Do Not Go to the Superstition Mountains in Arizona! (Part 1)
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1acs12u/do_not_go_to_the_superstition_mountains_in/
My stomach drops at this point, but I can’t take my eyes off of him and I watch this man put his hand back down by his side and it looks like he is starting to do a backbend. He put his chin up and reached both hands over his head like he was going to stand on his hands and his feet while arching his back. But as his torso kept falling backward, his legs didn’t move and his torso collapsed to the floor as if he was split in half at his belt line and his legs were just standing where he was standing.
I start having heart palpitations at this point and I start to feel cold. I can’t believe what I’m looking at and right before I’m about to call to the others, the two legs that remained standing took off running to the left. They were just two human legs sprinting the ledge of a mountain. I lost them after about two seconds and I pan back to where the torso fell and it’s in a full handstand. It just launches itself off of the ledge of the wall. Once it left the ledge, I pulled the binoculars away from my eyes to save myself from seeing the impact, but I was in total shock. I whip my head towards the guide and Abdullah and make concerned eye contact with the guide.
At the moment, I didn’t know how to explain what I just saw, but he could see that something was wrong by the look on my face. He jumped to the conclusion that I might be having heat stroke and just started giving me water and guided me over to the shade of the columns. I’m having this massive internal conflict because I don’t know how to tell these guys what I just saw, not to mention that I saw somebody on top of the ledge where the boulder fell, where the guide had suspected foul play. I kept getting these waves of cold flashes and the guide kept reassuring me that if I just hydrate, I’m gonna be okay.
So I was just slowly sipping the water that the guide put an electrolyte packet into for almost 10 minutes before the cold flashes stopped. I must’ve looked really bad because the guide was treating me like somebody who needed help. I finally got a couple of words out.
I just said, “I think I saw something over there.”
The guide cut me off and assured me that mirages and hallucinations are very common in the desert when somebody is experiencing heat stroke, but I didn’t know if that was a mirage. I thought mirages were supposed to be pools of water or fruit trees, not a pair of legs sprinting on a mountain and a torso taking a leap of faith.
As I started to feel better, I realized I hadn’t taken a sip of water since the first rest stop. I didn’t even take a sip at the second rest area or a sip after we ran up this hill. I asked the guide to just give me a couple more minutes and I would be fine to keep moving and he took that opportunity to go look in the direction that I had hinted that I saw something a couple meters away from me and Abdullah. Instead of checking on my well-being, Abdullah excitedly told me that that was a great move because it gave him time to scout the area. He thought that I was completely faking it so we could linger at the top of this hill and insecurely, I pretended that that was exactly what I was doing and that I was fine the whole time.
I only did it because I didn’t want him to be worried about me and after taking down that bottle of electrolytes I felt physically 100% better, even though I wasn’t sure if I had just been hallucinating from dehydration. Part of me just didn’t want to be a liability to the group or for them to think I was the weak link. I don’t know. It was super insecure of me, but Abdullah continued.
He peeked over my shoulder to make sure the guide was still looking off into the distance, then he pointed further north towards the next hilltop and said, “Can you see it?”
And right there, almost to the top of the next hill, there was a clear arch on the left side of that hill that you wouldn’t be able to see from the main trail. It was the shape of an eye and it hit me. The Dutchman’s words go through my head again. “Through the eye of the arch, if you look through you will see my mine.”
Adrenaline rushes through my veins instead of a cold flash. We’re gonna find this thing, but how are we going to convince the guide to go to that next hill? Because there’s no way he’s gonna go further off-trail just for the sake of some Instagram pictures. I’m starting to mull over the option of parting ways with the guide when he walks over, but Abdullah speaks up before I do.
We had just been talking excitedly and I reassured him that I felt 100%, but he said, “I think we should camp here tonight. I don’t think Doug is ready to continue hiking.”
And even though I was feeling insecure about being the weak link, that was genius. It’s the perfect opportunity to stay at this clue and convince him to go to the arch on the next hill in the early morning while we have the whole day ahead of us.
The guide looks at me for my opinion on the situation and I put on a puppy dog face and say, “I think I’ll be good by morning.”
I saw a slight twinkle in the guide’s eye as if he had an idea that something was up, but I tried to barrel over that twinkle by asking if he had another electrolyte packet. It seemed to work. So we started to set up camp on top of the hill in between the pair of columns. As the sun started setting and our camp was built out, we started to eat and chat and everything felt kind of normal again. Since we had to wait for morning to do anything, there were no mine games to play or no clues to look for so we all got to relax.
We pitched our tents in between the two columns and lit our fire about 10 feet in front of the entrance to our tent. We were all fed and rehydrated and started to wind down as it became completely night. It’s weird how dark and quiet the desert is at night. The sky is completely illuminated with stars, but without the fire, we wouldn’t be able to see a foot in front of our faces. The only sounds that we can hear are small insects, the occasional breeze, and the crackling of the fire. We’re all getting drowsy so we’re talking less. You could tell that we were all just about ready to hit the sleeping bags. There’s nothing quite as exhausting as spending your whole day hiking in a blazing desert. I could feel my eyes getting heavy as we started walking to the tent, but as we were about to climb in, we heard something that sounded like a major crackle in the fire.
It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from the direction of the fire which is behind us. We all look at each other a little confused when we hear it again and it’s definitely coming from in front of us. We all stay extra quiet waiting to hear it again and it only takes a couple of seconds before we hear two back-to-back. It sounds like it’s getting louder and closer. We hear another, but this one sounds like this one slapped two bricks together, not just a crackle in the fire. These pops kept happening, but we could see no sign of the sound. At this point, we all walk up to the edge of the hill and we’re looking down towards the main trail. We hear another, but this time we see a flash coming from the source of the sound.
It just looked like the flash of a firework in the distance. They keep going off and they keep getting closer. From our perspective when we’re looking at the main trail, the flashes are coming from the right side, but each one keeps getting closer to the middle. By the time it gets right in front of us, just about to where the trick in the trail was, the flash of this thing barely illuminates the source of it and we realize it’s a man unloading a pistol into the air and he’s shouting. He’s not saying any words, he’s just making mindless sounds while he’s sending shots into the sky.
I grabbed my binoculars to try to get a closer look for the next time he shot and he got illuminated, but I was just scanning the dark and he’s fading off to our left. He must’ve reloaded because he let off a few simultaneously with a really loud shout and I’m able to get him in the sights of my binoculars while he does it. This man is ass naked, jogging the main trail, firing his pistol into the sky in the middle of the night in a desert. He’s a drawn-out, older man with no clothes or shoes on and a beard and haircut that covers almost his whole head.
He just keeps going shooting into the sky until he fades out of earshot and eyesight off to the left. I look back at the guide and he’s already looking at me, but he has a funny look on his face, and almost as if he’s trying to hide his true intention of the question he flatly says, “Did you see it?” With no extra details of what “it” was.
I’m already super suspicious so I say, “It depends. What did you see?”
He seemed frustrated with this answer and it confirmed my suspicions. He was only going to tell us what he saw if I had seen it too, but he replied with something that didn’t really make sense to me.
He just says, “I saw The Hermit.” Abdullah’s super confused so I sarcastically reply, “So by The Hermit, you meant you saw a man ass naked unloading his pistol into the sky right?”
You could feel the tension between us and what I said clearly got under his skin and he finally said what he truly felt.
“You know this is all happening because of you guys, right?”
Me and Abdullah look at each other like “Oh, here comes the truth.” He seems angry enough to finally speak from his heart and spill all the beans. He starts with a series of questions.
“You know why the smoky mountains are called the smoky mountains? Because of the notorious smoky clouds that cover their peaks. Do you know why Apache Mountain is named Apache Mountain? Because Apache lived there. Do you know Buffalo Valley is named Buffalo Valley? Because of the sheer amount of buffalo that roamed there. Why do you think these mountains are called The Superstition Mountains? You think it’s a coincidence?”
Me and Abdullah have had it up to here with this guy and Abdullah replies, “Wait, I thought these were called the Pyrate mountains because of all the fake gold here.”
And I pile on, “No, I thought they were the hermit mountains because of the hermit crab you just saw shooting his gun into the sky.”
The guide claps back immediately with “They should call these the dipshit mountains because all of the dipshits like us coming here to search for a gold mine that doesn’t exist.” I go, “Oh, so it’s us now. Us as in all three of us looking for the gold.” At this point, I knew I had him backed into a corner and I could see it in his eyes that he was about to change the direction of his argument.
He takes another one of those deep breaths like he did at the second rest stop, ready to peddle more lies to scare us. He goes, “You promised me you weren’t looking for it anymore. I wanted to believe you, but the hermit only comes out when someone is looking for the treasure that he thinks is rightfully his.”
I’m entertained by this dude’s lies at this point so I just gaslight him and condescending say, “And who is this hermit?”
And he says in a much more serious tone, “ Who you just saw is Elisha Reavis and you’re gonna end up just like him if you don’t start listening to me.” There’s no way this guy is now trying to tell me that the freak that I saw running through the desert is the ghost of the man that he was just telling us about earlier. I decide it’s time to light a fire in this argument.
So I just say, “Admit it. Admit you want us to leave so you can go find the gold for yourself. It’s not like we could stop you. You’re the only one with a gun here.” That set everything off and it just became a circle of accusations of him calling us liars, about our intentions, and us calling him fake for not just wanting to split it three ways. It got heated to the point where as a collective, we had forgotten that a man just ran past our camp, naked and unloading a firearm into the sky, until we heard a sound on the other side of our campsite that clearly resembled somebody running over rocks and pebbles.
Even though we were all arguing, we knew that we were all sane and the man that we saw was clearly unhinged. So if he’s near our campsite, we need to stick together. We hustle back to the pillars and the campfire so we can have as much light as possible to see him approaching. We were all scanning the darkness on the outside of the circle that our fire illuminated for any signs of this man.
It was quiet for almost a minute to the point where I felt like it might be a false alarm, until we heard it again. It just sounded like a quick, short run that skids to a stop only about 20 feet away from us, but we couldn’t see a thing past that ring of light. We knew something was there at this point and knowing that he was wielding a weapon kept our adrenaline at its peak, but we were just stuck at this little campsite waiting for him to finally run through the barrier of visibility. But he’s just scurrying from left to right every couple of minutes.
This process just kept going on and on. Sometimes he would scurry so close to the ring of light that a couple of rocks would almost get tossed into the campsite from what sounded like him skidding to a stop. Every time he got close, the next time he scurried he’d go a little further back. It was like he was teasing us because he knew we couldn’t see him. After what felt like an hour of this dreadful anticipation, I remembered that I had a flashlight in my backpack. So I take it out ready to turn it on, but I don’t want to turn it on too early so he knows that we have a further range of visibility.
So I whispered to the guys, “I’m gonna wait for him to get close and when I shine the light on him someone needs to hit him with something. We can’t let him think that we’re willing to be victims and there’s three of us so I think we could scare him off.”
We decide the best gameplan is for me to shine the light on him and Abdullah to throw a piece of wood from the fire that’s only lit at the tip like a torch directly at him so even if it misses we can illuminate the area near him to see if he has his weapon drawn. Because the guide wasn’t willing to shoot unless we could confirm that it was him and he has his weapon out. So we wait what must’ve been 15 more minutes until he skids to a halt right outside of our line of sight and a couple of rocks come into the campsite again. I aim my flashlight directly at the source where I think he’s probably standing and I turn it on.
I don’t know why I thought this light was going to illuminate his whole body like it was one of those massive helicopter spotlights because it didn’t. But it extended our line of sight about five more feet and we were able to see his shoes and the bottom of his pants. Something feels off about what I’m looking at, but I can’t put a finger on what it is and Abdullah doesn’t hesitate. He takes a baseball skip and launches the torch at this guy as hard as he can. When the torch leaves his hands, we can tell right away that it’s going to be a direct hit and it seems to be right on course to hit this guy directly in the chest.
I could still see his shoes and he’s not moving or reacting to the torch in the air. I start bracing for impact. As this torch is rotating in the air, closing in on this guy, the flames of the torch start illuminating his legs more, just inch by inch we could see more of his pants. His knees, then his hips, and now it’s only a couple of feet away from colliding with this man’s chest. It’s only a couple feet away and the man still hasn’t moved and we still can’t see his face. And then it hit me.
The man that we saw was naked and this torch glides right through where this man’s chest should’ve been. And as it’s right above these illuminated legs, you can clearly see that there’s no torso attached to this pair of legs. The torch just goes sailing over them 30 feet into the distance because it didn’t make an impact with anything. As the light of the torch starts to fade off of the legs, right before they go completely black, the legs take off sprinting to the left.
I feel a sense of panic in my soul that I’ve never experienced before. My initial thought is that I’m hallucinating again, but when I swing my head to look at the other guys I know Abdullah saw exactly what I just saw. I had no time to fill them in that I had seen this pair of legs on the ledge before we set up camp because the guide didn’t even look at us.
He flat-out said, “Pack the essentials and run.” I knew this guy was full of it when it came to the gold, but what we just saw was unrelated and unimaginably horrifying. You can peddle lies, but you can’t fake the fear that he had on his face. So we all start shoving our essentials back into our backpacks and take off running to the right, away from the direction we saw the legs run.
Instinctually, that was the correct direction to run, but I didn’t make the decision based on instinct. I made that decision because I knew the archway was in that direction. I’m telling you guys this to be transparent. In retrospect, I’m ashamed of this train of thought. I don’t know what came over me in those mountains, but when I saw the hermit running down the trail the first thing I thought was at least he’s not going in the direction of the mine.
When I was arguing with the guide, all I was thinking was how do I get him to leave to only split it two ways. When we were packing our bags to run from whatever those legs were, the only thing that went through my mind was to run to the right because that’s where the arch is.