, sorry, he's being rude, honey, be patient. The morning will come very quickly. Then it starts repeating what the lady said, as if it was taking in new information and formulating a new question to ask. It repeats itself three times, my husband's going to be here in the morning. My husband's going to be here in the morning. My husband's going to be here in the morning. And then she looks back at the group and asks, do you know what time my husband's going to be here in the morning? And they shook their heads no. She walked away, but a little bit more frantic this time. I don't really know how to explain it, but the only way I can explain it is that she turned more like to an active panic, as if she knows it's crunch time. She only has one day to convince this kid to take her home. She continues to walk group to group, just repeating herself, do you know what time my husband's going to get here, you know what time my husband's gonna get here. It literally walks around asking the same question, getting the same answers. So, just to recap, then the sun's freaking out when he sees her completely. That's not my mom anymore. That is not my mom. They start looking into this more. They being in the park ranger, him and his friend. They're all realizing how the thing is acting weird, almost like a demonic force in somebody's body, trying to figure out what's going on. Doesn't really know who her son is, doesn't know the situation, asking a lot of questions, trying to get answers. They've called the dad to come pick the boy up tomorrow and they have a game plan to completely separate the two until the morning, because the park rangers fear is this thing can leave the park only if it's able to manipulate a loved one to take it home, and then from there, we don't know what terrible things would happen. Yeah, and the park rangers like general attitude is like he's seen this before. Yeah, he seems like this isn't the crazy to him, Like it's like he's been in this situation before. It's definitely seeing a thing or two. By this point, it's kind of like it goes back to the same thing we talked about, this stairs in the woods. Apparently this happens, these mysterious stairs in the woods, and they're dangers. They're dangerous, forced to be dealt with. Yeah, it's pretty messed up. The part where it's repeating itself over and over again that that's generally junior really terrifying, but it's doing it again as if it needs to collect this and like it has to process it figure out what to mimic and act and do next, right, because it's like just sitting there when no one's watching it and it's not doing anything. Yeah, it's just kind of yeah, it's just like whatever someone talks to it, it starts to just behave like they're behaving or something like that. It's just to pretend to be human. I guess. Yeah. It's like not even breathing when nobody's near it. It's not even moving and it's not doing anything. Then as somebody comes to your bike, it comes alive and then like almost like it snaps into character or something. Jack, you want to pick the story back up here. Okay, the sun starts coming down and the kids start coming home from battle boarding. We're coming up on dinner time and everybody meets in the common area to eat. We can't just obviously keep a mom separate from her kid without other campers getting really suspicious. So me and Sam go meet with Nick before he re enters the campsite because we just want to avoid this situation entirely. If we just get through this part, we get him in his tent and they we're home free. We got the kids safe, and we're all good. So we're just assuming that if fall, maybe it'll follow the herd, you know, go get food like everyone else is getting food. We could just get Nick to his tent and we'll be set. So I have Sam go make a couple of plates of food for us while we escort Nick to his tent. But within a couple of minutes, while Sam was getting our food and I'm getting to the tent, it must have slipped away, because when we get to Nick's tent, he and zips it this thing that listens or it's just not his Mom immediately pops out and grabs him by the arms and says, you're not gonna leave without mommy. I wish I could say I did something heroic, but I had just let out a little bit of scream and a double hand gripped Nick's string backpack because I don't want to risk touching this thing, and I swung him behind me really hard because I was trying to get him. He wasn't trying to get into like a cup of war with this thing. When I tell you, in this moment, I was mortified because I was the only thing in between her and Nick. I felt fight or flight gripping in. I had to remind myself that this isn't a woman, and if it takes a step forward, I'm not flying. I'm standing here. The only words I could get out were are you good? And then it just said kind of softly and menacing. We need a long time. Don't make me scream eybark at Nick to go get the ranger, because the only thing I want at this moment is authority. Figure here is like me, but I have no idea what the thing is. So Nick books it and I'm just kind of frozen there staring at this thing, waiting for it to scream and make me look like maybe like a creep or something. In front of the entire camp, But it just stands there for a few moments with its eyes staring around like it's searching for something in its head, almost as if it's trying to remember something. And just like that, its eyes lock onto me, and I brace myself because I think it's gonna let out this horrific scream. I was expecting the scene that this thing is about to make when it finally explodes into a scream, but that's not what happens. You know. I get a little confused and almost a little bit relieved, because in that moment, I realized that this thing only mimics sounds. This thing has no gauge of human inflection or social cues, because the scream that it did didn't match the situation. I expected to scream in horror, as if it was accusing me of attacking her or something, but instead it screams as as like a little girl was playing. I peak for a quick second, just kind of see the camper's reactions, and I get a little bit relieved, just because I see a few of them are actually rolling their eyes at this point. They think really fed up with this person's behavior. And the slight relief that I had disappears immediately when I look back at it, because it abruptly stopped screaming. I could tell it didn't. It's almost like it couldn't. It understood that it wasn't working. Whatever it was trying to do, it wasn't working. And its chin tucks in a little bit and starts looking at me at the top of its eyes as if it's honing in on me. And the adrenaline my chest starts pumping because I don't know what this thing's going to run away or attack. It almost looked a bit happy about how scared I was. He gave a little bit of a smirk and replied, are you good in my voice with his mouth closed, exactly how I had just said it to them. It did it as if it was threatening me. If I get in the way of her leaving with Nick, it could mimic me and leave with Sam. That moment felt like it lasted forever. Finally I felt somebody grab my shoulder. I looked back at it. It's the ranger. He has this confidence in his face that he's about to just handle the situation, which makes me feel a lot safer. He loudly says, don't let this thing intimidate you. It could only take your form if it could put you in a trance. And the only way he could put you in a trance is if you're a neebrid He didn't drink anything tonight, right, I just nod my head no, I mean no, I then you're good. And he looks at her and just says, go to sleep, your husband's going to be here in the morning, and brushes her off. Her eyes light up as if she likes what he just said, and she almost scurries back into her tent. And as we're walking away, I hear repeating to herself, almost joyfully, my husband is going to be here in the morning. My husband's going to be here in the morning. We start walking away and I see Sam walking up with the plates of food. We look on his face was like, you know, hey, what happened. The ranger tells me and Sam to come eat dinner with him, that we deserve a little bit of an explanation. While we're walking where we usually eat dinner, a little bit away from the campers, I see Nick in between two camp guys and he's safe. So I'm a little bit more relaxed at this point, and the questions start flowing in my head. Then I'm about to ask this guy because I've got thousands. We sit down. The first question that comes to my head is, so you know what that thing is? Then Ranger says, kind of all the other rangers call a mimic. I've heard plenty of stories about them. I've only had one other personal experience with it. My working theory is that interacting with the stairs almost calls to them. Whenever the Stairs are involved, it feels like it attracts everything. We're very fortunate that we had a lucky draw with the mimic because it could have been something so much worse. I immediately think, if we're lucky with this thing, what else is in this park? The ranger just keeps going on with the story. So what we do know is these things think target people that are under the influence of something. The last time I had to deal with it one it tricked this hippie guy that came here by himself. He was an easy target and I was the one. I saw him walk into the forest with it. I thought about chase them and interveniing, but once they hit the tree line, it's almost like they dissolved into the woods. Think to myself, that's exactly what Nick told me. So this ranger is definitely onto something. The ranger goes on and says when the hippie wandered back into the camp, he knew it definitely wasn't him because he was talking really formal, and this guy was the opposite of formals. Everything he did was laid back, chill, hippie vibe. We came back very eloquently, asking very specific questions in a monotone way. I knew something was wrong. Started walking around the camp asking everybody who he came here with, and he was trying to figure out if he had any loved ones or family nearby before he got taken by this thing. He was very open with me and everybody else that he was a traveling nomad and he had nobody really significant in his life in general. And when all the other campers started there high back to the lodge, he wouldn't leave the campsite, and I told him I couldn't leave the campsite without everyone, and he was my responsibility. He said, he can't leave the campsite without somebody that loves him. He got really frantic. It was pleaded with me to call someone for him. I told him that he need to put any eye on his emergency contact for him. There was nobody to call or ever seeing the feet on his face. The last thing that sent to me is I ran out of time, and that he backed towards the tree line. It's almost of his face dissolved and he struggled up and became part of the forest. And two days later we randomly found that hit be at the bottom of a pit about a mile off the campsite. The autopsy said died of starvation two days earlier. So it's my assumption that these things can't survive without a living hosts. They trick you, then they trap you, then they mimic you, and they try to commendment somebody to take them home. Seems like they can't leave the park unless somebody loves them escorts them out. The way she's been acting almost confirms that with me, because it seems like she's been abided by the same rules. But we let this thing out and he gets this city or town. We have no idea how much standwards this thing could do. I cut him off and I asked him, how were we going to get the husband to leave this lady. He confidantly says, let me handle that. We just see a focus on getting Nick to the lodge and trapping that thing here, so to focus on finding the real her while she's still alive. Sam stands up says we're going to extract Nick at six hundred, make the handoff the father, and we orchestrate a grid style search party starting east to the campsite. When Nick leaves. That gives approximately ten hours a shurch sight before the sun up goes down. Sam kinds what the switch started to taking control of the situation, because as core, he's a tactical minded, a well trained army ranger. He was an armyer for about ten years. The park ranger says, we're coming up on day three. If we don't fight her tomorrow, we might not find her alive. He dismisses us and tells us to get some rest. So me and Sam just clear our plates really quick to get some calories. Then we hustled back to our tents so we can get as much sleep as possible before the morning search. But once we get back to the tent, I'm just lying there with my eyes open. I've had a really tough time sleeping. I just keep thinking about her repeating with my voice. I just can't get that image on my head. Hear my own voice being spoken to me. Can't express to you how eerie it is to hear your own voice when it's not coming from recording. And Sam knew exactly what I was thinking. He just blurred out, porcupine. I said, what if that's our code word, porcupine if any point we get split up or something crazy happens. You just asked you what code word is, so you know it's me has set to be. I recognize you. Sure gives me just enough relief to fall asleep, but it sure did not stop me from having nightmares all night. Wow, that's creepy as hell. It sounds like, though, that they finally feel as if they have the situation under control. They have a plan in place. Yes, this thing needs to be taken home by someone that loves it. That's what the creature's plan is. So they're trying to find what they believe is like the host body, right, they're trying to find the actual mother. Yes, well, it's still a lot, and in order to do that, they have to continue to keep these two apart because in the morning the next part I'm about to get into, the father is coming, and when the father gets there, they got to get back to the lodge. They got to get the kid with the father and get him out of here so he's out of danger. And at that point in time, the thing is going to really struggle to leave these woods without being able to attach itself to a loved one. So they're planned in place. They are going to get up in the morning. First thing, get that kid across the camp the forest to the excuse me, the campground, through the forest to the lodge, get it with his dad, and then they have to go find the real mother in the woods then to go from there. They did establish a safety word. They said, hey, if something happens to us tomorrow, if we get split up, the safety word is porcupine. The reason they established the safety word is, like I said, because this thing's a mimic, right. They don't know when it's that it somehow became the host of your body, your mind. So they have a plan in place. At least here. It doesn't even need to look like you, just sound like you. It could look like someone else and still sound like you. So it's like extra scary because it could be anywhere. Yeah, it's so freaky. What it copied his repeated his voice, I mean what he said in his exact voice. That's that's absolutely and saying I don't know, all right, I'm gonna start storry back up in the next morning. I abruptly woke up the next morning right as the sun was coming up, and I saw Sam was already getting ready, so I jumped up to catch up. Because every moment that we're still here, the woman is still out there in the wood suffering. I get ready like I'm late for the first day of school. Rangers already at the edge of the campsite with a appears to be groggy, tired Nick. All of us climb into one of those off roading golf carts. Thank god we had a vehicle, because I was not looking forward to a fifteen mile hike there and back and then joining a search party. Me and see them jogg up, and we just hopped the back seat quietly because we're trying to execute this mission and get this over with. When the ranger turns on the engine, we hear we hear a zip come from a tent. The zippers being opened, and it comes storming out of her tent towards our cart. We start driving away and it's a little downhill the hole as we descend, so once we are about thirty feet away, you can't see over the ridge there anymore, but you could see her storming up to the edge of the trail and just stand there. This woman looked very angry that we lied to her. She stands dead center of the trail for about five seconds, then she just turns and sprints into the tree line. Sam sees it and asks, where do you think she went? The ranger cuts us off and says, keep your head on a swivel. She's getting desperate. We're driving for about ten minutes and the trail continues to get more and more narrow as we go. It's about a five miles stretch or the trees are just about three feet away from each side of the cart, and for the next five miles we find out exactly where she went. She was periodically popping out of the tree line, screaming things at Nick, Mommy loves you, Take mommy home. Where's your father? She just continued to scream and cry, please don't leave me, Please, don't leave me. She never made it a tempt on the vehicle. It just seemed like she was tracking us and following us and continuing to try and manipulate Nick. But let me tell you, it never got less creepy that she was always ahead of us. And finally we get to the lodge and we see the father out front, standing outside of his truck, looking pretty confused and frustrated. We tactically pull up neck to the truck, planning to get Nick into his vehicle as soon as possible and as quickly to get him out of there. But the second we stop, Nick jumps out of the vehicle and runs his dad, crying, see and I want to go home. His dad gives him a quick pat on the back and says, don't worry, I'm taking you home. Wait in the car. I have to talk to these guys real quick. We walk up and he walks up to excuse us. We're walking up to him, and he says to us, and he seems very frustrated when he asks this, are you guys gonna tell me why I had to rush here first thing in the morning. I have no idea what we're gonna tell this guy, But we need to get him out of here as quick as possible. The ranger steps up and quickly replies the chod on this campsite needs to be here with a responsible adult. As a father's asking where the mother is, she pops up out of the woods, completely out of nowhere. She is hauling it towards us, announcing to everybody, the whole crowd, there, finally my husband is here. Finally my husband is here. She's walking up to him, starting to approach him, kind of like maybe like she's looking for a hug or looking to be embraced. He puts his hand up and he starts backing up towards his truck, and he says, I cannot believe you right now. She just kind of says in a sad voice, I just want my husband to take me home. He cuts her off immediately. He talks over her and says, Kristen, don't play that shit. We've been divorced for over a year. He starts scanning her. He's looking her up and down and with a look of disgust on his face. And I take a look at her. She's looking really drawn out, sleep deprived and exhausted. In that moment, I can't help but wonder if she's in mayor of the real Christin. But the father cuts off my train of thought and says, you promised me you were done drinking, and I gave you one week alone with him, and you can't keep yourself together. She gets out a little bit, a little whimper and says, can you please just take me home? And he says absolutely not. Pull yourself together and take yourself home. He then storms to his vehicle and drives off. I'm thinking, wow, I can't believe this did our job before us. For a brief second, it felt like we won, like a victory. This is until she takes off, sprinting back into the trees. The three of us look at each other and we all have an understanding what is happening. She's trying to beat us back to the camp so so you can switch into somebody else before we get there. That moment of relief immediately turned into the most bumpy, chaotic off roading experience of my life, because we have no idea how long it's going to take her to get back, but we know, at even our top speed, it's going to take us several minutes. The ride back was far too loud for any of us to talk and have any sort of type of conversation. So I'm just in my head thinking, what are we going to do with her when we get when we have to go search for the real christ what's the point in finding her if we come back and it's a and it's found a new host already, and we're gonna have to go through the same process all over again. When we pull up to the campsite, I was damn near expecting this thing to be dragging somebody else into the woods, with how desperate it looked when it darted towards the tree line end of the woods before we left the area. Come to our surprise, the campsite is completely vacant. Sand just blurts out, where is everybody? The ranger Filt tells us that he had the camp guides take everybody onto the pontoons for a fishing day, so nobody was at the campsite for her to pray on while we were gone, but they might get back before we find the real Christens. So we have to make this thing come with us on any by any means necessary. We hop off the call of cart. We are walking with the with purpose now towards the campsite, assuming that she's hiding somewhere, But she's just sitting in the middle of the campsite on a log by the bonfire, rocking back and forwards. I see something on the log next to her. As we get closer, I realized that I'm seeing three crows sitting on the log next to her. They're just standing there, perfectly perched up on this log, with the exact same spacing between them, as if they're in a form forming something. As we're walking up, I'm mentally preparing to have to fight this thing and drag it into the forest with us to search for the real Christin. I could tell by the way everybody was walking up that nobody has any idea how this interaction's gonna go. Assuming she's going to be violent, that's all we could assume. But I know that I'm prepared to do whatever I have to do to save the real Christin. I know they are too. The park ranger sternly says to it, you're coming with us right now. She just keeps rocking and mumbling. She's mumbling this, do you know what the crows are? Do you know about the crows. He cuts her off immediately. He says, you're coming in the forest with us right now to find that woman. It looks up at us, almost excited, with real optimistic look on its face. It's really delicately standing up and starts walking towards the tree line and says, I'd love to go in the forest with you. Sam immediately takes charge and says, let's do a triangle formation. Sam points to the ranger and says, you're at the front, and me and Doug will be on either side of her. Doug will scan the right, I'll scan the left, and she'll stay in the middle of all of us so she can't get away from us. Me and the ranger are both not sure about this, so the mimic seems okay with this idea and just takes her place in the middle of the formation. It makes me very uncomfortable with how willingly she wants to do this, but we don't have a choice at this point, and we need to just go. We started to go into the tree line. I'm trying to do my job and just keep scanning the right for clues or you know, where we can find Christen. But I can't help but keep checking on her. Sure it's not getting any crazy ideas. But we're walking about three minutes when I peek back and there's something different about it. I take a better look at her, and her face looks full and vibrant, her bags under her eyes are gone, her posture perfect. She's almost giving off an aura early similar to the glow of stairs. The forest is super dense and there's not a lot of sunlight that gets through the trees. Sam and the ranger look completely shaded, but she looks like the sunlight is hitting her. This makes me internally panic because I already didn't like how happy she was to come in here. I really don't like that. Once we're in here, she seems to be thriving. I look away from her, just to start looking for more clues. As we keep hiking, everything in the forest starts looking the same. I start to feel a little disoriented and dizzy, but I just focus on the trees. Before I know it, I feel like a lot of time has passed. I'm out of touch with the situation. It feels like I'm an infinite loop of paranoia, and I realize I haven't checked on her or anybody else in the group before, it feels like ours. So when I finally pulled myself together away from the haze, I panned back to the group and the park ranger is standing where she was in between me and Sam, and she's at the front of the group. Me, Sam, and the ranger are just standing single file behind her. I have no idea when that switch happened. I can tell that Sam and the ranger haven't realized that which happened yet. I'm not even looking for clues at this point. I'm just disoriented and confused, barely remembering why we're even out here, until the park ranger shakes his head really hard, like he's shaking the trance off, and blurts out stop. He slaps me and Sam and that yes, stop us from walking. This is the first time I've seen a real panic in the Ranger's eyes. He starts questioning me and Sam if we have any idea how long we've been out here or what direction we went. We all frantically check our watches and phones, but none of them seemed to be working. She had stopped walking about ten feet ahead of us and just turned around and calmly looking at us. The ranger storms up and yells, where'd you take us? Aggressive? Borderline violent? She just gently replies, I took you where we were meant to go. Silly. She just lightly lifts her hands and points to her right. We all turn our gaze and see this massive, hallowed out tree with a big oval gap in the front of it, with glass stairs spiraling around the outside of it. There were like the stairs that you would see in the loft, but they were sticking out of the bark of the tree. And I realized that the real Kristen is sitting in a fetal position, completely motionless, inside the oval gap, and we're just standing there. I just believe for a moment in question to start flooding my brain. Why would this thing take us directly to Kristen? Is it surrendering? Is it a trap? Was it planning to lead us here the whole time? I take a better look at the tree, and it's giving off some the same illumination that her in the first staircase we're given off. I start to get those intrusive thoughts again. I feel oddly drawn to it, but I know better than to act on them because of what happened the first time I look back at the other guys to see their reactions on their faces. But when I look at Sam, the mimic is right next to them, with her hand on his shoulder, whispering in his ear. I didn't see this thing walk up to him. I take a step towards them. Before I get a word out, it whips his head towards me and says porcupine. Sam's eyes are completely glazed over. He's just staring at the tree motionless. Takes a slight pause, tilts her head, takes her hand off his shoulder, and he immediately starts spreading towards the tree. He gets a little bit of a head start of me, but I start chasing him right away because I could tell this something is off. As we're getting closer to the tree, I can tell he's not spreading towards Kristen. He's sprinting towards stairs. The direction he's spreading is like five degrees off from the oval gap. But I close it on him and I get one hand on his back. I'm slowing him down, but I can't stop him from getting to the second step of the stairs, and once he touched it, it felt start. The stairs gave off a vibrating pulse with each step. It's almost like somebody banging on a drum. I gave my second hand on and rib him up stairs. I get him to the ground. I have to restrain him with all my strength because he's trying as hard as he can get back at these stairs. Sam is not small or feeble by any means, and I have to use all my strength to restrain him. But he's not fighting me. He's not hitting me, he's not pushing me. He's not even looking at me. His eyes are fixated on the stairs, and he's just clawing to get back to them. Gets to the point where I don't even think I could restrain him any longer, until he suddenly stops and goes limp. His eyes revert back to normal. He just looks at me and goes what happened? He seems okay? So I look to see what stopped him, and I see the ranger pulling Christen out of the tree. It seems like the moment he pulled her out, he stopped. Me and the ranger look at each other as to say, what now. We all look back towards the mimic, and this thing had a satisfied devious look on his face. That wasn't until his face started to fade away to nothing, and just like the ranger explaining with the hippie, starts to evaporate, and once it completely disappears, I look back to Sam to see if he's okay, and he gives me the nod that it's all good. This is messed up. This is creepy as hell. So this, this mimic of Kristen with the missing person that they're looking for at this point in time. Now got the son out of the park safely. This thing leads them to her. But before doing that, they're all walking along and they somehow get in this trance where and the person telling the sharing the story says he's just looking for clues. Then he looks back in the in the strategic position they were all walking in with him to the left, his friend of the right, and the park ranger leading the pack with the with it, as we're calling it, the mimic in the middle. All of a sudden, when he looks back in this trance, everything's changed. The lineup's changed, the way they're walking's changed. It was as if she was leading them where to go. Now, Yeah, she was in the front now and the ranger was in the center, and they were all following her for an amount of time unknown amount of time, and it seems like the ranger finally who this time, is just falling behind, right, they're all just falling her. Now he snaps out of the trance and he says like stop, taps the other guys on the back or chest or what it said, to kind of get them out of the trance. And yeah, you get the feeling that he was just desperate to get them out of that chance because they said slaps them on the chest. You can imagine the feeling of like his desperation at this point, like, you know, he doesn't know how long they've been walking like this, and he knows something bad happened. The saying was suddenly leading them. I could feel like when he described it, I can almost feel the force of like, yeah, that damn just slapping them across the chest to like knock them their senses back. End. Yeah, that was a very spooky part of the story. It's this whole part there, but all along she actually led them to the real person who was sitting in a walltout area of a tree with a new set of stairs right by her. So they all start heading towards her. They don't know he actually he doesn't know him and his friend are heading towards her the stairs. He knows he's feeling the urge you go to the stairs, but he's not got to do that. This time, spread takes off running on to the stairs, and he has to yank him off. Really an identical situation to what happened with him earlier, except for I think his friend made it up an extra step. And then he's basically holding his friend down that his friend's going nuts, wants to get right back up, has to get on them stairs in the woods, And all of a sudden, he just stops, stops fighting it, stops fighting that urge. And as soon as he stops, he looks over and he happens to see that the exact same time where the park ranger is pulling the real Christen out of the tree. And then this thing, just like the park ranger said happened with the hippie earlier. They went missing, and which is you know that the next day they found the dead body of the hippie and they said it was two days later, which is creepy enough as it is, but yeah, it just evaporates into the woods. Yeah, and and le s Ky go back up the hole in the tree. You know, you've heard stories of of mimics or changelings. They're always there's some kind of hole in the tree, kind of connection to their beginning, their origin, or their birth. Yeah. So, uh, just to see that kind of pop up again, I was like, yeah, I'm settling even And I think the the troubling part is even though the park rangers basically predicted like how this could play out, he still is powerless, right, and became victim to the trance. And let's not forget about the creepiest thing about the trance, that is, when Sam realized they're in the trance, he started walking towards his friend because he saw this mimic talking in his friend's shoulder. I said, Sam, right, I met it wrong his friend of Sam's shoulder, Yeah, I mean it was like at a hand on the shoulder, right and talking like whispering into Sam's ear, And before he could get close enough, the thing just whifts its heather out at him and says this safe word that they established the night before porky. Right, they're laying in the Tan and I and they said, porky, pine is are safe word. If anything happens, we're spread out, split apart, anything weird happens at all, we will know if each other's okay, if the word for you kinda said And that's what the mimic just said to him, right, yeah, yeah, so yeah, I wonder it was this, you know, was it able to read it mined or was the you know, mimic listening to them the night before, like nearby? Yeah, it's either way. The creepiest part might be that the mimic seems happy, like it just accomplished something. Yes, the devious smile they described her. Jesus, are you ready to pull this back up? Luke? They just found the real prison here and the mimics vanished off into the woods, evaporated, I think, is what was said. Yep. So we immediately start putting all of our attention towards Kristen, a hell around her and rangers giving her water. We're so relieved. Why she starts slowly regaining consciousness. It takes about full minute for her start making sounds of her eyes starting to open. When she looks going enough. The ranger asks if she's okay, and she just says, what took you guys long? It's been days. The ranger follows up and asks her if she remembers anything. She barely gets out It told me you'd come, told me i'd be safe by the stairs. I didn't realize why that rubbed me the wrong way until Sam whispered to me, that's exactly what the mimic said when we first found it. This realization, to me was absolutely world shattering, because I realized that we didn't win. It's like the mimic knew we were going to find her like this, and it's mocking us from the beginning. Then even more questions started flooding my mind. Did not want to get out of the park. What's this motive just to get us back to the stairs. Why this thing looks so deviously satisfied. We're tending to Kristen while I'm internally turning these questions over into my head. She severely just dehydrated and starving, so I really don't have time to think. We just have her slowly rehydrating from the Ranger's canteen and nimbling on protein bars. From Sam's pack. I want to leave so bad, but we have to wait till she's strong enough to walk herself for us. Is way too dense for us the carrier, so we just assist her about thirty one feet away from the stairs because it doesn't feel right just hanging out right next to them. We have to wait there for about a half hour. The part of me is very curious to see if the stairs disappear or transform in any way. We don't start questioning it Kristen immediately because we want her to just focus on getting better. We all just focused on being as gentle and consoling as we possibly can. I could tell we all don't want her to see how shaken up we are, because we just wanted to feel safe. Once she seems calm and content enough, we all kind of huddle up start a game plan. Our phones are working out, and even though the data is kind of spotty, we could see that we're only a mile away from the camp. Once I let them know how close you are, I could see it in their face that we had the exact same experience, because they're as a surprise as I am. Because I felt like whatever the moment did to us went on for hours. Before we could start talking get into detail about any of our experiences, Kristen speaks up. Of course, she asks to see if Nick is safe and okay. At this point, she's standing up and seems okay to start walking, So we walk over to her and ensure that Nick is safe with his father. We calmly explained to her that we didn't feel safe having Nick at the campsite while we were looking for just in case he tried to run off and look for her himself. She had a little bit of a shame in her face. She nodded and accepted that as a pretty reasonable explanation. The ranger asked if she's okay to start walking back to camp, and she nodded obediently. So we got all of our stuff and start walking. We're about twenty feet before the most futrid rotten smell hits my nose. I know we all smell it at once based on everybody's body language, and immediately whip my head around see if the sorcerers the stairs, and of course the stairs are nowhere to be found. And the ranger looks as lest that says we need to leave right now. We all feel guilty rushing Kristen and after all she's been through. But it's clear that Ranger feels like we leave the area with a sense of urgency, so we really start picking up the pace. But it feels like the smell is falling. It smells like a mix of sour sewage rotten meaning sulfur. After five straight minutes of it not losing any intensity, I ask, what does that smell? Sam replies quietly, because I don't think he wants Kristin to hear it's a carcass, says with the certainly that I know is from experience. I wisher back one of their carcasses. Ranger cuts me off and says it's carcass, but he says in a way that Kristen wouldn't be able to tell what he actually meant. But me and Sam knew what he was implying, and the look on his face was also implying we should be quiet. Finish our whispering conversation by saying, if you see antlers, keep your head down, keep walking. I know I can't reply verbally, but internally I was cynically joking to myself, Great, I don't just worry about magical stairs in the faceless mimic. But now I have to worry about territorial stinky elk now momentarily forgot that the most dangerous thing here is still mother Nature and the last thing when he needs to be rushed by a six hundred pound elk. We get through most of the hike back with zero complications, but we could see the start of the edge of the campsite through the trees. We're all about one hundred yards away from the finish line when we hear an elk scream from behind us. You've never heard an elk scream. It's horrifying and borderline human like. I encourage you to look it up on you too. We start to pick up the speed a little bit until we're twenty feet away from the campsite. Elk let's out a second scream, but the tone changes a little bit. Half second into the scream, it sounds like a young boy screaming mom. Kristen Panicky whips her heads around towards Ranger and says, that was nick, I thought you said my son was safe. Ranger grabs her both so shoulders, not in an aggressive voice, but a way that he's about to say she needs to listen. I promise you that was not your son. Right now, we just need to get you to the lodge and the second we get there will call him, I promise, okay. And then to break the tension a little bit, he said with a smile, I just found you. Please don't go running off of the woods again. This comforted Kristen enough forget her through the trees. When we get out of the woods, it felt like I could finally breathe again. We were only in there for about three hours, but with everything that happened, I couldn't believe that it was just past nude. The campsite was still empty, but we needed to get Kristen into a vehicle and headed to the lodge before anybody came back because it raised a lot of questions with other campers. Why is she still here? There's common knowledge that she was going to leave that morning. We could tell she's peeking towards the campsite looking for her belongings. But the ranger gets ahead of it and he says, don't worry. Your stuff left when Nick did. It was a great quick thinking by the ranger. So now let's get you home. And the ranger said in my head, I'm considering asking her what she remembers. But during the two minute walk to the vehicle, I can tell that she's fully under the impression that she had a couple too many and got herself lost in the woods. I can see the embarrassment building on her face. Our current situation, that's kind of ideal, because we just need to get her at it here as soon as possible. She climbs into the vehicle, but before she but before they drive off, the park ranger walkie talkies the camp guides. He alerts them to bring the campers back to the camp site because there's an aggressive elk in the area and he doesn't want them walking back after dark where they can't see one coming. And on the other end, the camp guide, one of the other camp GUIDs replies, don't worry, we're already on our way back because an aggressive, quick full cold front has moved through and nobody's dressed for it. I don't know what it was about the camp guide saying that, but it puts a sense of urgency into the ranger as he starts to walk away to the vehicle, but it shouts back to us before he gets in. Boys I'll get back as soon as I can. Stay away from the tree line and if you smell it hide. We nervously watch him drive off. It's on and I'm absolutely exhausted. I catch myself just thinking about the devious look on the mimixed face before it disappeared and evaporated into nothing into the forest. It reminds me to check on my friend. This is the first time Sam and I have been able to have a minute to talk since everything that's gone down. So I just opened up the conversation with should we leave, and Sam goes, we can't. If it was just you that touched the stairs, I'd say let's go, But I cannot leave, knowing that I might have just made everything worse when I stepped on the steps. Well, I was not surprised with that answer at all, because that's exactly what I was thinking earlier when everything happened to me. I tried to comfort him a little bit more. I even asked the question because it was the first thing he came in my mind. Pretty crazy, how we were in that time loop back there. Don't really understand that. Sam looks at me funny, and he says, time loop Mine wasn't like that at all. Mine felt like sleep paralysis. I saw everything happening. I saw you losing it. I saw the ranger voluntarily switched spots with her, and I was trying to scream, but nothing would come out. And then she started talking to me, but not out loud. She was talking to me in my head. She just kept telling me that it was my turn to go out the steps and that we should really stop fighting it, and there was nothing that we could do, and she just kept asking me, do I know what the crows mean? And then I asked him. I asked, Sam, did she tell you what they meant? Like? What does she mean by that? Because I haven't been able to stop thinking about it this whole time. And Sam says no, she just kept tawning me with the question about the crows. But she did say that we'll know what they mean when we get back to the camp. That was basically our cue to start walking back to the camp because we're both looking for answers. I kept the dialogue going and I asked him, if our experiences were so different, what do we think happened to the ranger. He jokingly replied, I'm sure it was something unique and horrible, But I'm more interested to see what he knows about the source of that smell. We walked quietly for a second, straight ahead towards the logs to sit down. We could see from a distance the crows were still perched exactly where they were, and we just set on the log straight across from them. It's funny, because we were so tired, we didn't even have enough energy to be scared of the crows at this point in time. We were just sitting having a standoff with these things. They're staring at us and we're staring at them, and then one all the way to the left, the crow all the way to the left just squawks out of nowhere and just flies off. We just look at each other and nod. It turns out the mimic was right. We knew exactly what they meant, the crows meant. Sam just casually says one down, two to go, and then he follows up and kind of shamefully asked me, did I do what you did? He was implying, you know, did he have a seizure as well? I said no, It just seemed like you were really trying hard to get at the top of the stairs, rushing as fast as as fast as you could, but I stopped before you could get I stopped you before you could get there. He says, did you feel that vibrations? And I said, yeah, same thing happened, and you you know, same thing happened with him a step on them. He asked me, do you think there's a correlation between how many steps you go up in the severity of the consequences? I replied, I really hope not. And then right then we hear laughing and talking approaching us. It's the group of campers coming back from fishing. Luckily, the chatter sounds very nice and pleasant, so that gives us a little bit of relief because we know nothing bad happened to that while they were out. Me and Sam do are best to keep everything out of control, obviously, so nobody else knew. We didn't want them to show uncomfortable. Everybody else is unloading all their gear and gathering around them for lunch. Once everybody's settled in, one of the camp guides starts going around and he's doing a head count and he shouts, were one short. Everybody look around, who's missing? Everybody looks around for the immediate family or friends or loved ones. And then two guys speak up playfully. They're both in their early thirties, like real outdoor looking types. They said, don't worry, guys, that's just our buddy Pete. Sam and I looked at each other in fear and couldn't help but assume that this was a result of the stairs in the woods being stepped on again to be continued. Oh, man, wish I gotta know what happens next. Yeah, there's another apart. Man, Well, did dive into that later? I mean, wow, uh hell, what a cool story. Though. Yeah, So when I said this over to you guys, I sent it over in batches, like I'm gonna read this part. Jack, You're gonna read this part. Luke, you're gonna read this part. Did you guys read the whole story? Though? I read, I was going to read it all, but then I thought to myself that I kind of I was I kind of wanted to experience it live, and so I was like, yeah, I'm going to spoil it for myself. So I ended up not reading the whole thing in one sitting. That was also my kind of feeling. I was like, you know, I could get into my portion and I can experience that. But then I was like, I want to hear the experience of hearing the story from you guys when you do your guys' portions, and that way I can kind of get a feeling of how our listeners might feel as well. So I was just like in this mindset, like you know what, I could read this whole thing, bash it out real fast, and then go from there. But then I was like, man, I just I wanted to see what it's like being on the other side of this listening to it being read off by people. And so I was like excited to hear how you guys did your takes because I knew how I was going to do mine, and so I was like, you know, I want to hear how you guys do. And so I really enjoyed experiencing it with everybody else except for the parts that were I had edited into mine. I knew it was going to be a little bit different because the last couple of weeks we've just been sharing a story boom table talk right afterwards. But I was curious would they actually read the whole thing like obviously I had, I mean, I was so into this I did, so I was kind of looking for your reactions as we went along. I don't how did you guys feel about We'll get back to the story in a second. How did you feel about the change in pace this week? Obviously it's not something I think we could do every week, but I really enjoyed it. It really felt like we were kind of like weaving the story together while we're reading it. Yeah, I felt like we were in school, like taking her in to reading. Well, we were actually pat right. Yeah. I was gonna say a slightly more ancient form of that, it would be like a Viking Skalds would take turns telling a ghost story and says this is a very druidic story as it is with the mimics and the crows, which kind of reminds me of Odin's Ravens in a way. I was thinking more like that, but similar, that's exactly same thing. I was thinking, Look, that's exactly thing. Yeah, that's that's what Pilgrims and the Vikings and all that stuff. What do you guys think about this story? Though? It was a so last week we talked about the stairs in the woods, and then I was able to find this. I really love this. I always enjoy stories involved going into the woods. I've always liked going into the woods as a kid, not at night, that was That's where I drew the line. Not searchingly for a missing people, no, no, but I would you know, go on trails, go on hikes and things like that, and you just stare off out there and you're just like, what kind of things are going on out here when when no one's watching, you know, it's just the animals and just stuff like that. So I've always enjoyed woods and wood based stories. I guess I'm always been a big fan of preachers too, Like you know, things that someone might have conjured and some past life, some sort of weird thing that shouldn't be here. And so like this idea of something coming into our world or being attracted to someone because they interact with something from their world. That kind of story always is like the perfect type of like story for me, Like, you know, it gives you a little bit of a chill, but it's also like you know, it kind of harkens back to old and religions and stuff about you know, their you know, rich listic offerings or something you know, just some sort of dark creature in the woods. So I've always liked stories like that in general, So this has been absolutely awesome to listen to and to talk about. People commenting, Jesus, that's terrifying, crazy story. Some people like the change up seems more more than not. The only person thought they like kind of us. I think it's hard to pay attention that long. But the good thing about this is you can always come back and listen to it later. But we do appreciate everybody listening to it live there for sure. I thought this was like a good follow up to what Jack teased last week. Then yeah, you know what happened when you touch the stairs in the woods. This story is a little bit everywhere. I got a lot of controversy around it. I will say one thing, it's a great story. I mean, wow, how creative? Is there another part to this? Like this, I cut it off because I knew I knew it would be it would be past our time. Well, I definitely want to rest. Yeah, oh yeah, there's more. I uh, there's basically a second half. There's about the same amount left again length. Yeah, I would like to like to revisit for sure, And uh, get the ending, get get the final bits of the story. Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. That's what happens when you step on the stairs in the wood said, yeah, don't do it. It's to say the fuck off. I know. We're just we're just talking here. People are commenting along. That's fine, we're just wrapping things up. The mimic character, Luke Jack. We'll let luc go first. But what did you think about the mimic character. Mimics are a very interesting creature in different lore and like stories, there's always different like shape shifters or something that like takes on the form of someone that gets lost, or they deliberately adduct people. I always I like those stories a lot. Jack actually mentioned something about the tree with the Old Wolf opening, and that has come up in a lot of them also, so that must be, you know, some sort of connection to an ancient story of some sort. I find them to be absolutely terrifying, because the worst thing I can imagine is something looking exactly right but being wrong. Actually, uh, what's his name? Stephen King said that the most terrifying thing he could come up think of would be to walk into his house and find everything replaced with the exact copy of itself. And so that's kind of like the feeling you get from a mimic. Yeah, you know, kind of like to go on from that the mimics and you know, I guess the times a're called changelings or yeah, changelings or even sci fi stories, I guess what's the other thing, Well, there's something opper or what the heck is that word? Oh? Yeah, uh like what was it? Doppel ganger? Doppelganger? Yeah, yeah, And it's just like this, you know, this idea that someone you knew is not that person, and it just is pretending to be that person. Like I said, like sci fi movies had like the pod people, you know, it was like just you know, a fake uh, and you're just like, you know, what happens to the real person? What happens the person I knew? And and just seeing this person or thing pretend uh to be a person. This is very unsettling. It's unsettling on every in every angle. And uh yeah, yeah, for sure stories of of of of mimics or change things or doppel gangers that yeah, you can't help but be incredibly fascinated about them. UFOs are talked about more mainstream these days, and there's just it kind of brings me back to that when I'm thinking that there's a whole huge forest, there's a whole ocean, there's a whole whatever it may be that we don't really inhabit, so we don't really understand. Maybe we don't really understand where we're at now. But you know, to think about what's in the woods that you don't know, the things you don't know about is terrifying. And I think that for me when the comment was made that they were almost the ranger said they were almost lucky, that this was the mimic that you're dealing with. Yeah, and you know, he mentions at the end of this of this segment of the story where there's the elk and there's the what's going on with the crow is what's going on with you know this like carcass, like smell that there's you know, what else is going to if you smell it? Hide right exactly? You know. And also a lot of times people say, like, you know, we're humans, were the or the king of the planet or whatever, but yet we stay out of the woods, you know, we stay off the mountaintop, so we stay out of the bottom of the ocean. We stay far away from all of these locations that make up most of the planet, And yeah, you wonder to some degree, it's like, well, yeah, obviously it's logical, but you know, maybe there's also more reasons than we can fully understand why we've always done that. We've always stayed out of those areas we live, where we live, and whatever else is out there where that's out there, guys, spend another fun episode. Yes, let's feel exhausted from all the reading, though, Yeah, there are some long stretches there. I tried to split it up evenly, right, I gave you all the worst, but there was a part where they said they were exhausted it's only new and I was like, yeah, I mean I kind of feel this exhaustion just from the you know, through the story, you can kind of feel like they're exertion they're going through. Yeah, I agree. Well, yeah, so everybody listening live and those of you listened later. We do this live every Monday at ten thirty pm. If Luke's not walking his cat at that time is a big Doug. We're gonna we'll do this every week, you know, less holiday or something coming up. It was a it was another fun week, though, I'm excited about what the future brings. You want to get us some stories we are I think this stream to the Facebook. I finally got that set out, So look for your scary stories on Facebook. It's also on Twitter. You can also I'll let you plug the discord and all that other shit, Luke, because I don't know. But it's also you can look up my profiles on Everything's Podcast Father. It's also there, Luke. You have a couple of communities that you set up. Yes, we have a discord, which is your scary storage discord. I need to put that link on our Facebook. I haven't done that yet. We also have a Reddit page so called share your Scary Stories and yeah, you can catch me on there on discord or read it as John Daily Programmer. I handle most of that stuff. We're still setting up your scary stories dot com. You can just submit there, or you can contact us wherever. We just told you guys, I'm going to hit this outro. We're gonna be done with it. What do you think? Yeah, we'll see you next time.