Quick background: I’m a volunteer paramedic in a very rural town in central BFE. Like not a single stop light rural. It’s an old mining town with dozens of abandoned mine shafts that, despite an abundance of warning signs, tourists and teenagers like to explore. Every few months we get a mutual aid request from search and rescue for a missing person last seen near a shaft entrance.
90% of the time they’re okay and we find them without *too* much effort. We give them a stern talking to and send them on their way after a quick medical check. They’re typically relieved, sometimes real emotional. But we’ve had a few that were unreasonably terrified, talking about the other person/people “at the end”. None of them ever elaborate beyond that, they just sob.
So this happened a few months ago. We got toned out for a missing person/rescue “last seen near the hwy 90 / SR 376 junction. RP (reporting party) on scene”. The mine shaft is only 200 feet or so from the road and it’s the primary source of the other 10%. The ones we never find.
We got on scene and saw the girlfriend who had called. She was standing near her car on the side of the road waving us down. She told us her and her boyfriend walked “like a half mile” into the shaft until they saw three other people ahead of them, said they were walking towards her and her boyfriend. She said it was too dark to make out anything other than three faint silhouettes.
She was crying, telling us how worried she was about her boyfriend. Said he kept walking after she begged him to turn around and leave with her. The SAR guy and I got our kits ready, grabbed our flashlights and some chem lights and told the girlfriend we would do our best to find him before making our way down the shaft.
We went deeper than either of us were typically comfortable with, easily a half mile, but the incident was recent enough that a more thorough search was warranted. We started shouting his name, telling him to walk towards our voice. We’d stop at each tunnel that branched of the main corridor, shout his name again, drop a chem light to mark our path, and move on.
We stopped at another branch, at least a mile in at this point, and we heard/felt this sound/boom. It wasn’t super loud, maybe like a backfiring car… I can’t really describe it accurately but imagine a broken thunder clap. Broken like a radio transmission cutting in and out. My partner said it wasn’t a collapse, he said you’d feel a strong gust of wind and it would have been much, much louder. It scared the fuck out of us, though, regardless of its source. Like shitless-scared, but trying not to make it obvious. And in an act of masculine stupidity we made our way down that tunnel. I remember feeling this obligation to go that direction, specifically. Finish line mentality.
My flashlight flickered briefly and then died because of course it would. I started swearing at it when my partner cut me off with a few taps on my shoulder. He pointed straight ahead, not saying a word, flash light beam dancing around the walls while he tried his best to show me three silhouettes straight ahead of us. Just close enough to make out their shape.
We moved forward, they moved forward. We stopped, they stopped. I brought my hands around my mouth to shout and the one on the right did the same thing. I saw my partner put one arm straight in the air to wave and the one in the middle did it as well. I scrambled to make sense of it, maybe it was a mine shaft version of a mirage or something; the near pitch black tunnel fucking with my head. Everything we did was reflected by them, except the third one. The one on the left. It was taller than the other two. Significantly taller. It’s head canted to one side, briefly, before it would stutter to the other side.
I was scared. No question about it. But I still felt the need to move forward (I didn’t, thank fucking god). It was like that sense of dread you feel standing on the edge of a cliff. There’s a French term for it I think “L’appel du Vide“, it translates to “the call of the void” or something similar. You get that desire to just step forward despite knowing that it would guarantee death.
My partner gestured forward. I grabbed his arm, telling him that we can’t do this, we need to leave, now. That sound cracked again, just once. I turned my head towards the silhouettes. The taller one was closer now, much closer. Still jaggedly rocking its head side to side.
I heard my partners foot steps take off in the other direction, full on sprinting. I followed, dropping my kit thinking the MRE inside it would be an acceptable offering for it/them. There was no sense to be made in that moment. No logic.
My partner disappeared around the corner ahead with his flashlight. I could just make out the chem light we had placed at the turn, that was enough to give me something to move towards.
Another crack boomed, louder that time, just as I rounded the corner. I saw the chem lights, all of them leading towards safety. I knew could feel it behind me, I knew it was there, getting closer with each boom, each crack. In the distance ahead I could hear our team repeatedly shouting my name.
They followed me out as I made my way through the opening. My partner was sitting on the ground, head in his hands. He looked up at me, eyes wide, shaking his head.
Our captain grabbed me by the shoulders and asked me why he stopped. I asked him in between breaths why did who stop? He said the boyfriend. Said he was behind me when they saw me running towards them and that he just stopped. I told him we never found the boyfriend. I heard the girlfriend “you saw them too, right? You saw the one on the left?”
I just sat in the ambulance after that. Sobbing. I couldn’t even look at the girlfriend. I didn’t need to.
My partner and I agreed, we would not talk about what happened. We couldn’t. What was there to say? It was beyond reason, beyond explanation. “We saw a mirror at the end of a tunnel in a mine shaft but there was an extra person in the reflection”. Who could we tell? You guys, that’s really about it.
Things have settled since and we’re back at work, looking for the kids and tourists who wander too far. Except now I bring two flashlights. And an extra MRE.