This was a few years ago but I thought I’d share as my first Reddit post.
As our 2nd anniversary approached, my girlfriend and I decided to take a weekend trip to Red River Gorge Geological Area in Kentucky. We had intentions of completely unplugging from our busy lives in the city and thought it’d be a great idea to do some hiking and “glamping” in a secluded log cabin through Airbnb.
Our cabin was hidden in the woods- no phone signal, internet access, or convenient access to civilization. It was exactly what we were looking for so we booked.
On the way to the cabin, we stopped to pick up some groceries and odds and ends for the weekend: grilling foods, s’mores, firewood, starters etc. We settled into our cabin and after a long day of traveling I decided to start a fire to cook dinner and unwind.
Despite my camping experience, I couldn’t get this fire to ignite. I tried everything a Boy Scout could think of. The fire starters refused to light. The wrapper would burn, but the stick itself would not catch fire. I even used lighter fluid and it didn’t produce any results. The wood, starters and ground were completely dry. After trying for about an hour or so with different batches of wood, I gave up.
At this point, I’m pretty frustrated and confused. My girlfriend even gave me a hard time saying I didn’t know what I was doing lol. Hungry, we decided to get back on the road and hit a subway about 30 min away. Upon our return, we settled down for the night. Our bed faced a large window, giving us a view of the fire pit outside.
In the middle of the night, my girlfriend woke me up with a loud scream as she shook me. The fire had risen to what I would guess about 8 feet. Before I could even reach the door, it extinguished abruptly by itself, leaving behind a trail of heavy smoke. Im truly shocked and baffled. What the hell could’ve happened? I absolutely made sure nothing was burning before we went to sleep, and the wood had refused to catch earlier anyways.
The unsettling vision of the fire exploding and distinguishing like that stuck in my mind all night- I barely slept in fear it could possibly happen again. The next day, in the coffee table drawer we found an air bnb info/rule book. As we’re flipping through, the host emphasizes the importance of distinguishing your fires and goes on to explain that a few years prior, the cabin had burnt down due to the negligence of a previous guest who had not properly extinguished a fire.
I truly felt sick reading that. Did what I experience the night before have a connection to the cabins past?
Later that evening, with the same firewood and same fire starters, I was able to light the fire effortlessly.
I did some research when we got home from the trip and there’s no record of a fire or any deaths on the property? Pretty eerie…