My friends and I used to go camping and hiking about every two weeks. One weekend we decided to hike through a few mountains. We figured it would take us three full days. In those days, there were no telephones and few houses along the highway. The nearest telephones were ten miles in each direction, as a crow flies. The area was pretty remote. We checked the weather forecast and it was predicted to be sunny, with only a 20% chance of rain. It was perfect Spring weather. It was cold enough in the mountains to need a fire at night, and about 60 degrees F during the hottest part of the day. It was beautiful. So, we got my father to drive us in to the head of the valley where we would disembark.
The head of the river flowed on one side, cold and rocky. Two tributaries flowed down from the mountain and joined it from the other side. One came down a beautiful silver waterfall. We started along an old overgrown dirt road that ran alongside one of the tributaries. We soon came upon an old house built back in the 1800s sometime. It had three floors and was long abandoned. As it was getting on in the day, we decided to spend the night in the old house and hike on into the mountain at dawn the next day.
While one of the guys gathered firewood for the coming night, I went about scouting the house with the other guy. It was a huge old house and it would have been a grand sight in its day. Then, however, it no longer had any paint or varnish. It was just brown, rough, weathered wood. In one of the large rooms on the third floor, we found some old newspapers from the early 1900s. The main story concerned an affluent family that lived in the area at that time. The wife had lost her mind and killed her husband and two children with an axe. We thought that was a pretty cool find and took the paper downstairs to show the other guy.
Darkness comes early in the mountain valleys and we were surrounded on three sides by peaks. By 3:00 it is already getting dark in those valleys, but is bright up on the mountains. As we sat on the front porch of the house, just enjoying the evening, watching the light die, I suddenly was startled by the sound of voices. The hair stood up on the back of my neck as they seemed far away, but all around us. There were four people talking. I whispered in alarm, I hear people talking! He told me I was crazy as there were no people for many miles in any direction. Suddenly, I saw him stiffen and his eyes grew wide. He said, I hear them, too! It was eerie. We could hear them speaking as plain as day, but they were too distant to understand. What was worse, they were in the house with us! With our hearts pounding, we all grabbed our shotguns and started scouting the entire house, then, we started looking outside. We found nothing. Nor, did we hear the voices any longer. That was strange.
We decided that there might be some hobos or moonshiners nearby, so we decided to rig warning tripwires and booby-traps all around us. We found some old string and some vines and ran them between the trees outside and put old cans with pebbles in them on the strings. We also put some old glass jars on the strings so they would fall and break. These things would warn us if someone approached the house at night. But, talking it over, because the voices seemed to be inside the house, we rigged the windows of every downstairs room and every door, inside and out, with tripwires to warn us. I found a huge old log and two of us hefted it over the door of the room we were going to sleep in and rigged it with a tripwire. We barricaded ourselves inside.
Feeling safe, I pulled out my Buck 120 that I had been using to cut string and vines, carefully washed it, and began cutting bacon into the pan for supper. During the evening, we heard something moving about and when we looked out into the room where the noise came from, we saw nothing at all. We explored a bit and seeing nothing, we went back into our room and sat beside the fire, feeling disturbed. Finally, things seemed to have settled down and we decided to go to sleep.
Along about midnight, suddenly, something set off the log trap leading into our area of the house!. We jumped up, and grabbed our guns, but there was nothing in the door and no one smashed under the log! But, something set it off. We were now scared because none of the tripwires and booby-traps outside or on the widows had been disturbed. So, whatever set off the log trap was in the house with us!
With hearts pounding and guns in hand, we set out with our flashlights to find whoever was in there with us. We searched the entire house, top to bottom and found nothing and no one.
We finally got settled down and we back to our sleeping bags. As we lay there trying to sleep, suddenly something hammered on the floor between one of the other guys and me, three times with such force it shook the room! Bam! Bam! Bam! like someone chopping with an axe not 6 inches from our faces!. The other guy jumped up, and fired a shotgun round through the floor. We rushed outside and looked under the house and we could see the firelight from the hole the shotgun blast had made in the floor. But, there was not enough room under the house for a man to fit.
Now we were really frightened. At 4 Oclock in the morning we decided we had had enough of that haunted house and we packed up our gear, put out the fire, and high-tailed it out of there. We went up that mountain the dark, risking a broken leg or a fall, rather than spend one more minute in that place.
The head of the river flowed on one side, cold and rocky. Two tributaries flowed down from the mountain and joined it from the other side. One came down a beautiful silver waterfall. We started along an old overgrown dirt road that ran alongside one of the tributaries. We soon came upon an old house built back in the 1800s sometime. It had three floors and was long abandoned. As it was getting on in the day, we decided to spend the night in the old house and hike on into the mountain at dawn the next day.
While one of the guys gathered firewood for the coming night, I went about scouting the house with the other guy. It was a huge old house and it would have been a grand sight in its day. Then, however, it no longer had any paint or varnish. It was just brown, rough, weathered wood. In one of the large rooms on the third floor, we found some old newspapers from the early 1900s. The main story concerned an affluent family that lived in the area at that time. The wife had lost her mind and killed her husband and two children with an axe. We thought that was a pretty cool find and took the paper downstairs to show the other guy.
Darkness comes early in the mountain valleys and we were surrounded on three sides by peaks. By 3:00 it is already getting dark in those valleys, but is bright up on the mountains. As we sat on the front porch of the house, just enjoying the evening, watching the light die, I suddenly was startled by the sound of voices. The hair stood up on the back of my neck as they seemed far away, but all around us. There were four people talking. I whispered in alarm, I hear people talking! He told me I was crazy as there were no people for many miles in any direction. Suddenly, I saw him stiffen and his eyes grew wide. He said, I hear them, too! It was eerie. We could hear them speaking as plain as day, but they were too distant to understand. What was worse, they were in the house with us! With our hearts pounding, we all grabbed our shotguns and started scouting the entire house, then, we started looking outside. We found nothing. Nor, did we hear the voices any longer. That was strange.
We decided that there might be some hobos or moonshiners nearby, so we decided to rig warning tripwires and booby-traps all around us. We found some old string and some vines and ran them between the trees outside and put old cans with pebbles in them on the strings. We also put some old glass jars on the strings so they would fall and break. These things would warn us if someone approached the house at night. But, talking it over, because the voices seemed to be inside the house, we rigged the windows of every downstairs room and every door, inside and out, with tripwires to warn us. I found a huge old log and two of us hefted it over the door of the room we were going to sleep in and rigged it with a tripwire. We barricaded ourselves inside.
Feeling safe, I pulled out my Buck 120 that I had been using to cut string and vines, carefully washed it, and began cutting bacon into the pan for supper. During the evening, we heard something moving about and when we looked out into the room where the noise came from, we saw nothing at all. We explored a bit and seeing nothing, we went back into our room and sat beside the fire, feeling disturbed. Finally, things seemed to have settled down and we decided to go to sleep.
Along about midnight, suddenly, something set off the log trap leading into our area of the house!. We jumped up, and grabbed our guns, but there was nothing in the door and no one smashed under the log! But, something set it off. We were now scared because none of the tripwires and booby-traps outside or on the widows had been disturbed. So, whatever set off the log trap was in the house with us!
With hearts pounding and guns in hand, we set out with our flashlights to find whoever was in there with us. We searched the entire house, top to bottom and found nothing and no one.
We finally got settled down and we back to our sleeping bags. As we lay there trying to sleep, suddenly something hammered on the floor between one of the other guys and me, three times with such force it shook the room! Bam! Bam! Bam! like someone chopping with an axe not 6 inches from our faces!. The other guy jumped up, and fired a shotgun round through the floor. We rushed outside and looked under the house and we could see the firelight from the hole the shotgun blast had made in the floor. But, there was not enough room under the house for a man to fit.
Now we were really frightened. At 4 Oclock in the morning we decided we had had enough of that haunted house and we packed up our gear, put out the fire, and high-tailed it out of there. We went up that mountain the dark, risking a broken leg or a fall, rather than spend one more minute in that place.
