I have only ever told one person this story: the detective investigating my best friend’s death, and his response was to inform my mom that I was likely suffering from trauma-induced psychosis. Because of that, I only ever tell edited versions of this tale. However, I feel like this is a place where I can tell it freely because, well, we’re all just “telling stories”, right?
I actually really enjoyed high school. I had plenty of friends, and experienced pretty much everything a high school boy could want to experience. But this one event was a dark cloud that hung over my better experiences.
Jason had been my absolute best friend since we had a class together in 4th grade. What started that unbreakable bond? Finding out we both had June birthdays! From 4th grade to the end of 10th, we spent at LEAST two days a week together outside of school. That was just one-on-one as well, most of the time when we were in larger groups, we would both be there. We shared so many of the same hobbies and interests. But more importantly, he was someone who I could always call to have my back. A friend in the truest sense of the word.
One shared hobby we had was riding dirt bikes. While we actually lived in a pretty heavily populated town, we were surrounded by vast woods that featured long sprawling trails. So, every summer, we spent a lot of time driving up and down those trails. However, we really only ever stuck to specific trails, avoiding any areas that had heavy pedestrian traffic, but also straying from areas that were too remote. So, it surprised me when Jason asked me if we should bike to Tillsville on a particularly hot Friday morning just two weeks after school got out for the summer.
Tillsville (not the real name for privacy reasons) is an abandoned mining village located within the woods settled right against one of the mountains contained in the woods. There weren’t any active “urban legends” about the place, but people were discouraged from heading there out of fear that people would venture into the mines and get hurt. It wasn’t unheard of for people to head to the village and party, but we never had to because we were lucky enough to have friends with “cool parents” that would allow their kids to throw their own.
“For what?” I asked, because, well, I didn’t think it would be particularly interesting.
“I don’t know, I just thought it would be cool to switch up our route today” He said, beaming, as if this was some genius idea.
I pushed against the idea for a couple of minutes because, I’m still not sure why in that moment, but a small voice in the back of my head told me that it was a bad idea.
But Jason was hearing none of it, he even bribed me with the promise of paying for that night’s pizza himself if I agreed to go, so, of course I did!
The woods on the outskirts of our town are absolutely beautiful. However, as you get deeper in the woods, the trails are far less obvious, and once you’re in the most remote areas, you’re far more likely to get completely lost than find your way back.
To quantify where Tillsville is in the woods with 1 being the trails near the tree-line and 10 being the single free-use cabin set up in the most remote area for lost hikers to hopefully find and use for shelter, I’d say it’s a 6.
Our ride to the village was mostly smooth. Along the way, Jason and I ran into Anna, a mutual friend from school who was walking her dog through the trails. We chilled for a few minutes and discussed meeting up the following day to study for our driving tests together as she had a late May birthday, but hadn’t been preparing for her test.
As we got closer to the village, Jason took the lead. He said that he had been closely studying the trails that led to Tillsville over the previous week or so. I remember how loud he whooped once we saw the village’s watchtower poke above the trees.
“First try with zero problems, thank you Google maps!” He screamed.
This was my first time seeing Tillsville. It had been described to me before, and I had seen a couple pictures online, but actually visiting it was a whole other experience. There were two separate sections of the village: the residential area and the actual mining area.
The residential area consisted of about twelve abodes in various states of disrepair set up in a sort of cul-de-sac. Jason rode right up to the one closest to the edge of the village and before I could even get off my bike, he was heading inside.
I remember stepping inside and for some reason feeling incredibly sad. It was a small house, and was pretty rotted, but you could see that it was once loved.
“Dude, check this out.” Jason said, pointing to a picture frame.
We were shocked, it was a family portrait, featuring a dad standing in the middle in his mining gear, what I assume was his wife, and a little girl laying between her dad’s legs. We couldn’t comprehend why someone would leave something like that behind. As we entered the other houses, disregarding the beer cans, modern cigarette butts, and used condoms, we saw that other families had just hastily left their little village, leaving seemingly important items behind.
Now, while I said before, there had never been some spooky urban legend surrounding Tillsville, the last days of the mine are “infamous”. Like many other coal mines, Tillsville was set to shut down in the early-70’s. While it was never some huge prolific mine, it still employed about 40 people. 25 or so of which actually lived in the houses next to the mine. While losing your job is horrible, losing your job and your house at the same time is a next-level bullshit situation. Tensions were high, people were mad. One miner went on to say that some of the guys had just turned into balls of rage that felt they had no idea what they could even do afterwards because mining was all they knew. Things came to a head on the second to last day of the mine’s operation (which consisted of preparing the mine for shutdown). As the story goes, while discussing severance pay and how the miners could get in contact with landlords in the town proper, a fight broke out. One which ended with the mine’s foreman and another senior member of the team being beaten to death. That same miner who gave the only media interview on the situation said that he was haunted by the fact that people who he knew as kind and compassionate just suddenly snapped and turned into monsters willing to kill out of anger
Now back to my story, when Jason and I got into the last accessible house, we were looking through an old duffel bag that had been left in the bathroom.
“Oh, wow..” I said as I pulled out a big-ass Crocodile Dundee bowie knife.
Jason jokingly slapped at the blade like the big dummy he was, when he gasped.
“Did you seriously cut yourself?” I asked, worried at his wide-eyed gaze.
“I think someone might be out there.” He said flatly.
From where Jason was sitting, he could see out the bathroom, through the living room, and slightly through the door-less entrance.
I whipped around, “Where?”
I tried straining my eyes to see if I could confirm this, but saw nothing. Then, out of nowhere, Jason snatched the knife out of my hand and rushed out of the house.
“What the hell!?” I shouted as I followed him as he stormed off toward the back of one of the adjacent houses.
Jason slowed as we reached the back corner of the house. He turned and gave me a “ready?” look. Though I definitely wasn’t, I nodded.
We both turned the corner at the same time, and breathed a sigh of relief in unison at the sight of an empty overgrown back yard.
“What did you think you saw? Person? Animal?” I asked him.
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s see the mine.” He responded, brushing off the question.
Though he had regained his usual goofy composure, it was weird to me that he just completely ignored the question.
But, wanting to appease him, I dropped it and we headed off toward the mine.
All that was left of the actual mining area was a flimsy watchtower, half of the mill, a storage warehouse, the pump shed, and the hoist house/headframe. But there was also a separate entrance into the mine that was out in the open, and, showing the low IQ of my fellow townspeople, the fence that had been erected to keep people out of the mine had been torn away.
Now, I was actually interested in seeing the mill and headframe, but Jason was making a beeline for the entrance to the mine.
“Wait, you actually want to go inside?” I asked, trying to keep up with him.
“I mean yeah, my brother went to a party inside just last year, it’s not like it’s going to collapse the second we step inside, idiot.” He remarked, not breaking his stride.
“Now that you’ve said that, that’s exactly what’s going to fucking happen.” I responded, only half-joking.
The closer we got to the entrance, the more I felt… Something. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say that the mine had an “aura” about it. I don’t know if it was exactly an aura of danger, but for me, it simply felt oppressive.
I held my breath as we crossed the threshold, but even looking back, I have to admit, after the first few steps, being inside the mine was pretty cool. I mean, the whole time we were inside, my brain was screaming “danger”, but at the same time, I was enjoying it.
The first thirty or so feet of the mine was a straight shot. We hopped around the tracks on the floor, and even had a contest to see who could balance on the edge of the tracks the longest. Then, the mine broke off into three different “paths”. The first two sloped downwards. The stairs beside the tracks alternated between wood and stone that had been carved into the actual ground. Past a certain point, the downward paths led to murky black darkness. While Jason had brought four different flashlights, at that moment, it felt like they couldn’t have even penetrated such an absence of light. The third path was a short one that led to a large hollowed out stone “room” that had probably been used as a break room. I took the initiative and walked into the room before Jason tried dragging me to hell.
The room was pretty big, and sadly, was full of trash and graffiti.
“Holy shit!” Jason shrieked, staring at the ground.
I knew I was going to be annoyed at his discovery, because the jolt that his shriek gave me nearly stopped my heart.
Jason bent down and grabbed something.
“This has to be Mark’s!” Jason said as he held up a beer bottle.
Indeed, Jason was holding some shitty microbrew IPA that I had only ever seen Mark, Jason’s older brother, drink.
“Put that in the bag, show it to Mark to prove we actually went here.” I said.
I did my best to prolong our time in that room. I went so far as to start talking about the upcoming football season, Jason’s favorite topic, to avoid having to actually go deeper into the mine.
But as we exited the room, Jason completely disregarded the left-hand turn I made toward the straight-shot, as he was fumbling with his back pack, shuffling toward the stairs for the right side slope.
I huffed as I turned around, refusing to let my idiot friend get crushed by a cave-in alone. Jason had filled his backpack with shit including the knife we had just found, so the flashlights were at the very bottom of the bag. As he dug through the bag, I swore I heard the sound of something sliding on one of the stone steps about fifty or so feet down.
“Shh.” I said, grabbing his arm, trying to stop his ruffling.
Completely ignoring me, Jason whipped out his biggest flashlight and shone it downwards. To my relief, nothing was down there.
“Yeah yeah, I heard it. But look, it’s nothing ya big pussy.” He said as he grabbed out another flashlight, shoving it in my hands.
As we began moving downwards, I was shocked at how damp everything smelled because the rock around us looked bone dry.
“You know, Anna is literally the only human who knows we’re down here.” I nervously squeaked as we descended into what could only be a bad situation.
“She’s got a big mouth. We agreed to see her tomorrow, she’ll call someone if we don’t show.” Jason responded.
That wasn’t entirely true. While we were in one of the houses earlier, I had used the bare bones reception I had to tweet “Checking out Tillsville” just in case, but was planning on deleting it once we left.
Eventually, after about three minutes of walking, I once again heard a sound that definitely wasn’t coming from us. This time, it sounded like there was another fork in the track, and the noise was coming from the right-hand side. However, this wasn’t the same sliding noise, it sounded like running water.
I froze in fear, hoping that the sound would pass, to not rile Jason up, but he clearly heard it, because he started bounding toward it. As he began rushing down, I turned to my left, and of course, the words “THERE WAS NOTHING FOR YOU DOWN HERE” were spray painted on the opposite wall.
“Dude, we really need to-“ I began to say, but Jason had already made it to the next fork, and was peering around the corner toward the noise.
What happened next felt like I was watching a third-person experience of everything. Jason whipped around and screamed in a voice I didn’t think could come from the bulky right tackle of our varsity team.
“FUCKING RUN!”
He was already making his way up the stairs when another sound filled the mine. One that I can only describe like this: imagine if you threw a bobcat into an industrial wood chipper.
My body went into autopilot. I just MOVED. As we got close to the top, I could hear someone or something following us, but their strides were bigger, bounding up multiple stairs at a time.
I don’t know how, but we managed to make it to the entrance of the mine without ever looking back once, but a problem arose. Trying to squeeze out at the same time, Jason’s backpack got snagged on the ripped open fence. However, the mountain of a man just somehow slipped through the straps effortlessly. Before I knew it, we were on our bikes, whizzing away from the village.
The next 40 minutes were nerve wracking. Though we were moving at 15-20 miles an hour through the woods, it still felt like whatever was down in the mine was at our heels, ready to spring on the back of our bikes and sink their teeth into us.
When we finally exited the woods, we stopped our bikes and took a second to compose ourselves. Which I desperately needed, because I was legitimately on the verge of soiling myself.
“What the FUCK was that? What did you see!?” I demanded.
“You’re going to hate my answer.” He said, grimacing.
“Why?” I was angry, but I shouldn’t have been. Being angry didn’t make any sense. But I was that scared.
“Because I don’t know.”
“What the hell do you mean you don’t know? You were the one who told me to run!”
“Yeah, I did, but dude, I don’t fucking know what it was. You’re going to beg me to describe it, I get it, but I don’t know. I just knew that what I was seeing was bad.” He shuddered as he said this, the color drained from his face as he clearly tried to make sense of what had just happened to us, what he had just seen.
I was about to demand more details, but Jason spoke again, “Shit, my bag.”
“Was there anything important in it?”
“Just the piece of mail I grabbed from the box when we left, but it was just a certificate saying that I had completed my volunteer work for social studies next year. I can call and ask for another one to be sent.”
I don’t know why, but the fact that the only negative thing that had happened because of our trip deep inside a clearly incredibly dangerous mine was the loss of a volunteering certificate was the funniest thing in the world to me, and I broke out laughing. Jason just sat there, stone faced, before abruptly driving off.
The rest of the night, while it was “normal”, Jason was clearly seriously bothered. It was like he had fallen into the quickest deep depression in history. As we played Rocket League, I looked over to see him on the verge of tears.
“Jason, what’s wr-“
Jason chucked his controller on the ground in a sudden flash of rage. “Why didn’t you stop me from going down there!?”
“Jason, I did everything I could to get us to leave without actually protesting. I didn’t want to be the pussy who forced you to stop doing something you clearly wanted to do.”
At that, Jason suddenly stood up, furious, fists clenched, which scared the shit out of me. But he seemingly immediately realized what he was doing and sat back down, apologizing, and went back to just looking like he would never experience joy again.
For the rest of the night, I mostly just played on my phone as Jason sat on the couch in his room. I tried engaging with him multiple times, but he simply stopped answering. I didn’t want to leave him though, so I just scrolled until I passed out.
Hours later, I awoke to the feeling of being violently shaken. The sleep left my eyes quickly as I saw Jason looking down at me, scared out of his mind. I was about to ask him what the hell he was doing before he put his finger to his lips and pointed toward his window.
Somebody was incessantly knocking on Jason’s… Second story window.
I, like Jason, was frozen in fear. The knocking wasn’t violent, it was almost, seductive, I guess? The knocking did eventually stop after a good 30 seconds, but was replaced with a much worse sound.
“JaSoN… DOnT yOu wANt To explORE?”
Every syllable this thing spoke sounded like it came from a different person, as if someone was turning to different radio stations one after the other.
After this, there was a long pause. Jason, who was back on the couch, turned toward me. I’ll never forget his face. My best friend looked as if he had been told his mother had just died. I tried sitting up out of my sleeping bag, but everything happened before I could.
Again, it felt as though I was watching myself experience this in third person. First, the window broke and the blinds were ripped away. The room then got unnaturally bright, like a flashbang had just gone off. Jason shrieked in terror, the same tone he had used as he told me to run in the mine. Then came that noise again, a high pitch industrial squeal. Finally, I saw a boot? A foot? A paw? Coming down at my face. Then… nothing.
The next thing I knew, I woke up seeing red, and my eyes were stinging like hell. I wiped the blood out of them only to be met by the sight of Jason’s parents standing in the doorway, looking at the far wall, screaming. But I couldn’t hear them? I only heard the crunching of my broken nose as I moved.
I looked where they were looking. The shattered window and surrounding wall were caked with blood. Before I could comprehend the situation I found myself in, I passed out again.
They never found Jason, but the amount of blood in the room all but confirmed that Jason was dead. I was considered a suspect for a day or so, but Jason’s mom herself told the detective that she had checked on us only about 15 minutes before she and Jason’s dad heard what they described as “A tornado localized completely in their home”. Not nearly enough time for me to kill Jason, throw his body through the window, and hide it somewhere nobody would ever find it. The prevailing idea in my town’s PD is that multiple intruders, people we probably saw commiting a crime in Tillsville, broke into Jason’s house, brutally beat me, killed Jason, and took his body out the front door. I guess they believe the broken window is a diversion of some kind?
During that day though, I gave my account of what happened at Tillsville at least four times. Eventually, the detective got so frustrated that he left for 45 minutes, and came back holding a rolled up sheet of paper.
“Son, look.” He said as he unrolled the paper.
It was a map of the mine, created only two years before it was shut down. The detective traced every inch of the mine with his finger, specifically the area that I said Jason had seen something. There was no second fork in that area. It was just a complete downward slope into the lower sections.
Like I said earlier, I had a good high school experience. But Jason’s death was a dark cloud that rained whenever I started to feel TOO happy.
I live in a completely different state now, but I still keep in contact with Jason’s parents, I try to act as much like a son as I can for them.
The most infuriatingly confusing thing about this situation is that I have actually heard that people have since had parties in that mine. It may sound horrible, but why are they alive? Why did I have to lose my best friend?