Maren Horjus - Haunted Hikes: Real Life Stories of Paranormal Activity in the Woods

FALCON

An imprint of Globe Pequot

Falcon and FalconGuides are registered trademarks and Make Adventure Your Story is a trademark of Rowman & Littlefield.

Photos istockphoto.com

Except photo 181 by Maren Horjus

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

ISBN 978-1-4930-3064-4

ISBN 978-1-4930-3055-2 (e-book)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

F EAR IS a good thing, if only because it reminds us that were human. Go for a walk in the woods if youve forgotten. Away from the din of calendar alerts, unread e-mails, and urgent notifications, the world shrinks to the size of one human being. And there, in that scale, is where your senses are awakened.

Its where a rustling in the underbrush can steal your breath, where a flicker of movement around the next switchback can send your heart thudding percussion in your eardrums. Its where your mind is freer to reconsider what you once thought to be true, and its where I hope you are when you readand later, recallthe stories in this book.

These stories are a mix between old and new, widely told and seldom heard, but they all share the same DNA: They center around our wild places.

This isnt to say that our cities and frontcountry are immune to ghost stories, but our natural landsour old-growth forests, crinkle-cut mountains, redrock canyons, salt marshes, airy balds, and everything in between that characterizes Americas wildernessare shrouded in mystery. Or maybe its just that there, where the world is untamed and unrestricted, we notice it.

Some of the stories on the following pages are purely objective recounts of legends ever-present in our history. Others are more speculative in nature, my personal spin based on my own research, interviews, and faculties. They span time, from our countrys earliest beginnings, like the ancient tale of Princess Noccalula or the elusive Lost Paradise, to our more recent history, like the failed Letchworth Village asylum. Some explore the more paranormal, like the Bell Witch or the Hurricane Haint, while some examine crimes like the Shenandoah slayings and characters like Charles Manson whose violence, for all intents and purposes, has bled into the present. Still others are less scary than they are puzzlingwho or what is responsible for the Carolina bays? Why have so many people perished on Rainier and Mt. Washington?

My hope in putting together this book was to explore these tales, the fabric of our wild places, with a journalists eye and a childs wonder. But these stories arent mine; theyre ours, as hikers and people who believe in the supernatural power of wilderness, and I believe its our duty to preserve them.

You can do your part in two ways. One, share these stories, preferably around a campfire in the untrammeled backcountry, but the setting doesnt matter. And two, let yourself get scared. The stories in this book should remind us that our peace is not guaranteed. The wilds around us dont owe us anything and are totally unpredictable.

So the next time youre on a lonely trail and you spy the faintest twinkle of movement or hear a whisper from somewhere in the underbrush, let your heart patter in your chest. Let it beat in your ears. Consider that maybe its something moreor that its the start of something that we should include in Volume Two.

I TS IMPOSSIBLE to know what Paula Welden was thinking when she awoke on December 1, 1946. It was a Sunday. Perhaps she had penciled a hike into that small calendar square all along. Or maybe going for a walk in the woods was spontaneousan afterthought when she finished her shift in the campus dining hall. Welden, a sophomore at Bennington College in Vermont at the time, liked the outdoors and painting. She was majoring in art, but reportedly losing interest in the subject, and supposedly dating someone long- distance, but hiding the news from her father. She was eighteenand acting like it. So maybe it isnt necessarily odd that she returned to her dorm room and announced to her roommate that she was taking a long walk. But it is strange that she never returned.

That afternoon, around 3 p.m., Welden left her dorm room wearing a fur-lined red parka and blue jeans and hitched a ride to the historic, 272-mile Long Trail. Famous as the countrys first long-distance hiking path, the Long Trail runs the length of Vermont, undulating across the spine of the Green Mountains. One of its highlights comes in the form of 3,748-foot Glastenbury Mountain, a high point that sentinels over a sea of New England hardwoods in the southwest corner of the state. Its not an easy walkmore than 9 miles deep in the backcountrybut the trailhead is just a 10-minute ride from Bennington College and presumably where Welden was headed.

There are only a few reports of people she may have encountered, including the owner of a nearby gas station and the man who drove her up to VT 9. A couple of people reportedly saw her walking along the highway in the direction of the trailhead around 4 p.m.

When she didnt return from her walk, Weldens roommate allegedly alerted authorities, launching a campus-wide search. Community members fanned the area, while Weldens family offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who could locate their daughter. Newspapers hired private eyes. The fruitless search is said to have ultimately given rise to the Vermont State Police. Plainly, Paula Welden had vanished.

Oddly, though, Weldens disappearance was neither the firstnor the lastto occur in the area around Glastenbury Mountain. A year before, a hunting guide had gone missing and was never recovered. The area claimed another in 1949 and two more in 1950.

Despite thorough investigations at the time and subsequently, no one has ever discovered who or what is responsible for the disappearances. Some people believe theres a Bigfoot-like monster roaming the area, while others have suggested the existence of sinkholes and interdimensional portals. Perhaps there was a serial killer, or maybe the mountain is just cursed. Since we cant ask Paula Welden, youll have to see for yourself.

DO IT

Pick up the Appalachian/Long Trail from VT 9 (42.885110, -73.115580) and take it 9.4 miles north to the Glastenbury summit. Find established campsites near the mountaintop, or leave the tent at home and grab a spot in the Goddard Shelter (first-come, first-served) near mile 9.1. Retrace your steps the way you came for an 18.8-mile out-and-back, or arrange a shuttle car and thru-hike to Kelley Stand Road (43.061171, -72.967758) below Stratton Mountain, making it a 20.4-mile point-to-point hike.