| Part 1 | Part 2 |
I’ve been hiking parts of the Appalachian Trail for about 15 years, successfully through hiked it NOBO in 2020 (from Georgia to Maine for any readers not familiar with the jargon), and would humbly consider myself an all around seasoned hiker. I’ve spent hours searching online, spoken to hiking friends, burned through books at the library and have simply come up short. I’m writing this post because I’ve never experienced anything like what happened the last few times I’ve been on the trail and need to know if anyone knows what the hell this is.
It started happening about two months ago on a weekend backpacking trip. I left right from work so I got a bit of a late start but I work pretty close to a trail head that takes me up to a nice, more remote section of the trail. I’m just going to start from the beginning, specific details and all, about each day I’ve been on the trail. Hopefully I overlooked something that makes this make sense.
Night One:
I teach High School history and the students were especially checked out on this Friday afternoon. I can’t blame them, it had been a long week. I was eager to finish the day and get out on the trail too. The long hand on my classroom’s analogue clock slogged its way to the 12 as I wrapped up a lecture for my Honors U.S. History Class. “So President Taft’s choice to replace Roosevelts appointed Secretary of Interior really drove this wedge between them. Some saw this as a clear sign that Taft had abandoned the Conservation movement.”
The overwhelming majority of the class were buried in their phones, likely on snapchat or whatever social media is popular now, probably talking about weekend plans.
“Well that will do it for today, don’t forget the quiz Monday, have a good weekend,.” The bell rang and the class cleared out quickly as the hallways began to bustle with student traffic. I waited an obligatory 5 minutes before making my own way out but was caught by a coworker. One of the new hires this year.
“Hey, Alex! This week was a tough one, wanta grab a beer?”
Joe was a nice enough guy, a little weird, but he meant well. He was a little quirky and socially awkward but it’s rare to find other teachers who fit the bill as ‘normal.’
“Hey, Joe. Sorry, gotta pass this time, I’ve got a camping trip planned.” “Oh really? Where to?”
“I’ll be on the Appalachian Trail for two nights.”
“Oh… well I hope you know the rules of Appalachia.”
He said this with a grin as I stifled an eye roll. Yes I had heard of the silly rules. I decided to be nice and entertain him.
Feigning genuine curiosity I asked “What are the rules, Joe?”
“Well, there’s three main ones, a bit of debate about a few others but here it goes. One: don’t leave the path. Two: Don’t go into the woods at night. Three: If you think you heard your name, you didn’t… Kind of spooky right?”
“Wow, I’ll be sure to keep those in mind.”
“Ahaha, well I’ll let you go, we should hike together sometime!”
As I began to step away, I smiled and got out a quick, “Sure, that’d be nice.” I typically prefer hiking alone. Something about the quiet, and single minded focus on the task at hand always felt meditative to me. I already began to feel the stress relieving effects of the solitude on the heavily wooded drive up. After driving for about 45 minutes, the narrow country road leading to the trailhead came into view. I turned and found a small empty dirt parking lot accompanied by a singular post marking the trail entrance. It was mid fall and a little chilly so I didn’t expect to see too many others on the trail. I tied up my hiking boots, got my pack on and made a quick mental check of all the essentials. Tent, food bag, buck knife, light source, water filter, stove, book, etc. It was time to start on the trail.
The first hour of the hike was uneventful. The path was deserted, not a single other hiker in site. Most of the leaves had fallen from all of the trees as the forest transitioned to winter. The route was a little uphill and a bit rocky but nothing unexpected. Pennsylvania has a reputation for being one of the rockiest sections of the Appalachian, sometimes mockingly called “Rocksylvania.” I only have about another hour of hiking before I reach the spot I planned on setting up camp at when I started to hear a faint smacking sound deep out to the left side of the trail. It was clearly quite far away but It sounded as if someone were smacking tree branches together. I really didn’t think anything of it. Things made noise in the woods, trees fell, deer moved around. It only became strange when I realized the noise was changing as I progressed along the trail. For about ten minutes, I heard periodic spurts of three smacks in a row. This might suggest to the reader that it was a firearm of some sort. I’m familiar with quite a few different guns and none that I know of sound like this at a distance. I barely noticed on a conscious level but the number of successive smacks had increased to four. I only seriously noticed the transitioning of the smacks after about thirty total minutes of hiking when it was now up to five.
whack, whack, whack, whack, whack
I stopped, only just now consciously processing the full strangeness of the noise. I peered off focusing my gaze as far as I could towards the direction of the faint smacking. I heard it again, still five smacks
whack, whack, whack, whack, whack
Still faint and distant. An idea flashed into my head and I quickly turned back on the trail and retraced my steps for about 20 paces. I stopped again and waited… until whack, whack, whack, whack
Only four again. In my view there were two possible explanations. One: The fifth smack was inaudibly obscured by something on the previous 10 minutes of the trail. However, if that were true, the sound would likely be getting louder, and it was still as faint as when I first heard it. Two: Whatever was making this noise was reacting to my movement and progress along the trail, increasing the number of whacks the further along I hiked.
I decided to move on and put the sound out of my mind. Whatever it was, it was far away, too far to see. Didn’t seem likely that it could see me then either. The smacks moved back up to spurts of 5 as I caught up to where I had turned back on the trail. After an additional 10 minutes, I half expected to hear spurts of 6 but the smacking had completely stopped almost exactly as 10 minutes had passed. I walked for about 3 minutes more before I saw something. A tiny little square hung from a piece of string tied to a branch. The square dangled right in the center of the trail about 5 feet off the ground.
I stared at it for a moment, unsure of what it was. I reached out and felt the square to discover it was just folded up paper. I slowly removed the paper and began unfolding it carefully. I had heard of people leaving cryptic messages folded up, hanging from trees in the woods before. It sounds creepy but its kind of common in parts of PA, they call them “Schuylkill notes” if you’re so inclined to look into those. Schuylkill notes typically contain jumbled up cryptic messages about secret societies, the illuminati, aliens, or anything that might attract conspiracy theorists. The single word on this note, however, left a much more chilling impression.
“ALEX :)”
I was genuinely scared now. My mind raced, thinking back to Joe’s comment about the rules and names. I felt stupid getting so paranoid on the trail, but I was alone, the sun was going down and I had about two hours of hiking between me and my car. I practically ran the remainder of the distance to the shelter where I planned to set up camp (The Appalachian Trail has a bunch of bare bones shelters where anyone can sleep, or in my case, camp next to). When I arrived at the nearest shelter, I stopped and caught my breath. I kept reminding myself that things make noise in the woods and that people have been known to leave weird notes around the woods in this region. The name was a coincidence, it had to be, my name was fairly common. I started to focus on the task of pitching my tent, setting up my sleeping pad, and getting ready for the night as the sun vanished.
I couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling. I honestly would have turned around and gone back to my car if I could have but it would be seriously dangerous to hike for two hours over rocky downhill terrain in the dark. I layed in my tent, reading by the light of my LED lantern. I skipped cooking dinner that night and just settled for some Jerky and a Cliff Bar. My tent provided a false sense of security against whatever was outside, but false security was preferable to none. I eventually drifted off to a light sleep. Unfortunately it didn’t last long.
Something big was brushing against the outside of my tent. My food was tucked away in the bear box offered by the shelter so whatever it was couldn’t be after my food. One’s mind frequently goes to “bear” in such situations as a worst case scenario/horrifying situation. A black bear seemed like more of a best case scenario at this point. They were harmless for the most part so long as you didn’t get in between a mother and her cub. Some irrational part of me hoped that unzipping my tent and revealing the culprit to be a black bear looking for trash would somehow explain the odd happenings of the day and finally make things make sense. I was surprised at myself as I cautiously unzipped the entrance to my tent and readied the lantern to peer outside. It wasn’t a black bear.
Standing about 5 feet from my tent was what appeared to be a deer. The deer was, disturbingly, standing on its hind legs only slightly hunched over while its front legs bent and its hooves dangled. Its body was riddled with fleas and ticks, I could count at least 8 of them ready to burst from gorging on the deer’s blood. Most off putting was the deer’s face, which seemed to be contorted into an attempt at a smile, revealing rows of overlapping teeth. I felt for my buck knife and waited. The deer exhaled briskly out of his nose, breath visible in the October air. Once the deer inhaled, filling up its corrupted body with oxygen, the distorted animal slowly turned around and ran away, the entire time remaining on its hind legs. I zipped up the tent, kept the lantern on, and clutched my knife tightly. I wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night.