Ever since the summer of 2001 I haven’t stepped a foot in Yellowstone National Park. I know what you might be thinking. Why avoid a place for over 20 years when there’s no evidence of it erupting? I mean, there’s plenty of things to do in the National Park. Plenty of sites to see, including the ever so famous Old Faithful. There’s even some bears and other wildlife to snap shots of for family albums you’ll spend over an hour scrapbooking. But after experiencing an incident that absolutely terrified me, I never want to venture in that god forsaken place again. An incident that haunts me and still sends me little reminders it will never leave me.
It started when I took a road trip with a college friend. We had both finished our second year and wanted to start off our summer driving to Malibu all the way from Jersey. We had seen way too many advertisements for it and thought it would be a good chance to maybe meet some girls and check out a few food stands. Corny as it sounds. We were young and didn’t really have a plan. But we did make enough time to map out where our relatives were from Point A to Point B. We would be visiting my relatives first in Ohio and his relatives second in Wyoming. Then after a resting point in Nevada, we would do a straight shot to California. And probably dunk ourselves in the water from all the sweat that accumulated in the car.
Well least to say we were exhausted from exiting Ohio and tag teaming each other to take the wheel in order to get to Wyoming. After a mutual decision, we both agreed to rent a cabin and do some sight seeing for a few days before marching back to my 1990 Toyota Corolla to head to his relatives for some half cooked peach pie or something like that. I can’t really remember what dish my friend detested but he told me to just be polite and discretely get rid of it since his grandma was sweet and didn’t know any better when she baked it.
What I did remember is him mentioning the kill zone.
“Yeah, it’s this place where if you die only 12 people living in it can act as a jury for whoever wacked you. It takes forever to process a case,” he said excitedly as he was packing up more gear and snacks to head on a trail we picked. I had provided bear mace in my provisions and tucked it away where I could reach it in my pocket while we talked, and I just shook my head at this.
“There’s no way this can be real,” I tittered. He was always into trivia. When he wasn’t reading Nietzsche in Russian or talking about the rock formations of what we passed on our trip, he was reciting trivia to me.
He swore up and down it was and said, “No really! That’s one reason why people go missing up here! My mom tells me all the time not to go alone while visiting Yellowstone!”
“Are you sure she just didn’t want you to fall into a hot spring?” I laughed, not taking him seriously at the time. He always did this about how we had to take precautions.
“You know what, Jack? There’s some spooky shit around here. There’s a reason our families tell us to stick together instead of just wandering off around Yellowstone.”
“Yeah, okay. Well, we need to head off if we want a good start on this trail so.”
“Fine, whatever,” he just said, looking disappointed.
We had decided to pick the trail next to Mammoth Mountain. My friend wanted to explore the area around where the hot springs were along with whatever else we could find and he was set on this one. We set off in the car and picked a spot to park next to our trail. Once on the hike he kept looking around on occasion and told me bears come around here and to keep an eye out for them. I just chuckled and brushed it off as his typical need to stay vigilant.
When we got to the halfway point that’s when he wandered off and gestured with his hand for me to follow him.
“Are you kidding? These trails are marked for a reason.” I had said it very clearly to him. He paid no mind.
“Come on,” he said, “it won’t take too long. It’s just what a friend showed me last time we went up here. I promise we’ll be back on the trail before you know it.”
I scoffed, “Whatever, man. I just don’t want to be the one to tell your parents you found your way into a hot spring.”
He just laughed and looked at me like I was in for some big surprise at the end. He was right though. It didn’t take long for him to show me what it was. It was about 30 minutes in that he showed me a big hunk of metal that appeared rusted and deteriorated next to a squirrel that looked like it had just decided to fall asleep and never wake up.
There wasn’t much else to take in. The area in this patch of dried grass was quiet. Not a bird chirped. The sun lit the backs of the trees and the earth for that moment was still. It almost could appear peaceful.
If it wasn’t for the smell.
“Urgh, God. What is that?” I coughed, covering my nose. The smell still crept in, permeating my nostrils with that awful stench. It smelled like burning iron, like pus, like being next to a vat of disposable chemicals. I almost felt sick. Like I wanted to throw up.
My friend could be so strange. He just offered his extra mask he had brought and started to put one on himself.
“I wanted to bring you here to get your opinion. You’re studying this stuff, right?” he asked.
My eyes were starting to sting, like how you get when you’re too close to onions. And I got a really strange feeling about this place like we weren’t supposed to be here. The air felt electric. Like my skin was tingling and getting exposed to something unseen but harmful to us both.
“I get what you’re getting at, but we don’t even have the right equipment to study it. I just think we need to go, man.”
He just sighed and looked at me sad.
“Well, at least you’re somewhat confirming it.”
It was then we heard someone talking from a distance. Something in a different language I wasn’t fluent in. Even if I couldn’t understand a word, something about their tone suggested a malice in it. I could only make bits and pieces of the words while my friend froze like a deer trapped on a cliff next to a mountain lion.
“Jack,” he said slowly, “when I give you the signal, you need to run.” He put his hand up and made it into a thumbs up, then slowly put it down.
“What?” I whispered, trying to suppress the growing panic in my voice. Realizing he wasn’t playing and we were in some serious danger. “What do you mean? Let’s just go!”
“My friend never made it out, Jack. They did the same to him that they’re going to do to me. They’re debating if I’ll join them, but I don’t want to.”
“You have a family! Let’s just leave!” I pleaded.
He just looked at me. In any other situation two college kids with high grade masks on would seem ridiculous. But another feeling began to creep in and chokehold me. Dread.
“Exactly,” he responded, more firm to me than my own shaking breaths. “And I’m not going to be a part of this. I know what they’re planning to do. They’re going to shoot me since I’ll say no but they’ll leave it at that. They won’t go further.”
It was almost like…he was trying to reassure me.
I just stood there rooted. I couldn’t go.
“They’re not here yet,” I begged. “Let’s just - “
There was the crack of some twigs on the ground that sounded closer, slowly approaching, like someone stalking prey. The footsteps were about 50 feet away, getting closer to us. They sounded big. Belonging to a man who could snap someone in half. Then the sound of someone unfurling plastic could be heard.
My friend remained where he was. Without words, we stared back at each other, knowing it would be the last time.
“Don’t come back here. And if you meet my family say New Zealand nice and tell them I love them.”
He put his hand up in a thumbs up signal.
I bolted as fast as I could. Every branch brushing against my shirt felt like a large hand about to grab me. What took 30 minutes turned into ten and it wasn’t until I was firmly at the beginning of the trail that I ripped off my mask and wheezed. I shuddered and I remember the cold sweat dripping down my neck and down my back like a slick serpent. Whatever I encountered had been the death of him, and it was now hunting me like a bloodhound. I let out a small sob for him before crawling into my Carolla. I had no other choice.
I turned on my engine and drove out of there like a bat out of hell. The cabin we had stayed at had a telephone where I then called the police, stumbling over my sentences to tell them what I could. I told them I lost my friend on the trail where we had encountered something and he was really hurt, badly. I told them exactly where that trail was. I told them what I had seen.
They just took a pause on the phone after I finished. They told me to wait where I was and I would be questioned about it. After some very frustrating interrogating, practically painting me as the culprit, they sent a search party 17 hours later. After 8 hours, they found the clearing. They said there was no remnants of metal or my friend. Just a dead squirrel laying on top a patch of dried grass next to a small campfire.
“Squirrels die all the time, son. It doesn’t mean there’s anything abnormal about the area. Sorry to hear about your friend though,” one of them had said to me.
I just looked at him in disbelief.
“Might have fallen into a geyser,” another one joked before being told to shut it by the rest.
“Sorry about him, son. He has no manners. But for your own safety please don’t wander off the path. People disappear all the time because of that. Hot springs will boil you up in less than a minute, and the acidic pool will dissolve you. There’ll be nothing left.”
They left soon after. Chalked it up to a missing person’s case.
I just sat in silence. It wasn’t until the next morning I had the courage to step out.
When I gathered up and packed my remaining things to put in the car, that’s when I saw it on the passenger seat of my Toyota Corolla. It was a hunter’s knife, placed neatly on the seat. It shined menacingly back at me, the sun hitting its sharp blade. It reeked of alcohol. I shook while trying to put my keys in the ignition and swerved onto the main road, leaving the cabin alone with its silence.
The moment I arrived at my friend’s house in Wyoming I told them everything I knew. I told them about New Zealand out of respect for him and that he wanted them to know he loved them. They just sighed and thanked me for the information. I haven’t contacted them since and I think they preferred it that way.
I never made it to Malibu, nor do I intend to head that out west again. I had no intention of driving my car anywhere around that massive caldera for any longer than I had to. I instead took the south route home and headed up north from Georgia. On my way home, right at the border of Wyoming, I stopped at a gas station. That’s when I heard a chuckle as I filled my tank.
“Putcha,” a woman said softly right next to a man beside her. It sounded like she was calling him “dear” or “sweetheart”, but something was off about it.
They walked by my car and he chuckled, “Hot spring for them.”
They then broke into giggles and something about it at the time set me off. In that moment when he said this, I had thought whatever was left of my friend, there would be no body to find. And their words branded me like a hot iron where it took everything for me not to punch the guy. But now reflecting on it, I don’t think they were even referring to my friend. And that more than anything scares me.
At the time I couldn’t get out of there faster. And for years I became a hermit, keeping to my studies far away from that place.
It didn’t matter to them. I am taunted in my purgatory. I notice footsteps around my yard getting a little too close to my windowsill, just to tread off like a warning the moment I make a movement. My keys go missing on occasion only for me to get replacements and find papers on my desk missing or notes on my research having shifted slightly where I last left them. Most recently I was sent a letter from an anonymous source, placed neatly on my doorstep, as if a metaphor to tread carefully.
It’s contents included practically a written sermon about the end of days and of my end. How an eruption could start at Yellowstone with the help of nuclear bombs. How it will be the start of something greater. How I was a part of this dream in creating a new reality. I just crumpled it up like I was squeezing the life out of it and it remained limp in my hand. It wasn’t until I regained my senses that I placed it on my desk.
I dont know how much time I have. The locks on all my doors don’t seem to work anymore. And I don’t think these little notes are going to stop. It is now that I realize I have a bound contract with my silence and whoever is involved is stringing us along like puppets. It sounds so strange when you first say it to yourself. But it’s only when you get sucked into the madness that you can see it for what it truly is.
If the bombs do erupt, Yellowstone will swallow several states whole. Destruction will rain on people in form of a hellfire…the size of Texas. Ash will suffocate millions all the way to Chicago. And that’s…that’s just the start of it. Who ever is…is planning this….they won’t stop with just Yellowstone. The whole world will be covered in ash. Wherever they want it to be. Whatever you want to say about me or my experiences I don’t go to Yellowstone. I stay far away from that place. I don’t want any part in whatever hell is about to be created there.
I know my time is limited, but take this as a warning. Don’t go to Yellowstone. Go somewhere else. Make memories somewhere else. Live somewhere else. And run when you get the signal.