Rebel Road
Exploring the road less traveled on faith, mystery and the supernatural.
Rebel Road
Hiking, Camping and Missing 411 | Summer Supernatural Safety Part 2
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Don't step off the path! But...do join us as we continue our look into some more missing 411 cases. In this episode, Haley and Mary dive into eerie stories of vanished hikers, mysterious mountain lights, and legendary creatures linked to the Appalachian Range. They share practical safety rules for outdoor adventures, blending folklore with survival tips to keep you safe in the wilderness.
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Welcome to summer school, everyone. Well, sort of. We are continuing our series on the supernatural safety tips.
SPEAKER_00We are so happy to be back, and thank you so much for joining us again. And if you are loving these episodes and you listen to our previous episode or any episode, just share it with your friends, would you please, and your family, if you just find yourself really enjoying them. Also, if you could do us a favor and hit that follow button, you'll never miss an episode and it'll mean the world to us.
SPEAKER_01Last week we left everyone with this giant list of safe hiking tips. And we also shared two stories about two children who vanished without a trace, and that was Dennis and Trinity, both from the Great Smoky Mountains. And those mountains, they are a sub-range of one of the most bizarre mountain ranges in the US, and that is the Appalachian Range. And as we mentioned last week, our family comes from around the Appalachia. So I think you take and I take Mary the stories that come from them with a little bit more attention. It's just kind of genetically written in our DNA, like the Tennessee accent. And I don't know about you, but five minutes back and it just comes out.
SPEAKER_00That is so funny. I do that too. It's just so odd because neither of us live there. But I guess we just pick it up from all those vacations, and our moms probably had those accents when we were little. And I always tell Mike when we're in the southern states, I'm like, honey, you know, like in five minutes, I'm gonna have that sweet southern draw and it's just gonna be there. I just love a good southern accent, and I respect these Appalachian rules that you hear about it, the unspoken rules as they've become known as.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the rules. Now, again, we are chatting about hiking and camping safety with a supernatural element all months this month. And the Appalachian Trail, it spans more than 2,000 like 190 miles. It's all the way from Georgia up to Maine. And it really passes through multiple national parks and protected areas. And when you start thinking about that conspiracy around national parks and how they are protected, we'll we'll circle back to that. But the Smoky Mountain National Park and the Shenandoah National Park are in that area. The Appalachian Trail, it sees approximately 16.9 million recreational visits annually. That is a lot of people. Now, while millions enjoy short day hikes, only about three to four thousand people attempt the through hike, the entire trail each year. And a handful of people vanished during that time. And like we love doing here on the Rebel Red Podcast, uh, we have our first story, and it's another missing 411 account, and this time on the Appalachian Trail. So let's tell that story.
SPEAKER_00The Blue Ridge Mountains were a brilliant blanket of crimson and gold. On October 18th, 1975, Lida Johnson, a gentle 71-year-old grandmother, smiled as she walked along a flat, paved blue path just off Appalachian Trail in Shenandoah National Park. The air was crisp, the sun was bright, and the trail was bustling with weekend leaf peepers. Lida was hiking with her close friend and companion. Because of her age, Lida walked at a slow, measured pace, her eyes fixed on the majestic mountain vistas peeking through the trees. I'm just gonna go step ahead to look at the next viewpoint, Lida told her friend, gesturing to a rocky overlook just 40 yards down the trail.
SPEAKER_01Her friend nodded, pausing to adjust her jacket. She watched Lida take a few steady steps forward, rounding a gentle curve in the path lined with thick mountain laurel. It was a window of less than 60 seconds. When the friend walked around that same gentle curve, she expected to see Lida standing by the stone overlook, admiring the valley below. Instead, the overlook was empty. Lida, her friend called out, her voice cutting through the quiet rustle of wind. No answer. She walked to the edge of the stone barrier, looking down the trail. It stretched out clearly ahead of her, completely empty.
SPEAKER_00Within hours, the tranquil autumn afternoon dissolved into a massive federal operation. Park rangers, tracking dogs, and hundreds of volunteers flooded the Shenandoah ridges. They focused their efforts on the immediate perimeter of the paved loop. Assuming a woman of Lida's limited immobility couldn't have gone far. But the mountain terrain yielded nothing. The tracking dogs sniffed the stone overlook, whined, and sat down, unable to pick up a scent trail leading into the woods. Ground searchers formed tight grids combing through the brush, but they found no dropped items, no broken twigs, no scuff marks indicating a fall. It was as if Lida had dissolved into the mountain mist.
SPEAKER_01As days turned to weeks, the search was reluctantly scaled back. The case became a haunting ghost story among the rangers of Shenandoah. How could a 71-year-old woman with a slow stride vanish instantly on a crowded, flat trail? More than a year passed. The autumn leaves fell, the winter snows melted, and a new summer came and went. In late 1976, an experienced backcountry hiker was navigating a brutal, trackless ravine miles away from the paved loop. The terrain here was treacherous, steep, jagged, and heavily choked with briars and fallen timber. It was a place an elderly woman would have found physically impossible to climb down, let alone reach on foot. There, resting quietly in the deep shadows of the ravine, the hiker stumbled upon human remains and weathered clothing. Forensic teams later confirmed the tragic truth. It was Lida Johnston.
SPEAKER_00Okay, Haley, we have some crazy coincidences again. But let's talk about this crazy little fact, Haley. This frail grandmother, who could barely walk, somehow walked through miles of impossible vertical terrain without being seen. And then she finally just died in the dark depths of a mountain canyon. That is so sad. How did they miss her? Because she was so far away. That was impossible. There was no way she could have gotten it. But let's talk about the overlap of this case with other 411 cases that we mentioned in our first episode. Well, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_01First off, Lida left her friend. And what did we say last week in our episode? Never leave the group. Always stay in the line of sight.
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01So important. Yeah. Second, the path was lined with those thick mountain laurels or hell laurels as they are called. They really are that thick, folks. That was another rule we came up with. Stay away from the thick bushes and brush. And then in 60 seconds on a busy trail, poof, she was gone. And the tracking dogs, once again, they couldn't find any scent of her.
SPEAKER_00That is why these 411 cases are so weird. They all share a lot of these same characteristics. While she was not a young child, she was elderly, which is one of those criteria. Remember, it's the young, the elderly, or super advanced mountaineers. That is so crazy. So she didn't just slip and fall to a resting place, like I mentioned. They found her body a whopping three miles away. And with her mobility issues, there was just absolutely no way she could have gotten there. So was she carried? Or I'm gonna go here. Did she somehow portal there? Did she step into a portal?
SPEAKER_01A portal. I I really believe the possibility in that, you know, especially with the no trace. That is wild. And we mentioned having a whistle as one of our rules. You gotta wonder if she had had a whistle, would all those people hiking around them have been able to locate her? You know, friends, think about that. Go buy yourself a whistle, keep it on your keychain, around your neck, make it part of your cool jewelry, keep it in your car, Mary. I think maybe uh we should give a few whistles away. What do you think? Yeah, that sounds fun. I'd give away some whistles.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, friends, send us an email at rebelroadeguest at gmail.com and leave us a comment either on a Facebook post or some social media post or even Apple Podcasts, wherever you're listening. Let us know. Leave a comment and your address. And we'll send, I don't know, Mary, what do you think? Maybe like the first 13 folks, uh, we'll give them a whistle and maybe also a Rebel Road sticker. I have to say, I love our Rebel Road stickers.
SPEAKER_00Who doesn't love a whistle? Yeah, absolutely. And our Rebel Road stickers, they go great on a water bottle while you're hiking. I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_01That's a really cute idea. So yeah, let's do that. Uh reach out, everyone, and we'll pick the first 13 folks. But just don't let the kids get the whistle. You're gonna regret that. But Mary, back to the portals. The Appalachia are linked to portals and time slips and loop trails. I folks stories warn uh that orbs or lights are actually moving ripples in reality. And there are local legends um that tell of hunters or hikers who walked toward this pulsing orb and they stepped through a shimmer in the air and then they just vanished permanently. It's much like our missing 411 cases.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we have the brown mountain lights in that area. And what about when you're walking in the woods and you come across a weird door or a doorway or the stairs in the woods? Have you heard about those? I have, but have not been lucky enough to see that yet. I don't even want to see that. That is a solid note, folks. Don't go through that doorway and don't go up the stairs because people experience some funky things and sometimes they just vanish. But also in that area is a little legend of the Moon Eyed people. You'll find them mentioned and kind of tied together somehow in a lot of 411 missing forms. So, Hayley, let's tell our first supernatural story about the Appalachia Mountains.
SPEAKER_01Long before the Cherokee came to occupy the deep valleys and smoky peaks of the southern Appalachian Mountains, the land belonged to a mysterious, ancient race known as the Moon Eyople. They were said to be entirely different from any other humans who walked the earth. They were short of stature, with skin as pale as mountain milk, hair like spun flax, and the eyes so large, round, and luminous that they gleamed like full moons in the dark. But their unique eyes carried a terrible curse. They could not bear the light of the sun.
SPEAKER_00To the moon-eyed people, daytime was a blinding, agonizing nightmare. The sun's rays burned their pale flesh and struck them totally blind, forcing them to live strictly subterranean. By day they retreated deep into the dark labyrinth limestone caves that honeycomb the foundations of the Appalachian Range. They built vast hidden cities beneath the earth, tunneling through the ancient stone and carving out walls where only the soft glow of biolescent moss lit their way. Only when the sun dipped below the blue ridges and the cool, heavy shadows of the mountain night did the moon-eyed people emerge. Under the cover of starlit and the pale moon, their vision became sharper than an eagle's. They would crawl out from the dark fissures in the rock to build massive, sweeping stone forts along the highest ridges. They worked in absolute silence, using the cover of darkness to cultivate small mountain plots and gather food, always watching the eastern horizon with deep anxiety.
SPEAKER_01For generations, they ruled the night. But everything changed when the early Cherokee ancestors migrated into the mountains from the north and west. The Cherokee were people of the sun. They hunted by day, cleared land in the bright afternoons, and slept soundly through the night. For a time, the two races existed as ghosts of one another. The Cherokee ruling the golden daylight, and the moon-eyed people claiming the silver dark. But as the Cherokee population grew, they began to notice the strange, ancient stone structures appearing on the peaks. They noticed unusual footprints near cave entrances and felt the eerie sensation of being watched from the shadows of the thickets as dusk fell. The inevitable conflict came during a phase of the moon when the nights were blackest. The moon-eyed people, feeling their ancestral lands encroached upon, launched silent nighttime rains, using their flawless night vision to terrify and drive back the new settlers.
SPEAKER_00The Cherokee elders quickly realized they could never defeat the enemy in the dark. So they devised a cunning strategy. Waiting for a cloudless, brilliant summer morning, the Cherokee warriors gathered outside the known cave openings and deep mountain ravines where the people slept. With weapons ready, they lit massive smoky fires at the mouths of the caverns, forcing the moon-eyed people to stumble out into the blinding open air to escape suffocation. The moment the pale subterranean people stepped into the valley, the harsh, unforgiving midday sun struck them. Blinded, helpless, and crying out in agony, they could not fight back. The Cherokee drove them completely out of the valleys, chasing them far to the west, past the Ochi River.
SPEAKER_01The Moonine people vanished into the western twilight and were never seen in the valleys again. Yet, Appalachian folklore whispers a different ending. Locals say they truly never left. Defeated, they simply retreated so deep into the bottomless Appalachian cave systems that the sun could never find them again. It is said that if you stand near certain deep blowholes or dark limestone cracks in the mountain rock at midnight and are not paying attention, you could be taken. Others say if you get close enough to their cave entrances, you can still hear the soft, rhythmic clicking of their stone tools. And if you find a deep ravine and shine a flashlight down into the darkness, you just might see two large, round, milk white eyes reflecting the light before vanishing into the dark. Now, this is mysterious, but it's not overwhelmingly as creepy as, say, a Wendigo or a Skinwalker. So, folks, maybe let's add a new rule: no hiking or cave exploring at night. And you know, the locals say that we don't go outside at night.
SPEAKER_00Maybe always just stay out of caves. Caves are my big solid nope. No, thank you. Haley, have you ever been svalunking or wild caving?
SPEAKER_01I can get down with going and exploring some caves, but the minute that someone wants me to squeeze into a small space to get to another space in the cave, that's when I'm turning around heading back to the car for a granola bar.
SPEAKER_00I knew what you mean. I went once. And I mean this was real skelunking. We had the knee pads, elbow pads, headlamps on our helmets. They measured me to make sure that I would fit in those freaking cracks. And I had absolutely zero idea what I was in for. Now remember, this is young, fearless Mary. And um, yeah, solid nope. I never should have done this. It was five miles underground. It took us I don't I don't even know. I think it was like eight hours. We were in places that were 18 inches tall. We had to tip our heads to the side, pulling ourselves along by our fingertips. And my naturally hippie self got herself stuck, not once, but twice. It was absolutely horrible. And we were doing something called a death straddle. So that's where you have one foot on one little rock lip, and the other is on another little rock lip, and there's a giant crack that goes straight down, and so you straddle this crack. And as we're walking, this crack gets wider and wider, and it was a two-mile drop if you slipped. So, you know, bye-bye, you're dead now. We can't rescue you. So, anyway, short me, so I'm also real short, is panicking as this crack is getting real wide. And I was behind the guide, he made sure that I was behind him all the way. He kinda kinda knew that I was gonna be a problem child. And this gully, right? We're doing this death walk, it ends with a sheer wall that goes straight up. And so I watched this guide kick his leg up onto the opposite wall, and he jacked his hand up and over this wall, like he did a little spin, and he lands into this little hole above this gully in this flat wall. And I'm pretty sure I said, Oh fuck no, because this guide was like six, seven, and I was with a tour of Marines, and my now ex who thought I would love it, and he was right, I did at first, but I was like, my leg won't go that high. So, long story, my ex had to hoist me up. We didn't have any ropes. This was wild caving, so there were no ropes to help us or to guide us, and so the marines were holding on to my ex, and the guide like lowered himself down and he pulled me up. The only illumination we had, because remember, this is a cave, were the lamps on our headlights, so it was absolutely terrifying. So getting snatched by a moon-eyed child or anything, and taken into a dark cave system that is nightmare fuel. It's true what they say, but caves are darker than dark, and the silence is crazy thick. It is wild.
SPEAKER_01I'm laughing a little because Mary is short. We we both are, and I can only imagine young Mary saying, Oh fuck, no, no way. But cave systems and rocky cliffs, boulders, granite formations are all an integral part of some of the missing 411 cases. It's just again that huge conspiracy around national parks and cave systems. So let's crawl out from the dark for a little and tell another 411 case. Now, this one is further. Away from the Appalachia, but we will circle back. Three-year-old Jared Adadero bounded down the Big South Trail in Colorado's Comanche Peak Wilderness. He was a burst of energy in a bright blue fleece jacket, navy sweatpants, and a pair of sturdy Tarzan sneakers. His father, Alan, had stayed behind at the resort, trusting a group of 11 adults from a Christian singles group to keep an eye on his boy on this crisp autumn day of October 2nd, 1999. To Jared, the rugged mountain trail was the best playground. The adults had naturally split into two smaller clusters, walking at different paces. Jared and his older sister playfully bridged the gap, running back and forth between the front and rear groups. Jared's favorite game that afternoon was a simple one. He would run ahead, duck behind a massive granite boulder or a thick tree, and wait. When the adults walked past, he would jump out with a wide grin and shout, Boo!
SPEAKER_00Around 11:30 a.m., Jared ran toward the front of the pack. Along the way, he stopped to chat with two fishermen casting lines into the rushing river. With the innocent curiosity of a toddler, Jared looked up at them and asked, Are there bears in these woods? They smiled, told him to stay close to his group, and watched him run along. A few minutes later, the woman walking at the front assumed Jared had lagged back to join the rear group. The adults in the rear assumed he was still leading the way at the front. It was a classic, fatal miscommunication. When both groups finally converged to rest, the color drained from their faces. Jared was nowhere to be seen. In a terrifying brief window of 15 to 25 minutes, the little boy had vanished into thin air.
SPEAKER_01The Larimore County Sheriff's Office immediately launched a massive search and rescue operation. Bloodhounds and tracking dogs were brought to the exact spot Jared was last seen. They sniffed his clothing, circled the dirt path, and then stopped dead. There was no scent trail. It was as if Jared's feet had simply stopped touching the earth. Then the mountains seemed to turn actively hostile. On the third day of the search, an Air Force helicopter hovering low over the canopy caught a sudden, violent downdraft. The aircraft slammed into the mountainside, crashing a hundred feet down directly onto the rescue trail and severely injuring the crew. Before the dust could even settle, an unseasonably brutal blizzard rolled over the Rocky Mountains, burying the wilderness in heavy snow. The act of search for Jared was called off.
SPEAKER_00For nearly four years, the wilderness kept it secret. Alan Adarero lived in a grueling limbo, alternating between grief and the agonizing hope that his son had been kidnapped and was still alive somewhere. That hope shattered on June 4, 2003. Two businessmen were hiking far off the beaten path, exploring a steep, treacherous mountain slope. And there, nestled against a gray rock, they spotted a flash of blue. It was Jared's fleece bullover. Nearby laid his navy sweatpants and his little Tarzan sneakers. The location made no logical sense. The clothes were found hundreds of feet strictly above the trail where Jared had disappeared. The terrain leading up to it was a near-vertical wall of loose scree, jagged rocks, and sharp cactus. It was a climb that would exhaust an experienced adult hiker, physically impossible for a three-year-old toddler.
SPEAKER_01When investigators arrived to process the scene, the mystery only deepened. Jared's sweatpants were turned completely inside out. His shoes showed virtually no scuff marks or drag damage, as if they had never walked across the sharp rocks. Oddly, despite spending nearly four years exposed to intense mountain sun, snow, and rain, the clothes were remarkably well preserved and not heavily faded. Upon closer inspection of the area, searchers found a fragment of a school cap and a single baby tooth. DNA testing confirmed the tragic truth. Jared was gone. To this day, two fiercely competing stories attempt to explain what happened on that mountain. The official police report points to a shadow in the woods. During the initial 1999 search, trackers found a set of mountain lion prints coming down the upper cliffs, converging with Jared's small footprints right where they ended. Big cats are known to ambush prey silently from behind boulders, carrying their prize high up into inaccessible cliffs and caves to feed away from other predators. To the state, Jared was a victim of the brutal, natural order of the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00But for Jared's father and the researchers who study the case, that answer has too many holes. If a mountain lion had mauled a toddler and dragged him up a cliff, why was there no blood or teeth punctures on the fleece jacket? How could an animal neatly pull a child's sweatpants completely inside out without tearing the fabric to shreds? And how did the shoes remain entirely unscuffed?
SPEAKER_01He was dragged almost vertically up. And the people who found him said it was a 35-degree angle and had areas of thick brush. So they basically climbed up using two hands and two feet. It was not a trail someone would take, especially a child.
SPEAKER_00And those scent dogs, they got there really fast this time. And even though they were on the trail he vanished from, they didn't hit on any trace of him. There were rumors of portals again in this part of Colorado, but we're in Colorado, so there are Bigfoot there.
SPEAKER_01So we have portals and uh Bigfoot again. Now, I know you don't want to believe it, Mary, but again, as we mentioned earlier, there are native oral traditions that are saying that Bigfoot has been known to steal children.
SPEAKER_00I don't know what Bigfoot is, but I do hope they are mostly peaceful. I just want humans to kind of leave them alone and just let them be what they want to be. But maybe there are rogue ones. They talk about the ones who've been banished from their tribes. Yeah, I think we mentioned that in one of our past episodes as well.
SPEAKER_01Now, there are entities that are said to be heavily prevalent in the Appalachian Woods. And of these entities, especially skinwalkers, it's said that they're able to mimic voices. These mimics can be even voices of your loved ones. And this is going to bring us, Mary, to some of our summer supernatural safety rules. Number one, if you are walking near the tree line or in the woods and you hear a familiar voice, like maybe a parent, a spouse, or a friend, and that voice is calling your name from deep within the brush, you do not answer, and you also do not move toward that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's that thick brush again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it's a trap. All right. Moving to number two, don't look too hard into the trees. You keep your eyes on the path. If you feel that there are a pair of eyes on you, or you notice maybe a strange shape in your peripheral vision, do not stare intently into that dark canopy. And why? Because entities are rumored to blend seamlessly into that dense vertical timber, or maybe they're crouching behind the fallen logs and they could just look like massive tree trunks until they move. The mountain lore warns that if you lock eyes with a predatory cryptid, you immediately lose the element of safety. It knows it's been spotted, which can then trigger an aggressive territorial response or a sudden change.
SPEAKER_00So just pretend you didn't see them. Keep calm. Remember, in our fear in the wind episode, that's episode two. Fear has a smell. It's a primal pheromone smell. The animals are gonna know, the cryptid is gonna know. This is good stuff, Haley. What else do you got? Okay.
SPEAKER_01Number three, do not whistle or sing in the woods after dark. I know we mentioned a whistle for the trail and the kids, and we're gonna send some out to you guys, but do not whistle or sing in the woods after dark. Now, and the reason is because high-pitched, non-natural sounds are strictly forbidden in the mountains once the sun goes down. All the locals know this. Whistling into a dark forest is essentially broadcasting an invitation. And cryptid theorists warn that copying a whistle or singing acts as a beacon, it signals your exact coordinate to curious or predatory entities in that area. Dang.
SPEAKER_00So don't blow your whistle unless it's an emergency. But then again, only if you're in the woods at night. Remember our safety rule. Don't hike at night.
SPEAKER_01Stand or at night. Okay. Number four. We did mention this one in the last episode, but it's important. If the woods go silent, get out. It is known as the quiet. And this phenomenon is heavily cited in both Bigfoot lore and those missing 411 cases. It's one of the biggest things in the Appalachia. Apex predators, like a Bigfoot, they emit low frequency sound waves. It's called infrasound. So that is the sound below the human range of hearing. And while humans can't explicitly hear it, the wildlife can pay attention. That sudden drop in ambient noise that indicates an alpha predator has entered the immediate clearing. And it really can cause all prey animals to freeze in terror. So take note.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if the infrasound isn't causing the silence, it is the scent of that apex predator.
SPEAKER_01Number five, stay on the marked trail. We keep saying this, never wander off the trail into thick brush, especially near boulder fields or steep ridges. The marked trail represents human territory, and this is lit by sunlight and heavily traveled. This is your safe zone. The moment a hiker or you steps off the trail into a deep mountain ravine, or they're called haulers, they enter this unmonitored hunting ground of native wildlife and larger hominids where tracking dogs consistently struggle to follow scent lines if there's a sudden abduction.
SPEAKER_00When you're hunting, let's say deer, you search for the trail, right? You'll find you can find deer trails. It's an actual path that you can see where they were or where you know they're gonna come, and it'll lead you right to them. So do you know what a hiking trail is? It is absolutely nothing but a gang trail for cryptids. Now you're all are never gonna think of a hiking trail the same way again. They know what path the humans take.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, isn't that crazy? That's a different perspective on it. Okay, so number six. If you see something strange, no, you didn't. This kind follows rule number two. If you catch a glimpse of a creature that looks physically deformed, uh, an animal walking on its hind legs or a humanoid shape and it's frozen behind a tree, ignore it and keep walking. You do not point at it, you do not take a photo, uh, you don't upload anything onto TikTok, you do not acknowledge it to your hiking partners until you are safely out of the woods.
SPEAKER_00Don't let that perfect shot of that cryptid be the last thing you do. No one's gonna believe you anyway, unless it's a blurry photo.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh this rule is an important one because acknowledging a cryptid, like a skinwalker, it's believed to invite the interaction. And so think about in local superstition, showing curiosity gives the entity permission to follow you home or lock onto you as a target. So, rule number seven, and maybe a new rule would be speak out loud. You do not have the permission to follow me, and you can rebuke that situation uh again in the name of Jesus. Just let the blood of Jesus take care of it.
SPEAKER_00Nothing worse than having a skinwalker or a windigo follow you home, or worse, to your campsite in a thin tiny nylon tent. Ugh.
SPEAKER_01Chills. Rule number eight. I think the last rule we will get into today. It's a terrifying scream, let's say a heavy footstep or a crying baby, it sounds like it's right next to you. It's actually far away. However, if it sounds faint and miles deep in the valley, that means it's right next to you.
SPEAKER_00Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Hayley, have you ever heard a mountain lion scream? Yes, I actually have. Terrifying. I've never heard one until one time. So let me tell you all another story. I was at home alone watching a scary movie. It was late. Our old house was surrounded by some thick woods, and the neighbors weren't super close, but they were there. Anyway, I'm watching this movie, and the lady in the movie is getting chased, and I hear screaming, and I'm watching this movie, and I'm like, wait, she's not screaming. So who's screaming? So I paused the movie, and there is this blood curdling screaming coming from outside, and I'm waiting, and it keeps going, and it's loud, like it's really loud. And I was like, oh man. So my first instinct was someone needs help. There's two ponds at our old house. One was on our property, and one was right behind our property, and there was this thick brush, this wooded brush that was between those two ponds. So I grab a flashlight and I go outside, and you can still hear this screaming. I mean, it was bone-chilling, piercing the night, screaming. And so I can tell where it's coming from. It's coming from those woods between the two ponds. So I start running there, and the sound is closer, it's more piercing, and like a wall or something pulled me by the nape of my neck, I actually froze. The sound stopped and I backed away, and I slowly made my way back inside. Everything inside me when I got to that line of bushes that was there was like it's not in trouble, not a woman. It was just this horrifying noise. Well, I found out a few weeks later that that noise was the same noise that a mountain lion does. It was a mountain lion scream. So let me play a clip of a mountain lion screaming for anyone who has never heard what it sounds like. So if you're out in the woods and you hear this, it's a mountain lion. Calm down.
SPEAKER_01And I guess I didn't realize that there were mountain lions at your old place, Mary.
SPEAKER_00Actually, I saw one strolling right down the dirt road in front of our house in broad daylight, just right in the middle of the road, not a care in the world. It was giant and beautiful, but then I was like, oh no, my chickens. But she strolled right past them. She didn't care. And you know, Mike didn't believe me until other people saw them. You could see the scratch marks in the trees, and some thought they were bears, but I knew. I knew it was that mountain line. I also saw a giant black wolf that no one believed me, but it was there. I saw it.
SPEAKER_01Lucky girl, you see a lot. Uh maybe it's uh you got a little extra of the Appalachian DNA in you. But anyways, well, folks, we are going to wrap up this episode. Be sure to join us next week for our conclusion of hiking and camping supernatural summer safety tips as we set up camp, so to speak, on camping. And we will dive into maybe a little more supernatural takes and how do you protect yourself from that? So don't miss it, and as always, don't step off the path. Keep your people in your line of sight, carry a whistle, keep it weird, and pull it back to Jesus. And don't be like Mary and try to rescue a mountain lion in the middle of the night. I didn't. Bye. Bye.
