Tales of Terror

Maybe it’s the scorpio in me, but I’ve always loved being scared. Fear gives me a pulse – whether it’s the adrenaline spike from a sketchy adventure, a casual Tuesday night horror flick, or times when the rational part of my brain surrenders to curiosity and pondering other explanations for what I experience in the world. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I don’t really celebrate the day itself anymore, but the transition from sunny summer afternoons to the long, shadowy autumn evenings brings a welcomed spooky energy.

Recently, on a dark and windy walk home from work in Leipzig, I reflected on times I have really felt spooked. I started mentally sifting through places I’ve lived and adventured, imagining the landscapes and challenges experienced, and I tried to pin point some moments that were deeply unsettling. Not surprisingly, to me at least, the obvious events that could instill fear were not my scariest. Waking up in a tent in Amboseli to the sound of a lion just on the other side of the electric wire around camp brought back a striking memory, but of fascination and excitement (which I guess is a form of fear, in a way). Or when I was sitting outside of the truck, also in Amboseli, reading a NatGeo magazine and looked up to see a hyena peering from behind a bush, I wondered if she was just curious or weighing out the risks and gains of an encounter. I’ve spent hot summer nights on sand dunes in the Kalahari desert, sleeping on a tarp so that I could hear the skitter of scorpion legs and wake up in time to move out of their way. I’ve crawled into caves in Cyprus to record the screaming calls of Egyptian fruit bats hanging from the roof above me. Animals don’t scare me, what frightens me most have always been anthropogenic mysteries – those both physically experienced and imaginary, perhaps sometimes a blur in between.

Voices in the Night, Italian Dolomites

In late September I set off to do the Alta 2 trail through part of the Dolomites in Italy. I had limited time off and wanted to try to go for the entire 160 kilometer trek in about 6 days. This meant trying a similar approach to my Albania hike where I would plan to double up the days on itineraries I studied, travelling fast and light. I also wanted to travel cheap. Mountain huts are expensive so I decided to bivy when I could, if weather permitted. Leading up to this trip, I had read that there was an unusually high death count in the Dolomites this summer. Speculation on reasons for this included more traffic in the mountains to escape the hot summer in the lowlands, post-covid vacation boom, and the pressure to post content of epic, sometimes risky, adventures on social media. It was also a pretty unstable summer for weather, causing heavy thunderstorms and landslides. I was going late in the season (turns out too late, I’ll write about that in another post) so I wasn’t expecting the summer thunderstorms, or the crowds. I took the train from Leipzig to Munich, then Munich to Bressanone, Italy and started my hike from there. My pack felt extra heavy and big compared to the other hikers I saw, who were likely either staying in huts for a multiday trek or doing a single night out. Many trails through the Dolomites crisscross throughout the Alta 2, so picking up or ending somewhere along the route is feasible.

After a hearty lunch of minestrone soup at Genova Hut, I started the second part of a double day hiking in to the fading light of late afternoon. My legs were reluctant to get moving again, but soon I found a rhythm as I meandered along a contour of a ridge overlooking a small village. The weather seemed a bit ominous, clouds were building up behind some of the distant peaks but it remained clear in the valley I was skirting. After a couple hours, I noticed the next section of the trail would be up and over a steep pass without many (or any) flat places to sleep, at least from where I was hiking. I weighed the option of pushing to see if I could get over the pass before dark, but ultimately decided that it would really suck to try to find a place to bivy in the rain if weather moved in. My surroundings were pretty barren, but I was hopeful I could find a place to set up that would offer at least some protection if it began to storm.

After dropping my pack and wandering around the crest of the ridge I was pressed to find a good spot, but I kept getting drawn back to a flat area on the edge of the cliff with matted down grass. It looked too small for a tent footprint, maybe a cow slept there the night before, or maybe even an ibex?! There would be no shelter from weather, but I decided I could just break down my bivy set up and huddle behind one of the many small boulders strewn across the slope if needed. I laid down my green tarp, stuffed my sleeping bag into my bivy (not really waterproof anymore), then folded half the tarp over me. I was still full from the minestrone soup, but munched on some dried meat and JetA (homemade peanut butter, cracker, cranberry combo) while I watched a stunning sunset.

Darkness encompassed the mountains as I settled in to my mummy-like setup and bright constellations started emerging from the darkness. The wind was picking up, and in the back of my mind I worried about a storm as I started to feel the tendrils of sleep lulling me into subconscious…

I jolted awake to complete darkness, or so I thought I awoke. I heard something in the distance getting louder. I tried to feel my way through the tarp covering my head, but I couldn’t manage to find my way out and I was worried that whatever I heard was coming closer. Then, a voice shouting from the distance, “Are you okay?!” reached me. I tried harder to climb out of my sleeping bag but I was falling backwards, into a black abyss, reaching upwards trying to claw my way back. I heard it again, but then the words seemed faint or even nonexistent as I let the darkness pull me down, back in to my slumber.

I awoke in the morning to a soft pink sunrise. There was no evidence of the voices I thought I heard the night before. It appeared that I barely moved that night as I woke up in the same vampire like position, arms crossed over my chest, that I had fallen asleep in the night before. I was close enough to the trail, and even a town, that if someone did somehow see me camped in the middle of the night, they could have easily gotten to me and ask if indeed I was alright. But I was pretty high on the ridge, and I never turned on a light for someone to see me in the night… it must have all been a dream.

I was a bit on edge because as I scanned the ridge above me I got startled by 2 big, brown shapes frozen in place, staring back. I squinted to focus my sleepy eyes and realized they were not bears, but ibex! It seemed like they got a good view of me too and quickly bounded up and over the ridge. I tried to shake off the feeling of still being watched, packed up my camp, and continued up and over the pass.

I had a similar experience of this auditory hallucination on a hike in Washington sometime in 2018. After a rainy, solo hike up to the summit of a peak somewhere off HW 2, I decided to take a little nap on a boulder to wait out the fog and maybe get some summit views. As I was dozing, I heard loudly, and clearly, the alarmed voice of my dad, “What do you think you’re doing?!” jolting me awake and nearly causing me to lose my balance. Perhaps I was contemplating if I really should be taking a snooze on the peak of a mountain and that wariness transpired in my sleep. I’ve always been fascinated about the transition of sleep stages into REM, and what happens when the body is in one phase but the mind is in another.

An energy vortex in Marcahausi, Peru

The Marcahausi stone forest is about 60 km east of Lima, but takes more than 3 hours to get to from the city via a nerve-wracking, steep, dirt road. Marcahausi is known for massive stones that eerily take on shapes like human faces and animal forms. Theories such as extraterrestrial visits and dimensional doors in the forest where inner Earth beings come out to sculpt the rock are told. I tended to believe the wind erosion theory during my research, but was excited to see the landscape and how these legends had spurred. The plateau was formed from a volcanic reaction and covers an area of about 4 square kilometers at nearly 4,000 meters. There are also some pre-Colombian structures such as tombs and small living quarters up on the plateau.

I really wanted to see Monumento a la Humanidad, basically a giant rock eroded into the form of a human head. I hiked up the trail to the plateau at 13k ft and swung Northwestward towards the head. I passed one other couple setting up camp but otherwise I was completely alone up there. It sure did feel eerie, so I could imagine where the myths and stories of other worldly beings came from. There was no wind, no animal sounds, and only a few birds. It was oddly easy to lose the trail though, it would just sort of vanish. I never got truly lost but without major landmarks besides big rocks that changed form from every angle you looked at them, I’d sometimes find I had begun to wander in a different direction than I had planned.

Eventually, I did find the path leading to the human face. As I approached, I thought it must be the wrong rock as there was no resemblance of a face. Then, as if materializing in front of me, it appeared. A profile of a human face, slightly looking up, with lips parted. It was about 3 stories high. I sat on a rock for awhile, silently watching as if I expected it to change shapes in front of my eyes again. I saw other big rock “sculptures” around it that my imagination made into beings and extraterrestrial forms. If aliens did sculpt this human head, did they sculpt the others to resemble what they themselves looked like?

I explored other parts of the plateau. I walked along strange walls of oddly shaped rocks and scrambled up tracks from rain runoff. At one point I found myself standing on the edge of a cliff looking down 1000’s of feet of sheer rock. Here it was said that the rocks that form this cliff were sculpted into faces representing all of the different races of the world, all standing together and looking in the same direction. It was indescribable up there, a sense of stillness but tension with scenery that would play tricks on your mind.

Later, in a hotel nearby, I had fitful night of “sleep.” I’d have intense dreams of doors in the wall opening to orange spiraling passages and awaken to noises while either feeling freezing cold or soaked in hot sweat. I’d jolt awake to the feeling of levitating or being pulled off the bed by my feet. Perhaps I picked up some of the strange energy from the plateau. I shook off the feeling the next morning, threw my stuff back into the rental, and weaved through the hellish traffic to drop off the car in Lima, wondering if I’d ever be drawn back to that mysterious place.

An unexpected visitor, Eastcentral Alaska

In 2018, a friend and I explored part of Eastcentral Alaska by foot and packraft. The goal was to hike/raft from Healy to the Richardson Highway. We planned to hike up the Healy River, over Cody Pass, then down the drainage to the Wood River. From there, we’d paddle eight miles to Kansas Creek, hike up the creek, over another pass, and down to the West Fork of the Little Delta. We’d float the West Fork to the junction with the East Fork, follow the Little Delta out, cross the Tanana River, and hitchhike to Fairbanks, where our journey would end.

It was my first time packrafting, first time in Alaska, and first time on a ten-day trip in true wilderness. In retrospect, it was my introduction to big adventures, and it shaped my early adulthood into what it is now. To stay on theme, one night of this trip was particularly spooky and still crosses my mind whenever I’m camped deep in the backcountry.

It was my first full day of paddling, and I was still learning the art of packrafting: how far I could lean before feeling tippy, and how to paddle a boat with such a wide, blunt nose. We navigated small wave trains and bends in the river. After another five miles, we passed an immaculate cabin, only accessible by plane, and marveled at the isolation of whoever stayed there… it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere.

The river tightened suddenly, pulling into sharper turns. Fallen trees lay across the channel – sweepers. If you couldn’t avoid them, they’d drag you and your boat down. I tried to paddle hard left around one, but I hadn’t yet figured out how to get real power out of each stroke. The raft hit the trunk of a fallen tree and flipped, dumping me into the cold water. I was a tangled mess below the surface as my helmet and hair caught on branches, but eventually I broke free and came up gasping.

A bit shaken, we made camp once we hit Kansas Creek that night. We built a structure out of driftwood to dry our gear by the fire, mine was especially wet after being submerged. As we cooked chili over the fire, a whistle cut through the still air.

A man emerged from the darkness, gangly and half-silhouetted by the firelight. He waved his arm with an abrupt, awkward motion. As he stepped into the glow, we could see he carried only a rifle slung over one shoulder – no pack, no water, no light.

He said he was a hunting guide returning to his camp. The night before, a group of horses had broken loose from another camp about twenty miles upriver. He’d helped retrieve them and was now hiking back. He looked thin, his clothes clinging to his frame. The way his eyes caught the firelight, they appeared too bright… the kind of wild-eyed look that comes from spending too much time alone in the wilderness.

We exchanged only a few words with our eyes locked. Maybe we were all shocked to have stumbled into each other in a place this vast and empty. Then, just as quickly as he appeared, he slipped back into the darkness. We sat quietly for a while after he left, listening for footsteps but hearing only the fire crackle and the rush of the river.

These are just a handful of the stories that came to mind on my spooky walk home. I’ve realized I was most afraid when there was some uncertainty about what exactly was happening in those situations. It’s like settling into camp when you hear something brush against your tent and you realize there’s only about a millimeter of fabric between you and whatever is out there – whether it’s a branch, an animal (maybe like a tree hyrax), or some being. The brief moment of uncertainty before resolution gives a pulse of excitement.

I was inspired to reflect on my own “Tales of Terror” after listening to The Dirtbag Diaries podcast, specifically their annual Halloween episodes. Last year, I tuned in to one during a moonlit walk at our Kalahari field site. As a cloud slid across the full moon, the desert shrubs seemed to shift into unfamiliar shapes in the absence of moonlight. A stiff breeze grazed my skin, seeming to have traveled thousands of miles just to raise goosebumps… I hit pause on the scary stories podcast, and made my way back to the safety of my room before resuming.

Happy Halloween! Go find a scare 🙂

I’ll be making time soon to write stories from an exciting summer field season in Amboseli, Kenya and from my time in the Italian Dolomites!