A listener writes “The summer of 1991 was something I had prepared for all year. I was part of a Boy Scout troop selected for a 50 mile crew trek at Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico. After several days at base camp, our packs were loaded and we set out on a 12-day trek through the mountains.
About four days in, I began to feel like I was being watched. It wasn’t fear at first just a persistent awareness that never went away. The guide assigned to our crew for the first few days seemed uneasy as well. He left us early, saying he’d meet us again three days later at the next major activity camp.
Early in the afternoon on day six, I stepped away from camp to dig a cat hole. As I was crouched there, I thought I saw something peek out from behind a tree, then quickly pull back out of sight. I brushed it off, telling myself I was exhausted and slightly dehydrated. I hadn’t been in great shape when the trek began, and the altitude and miles were taking their toll.
Over the next two days, that feeling of being watched never left. None of the adults seemed concerned, so I assumed I was being paranoid.
On the fifth night, I heard a distant howl that lasted close to ten seconds. It sent a chill straight through me. I had grown up camping, hunting, and fishing and had spent countless nights outdoors, but I had never heard anything like it. It wasn’t a coyote, bobcat, cougar, or bear. I barely slept that night.
Night six passed quietly, except for what I thought were pine needles falling on my tent. But night seven is when things truly became unsettling.
Every evening we hoisted our food and anything scented into a bear bag, suspended between two trees to keep black bears out. That night, heavy footsteps circled the camp. By morning, the bear bag was gone. The rope had been pulled so hard that the bag flipped over the line between the trees and dropped to the ground. The bag had been roughly 25 feet in the air and about 20 feet from each tree. I don’t know of any predator capable of doing that.
I overheard the scoutmasters talking quietly that morning they were shaken. The following night we camped near several other crews, and there were no more incidents for the rest of the trek.
Still, whenever anything unusual happened, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread. I didn’t dare tell anyone. I didn’t want to be labeled a coward by the other scouts. The ground was dry and rocky, and we never found any tracks or impressions. There was no proof only memories.
Fast forward to October of 1997
I had just completed a three year enlistment in the U.S. Army and traveled to Helena, Arkansas to visit my father’s side of the family. I grew up in Texas, about an eleven and a half hour drive south on I-35.
One night, my uncle invited me to go raccoon hunting with an old friend of his. We went up on Crowley’s Ridge and turned the friend’s hounds loose. I loved listening to those dogs work their howls echoing through the woods as they chased and treed raccoons. When they were younger, they used to shoot the raccoons, but now they just enjoyed hearing the dogs do their job.
We had already treed a few, and it was close to 2:00 a.m. when the hounds chased a raccoon off the ridge into a thick hollow. Suddenly, the woods went dead silent. Moments later, the raccoon came running back up the ridge right past us.
Then the hounds emerged.
They were whimpering. One was limping. Every instinct we had told us something was wrong, and we decided to get out of the woods immediately.
The next day, my uncle took me to visit an elderly Cherokee man he knew. My uncle asked him about the area where we had been the night before and showed him the location on a map. When my uncle pointed it out, the man told us to stay away from that place. Members of his tribe never go there, he said, because something old and powerful lives there. People have disappeared in that area over the years.
I didn’t fully believe it after the first incident years earlier but it’s hard to dismiss warnings from Native people with an oral history stretching back thousands of years.
It feels good to finally get this off my chest after all these years. No one would have believed me when these events happened. I don’t think even my wife would believe me now.
Thank you for listening for giving space to those who’ve carried these experiences in silence for far too long.”