I’ve been a huge fan of “true” creepy podcasts for some time. You know, the ones where the podcaster does some minimal Wikipedia research on a supposedly cursed item or location. After hearing loads of lore originating in my home state of Pennsylvania, I decided to give it a try myself. I saved up for a Tascam recorder, and decided I’d actually head to local places throughout PA within reasonable distance to do an on-location podcast using field recordings and my own narration while in the areas that are supposedly haunted or cursed or whatnot.
I investigated an abandoned mental asylum, thinking it’d be gold, but it was just a party spot for high-schoolers. There was absolutely nothing scary about it, and sure as hell no spooky voices or anything aside from crude graffiti and beer cans to explore. The second episode I took a road trip to Hell’s Hollow Wildlife Adventure Trail where you can supposedly hear moans or screams, but it was also a bust. I tried to add some eerie music, but knew faking sound effects would just be cheap and inauthentic. My effort bombed fantastically, but I decided I was going to try one more episode before giving in. I dug into the rarest and most obscure subreddits, Quora threads and message boards in search of anything creepy within reach that hadn’t been covered to death. On one such message board, I found a short thread mentioning a place in Lancaster where people seemed to dance in a trance-like state.
The post mentioned seeing people dancing around a stone pillar in a way that left them deeply disturbed, yet it didn’t go into much detail. I might have dismissed it as some newfangled pagans or folk dancers or even a film shoot. The thing is, the person who’d posted the inquiry about it wrote they were going to check it out next time they were in the area. I clicked their username to see an extensive post history that stopped abruptly after that post, nearly a week earlier. A little more digging and username searches led me to find people had voiced concern for the person, who seemed to have gone missing, at least from their previously ubiquitous online presence. I figured It sounded interesting enough to at least be worth the two-hour drive out. This would be episode 3.
There were few specifics in the original posting in terms of a lead to the actual location, if it did exist at all. A crooked tree in a large grain field was a marker, about 15 minutes from town. Beyond that tree—which was visible from the road—was a hill, and beyond that, a little dip of a valley where a stone pillar seemed to have emerged from the ground. Dark stone, three meters high, no other descriptors. I drove around for hours and my hope waned when nothing but farm houses, pastures and housing developments were to be found, and I began to think it was all just some elaborate hoax or some kid messing around. But then I saw a crooked tree so out of place I knew it had to be the one. A gnarled tangle of branches that looked so dead I couldn’t imagine it ever having been alive. I found a shoulder closest to the tree—a few hundred meters out—and exited my car.
“I found the tree from the posting; a tell-tale marker like some eldritch tangle of dead branches straight from a Tim Burton film. So funny on a peaceful Spring day, a tree can look so damned evil.” I always tried to embellish the ‘creepiness’ of things, when in actuality, it was just a dead tree. Nothing anyone hasn’t seen a thousand times. I was about to continue my silly little dictation when I heard a faint sound from somewhere off in the distance. It sounded like singing.
I’ll spare the hammy dictation I delivered into the recorder as I ascended the subtle grade of the hill towards the leafless tree. I huffed along, realizing how out of shape I was as I closed the distance to the tree. And that singing became more clear as well. A chorus of voices singing a simple melody that overlapped in different time signatures, like a round. It was lovely but at the same time a bit unnerving, especially out in the middle of nowhere. When I reached the tree on the hilltop, I was then given a view of the dip in the grassy field where the singing was emanating from.
A few hundred meters further, where the land dipped slightly into a valley, there was a tall, black pillar of stone far darker than slate. It looked almost like powdered black glass, perhaps obsidian even. Around the rectangular tower danced around a dozen men and women, some in their late teens and some in their twilight years. The people were wearing standard clothing; jeans, dresses, sneakers, boots. No robes or religious garb of any sort. Though they all smiled and looked blissful in expression, something about the scene left me anxious beyond reason. I watched for a few minutes, dictating the scene into the recorder, praying the distant singing would pick up on the mics.
“I-I’m going to ch-check it out,” was all I could muster into the mic when I tried to keep the dialog going. I hadn’t stuttered since going to a speech therapist in the sixth grade. Any embarrassment or regret that this episode would be a bust was wholly consumed by the overwhelming uneasiness welling up from within me. My bowels growled and my stomach squirmed. My heart pulsed heavy in my chest. I took a deep breath and began the walk towards the joyful scene on that bright April afternoon.
I tread slowly across the grass, only then noticing how much more vibrant and tall it seemed to grow closer to the stone. Sure enough, there was a gradient where the perimeter was marked by dead or dying trees and yellow, dead grass on the outskirts, the center grew more and more alive. Aside from a rut beaten down by those dancers, the grass at the base of that monolith grew nearly a foot tall. I tried to dictate this.
“Th-th-th-th-th,” I stuttered like a broken record before shutting my mouth. I’d have to go and dub over the dialog later, I figured. With every step towards the ring of gleeful dancers, I began to notice other details not visible from the distance. The men and women twirling around the black stone had tears running down their smiling faces. Their arms and legs seemed to bend in painful-looking angles with occasional violent spasms. I swear, I could even hear the occasional pop or crack from a hundred yards out. It sounded like bone. My attention shifted when I spotted other figures walking towards the stone from other directions.
There were two women not far from each other walking towards the stone from the East, and an elderly man limping towards it from the Northwest. I was approaching it from the South. All I could think of at the moment was that the large stone seemed to be drawing them towards it like a magnet of sorts. When I looked back at the stone, my stomach dropped.
There were only eight people encircling the stone with their bizarre dancing. I swore there were a dozen last time I’d counted. I flinched from a loud crack that echoed through the valley. The source was a woman in what I first thought to be a long white dress, but at this distance was clearly a night gown. Her arm was flopping around in sickening angles, cracked free at the elbow. Her lower jaw was clearly disconnected as well, and the bobbing maw of teeth flapped about as it twisted and bounced in horrendous ways. With every step towards that stone, more subtle and gruesome details became clear.
Firstly, every one of the dancing people seemed to be emaciated and sunburnt. Blistered lips and red, flaky cheeks shined from baking in the sun for god knows how long. Every one of them had clearly soiled themselves as well. And that song, lovely and minimal and hypnotic, wasn’t being ‘sung’ so much as moaned in an almost sexual manner. Another loud crunch drew my attention to an elderly man who’d fallen to the ground, leaving only seven dancers. I nearly vomited when I realized the crunch was from his collapsing ribs.
The others were dancing on top of him. On top of the fallen others. My body was racked with shivers as I was then close enough to see the flecks of burgundy and crimson speckling the legs of the dancers. Their feet were all red and wet with blood. I watched as one of the two women coming from the East arrived at the circle and joined in without a pause. A ghastly grin spread onto her face as she pirouetted and twirled in the mash of fallen bodies in that foul ring. She was maybe mid-thirties, curly red hair that bounced in her fluid steps. She looked like she could be my aunt. A clean-cut woman ripped from her routine by the pull of whatever dark phenomenon this was. I decided then to get the hell out of there.
My left foot continued on, followed by my right. I stared at the stone in horrified captivation as the revelation washed over me like ice water. My feet were carrying me forward towards that godforsaken stone. I’d lost control over my body. I tried to scream but nothing happened. I screamed in my mind to run, but my feet trudged forth, one in front of the other. I was going to end up a paste of innards in that gory circle around the stone. It was painfully clear then. Still, I could not pull myself away. I know I would have died in that field had it not been for my alarm.
I set daily reminders to keep on top of important things I keep forgetting. This was for returning books to the library before they closed and a late fee would start racking up. So yes, my fickle concern over a late fee saved my life. Something about the annoying, digital alert interrupted that disturbingly powerful trance that drew me in like a moth to flame. I was unable to stop walking, but I was able to adjust my course.
There was a gravitational pull around that dancing stone. I know I barely escaped the event horizon of it all as my path bent slightly to the left. Before I was able to bend around and eventually walk back towards my car, I saw things that will stay with me forever.
I saw the amalgamation of twisted, broken limbs being stamped into the ground. There were dozens, if not hundreds of completely pulverized dead. The smell of coppery blood and putrefaction and rot were beyond description, but it pervaded my nostrils and I don’t think it will ever fully leave. I saw small digits in the mess of gore mashed into the earth. Remnants of children’s hands and skulls of babies. Teeth and hair and organs drenching deep into the ground. I’ve never been as relieved in my life as when it was finally out of my peripheral vision.
I wasn’t able to control my feet until I was nearly back to my vehicle. With shaking hands, I unlocked the door and got in. I locked my gaze on the road ahead and started the ignition. Cramps stabbed my thigh muscles from whatever Herculean efforts they’d applied to divert their final destination. I sped off like a bat out of hell, and I blasted whatever the radio could give me to get that earworm of hypnotic, droning singing out of my head.
My stutter hasn’t gotten better. I can barely speak at all. The podcast dreams shattered. I’ve not been able to stop shaking since that day. Every night I stay awake as terror swirls in my mind knowing very well what I’ll see when exhaustion finally sucks me into a deep, dark sleep.
I’ll see the wide grins and flailing, broken limbs of those people. The collapsed faces under dancing heels stained red with blood. And that black plaque of death planted in that otherwise calm valley. I’ll see the dancing stone, and all I can think of is how so desperately I want to go back.