575 | If It Rains While You're Hiking in Olympic National Park, EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY

I am a pluviophile. I find comfort and joy in the rain and under dark skies. If you're like me, enjoy the next rainy day as long as you can, because it might be your last. This story from an anonymous sender will instead make you fear when the droplets begin to come down. This story is titled, The Impaler of Olympic National Park. It is a bizarre and terrifying account of something that lives in a popular national forest. something that has been taking people and animals alike for decades. If you want to survive, there are some rules you will need to follow. Most importantly, if you're hiking in Olympic National Park when it starts to rain, evacuate immediately. I can never forget what I saw in the Ho Rainforest, or what it did to the four of us afterward. But it taught us something. It taught us that if you're ever in Olympic National Park, there are rules you must follow. I'll start from here. Ever since I was 12 years old, I've been a naturalist. I love nature, I love animals, and studying them and observing them has always been my passion and hobby. My girlfriend Jules and I drove out to the Olympic Peninsula last May. We rented a cabin near Forks and spent a long weekend hiking with the hoe rainforest as the centerpiece. I've been wanting to see the hoe for years. Temperate rainforests like this are rare ecosystems. The hoe is one of the most intact examples remaining in North America. It gets 12 feet of annual rainfall. The Sitka spruce germinated when the Roman Empire was still standing. The place has some of the highest biomass per acre measurements ever recorded outside the tropics. Now, my Jules is the kind of girl who makes room feel different when she walks in. She's much livelier, more charged than myself. She has strong opinions and zero patience for the easy route. When we go hiking together, she's always pushing for the longer loop, the steeper trails, the summit attempt when the weather's going marginal. She'll give you endless crap for turning back too early. But she will not hike after dark. Ever. I learned this on maybe our fourth or fifth trip. That time we misjudged a day hike and twilight caught us, still two miles from the trailhead. I suggested we push through. I had a headlamp. The trail was well marked. But she said no, and the way she said it, it was clear this was not negotiable. We sort of jogged the final stretch in fading light, and she didn't speak the entire way. When we made it to the car, she would not look at me. I've never pushed her on it. Everyone carries something, you know. The drive into the hoe was everything I'd hoped for, and something more than that. But I couldn't quite name it at the time. The road follows the river through the forest, which closes overhead until you're moving through a green tunnel. I had my window down, even though it was a misty day. That smell was something nice. Just that smell of things being alive. We parked at the visitor center and started on the Hall of Mosses trail. That famous one, the postcard, and it deserved the reputation. The big leaf maples arched overhead like cathedral ribs, draped with these curtains of club moss. A varied thrush called from somewhere in the canopy. That single ethereal note that sounds less like birdsong and more like the forest was asking us something personal. Jules was in a good mood too, making jokes about the spooky vibes, doing an ironic Blair Witch angle with her phone. I was cataloging species in my head, the way I always do. Polistico munitum, Acer macrophilum. Everything had a name, everything fit. We continued on to the Ho River Trail, which winds deeper into the valley. The rain started about a mile in. It was light and steady. This is the kind of rain the Ho receives about 300 days a year. I had packed shells for both of us, so we kept walking. about four miles in something caught my eye off trail a flash of color that didn't belong there it was too bright and orange i thought it might be a varied thrush on the ground which would be unusual behavior worth investigating or maybe a late flush of chanterelles i told jules i wanted to check it out. She rolled her eyes at me, but followed anyway. It wasn't a bird. About 30 feet off the trail, and maybe 12 feet up a big leaf maple, there was a coyote. It took me several seconds to process what I was actually seeing. My brain kept trying to rearrange the image into something that made more sense, kind of like an optical illusion. This was definitely a coyote though, and it had been impaled on a broken branch, right through its midsection, just behind the ribs. The animal hung there with its head lulled to one side, legs dangling. The orange I'd glimpsed was actually more red now. It was exposed muscle tissue, where something had torn at the hindquarters. The damage looked relatively fresh. Days, I would guess. A week at most. The body hadn't even begun to bloat yet. There was something about this that was simply wrong. Because it looked like something had put it here on purpose. I tried to shake that thought. Anthropomorphizing nature is a rookie mistake. But the thought lingered in my mind. The way the body had been hung there was not happenstance. Jesus, Jules said behind me. I moved closer without even deciding to. My naturalist brain took over. This was data, a puzzle requiring a solution. Did you know that cougars have been known to stash prey in trees? That was my first thought, the most logical explanation. Puma Concalor will drag a kill into the canopy to keep it away from scavengers. I'd seen photographs of it in journals, and I knew about the behavior. But the longer I studied that carcass, the less it made sense. You see, when a cougar caches prey, it drags the animal up by climbing. The carcass ends up draped over a branch, pulled from below by a predator ascending with its kill clamped in powerful jaws. This coyote had not been draped. It had been deliberately pushed onto the branch stub with enough force to cause it to be impaled through the thorax. Judging by the angle, the force came from above, not from the side, not from below. The branch itself was maybe two inches in diameter. A cougar weighs between 80 and 200 pounds. That branch would not support such weight, let alone a cougar maneuvering a carcass into position. Do you think a cougar did that? Jules asked, already sharing my brain cells. I don't think so. It's not the right angle. And a cougar would lay the kill over the branch. Certainly not, well, this. So, what do you think did it? Well, I had no answer for that. A Pacific Wren sang somewhere nearby. That cascading trill. The rain continued pattering on the canopy. The forest went about its business, despite the dead coyote, completely indifferent. Let's head back, Joel said. The trailhead parking lot was almost empty when we got back. Just our rental car and one other vehicle. A battered Toyota pickup with Washington plates. An older man was sitting on the tailgate, about mid-60s. Gave off real, I've been doing this longer than you've been alive, vibes. Get out to the river? About four miles in. Beautiful out there. Sure is. Best rainforest in the lower 48. He took a sip from his thermos. You know the rule about the rain out here, right? I laughed, assuming he was joking. Let me guess. Bring a good shell? He didn't smile. Instead, he sort of stared at me for a moment, then blinked. Uh, no. The old timers around here say if the rain quits on you sudden, really sudden, like someone turned off a faucet, it's best to head back to your car. Sooner the better. He shrugged. Probably nothing. Just what they say. Just making sure you know. In the car, Jules was quiet. Now, she usually talks my ear off on drives. This time she just stared at the trees sliding past. That coyote was so weird, she finally said. You're not wrong about that. Surely you don't think a cougar actually did that? No, I don't. I was expecting her to ask more questions, but she didn't. We drove back to the cabin without another word. That night I could barely sleep. I kept thinking about that damned coyote. I simply could not figure out what kind of animal would do that, and the idea of a person doing it made my blood boil. Sure, some people think of coyotes as pests, but why impale it on a branch? There were no other wounds on it to indicate it had been dead before being impaled. What a cruel thing to do to an animal, even if it is a pest. Around midnight, I gave up trying to sleep and went over to my laptop. I googled random things at first. Ho Rainforest Coyote Tree, Olympic Peninsula Predation Unusual, Animal Carcass Impaled Branch. But most results were useless. After maybe an hour I found an old hiking forum. An old remnant from the early 2000s, mostly dead threads and broken image links. The interface was dated, all that early internet aesthetic of clunky frames and two small fonts. Someone had posted, though, about finding a deer carcass impaled in a tree near the Ho River Trail. They'd asked if anyone knew what could do that. There was one reply. A ranger telling them it was storm damage catching carcasses, which is the kind of explanation you give when you don't have one and don't want to admit it. I kept on digging. A 2011 post on a different form described what they called a bone tree. Multiple small animal remains stuck on branches in a single hemlock, arranged at different heights. There were squirrels, birds. They'd taken photos, but sadly the links were dead. The poster described it as almost decorative, like Christmas ornaments, except disturbing. They'd asked other hikers if this was normal for the area. No one had replied. I found three more posts across different sites, different years, all describing similar things. Animals impaled, at heights or angles that weren't quite right. Each post had few or no replies. People were encountering these things, even documenting them, but the silence of the internet swallowed their questions whole. but then I found one that made me sit back from the screen. A thread from back in 2007 titled Does Anyone Know the Rules for the Ho River Trail? The post read A man at the visitor center gave me a list but I lost it and I want to make sure I have them right before we go back. Something about the rain I think and something about animals and trees. I can't remember the rest but he made it sound important. The post had no replies. I clicked on the user profile. The user had only ever made one post. This one. The account had been created the same day and never used again. Either they got the information they needed through other means or they went back without it. I found myself wondering which it was and then I found myself not wanting to know. Hey there, Darkness Prevails here, founder of EerieCast, my little network of scary shows. I appreciate you listening to our scary content. But did you know you can support us, get ad-free feeds of your favorite shows, get a 20% discount code to the EerieCast store, and unlock access to members-only audiobooks all at the same time? Just go to EerieCast.com slash plus and become a member today. It's cheap and really helps us out. That's eeriecast.com slash plus. Thank you. Five months later, I went back. I know how that sounds, but that first night of searching had only been the beginning. Over the months that followed, I kept digging. Old forums led to archived trip reports. Archived trip reports led to out-of-print trail guides. I was pulling threads and more kept coming loose. Here's what I found. A passage in a 1973 trail guide to Olympic National Park mentioned, almost parenthetically, unusual predation patterns observed in the Ho Valley, possibly attributable to an unidentified large predator Beyond that there was no elaboration Just that sentence in a section about wildlife hazards I also found a 2014 blog post by a woman who had done a season as a park ranger in Olympic She mentioned that during her first week, a senior ranger had given her a list of unofficial rules for the Ho River Trail. They are as follows. 1. If the rain stops unexpectedly, return to your vehicle immediately. 2. If you hear rain but cannot feel it, retrace your steps, you are too close. 3. If you find animal remains above head height, do not run, walk back the way you came without stopping. 4. Do not camp in the hoe during active rainfall. She treated them, though, as quirky local superstition, the same category as the tourists who claim to see Bigfoot. But then she added something that stayed with me. It said, The senior ranger who gave me these rules had been working the hoe for 31 years. When I asked him if he believed them, he just said, I'm still here, aren't I? Now, I also happened upon the database of missing persons cases in Olympic National Park. The park has one of the highest disappearance rates in the country. Most are hikers who got lost, fell, had medical emergencies. The majority are eventually found. But there is a subset that aren't. Hikers who vanished on clear trails and good weather. Hikers whose last known locations were on or near the hoe. Hikers who disappeared during heavy rain. I cross-referenced the disappearance dates with historical weather data. It took a while, but when I was done, I had some sort of pattern. A great number of the unsolved cases clustered in the wettest months. October, November, March. The months when the rain falls for days without stopping. The thing, whatever it was, seemed to be active when it rained. The rain brought it out, or woke it up, or called to it somehow. I showed Jules some of this. She read the blog post with the rules, handed my phone back, then said, That's strange. But then changed the subject. October came. My cousin Ty called to say he and his girlfriend would be in Seattle for a long weekend, asking if we wanted to meet up. Ty and I grew up together. Our moms are sisters, and we spent every summer at our grandparents' place outside Spokane, running through the woods and building forts, catching frogs in the creek. He's three years my senior, and when we were kids that gap felt enormous. He was my big cousin, the one who knew all the things. I followed him around trying to impress him. Now we're both adults and the age difference kind of means nothing, but that dynamic persists underneath. He still makes me feel like the world is simpler than it's become. Ty is a big guy. Six foot two with broad shoulders. I recall his high school coaches refusing to leave him alone about football. He's also very charismatic. When he laughs, everyone tends to laugh around him. But when Ty is quiet, you know something is wrong. His girlfriend, Kel, was new. They'd been together about eight months. I'd only met her once, very briefly, at a family thing in July. She was a small thing, dark-haired. She has a face that's more interesting than conventionally pretty. She's from Portland and works at a literacy non-profit. She's not outdoorsy like the rest of us are. They came over for dinner. Jules made pasta and I made a salad. We drank wine together, Ty telling stories about his job. He's an electrician, and apparently electricians witness a lot of human foolishness. Kel was quieter but pretty sharp not afraid to ask questions I liked her at some point Ty asked what we'd been up to and I mentioned the hoe trip from spring hear me out I didn't plan to go into detail about everything but it just came out I described the trail and the trip and the sights and I kinda just brought up the impaled coyote you know, how you do his eyebrows instantly raised God, so what do you think did it? I don't know, man. That's what's been bothering me. I've been googling it. There's all this strange material, like from old forums and stuff. I found a few mentions of informal rules rangers pass down. Kinda makes me want to go back, look for more evidence. Dude, I am so in, Ty said. Kel looked at him like he'd lost his mind. Jules was giving me a look I couldn't interpret. How about a two-day trip, I said. Backpack in, camp one night, hike out. October's the rainy season, so we'd be more likely to see whatever there is to see. Babe, Kel put her hand on Ty's arm. He wants to go camping in a forest with a mystery predator in the rain. It'll be fun. When's the last time you did something adventurous? Kel looked at Jules. Well, are you going? Jules hesitated a fraction of a second. Yeah, yeah, I'm going. Do not camp in the hoe during active rainfall. That rule kept playing back in my mind, the one I'd read in that ranger's blog. I'd thought about it quite a lot, and there I was, deciding to take four people I cared about, including my cousin's girlfriend who had never been backpacking in her life, into the hoe during the wettest month of the year to camp overnight. But I kept telling myself these were rules meant to scare people. They were exaggerated. Every national park, every local forest has campfire stories that had gotten inflated over decades. If we were careful, and were already experienced, most of us, whatever was out there, assuming anything even was, We could handle it. I could handle it. I was wrong about all of that. We drove up on Friday morning. The rain started long before we hit the park. It was steady but soaking rain, turning the world around us gray and muffled. Kel was staring at the trees, reminded me of jewels on our drive back that day. Oh god, this is where horror movies happen, she said, her chin on her palm. The hoe in October is a different forest than the one I'd fallen for in May. This time of year, the big leaf maples have dropped their leaves, exposing the architecture of the canopy. Those massive trunks and interlocking branches, they look like vast skeletons. The moss hangs darker and more saturated, and everything is dripping wet. The hike in was still fun and massively refreshing. It was good to be out with my cousin and my girlfriend. Good to get to know Kel. But then, about five miles in, we found another one. It was a raccoon this time. What was left of the animal was twenty feet up, impaled on a branch about an inch and a half in diameter. The body was desiccated, most of the fur gone. It had been there a while. Ty came up beside me. Huh, he said. Kel looked, saw it, then looked away especially quick. Why is it up there like that? That's the big question, I said. I was already calculating. The branch was too thin for any animal I knew to climb it. and once again the angle was wrong. The same wrong angle as the coyote. Ty was watching my face, trying to get a read on me. Man, what exactly are we looking for out here? We made camp around 4pm, 30 yards off the trail near the river. The rain had intensified. Setting up tents in that weather was miserable. Kel's hands were trembling from the cold by the time we got her tent up. We ate dinner huddled under a tarp. The rain was drumming overhead. Our conversation stayed light. Ty told a story about a hunting trip that had gone wrong. At one point, Kel talked about her college roommate who had joined a cult. Jules did an impression of her boss. I liked that. I never brought up the rules, and in my head I kept telling myself we would be fine. We turned in around 9pm. Jules fell asleep within moments. She's always been able to sleep anywhere. Makes me jealous. I lay there just listening to things. I could hear the rain on the tent fly, water dripping from branches, the river in the distance, normal sounds. And eventually I did sleep. I'm not sure when, but I did. However, I know exactly when I woke up. When the rain stopped, it didn't taper off or fade out. The rain, all at once, simply stopped. And immediately, that man's words came back to me. Like someone had turned off a faucet. This was exactly that. One moment, the steady drumming on the tent fly, the drips, the patter. These had been our constant companions for hours. but suddenly nothing and the silence was so complete it felt like my eardrums were going to pop. I lay there in the dark wide awake. More of the old man's words came back to me. If the rain quits on you sudden really sudden you want to head back to your car. We were five miles from the car. It was the middle of the night. There was no heading back for us. Jules stirred beside me. The rain stopped, she murmured, half asleep. Yeah, it did. That's weird. She was already drifting off again. So quiet now. But as I lay there, my ears continuing to strain, I realized it wasn't just quiet. It felt like it was bracing itself, waiting for something. But then, the first deer screamed. A black-tailed deer in distress makes a sound somewhere between a bleat and a scream. A nasally high-pitched alarm call that means predator. I've heard it before. What was unusual was the second deer, followed by a third and a fourth. Within thirty seconds, the forest around our campsite erupted. Dozens of deer, all of them screaming at once. The sound became so loud, it filled the tent, filled my skull, until there was no room for even a thought. Jules grabbed my arm suddenly. Nathan, what? I don't know. From the other tent, Ty's voice called. What the hell? Kel was crying. I reached for my headlamp. Joel's hand clamped down on my wrist. Don't. Her voice was terrified. I'd never heard her so scared. Like panic taken up a notch. Don't open the tent. Please don't go outside, please. I stopped. The deer, though, they kept screaming. Some very close to us, within 50 feet, I think. Maybe even closer. I could hear them crashing through the brush, breaking twigs and branches, the heavy thud of hooves on wet earth, and still no rain. The silence between their screams was so unreal, unnatural. There should have been rain. This was the hoe in October. There was always rain. then something else moved through the forest and it passed maybe 20 feet from our tent I heard it clearly in that terrible silence heavy footfalls fast but it didn't match up to any quadruped I could remember for something so heavy it was very nimble with this odd syncopation that made me think of something moving on limbs that weren't quite equal in length, and the sound of it pushing through vegetation was so strange because it was so high up. Was it really that tall that it could move through shoulder-high brush that quickly? I tried to track its movement by listening. Left to right, I thought, toward the river, but then the direction seemed to shift, and for one horrible moment, I couldn't tell if it was moving away from us or toward us. Jewel's grip on my arm was the only thing keeping me grounded. I could feel her shaking, small but constant tremors that translated through her fingertips into my skin. Neither of us spoke, and we were both desperately trying to calm our breathing. These sounds continued for what felt like hours. Sometimes the screams were distant, up the valley. Sometimes they were close enough that I expected a panicked deer to crash through our tent. At one point, something big hit the ground about a hundred yards away. A big, wet thump. Something with significant weight meeting the earth But gradually all of it faded The screams became less frequent The crashing subsided The footfalls did not return But the rain came back And it returned the same way it had stopped. All at once. The breaker had been turned back on. It was like the last hour had been a nightmare. Unfortunately, it was real. I could still hear Kel crying quietly in the other tent. and I could feel Jules' grip on my arm, her fingers cramping from holding so tight for so long. We lay there until dawn, not speaking, and definitely not sleeping. Morning came. There was a gray mist all around us. We packed our things in near silence. Ty's face was pale and Kel moved like a sleepwalker. Jules, however, was focused, quick and efficient, but she didn't meet anyone's eyes. We should go back the way we came, Kel said. I shook my head. That would take longer. The loop is shorter going forward. I don't care. I want to go back the way we know. He's right, Kel, Ty said. Forward is faster. She stopped arguing then. She just shouldered her pack and started walking. Now, here comes the messed up part. Those deer we heard crying all night? Well, we found them about a mile from our camp. Seven of them, at least. Black-tailed deer arranged in a loose cluster of Sitka spruce just off the trail. They had been impaled on branches at different heights. The lowest was about eight feet up. The highest, twenty-five. Some were on thick branches, shoved onto them like grotesque ornaments. Others were on thinner branches that had punched through their softer tissue. The wood glistened red. God, one of them was still alive. A doe impaled through the hindquarters about fifteen feet up. Her front legs were kicking, though weakly, scrabbling at nothing. She was making a thin, barely audible sound. I saw her eyes. They were open and rolling. I watched Kel as she moved off the trail ten feet, bent over, and threw up. Jules stared at the doe that was still alive. Her face was completely still, and when she spoke, her voice cracked. We need to leave. Right now. We hiked faster. I kept my eyes on the trail, on my feet, on anything except the trees around us. And I didn't dare to look up. After we made it to the car, Ty was the first to speak. What the hell was that? Now, I've got to be honest. Up to this point, I mentioned that there were rules, but I didn't say what the rules were. Not to Ty and Cal. But this was when I came clean, so to speak. I told them all about the rules. All four. The rain stopping, which had happened. Then about the rain you can hear but not feel. The animal remains above head height. And the fourth. The rule I got my friends and I to deliberately break together. When I finished, Jules looked at me. She was angry. How long have you known about this? A few months, I said. Since after our first trip. Honey, I told you. I even showed you on my phone these rules I found. All you said was, that's strange, remember? She rolled her eyes. I don't remember that. But even if that's true, you didn't think to bring it back up before you took us out there to camp? Ty and Kel had no idea. She didn't speak to me for the rest of the drive. That night, I had a dream. I was high up, higher than any tree, higher than anywhere I'd been. I could feel the height in my stomach somehow. But I wasn't falling. I was stable, looking straight up at the sky. The clouds were dark and moving fast, close enough to touch. The rain was falling from them, but falling up, rising from somewhere below me into the churning gray sky. I didn't feel scared though, it was weird. I felt calm instead, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. At 4am I woke up and I went outside. I stood in our backyard for about an hour, and when I came back in, I realized I'd been staring at the top of the neighbor's Douglas fur the entire time. Three weeks passed after Jules and I talked about it directly. We'd been sort of circling each other, polite but distant, sleeping in the same bed but not touching. We would eat dinner with the TV on so we didn't have to fill the silence ourselves. I knew she was furious at me, but I knew I deserved it. Eventually the conversation happened. She was doing dishes. Her back turned toward me. She suddenly stopped. I... I keep seeing the one that was still alive. The doe? Yes. Her legs were moving. She was trying to run, but there was nowhere for her to go. I've seen animals die before, but I've never seen anything like that. It was so different, so horrible. She didn't even understand what had happened to her. She was just stuck there, waiting to slowly die. I know, hon. Do you? She turned around. Her eyes were red. You knew the rules. You knew there was something out there, and you took us anyway. You even took Kel, who had never been backpacking before once in her life, because you were so curious. She was right. You're going to tell me everything you know about this. All of it. Tonight. And so I did. A week after that, I found this ethnographic study. It started as a footnote, a reference in a 1936 survey of Pacific Northwest indigenous oral traditions. The footnote mentioned an unpublished chapter from an earlier work, a study conducted in the 1910s by a researcher named Ellison, who'd spent two years living among the Quileute, documenting their traditional knowledge. The chapter had been cut from the final publication. The footnote didn't say why. I spent three days tracking down what had happened to Allison's original manuscript. Most of it had been published in 1919 to moderate academic interest, but the missing chapter, the one referenced in that footnote, had been deposited separately in the University of Washington Special Collections Archive. They would not let me check it out, but I was able to see it while I was there. I'm going to recall it from my memory as best I can. Ellison's chapter was about predators. The first several pages documented Quileute knowledge of the animals that shared their territory. Black bears, cougars, and wolves. Standard ethnographic material. But one section was different. It ran for nearly 15 handwritten pages, and Ellison's notes became increasingly detailed, as though he'd recognized he was documenting something unusual. One section stopped me cold. Ellison had transcribed an interview with an elder, a man he identified only as J.K., age approximately 70. The passage was set apart from the rest of the chapter, as though Ellison wanted to preserve the exact words. This is what it said. My grandmother told me this when I was young, and her grandmother told her. There is something in the deep forest that is not a spirit. It is an animal, same as the elk, same as the bear. But it is older than the elk, older than the bear. It lives in the branches where the moss hangs thick, and it comes down when the rain is heavy. You will know it is near because the rain will stop, like a door closing. When this happens, you do not look, you do not call out. You run until the rain touches your face again. There is another way to know. If you walk too far into the deep places, you will hear the rain, but you will not feel it. The water falls around you, but not on you. This means you have gone where it lives, and you must go back. Do not go forward. Do not look up. It keeps what it catches on the branches, like fish hung to dry. If you see animals in the trees with their branches through them, you walk away slowly. No running. Running is what the elk do. Running is what it wants. My grandmother's brother did not listen. He went into the forest during the long rains to prove there was nothing there. But he did not come back. In the spring they found what was left of him in a sitka, very high up. My grandmother did not speak his name again after that. This is not a story I'm telling you. This is what is true. Ellison had added his own commentary below the transcription. His handwriting became cramped here, the letters much smaller. It was like he was afraid of being overheard, even though it was just words. It read, I have now interviewed nine individuals from three families. Their accounts are remarkably consistent. They speak of this creature the way they speak of cougars, as a known danger to be avoided, not as a legend to be feared. But I have found no physical evidence. To include such an extraordinary claim would end my career. I have cut this chapter. I pray I am making the right decision. The dreams kept coming. Every few nights, that same place, impossibly high, looking up at churning clouds, the rain falling upward, that feeling of belonging. During the day, I started to notice things. I'd realize I'd been staring at rooflines, thinking about angles. I'd find myself in parking garages, gravitating toward the upper levels. One afternoon I stood on a stepstool in the kitchen, reaching for, well, nothing. No memory of even climbing up. That was when Ty called me. Hey man, this is gonna sound weird, but have you been having strange urges since we got back? My stomach nodded up. What kind? All right man, don't judge me, but I keep picking up thorns, blackberry bushes, roses. I'll find myself pressing my fingers against them. The other day I was in the backyard, right? Supposedly checking the gutters. And lost some time. And when I snapped out of it, my thumb was pressed against a thorn hard enough to draw blood. Bro, I don't remember doing that. I was quiet for a moment. He continued. And here's the messed up part. It felt right. Like scratching an itch I didn't even know I had. Have you been having dreams, too? Like about being up high? He went quiet as well for a second, then replied, Christ, man, now that I think about it, yeah. Dreams about staring at the clouds or something? Rain going up instead of down? Jesus, Ty, that's exactly what I've been dreaming about. Aw, man, what's happening to us? something was happening to Jules too she wasn't sleeping through the night I'd wake up at 3 a.m and find her in the living room with all the lights on watching tv with the sound off she'd started leaving the bathroom light on when we went to bed she stopped suggesting hikes too eventually one time I suggested a day trip she declined and I pushed is this about the hoe She flinched like I'd struck her. Don't. Jules, you don't get to push me into this, she snapped. You took us out there knowing things we didn't. And now I can't... She stopped and took a breath. I used to be scared of the dark. When I was a kid. Really scared, not normal kid scared. I couldn't sleep without a light on until I was twelve. Power outages made me hyperventilate so badly, my parents had to put a bag over my mouth. They took me to a therapist who told them it would pass, and it didn't pass. It just went underground. Jules had never told me any of this. Three years together, she had never once mentioned it. I was convinced something lived in the dark, she continued. not a monster I knew monsters weren't real even as a kid but something else something that belonged there and waited there I used to lie awake at night and feel something watching me And I just knew if I got out of bed if I put my feet on the floor in the dark something would take me somewhere and I would never come back. I thought I got over it. That's why I started to hike with you, to prove the fear was behind me and that I could walk into the dark and nothing would happen. and it worked. I thought it worked. I could handle the woods at dusk. I could almost handle the dark itself. I told myself the thing I'd been afraid of as a kid was just a child's imagination. She finally looked at me and her eyes were wet. The hoe broke something. Whatever wall I'd built, it's gone. The fear never went away. I just buried it, and now it's back, worse than before, because now I know there's actually something out there. Now I know that thing I'd felt watching me as a kid, it wasn't my imagination. It was preparation. My body was trying to tell me something true, and I spent 20 years convincing myself it was lying. I got a call from Kel three days later. She said, I need to tell you something about the campsite. What is it, Kel? That morning, when we were packing up, before we found the deer, there were marks on the trunk of the Sitka spruce directly over your tent. Long scratches. They looked like claws. The wood was still wet. I felt the blood leave my face. Something had descended the tree that we were sleeping under. It came down while we were in the tent, inches from the fabric, and passed us by. It was right there. What was it? Why didn't it... I don't know, Kel. I don't know. But then I thought for a moment. Jewel's grip on my arm, her desperate refusal to let me move. We stayed inside, we stayed still through it all. So maybe I knew deep down, it wasn't interested in prey that didn't run. I called Ty afterward, telling him what Kel told me. She hadn't told him yet, wanted to call us first. Ty said to me on the phone call, I almost went outside that night. I heard those deer screaming and I thought, well, I don't know what I thought. That I could help or see what it was. I even had my hand on the zipper. Thankfully, Kel grabbed my waist. The same way you said Jules grabbed you. Thank God for women, am I right? Yeah, true, true. We were in the middle of it, man. That thing walked right past us. It could have taken any of us, but it didn't. If our girls hadn't been scared for us, we'd probably be dead. Six days after my call with Ty, Kel called again, but she was crying. It's Ty. I came home and he was in the garage. There's so much blood. Kel, it's okay. Is he alive? Where is he now? Yes, he's okay right now, I think. We're at the ER. He told the doctors it was a gardening accident, but I saw it. He was sitting on the floor. He had one of my rose stems, and he was pressing the thorns into his finger, one at a time in a row. There was blood on his hands, his jeans, the concrete, and he was just sitting there, calm. When I screamed his name, he looked up, and his eyes were just... I don't know. He just wasn't there. Oh my god, Kel. But then he sort of came back. He looked at his hand and screamed. He'd driven a thorn through his fingertip, through the nail bed. It came out on the other side. In the car, afterward. He asked me, what did that place do to us? that night jules stood in my office doorway you can't sleep either no she looked at the spreadsheets maps and photographs you want to go back i was thinking about how to answer that but then she said i'll go with you i turned around what if i don't go back i'll be afraid of the woods forever. Every time it rains, I'll think about those deer. I won't let it take that from me. The fear wins if I never face it. But we do it my way. A day hike only, in before dawn, out before dark. If I say we leave, we leave. And the second the rain stops, even for a moment, we run. I looked at her, and I said, Okay, your way. We went back the last week of November. Just Jules and me. Ty wasn't coming. His injuries were still healing, and his new fixation had not yet faded. He'd catch himself reaching for the rose bushes, having to physically redirect his hand. We drove up the night before, staying at the same cabin outside Forks. Neither of us slept very well. Instead, we mostly lay in the dark, listening to the rain on the roof, not talking. We left for the trailhead at 5am. The rain was heavy, headlights reflecting back in a solid white wall. The parking lot was empty when we arrived. Nobody likes the hoe in late November in a rainstorm. If the rain stops, Jules reminded me as we shouldered our packs. We don't hesitate. We don't discuss it. We just run. Agreed. I don't want to wind up in a tree. I had prepared like a field study. I had my camera in a waterproof case, my notebook in a Ziploc, and notes on everything I'd found. I would be doing this systematically. Approach the situation like a scientist. After all, we didn't know what we were up against. Whether it was even real, or if we had created our own rainstorm boogeyman. Jules, however, carried bear spray and a knife. She didn't pretend that either would help. About three miles in, I found a bobcat. It was impaled on a branch about 18 feet up. This body was fresh, maybe days. A mile further, a mummified dog draped over a branch. The hide had dried tight over bones. The density was increasing. Were we approaching the thing's territory? Lo and behold, we found something like a nest around 10am. It was off trail about 100 yards into old growth, in a depression surrounded by the largest Sitka spruce I'd ever seen. The canopy here was so thick, the rain barely penetrated. Just occasional heavy drops making it through, hitting the ground with audible impacts. I knew something was wrong before I could identify what. Because there was absolute silence here. As if all other wildlife knew better than to roost here. And then I made a realization. I could hear the rain. I could hear it drumming on the canopy above us, and hear the water dripping down through the branches, right? But because the canopy was so thick, I wasn't getting wet. That's what the roll meant. It means we're too close. We had found it. That roll had sounded the most unrealistic. How could it rain and you not get wet? But now it made perfect sense. I looked at the ground. It was matted and compressed here, a thick pad that crunched underfoot. When I knelt down and felt it, I found fur, bone fragments, decomposed matter, pressed into this dense carpet-like thing. This must have been years of accumulation. And God did it stink. I stood and looked up then. The remains weren't just on the ground. They were still in the trees, all in various states of decomposition. Pieces and bits, skeletons, full carcasses. They were above us, like a messed up timeline. Near the base of one spruce, half buried in the matted floor, was a hiking boot. It was old, and the leather was cracked, but the laces were still tied. The boot had come off a foot that was still wearing it. Joel's voice called to me. Hey, I think we'd better go. Hold on, I need to take pictures, write this down. Suddenly, she said, Don't move. I froze. She then whisper shouted, Above you, on the trunk. Slowly, I tilted my head back, and at first I didn't see it. The bark of a Sitka spruce is gray-brown and deeply furrowed, the moss's dark green fading to brown. I scanned the trunk, looking for whatever had alarmed Jules, and I saw nothing but bark and moss until the trunk moved. Twenty feet up, maybe twenty-five. The movement was so slight I almost missed it, a shifting in the texture of the trunk, like the bark itself was rearranging. But then my eyes adjusted and I saw the shape. There was a figure pressed flat against the trunk, head down. It was long and narrow. with limbs that were not perfectly symmetrical. Its color was gray-brown, almost exactly like the color of wet driftwood. The surface wasn't quite skin or bark, but something in between. And whatever it was, it was descending. Slowly, one limb extended, found purchase on the bark, and gripped it with a sound like wet leather on wood, and the body would flow downward, very slowly. Then another limb. Before long, I could see its hands. They were wrapped around the trunk, the fingers of them digging into the bark hard enough to leave marks, fresh marks, just like Kel had described them above our tent. I held my breath, and I stopped moving. The thing descended another two feet and stopped. Its head turned. The movement reminded me of a surveillance camera panning from side to side. It was facing down, looking directly at me. That creature clung motionless to the trunk, and its eyes on me felt like pressure against my skin. It began to move again, this time upwards. It ascended the same way it descended, one awkwardly long limb at a time, yet moving so steadily and precise. I heard branches shift and the creaking of wood. And then the sounds moved away until there was nothing left but rain. I didn't move for another minute. It was then that I felt Jules grab my arm, nearly making me scream, and she shouted, Run! Racing back to the trailhead was the most panicked I'd ever felt in my life. The entire way back, I couldn't stop thinking about why it didn't kill me. But if I had to guess, I simply caught it between meals. If you're still listening, I want you to know that I still don't know what it is. I'm a naturalist. I know what I saw. I know what it does. And now I know those rules exist for a reason. They're not just superstition. They're survival instructions, passed down by people who learned them the hard way. and I will tell them to you again. 1. If the rain stops unexpectedly, return to your vehicle right away. The rain stopping means it's awake. The rain stopping means it's hunting. 2. If you hear rain but cannot feel it, retrace your steps. You are too close to where it lives. 3. If you find animal remains above head height, do not run. Walk back the way you came without stopping. Number four. Do not camp in the hoe during active rainfall. And number five. A new rule that I've added. If you visit the hoe during rain, and you feel in the weeks after a pull towards sharp things, thorns, needles, points, or you have dreams of rain going up to the sky, tell someone. Tell them before you can't remember why it matters. That was definitely one of the more interesting stories I've read in a while. Lots of research in this one. Not sure how true the story is, but this is one new monster I won't soon forget. the next time I'm taking a stroll through the woods, especially if it starts to rain. Good night. Thank you all so much for tuning in to Unexplained Encounters. I've been your host, Darkness Prevails. You can follow me on X at Dark Prevails, and you can send me your scary stories of the unexplained at darkstories.org. Follow and leave a review of Unexplained Encounters on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. You can also listen to unexplained encounters and more scary story narrations from me on YouTube on the Darkness Prevails channel. Thank you. Until next time, everyone. Stay safe out there and stay creepy. Because this world is a strange one.