Pod Insights National Park After Dark National Park After Dark X Heart Starts Pounding About this episode In today’s long awaited collaboration, we team up with Kaelyn Moore of the podcast Heart Starts Pounding. Kaelyn covers all sorts of creepy, strange and unexplainable topics from around the world on her show, but today we all dive into the Reddit world (which is scary in and of itself) to bring you some tales of scary and strange happenings from where we know best ... the forest. For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to the week’s partners! Quince: Use our link to get free shipping and 365-day returns. BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off. Rocket Money: Use our link to get started saving. IQBAR: Text PARK to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products and free shipping.
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Transcript 15,062 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:19 Cassandra Yahnian? Hello, everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. Today, we have a fun episode for you all today because we are diving into strange and unexplainable stories in the outdoors. Plus, we have a very special guest today. Today, we are joined by Kaelyn Moore, the host of Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast full of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. Her podcast is a collection of stories that will have you questioning what's real, what's imagined, and what might be lurking just out of sight. If you love anything spooky, creepy, or pulse pounding, her show is made for you. Kaelyn's fascination with the dark side started early. She grew up in a small New England town with a chilling past. They had an active serial killer, and it was actually her great-grandfather, a junior reporter at the time, who helped
2:01 Cassandra Yahnian? catch him. So yeah, you could say uncovering eerie truths kinds of runs in her family.
2:05 Danielle LaRock? And that passion took her into the world of horror entertainment, working with the Monster, the company behind the Conjuring Universe, and later producing the reboot of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Now, through Heart Starts Pounding, she explores stories both real and otherworldly that make us question ourselves, our neighbors, and the world that we think we know. You've probably also seen her on Instagram or TikTok. If you don't recognize her voice right away, you're definitely going to recognize her face. She's the one pulling you into those jaw-dropping videos full of morbid facts and chilling stories you definitely did not learn in school. And today, she's here with us to read through some spooky Reddit threads, all of true stories from people who've had strange experiences in the outdoors.
2:49 Danielle LaRock? We're talking about serial killers, missing time, strange noises in the woods, potential alien encounters, and potentially even Bigfoot. Welcome to National Park After Dark.
3:01 Speaker 04 Hello and welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. As always, I'm your host, Kayla Moore. Today, we are going to talk about terrifying but true stories of things that people have encountered while hiking and camping. You're going to hear stories about strange clapping noises coming from nowhere in the woods, people losing time while hiking that they can't account for, horrifying encounters with strangers on secluded trails, and so much more. And there is no one better to join me today than the hosts of National Park After Dark, Danielle and Cassie. These girls have covered hundreds of episodes showcasing the beauty, but also the horrors inside of national parks.
3:42 Speaker 04 Because even though there's more and more people entering these parks every year, more and more of them never leave. And what do we always say here at Heart Starts Pounding? When you enter the forest, you re-enter the food chain. So, welcome to Danielle and Cassie.
3:58 Danielle LaRock? Hello. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction.
4:01 Cassandra Yahnian? Yes, it's so good to be here.
4:03 Speaker 04 I'm so glad we're doing this one. I am terrified of the woods, but I love camping. I love national parks. But I also really love exploring all of the scary and weird and bizarre and supernatural things that go on inside of those parks. And that's really your forte.
4:19 Cassandra Yahnian? It is.
4:19 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, that's part of the draw, right? Like, you're curious about what happens in the woods, and you want to experience it for yourself.
4:27 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, and exactly what you just said, where when you enter the woods, you enter the food chain back in. And it's so true. I mean, there are just a lot of things that can happen when you're out there.
4:37 Speaker 04 I know. It feels like we're no longer... Apex predators when we enter the woods. I have to ask before we jump into the stories because we have a lot of really good and really scary stories picked out today that we're going to go into. What is the scariest national park?
4:52 Danielle LaRock? Oh, that's tough. That is tough. Scary, like which category of scary, like spooky? Or?
4:59 Speaker 04 Let's do, okay, we'll do one spookiest and one like watch your back when you're camping in this park.
5:06 Danielle LaRock? Oh, my God, that is such a good question. I would say watcher, when I think of watch your back, I think more of wildlife. And that's just because that's what I'm like most afraid of because I freak myself out with those stories the most. So that's like a personal opinion, even though we all know humans are far more dangerous than wildlife. But when I'm watching my back the most in parks, I think I'm in Alaska.
5:36 Speaker 04 We talk a lot about Alaska at Heart's First Friday. We have a whole episode just on the really strange, mysterious disappearances that happen there because more people disappear in Alaska than any other state.
5:48 Danielle LaRock? It's just so remote. It's so wild. It's so beautiful. It has so much to offer, but there's a lot that happens there that kind of runs the gamut from wildlife to missing persons to true crime. It has a little, a little bit of everything. So that's my answer, I think. Alaskan national parks are in a league of their own.
6:08 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I think that's a good answer, especially because if you do find yourself ever needing help, a lot of times the only way to get to you is a bush plane, which isn't very comforting when you're, if you're alone, which you probably shouldn't be in Alaska.
6:19 Speaker 04 Right. So like even little things. Well, I guess breaking your ankle isn't a little thing, but even if you just break your ankle, you have to be airlifted out, I imagine, a lot of times.
6:29 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. And even like a smaller injury could be detrimental when you're in a place with no access to help at all.
6:36 Danielle LaRock? Right. Yeah. So if you break your ankle in Great Smoky Mountains, like it's still an inconvenience, but it's the most visited national park in the United States. Like your odds of being helped and getting to aid. Is a lot better than if you're in Gates of the Arctic and you're pretty much SOL. So.
6:56 Speaker 04 I think it's the remoteness that always scares me about the woods. The fact that like something could happen and you could just be there by yourself for a long time, or you could see something and no one else is around to verify that thing. We hear a lot of those stories too, but that kind of brings me to the first story that I want to dive into today. This story takes place in a park I think a lot of people don't necessarily think of as being remote, but we're going to talk about just how remote it actually is. This is something that's been in the news. I think a lot of people listening have probably heard at least something about this, but this is the double murder that just happened in Devil's Den State Park. So on July 26th of this year, 2025, the Brink family was out hiking in Devil's Den State Park.
7:40 Speaker 04 Devil's Den is this park that's nestled in the Ozarks in the northwest corner of Arkansas. It's this super picturesque place with hiking trails, beautiful views, and it's been described as really a perfect place for a family to spend the day. The Brinks had just moved to the area about a week prior and they decided that they were going to take a pretty easy hike with two of their daughters. The family consisted of 43-year-old Clinton Brink. He was set to start a new job just two days later. 41-year-old Kristen Brink. She was a licensed nurse. Together, the couple had three daughters, but that day only two of the daughters were with them, a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old. The couple had made it about a half mile into the park when it seems like a stranger approached them.
8:25 Speaker 04 Now, normally when you run into a stranger on a trail, you say hi and you pass them. Sometimes you may stop to chat, but these encounters are typically warm. There's this inherent camaraderie in the outdoors community, which is why the Brinks were probably completely caught off guard when this stranger pulled out a knife and started stabbing Clinton repeatedly.
8:48 Speaker 04 There wasn't much Clinton could do to protect himself, but Kristin, thinking incredibly fast with what some have described as a mother's instinct, whisked her two young children away from the scene and brought them to safety. And then she made the incredibly brave decision to go back to the scene and try to help her husband. The children watched as she fearlessly disappeared back into the woods. Around 2:30 PM that day, a call came in on a police radio that there may have been an assault in Devil's Den Park. Witnesses reported seeing a man with blood on his face emerging out of the trail and concerned, they called it in. And it was around that time that the two young girls flagged another hiker they found on the trail.
9:30 Speaker 04 And this one showed them the kindness and community that is usually felt amongst hikers. They listened as the girls described what happened to their father, how their mother ran to save him. But also, they gave a description of this man. He had blond hair, he was about 30 years old, and he wasn't anyone they had ever seen before. About an hour into the search, officials searching the trail started hearing screaming. They followed the screams to a trail of blood that led to the scene of the crime. There were the bodies of Clinton and Kristin, and neither had survived the attack. But with the help of the two young girls, as well as other hikers in the park that day,
10:13 Speaker 04 investigators were able to start piecing together more clues. Witnesses had seen the man get into a black sedan with a license plate that had been taped over. A photo taken inside of the park by what seems to be an unknowing witness shows the man earlier in the day facing away from the camera. He's wearing black pants and a black long sleeve shirt, a baseball cap, and he's carrying two bags over his shoulders. Police were able to quickly get a composite sketch out to the surrounding community and they were immediately flooded with tips. And within just a few days, they found their guy. A 28-year-old named Andrew James McGann was arrested during a haircut 30 miles away from where the attacks had taken place. And probably the
10:58 Speaker 04 most terrifying detail in this entire thing is that McGann was an elementary school teacher. He was a fifth grade teacher at Spring Creek Elementary School in Oklahoma during the 2023 to 2024 school year, but he left after being placed on administrative leave in the spring of 2023 due to concerns about classroom management, professional judgment, and student favoritism. He was later hired by Springdale Public Schools in Arkansas for the upcoming school year, though he had not begun employment or had any contact with the students or family yet. Police believe that this attack was completely random, as if McGann entered the park that day to hunt for victims. And he specifically chose Devil's
11:41 Speaker 04 Den State Park because of its lack of cellphone service, thick vegetation, and secluded areas. And one horrifying fact that some people have pointed out is that McGann moved states quite often for teaching jobs, and officials now believe that these are likely not McGann's first victims. Though he passed a background check to become a teacher and hasn't ever been charged with other crimes, police are now looking into unsolved murders around his other teaching jobs to see if they can find any connection. And I'll add here that this case is currently unfolding, but this is all of the information we have as of August 4. The thing that really strikes me about that one, which we were
12:22 Speaker 04 talking, you guys brought up, is the remoteness and that like the remoteness of an area being the really scary thing, and someone specifically targeting a place because of its remoteness. I don't know if you've come across that in other stories you've covered on National Park After Dark.
12:38 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, for sure. We definitely have. There have been a lot. My first, when you mentioned that, my first thought is that the AT has seen some similar type of attacks, unfortunately.
12:50 Speaker 04 AT being Appalachian Trail?
12:51 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
12:52 Speaker 04 Okay, yeah. For my listeners, that might not be as familiar as your listeners.
12:57 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, the Appalachian Trail, it is really, it's one of the most popular through hikes. And unfortunately, there's been several different instances that have happened where people have been attacked on the trail. And it's been the same instance where we're seeing in this case, where someone took advantage of the remoteness of the park that thought that no one else was going to be around, that they could probably get away with it. And unfortunately, in this case, it feels like this was probably very premeditated and that they did choose this location, which I always, always hate hearing these stories because these parks are supposed to be a safe haven for people. And to know that you're out with your family, with your children on a nature hike,
13:42 Cassandra Yahnian? exposing them to the outdoors and hiking, and to have someone take that away and ruin it in such a tragic and horrific way is just so, it's so upsetting to hear.
13:53 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, and my mind instantly went to an episode that I covered, I think it was in 2022. It was an earlier episode before we hit the hundred mark for sure. And it's kind of just in relation to the randomness. Obviously, there's the remote aspect, but there's just like, there is, what is the reason? And sometimes it is just random. And I did an episode in Olympic National Park where a young woman, her name was Jane Constantino. She was in her early 30s and she was on a solo bike trip. She biked from Colorado all the way to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. She was about to get her bike into the ocean, which was her goal,
14:38 Danielle LaRock? and a man just randomly murdered her, same way, stabbed her to death and left the park and people passed him, same thing, like noticed blood on him. And he was caught rather quickly, but. Same thing. It's just like you, your brain tries to make reason of these things. And sometimes it's just people are evil and do evil things, even in the most beautiful places.
15:03 Speaker 04 Yes, absolutely. And I think we talked a little bit, we had an episode where we talk about the Appalachian Trail and we cover this case of the two, the gay couple in the eighties who were killed by just, I forget what his name was, but this man just saw these women who were on a hike in between, I think it was their summer break. They were taking just a long hike before they went back to school. This guy found them and just started following them on the trail. They kept running into him and he seemed to be not really a local. It turns out he was living in a cave along the trail and just kept popping out to follow them and then open fired on them when they were in a little clearing, just setting up camp and having a really lovely afternoon.
15:46 Speaker 04 But the thing that came out about that case was how rare this is. Like this is not something that happens very often, which is why it is so shocking when we hear about these cases. Because like we mentioned, the community is so strong. It's full of people who are very nice to each other. Oftentimes people hike the Appalachian Trail and make tons of friends.
16:06 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
16:07 Speaker 04 The whole way, you're just chatting with people. People are like cooking you grilled cheese out on the side and stuff. And so when, when something like this happens, it's especially devastating. But in this story too, just kind of seeing how everyone immediately came together and all of the witness statements that came out, all of the tips that flooded in, like everyone really banded together to find this person and they found him so fast.
16:29 Danielle LaRock? That's one thing that we've really found in the outdoor community, just in our own interactions, is that the outdoor community is so bonded and so strong and it's such a special place that when tragedy does hit, unfortunately like this, that people really rally around the people who are affected and try to help in any way that they can.
16:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, definitely. When you hike in areas where you don't have cell service, are there like specific precautions that you take?
16:57 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, certainly. We have a couple of things. First of all, we, one of the cardinal rules of hiking, especially if you're by yourself, or if you're going into an area that you know is remote and you're not going to have any cell service or things like that, is in your car, you're supposed to leave your plans. Not like exactly, you know, your move for move or anything like that, but general in date, out date, and what general trail you're going to be on. Just in case something does happen and, you know, somebody, a ranger notices your car there. It's nice to have something on your windshield that kind of shows your itinerary.
17:39 Danielle LaRock? Also, we hike with a Garmin InReach. That is obviously something that we've never had to use and hopefully don't have to, but it's nice to have in case something does happen and we need to reach either search and rescue, or we can program it to send out texts to friends and family. So that's also really nice to have. So those are the top two things that come to my mind.
18:03 Speaker 04 Interesting. Yeah, I hadn't heard the leaving your plans in a car, but that's obviously such a good idea.
18:09 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, just leaving a little note on your windshield just inside. So if someone walks by and they notice that your car's been there for a little while and they see that you were supposed to be back the day before, but your car's still there, it'll send some red flag warnings out and people might start looking for you. Also, something that we always do whenever we go out is just to let our friends and family know. Always have someone know where you are and what your plans are because, yes, it's great to have that on your windshield, especially for rangers and stuff. But say that there's limited patrol or someone just doesn't notice your car for a little while. Having someone somewhere that's expecting to hear from you at a certain time is always really helpful.
18:51 Cassandra Yahnian? So if you are gone longer than expected, then someone can flag it pretty immediately.
18:57 Speaker 04 I'm sure there's so many cases of people going on hikes and no one knows that they're supposed to be back that night, thinking maybe they're gone for the whole week. So when they don't show up in seven days, no one really is thinking much about it. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense that you need to tell people exactly when you're supposed to be back, or at least when you're thinking of being back.
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19:49 Danielle LaRock? Okay, with that, do you want to read your next story that you have? For sure. My first story is titled, "Time mysteriously skipped ahead a few hours while hiking in a remote area." In parentheses, "New Mexico." And it is from Reddit user puddlesdown. "I often explore remote locations and old mining areas because I'm an avid rockhound. On one trip in central New Mexico, I left my hotel at 7:30 a.m. My destination was less than 30 minutes away. 10 miles by highway, 3 miles by paved road, and then 2 miles up a relatively well-maintained dirt road, followed by a 3/4 mile hike to the rockhounding spot. It was supposed to be a pretty easy trip compared to the others I have done. When I got off the highway, I decided to fill up on gas for good measure.
20:34 Danielle LaRock? I kept the receipt, so there's no doubt I bought gas. However, about halfway up the dirt road, 4 miles from the gas station, I noticed my gas gauge drop to about 1/4 of a tank. That had never happened before. When I got to the area where I needed to get out and start walking, I walked a few feet and noticed a better place to leave my car, so I went back to move it. This took less than 10 minutes. My car wouldn't start. The battery was dead. I still had the receipt for the battery in my glove box, showing I had purchased a new one a week prior. I checked it against the battery under the hood, and sure enough, the new battery was installed properly. Luckily, it was under warranty. The entire dirt road was uphill, and I noticed a truck driving up, so I decided to wait and ask for a jump.
21:19 Danielle LaRock? It was a man and a wife who were very kind and gave me a jump. My car started and I moved it to the new spot." The time was 8:45 when I finally started hiking. The hike itself was uneventful and took 90 minutes. When I got back to my car, it was 10:15 a.m. I was feeling pretty hungry, so I decided to order takeout from near my hotel. I figured it would take me about 30 minutes or so to get back, and the food would be ready for pickup when I got back to town. The problem was, when I put in my online order, the confirmation said my food would be ready at 6:00 p.m. That didn't make any sense. So I tried calling the restaurant, but no answer. So I decided to just drive there and ask them to prepare it ASAP. First, I was going to stop at the gas station and figure out why I didn't get the gas that I paid for.
22:04 Danielle LaRock? I still had the receipt, and my gas tank was still at a quarter of a tank. So I drove the two miles back down the dirt road. When I reached the end and pulled out onto the frontage road, my gas tank showed it was full again. When I got to the restaurant, ready to tell them that 6:00 p.m. didn't work for me, my order was already ready. That was a relief, but it was then, picking up my order, I looked at the time, and it was 6:05 p.m. It should have been 10:45 a.m. I looked up at the sky, and sure enough, the sun was getting low. I lost seven hours somehow and can't account for it. And there's an update from the original OP here.
22:46 Danielle LaRock? And they say, "I wear an analog watch when rock hounding in case I lose signal. The time on my phone and my watch matched up until I checked my watch at the restaurant. I had to readjust that watch after I got food. I was keeping an eye on the sun to help me keep track of my direction, and it was climbing to its apex when I got back to my car after hiking, and it was starting to heat up like normal for a late morning. But soon after, I got food, dusk settled in." I wish that I could explain it. "I've been doing this kind of thing for 25 years, and I've experienced heat stroke and heat exhaustion, and unfortunately, delusion brought on by septic shock, but this wasn't any of those. I had plenty of water, vitamins, electrolytes, you name it,
23:30 Danielle LaRock? and the time jumped when I was in an air-conditioned car in October." It was a good idea, though, and that's it. Wow. What a story.
23:39 Speaker 04 Oh, I hear a lot of stories of people losing a lot of time in the woods.
23:43 Danielle LaRock? You know where my first, first thought goes to, and I think Cassie knows what I'm gonna say. Lost time, I think of aliens.
23:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, that does come up a lot when people are talking about lost time. Explain why that's the first place that you went, because I'm curious.
23:58 Danielle LaRock? Well, so in I, there's one thing about me is I am a huge extraterrestrial fan, always have been. And we don't do a ton of alien abduction stories on National Park After Dark, but we've done a handful. And each and every one of them, there is an element of lost time.
24:15 Speaker 04 Yes.
24:16 Danielle LaRock? That is a through line, no matter what, and in stories that we haven't covered, that I've just heard of on my own. It's just something that you see, it's an element of every alien abduction or encounter story that you just see across time. Is this loss of unaccounted for time that there's no explanation. And sometimes later on, as people are like working through their experience, they'll start to put some pieces back together. But that initial, in the initial aftermath, people are just confused as to what happened because they have no recollection of it.
24:51 Speaker 04 That's like a big part of the Betty and Barney Hill story, right?
24:54 Danielle LaRock? Yes.
24:55 Speaker 04 Is that they lose a lot of time. And I think it's interesting then that this story took place in New Mexico. He specifically calls out New Mexico, which to me is the most alien abduction state of them all.
25:07 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Oh, because of the Roswell situation. Yeah.
25:10 Speaker 04 Yeah. You just hear a lot of like eerie stories about people seeing things. It's got this big, open sky that's often clear, so you can see a lot of things. And people just are always talking about seeing UFOs. And then of course, there's the Roswell of it all. But interesting that, yeah, maybe this was some sort of alien thing. I don't, it didn't sound like he saw anything else, but is that kind of, like, do people just lose time? And then they realize it's aliens? Or is there like an element of like, but I saw this light and then, and then all of a sudden I lost time?
25:40 Danielle LaRock? Well, that's the hole in the story for me.
25:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's the hole in the story for me too, because it, when you look at the Betty and Barney Hill story, they saw something. And then they lost time. And same with Travis Walton, he also saw something and then lost time.
25:55 Danielle LaRock? And same with the Alagash Four that we did up in Maine.
25:58 Speaker 04 In the Alagash Four, they saw something. So that is definitely, that's definitely, it's so strange too. And I love that they pointed out.
26:06 Cassandra Yahnian? That they've experienced heat stroke before, they know that they were fine physically, that there's no explanation for that because that was kind of where my mind went for a second because I was like, wait, you're in the desert, it's New Mexico, did something happen? So for them to point that out, now I'm like, wait, how?
26:23 Danielle LaRock? Oh, hold on, there's another element here though about the battery and it might be a stretch, but sometimes with different alien encounters and things like that, it whatever technology that they utilize warps and kind of messes with ours. People's batteries drain, electronics go haywire and go on the fritz. And so that could be something to attribute.
26:51 Speaker 04 Cause it was the gas and it was the battery.
26:53 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
26:53 Speaker 04 The battery died immediately, but he had just bought a new battery, which, okay, maybe that's a one off, but the gas, like to buy gas, to then lose all that gas and then to, for the gas to randomly reappear is very strange.
27:06 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
27:07 Cassandra Yahnian? My thought with that, and this might just be because I had a car that did this. If you were on a hill.
27:12 Speaker 04 Oh yeah, of course.
27:13 Cassandra Yahnian? The, the measurement would like be on some like, are you just, is your car just in a weird position? And then you got to the bottom and it's flat and now it shows the right amount of gas again. So for that part for me, I was like, well, that I can explain away.
27:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
27:27 Cassandra Yahnian? But the rest of it is very odd, very, very odd.
27:31 Danielle LaRock? I've never, I, every time I hear a story like this, I definitely give it some credit and thought because I've never lost time like that.
27:40 Speaker 04 No.
27:40 Danielle LaRock? Unless I was drunk or something, which is a whole nother story. But just like out rock hounding, like just a normal day and losing a chunk of six plus hours is very strange.
27:52 Speaker 04 I was talking to this woman once, have you heard of Thompson Park in New York?
27:56 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
27:57 Speaker 04 Thompson Park is, people say it's the area 51 of New York. There's supposedly very weird things that happen there, but I was looking into it and I ended up talking to this woman who told me the story that when she was 16, she and her boyfriend were out in Thompson Park. It's all, it's just a little park in this residential neighborhood area too. It's not this big, massive thing. There's like little hiking trails and stuff, but it's, it's not crazy big. So she was with her boyfriend and they just, they were at a family party. So all of his family was there and they take off on this little, little path just for a 20 minute walk. And she said she was gone for 20 minutes. And then they come back after this hike and his family is freaking out and they're like, where the hell have you been? It's been two hours.
28:41 Speaker 04 We've been running around the park screaming your name and we didn't know where you were. We thought you guys left. We didn't know what happened. And she was like, it was so weird because we were not that far from where they were. So if they actually were yelling our names, they would have, we would have heard them. But one thing that she couldn't figure out, and, and she was like a totally normal woman too. She was like, I, I can't explain this at all. And this, it freaks me out to this day. She's probably mid 30s. She was like, I still think about this all the time. It still freaks me out. But the family had run through that trail and didn't see them. And she insisted that that was the only place in the park that they, the two of them had gone was just on this one little trail. So she couldn't figure out how they didn't see them while she was there. And I was like, that's so weird. Let me look into it.
29:23 Speaker 04 So I started looking into like the history of the park and it turns out, take this for what you will, that in the seventies, there was a witch named Gail that lived in the area. And she's on record. She gives interviews. She, she died in maybe 2020, but like later in life, she had done interviews with local news and stuff. And so she tells a story about how in the seventies, she put a curse on the park that causes people to lose time by entering different dimensions. And so she said that she would like slip through the dimensions in the park. And this woman that I talked to had never heard of that before. Like she, she was very unaware that that was a thing. So it's not like she was pulling my leg or anything. So I let her know, I was like, maybe it was from this curse that this witch put on the park back in the seventies, but it was.
30:06 Speaker 04 Crazy. It's not aliens, but it is, I guess, another thing. Like, maybe there was some sort of witch that cursed this area. Who knows? But I just, that, that's a time slip story that always sticks with me.
30:18 Cassandra Yahnian? That's so funny, because in my head, when you were telling that story, I kept thinking interdimensional, like some type of, you're in the same place, but you're in different dimensions, is the only thing that I could think of, that you could be standing and yelling and going through the same area, but knowing you don't see each other and you totally miss each other. So that's so interesting that someone has come forward and been like, I, did she ever explain why she cursed the park?
30:42 Speaker 04 It wasn't a malicious curse. She just, she just said she did. I guess she was really feeling it in the 70s that this park needed.
30:50 Cassandra Yahnian? It's like the best prank.
30:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, seriously. But now, but it's literally called the, the Area 51 of New York, because so many people have weird experiences like that.
31:00 Cassandra Yahnian? Interesting.
31:01 Speaker 04 And it has become known as this kind of alien. There's even like a, a big alien head on the sign, because they thought it was maybe aliens. But I really think it was just this woman in the 70s who put this weird interdimensional curse on the park.
31:13 Cassandra Yahnian? We'll add it to our list of places to visit.
31:17 Danielle LaRock? Get me out of this dimension. I want to go somewhere else.
31:21 Speaker 04 I know. Tell me what you find if you, if you go into Gail's dimension that she set upon the park.
31:27 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. Now I'm so curious. I could, I could do another dimension, I think, for a few minutes.
31:32 Speaker 04 It's not that far from you guys either, because you're already kind of over on that side of the, the country anyways.
31:37 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, we're on the East Coast.
31:38 Speaker 04 Yeah. Take a day. Switch dimensions. Go take a day trip.
31:44 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, day trip to another dimension. Yeah.
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33:13 Speaker 04 Okay, I'm gonna read the next one that I have for you guys. This one is called Florida Appalachia Cola National Forest Creepy Encounter With A Serial Killer. And this comes from Reddit user Dr. Jim Danger. So this story goes. When I was about 18, me and some friends took a road trip about seven hours or so down to the Appalachia Cola National Forest near Tallahassee, Florida. We were gonna do a little camping, drink a few ice cold Natty Lights, you know, 18-year-old stuff. As such, we didn't want to be bothered by any park rangers, so we drove way deep into the woods. We got there, we set up camp, we had said Natty Lights, and me and a friend decided to go do a little exploring. So we walked about 100 yards from our site back to the main road.
33:57 Speaker 04 And we saw another path directly across from us, so we kept walking. Immediately, we started seeing signs that someone had lived there for a while. Big bags of trash, stuff like that. It should have been this huge red flag to turn around, but... You know, we were 18. Nothing could hurt us, right? So we get to this campsite of an older white guy living out of his van. Clotheslines strung up, coolers placed around it, this big gorgeous dog. I think maybe a golden retriever. We tried to back out, but he saw us, so he started talking to us. He seemed friendly enough. He asked us where we were from, told us about some cool spots to check out in the park. And we ended up chatting for 10 minutes and then going on our way.
34:39 Speaker 04 I kept thinking to myself, how odd it was that he gave all of his directions in steps, not yards or miles. Guy always seemed to be a little off balance as well. Not like he was stumbling drunk, but as if he was walking on a balance beam, kind of swaying from side to side. Oh, and he was super excited to talk about national parks and forests, especially ones where we were from. Okay, camping part over, we went back to our tents. Fast forward two months. That same friend calls me late at night and he tells me to turn on the news. I oblige and I see an old dude with a van. You see where this might be headed, but I didn't. So I get pretty annoyed at my friend for waking me up.
35:23 Speaker 04 No, watch, he tells me. And then I see the golden retriever and everything clicks. What the hell? That man's name was Gary Michael Hilton, and he was convicted of at least four murders. He kidnapped and murdered a girl on Blood Mountain in Georgia, an older couple in North Carolina, and a girl at that campsite that we were at not long after we left. Yes, the very same places that he had been talking to us about. Obviously, we called the cops and they put us in touch with the FBI. And we got flown down back to the area to take investigators to the campsite. We had to point out every spot we saw, anything. Tell them exactly what he told us. Show them all the places that he described to us.
36:08 Speaker 04 And I didn't find out until after the trial. But apparently, they found what appeared to be a partially destroyed human finger bone in an area near the site. So I had to fly down again to testify. Have you guys covered Gary Michael Hilton at all on your show? Cause he, he's known as like the National Park serial killer.
36:28 Cassandra Yahnian? The National, yeah, forest killer or something.
36:31 Speaker 04 Or National, yeah, National Forest.
36:33 Cassandra Yahnian? He's recommended to us all the time. We have not covered him.
36:36 Speaker 04 Let me give, I have like a little overview here for people who might not be familiar with him. So Gary Michael Hilton is a US Army veteran known as the National Forest, you were right, National Forest serial killer. And he's an American drifter convicted of murdering four people across Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida between 2007 and 2008. His victims include 24-year-old Meredith Emerson, who was abducted while hiking in Georgia, elderly couple John and Irene Bryant, who were attacked in North Carolina, and Cheryl Hodges Dunlap, a Florida nurse, whose decapitated body was found in the Appalachia Cola National Forest. Hilton used his victims ATM cards before killing them, and he often
37:17 Speaker 04 disposed of their bodies in remote wooded areas. He was sentenced to life in Georgia and received a death sentence in Florida for Dunlap's murder, which I looked into this, he actually publicly confessed to that murder this year in 2025. He had never publicly confessed to it before. He was doing an interview with Court TV, just a casual interview. They were asking him questions. He was like, I'm not going to tell you anything. And then all of a sudden, he was like, do you want to know something? I did kill her.
37:46 Cassandra Yahnian? Wow.
37:47 Speaker 04 And the, the Court TV interviewer is like, oh, you've never said that before. He's like, no, I've never said that before, but I'm ready to admit it now. I did kill her. Which was crazy. I mean, he's 78 now, so maybe he's kind of having like a deathbed confessions moment.
38:01 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, to be that interviewer, to be like, wait a second, what are you revealing to me now?
38:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So scary. But I know that one, I didn't know if you guys had covered him because he is such a, he's known for his like forest murders.
38:17 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, we get recommendations for it all the time. We have not covered him as of yet, but we are familiar with him because his story is just. Of course, he's another person. How you mentioned at the beginning of this episode of someone going into remote areas and targeting people.
38:34 Speaker 04 Right, right. And also, it seems like he lived in the area. The thing that really struck me about that story is something that I think about when I go hiking too, is you just never really know who you're running into. And so if you see a campsite that's kind of weird and stands out to you, and then months later, you come back and you see that it's on the news, is just so, so eerie to me.
38:55 Cassandra Yahnian? To know how close you were to something so horrific.
38:58 Speaker 04 Yeah.
38:58 Danielle LaRock? We've had a couple of people write in. So we do, twice a month, we do Trail Tales, which is just listener stories. And we've had quite a few people write in about having, just in retrospect, obviously, you know, just like this one, but with Carrie Stainer from Yosemite. And Cassie, I think, covered that episode in like, I don't know, episode four?
39:22 Cassandra Yahnian? It's like the third episode I ever did or something.
39:25 Speaker 04 Oh, I'm not familiar. Can you give me an overview also for like my listeners who might not be familiar?
39:30 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. So Carrie Stainer was a serial killer that was active in Yosemite National Park. And I can't, I'd have to look back on the year. It was a while. I want to say the 70s or 80s that this was happening. But he worked as a maintenance guy at one of the hotels that was right outside of the park. And he actually, he attacked a woman and her daughter and her daughter's friend who were staying in the hotel. And he also attacked a woman who was working in the park in a remote area. And it became huge headlines because he was just preying on people that were within the park. And there are some speculation that he has more victims that we're not aware of. But his whole story is really interesting because
40:12 Cassandra Yahnian? there's Carrie Stainer, who ended up being caught and is a serial killer. And he was caught staying at a lodge, like, and he was in a, someone, he was in a hot tub in a hotel with someone. And they were, saw him on the news, like, in the background and was like, hold on a second, wait a minute.
40:28 Danielle LaRock? Like, I was just in a tub with that guy.
40:30 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, like having a casual conversation and
40:35 Speaker 04 The guy from the tub? Oh, yeah. Whoa, scary.
40:38 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. Yeah. And so he ended up being caught because people recognized him from, from the news and stuff, but also his family story is interesting too, because his brother, Steven Spader, was actually abducted, Stainer, sorry, was actually abducted as a child. And he was abducted by this man and was taken for quite some time. And it was huge news for a very, very long time.
41:05 Speaker 04 That's right.
41:06 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
41:06 Speaker 04 I think I had, I didn't know the specifics about the serial killer brother, but I had heard the headline of like, oh, there was this little boy who was kidnapped and then his brother went on to become a serial killer.
41:17 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
41:18 Speaker 04 In your research during that episode, did it seem like the kidnapping of a child at all affected the way that the other brother grew up to become a serial killer? Or did those feel like separate things?
41:30 Cassandra Yahnian? I don't know. It's hard to say because I think that it, it must've had an effect on him at some point. But I do remember specifically when I was researching it, that his family was kind of shocked at the apathy he had towards his brother after he was found. Like he's even seen on some news coverage where everyone's like smiling and crying and so happy that his brother is back and safe. And you can see Carrie in the background, just stone face. And people said that they thought he felt a little bit of jealousy towards the attention that his brother was getting and that he didn't get it. And so there was like a weird dynamic there where he never, he never seemed to care.
42:14 Cassandra Yahnian? I don't know if care is the right word, but.
42:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, maybe he was already suffering from a lack of empathy as a child. Something that a lot of serial killers suffer from.
42:24 Cassandra Yahnian? Something was off with him for sure.
42:25 Speaker 04 Wow. That's really scary. Okay. So your listeners in hindsight said that they had stayed near where he was.
42:32 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
42:33 Speaker 04 Ooh.
42:34 Cassandra Yahnian? Or stayed in the hotel that he worked at at the time or had an interaction with him. We've had a few listeners who have met him.
42:42 Speaker 04 Whoa. And I met, was he targeting women?
42:45 Cassandra Yahnian? Yes.
42:46 Speaker 04 Yeah. And so I imagine a lot of your listeners are young women too, where you're like, you're really like, oh my God, that was almost me.
42:51 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. Yeah. It's so easy to put yourself in those shoes when you see the type of people, people like that are attacking and then you can envision yourself as that and you're doing, you, you're in similar situations as well. So it's very easy to put yourself there.
43:05 Speaker 04 Yeah. This is different, but I remember my mom telling me when she was, I can't remember how old she was, but she and all of her friends cut their hair short because Son of Sam was operating not too far away from where they were. And he was, it seemed like he was targeting really long haired brunette women. And so women just started cutting their hair because you're so scared. You don't know where this person is. You don't know if they're going to target you. You don't really know how to protect yourself. A lot of times too.
43:30 Cassandra Yahnian? You don't want to draw attention.
43:31 Speaker 04 You don't want to draw attention. We cover this on Clues, the other true crime show that I do. But a lot of times the news will withhold a lot of information from the public too, to not scare people. But it's information that like young women could really use that, hey, there is a serial killer in this park. Maybe be careful, but they don't want to scare people. So they're not telling anyone that he's operating in Yosemite. And it just, yeah, you just really don't know how to protect yourself in that situation.
43:58 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. You don't want to cause mass chaos, but at the same time, people need to know how to protect themselves at the.
44:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, definitely.
44:10 Speaker 06 Bonjour, compadre. It's the.
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44:43 Speaker 04 All right. So the ones that I've been covering so far have been a little bit more true crime focused and the ones that you have are a little more supernatural focused. So I'm actually really excited for you to read the next story that you guys have.
44:54 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. So the story that I have is titled, "Something Strange Is Happening in a Remote Town Outside Glacier National Park," and it's by Reddit user designer-stable6209. And I really like this one too, because we were just in Glacier National Park.
45:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, just got back. Okay, so you have to verify if you, if what happens in this story, if you could see it happening in the park.
45:20 Cassandra Yahnian? For sure. We'll see. There's a little town in remote northern Montana, right on the river just outside of Glacier National Park, near the Canadian border, where I've had a few experiences I still can't explain. My boyfriend and I go up there a lot in the summer. We're big into fly fishing and rafting, and it's kind of our favorite escape. It's insanely beautiful. There's a bar and music venue with a tiny mercantile at the center of town, but no cell service, no wifi, and it takes a long time to drive down a dirt road to get there. Big mountains, a rushing river, and this feeling that you're somewhere different. We always joke that it's like a portal. The first weird thing that happened was about four years ago. We were up there with three friends, staying in a private cabin that
46:02 Cassandra Yahnian? belonged to a friend of a friend. It was pretty close to a few other cabins. After grilling and hanging by the fire until around midnight, everyone but my boyfriend and I went inside to sleep. We stayed back to grab something from the truck and ended up just sitting in the truck bed, talking and watching the stars. That's when I heard it. A single loud clap, coming from somewhere behind us, maybe 100 yards out. A few seconds later, another clap, just one, but this time from our right. Then another from the left. They were spaced out, not fast or random, and each one clearly came from a different direction. Then another clap came from behind us again, only closer this time, maybe 75 yards away.
46:44 Cassandra Yahnian? One at a time, loud and from different angles, it felt intentional, like something was circling us. At one point, we heard another clap and dogs in the area started barking. We looked at each other but didn't say a word. We were frozen. Then we heard one more. This one was so close, it felt like it was right there. Without speaking, we both jumped up and sprinted to the cabin. I've never run that fast in my life. It wasn't just being creeped out, it was that full body panic, the kind where your brain is just screaming to get inside. As soon as we shut the cabin door behind us, we heard one last clap. It came from the woods right outside, maybe 15 feet away. Last year, we were back in the area, this time camping about 10 miles down the road
47:28 Cassandra Yahnian? at a lesser known spot along the river we were floating on during that day. It was a group of us in a few tents, and there was a guy we didn't know staying in a Sprinter van fairly close to us. He was friendly and we talked to him for a while. He mentioned he used to be in the Air Force. Later that night, our group of six or so friends was split up. Some were by the fire, a few were down by the river, and someone was off behind us in the trees peeing. I looked up and saw this flashlight in the sky, kind of like a shooting star, coming from the right to the left. But then it suddenly stopped, grew in brightness, flashed, hovered for a second, glowing bright, and then shot straight up into the sky incredibly fast before disappearing. Right away, people from all over the campsite started yelling,
48:12 Cassandra Yahnian? "Did you see that?", including the guy in the Sprinter van. He came over saying he saw it too, and told us it wasn't his first time. He said he's been seeing that same phenomenon twice before at the exact campsite. Considering his background in the Air Force, it definitely gave more weight to know how shocked he seemed by it. Later that night, we also saw Starlink satellites pass overhead, and those were really easy to recognize and totally different from what we had seen earlier. A month or so later, we were back in town at the bar seeing live music. We started chatting with one of the guys in the band, just talking about the area in general, and the campground came up casually. We didn't say a single word about what had happened to us there, but the musician just goes, "Damn, that campground is beautiful, but every time I'm there, I see UFOs."
48:57 Cassandra Yahnian? We just stared at him. "We also have a friend who works for Glacier National Park and has seen or heard about unmarked government vehicles heading into that area more than once. I'll be heading back to that campsite in July, and will definitely report back if anything else strange happens."
49:12 Danielle LaRock? Oh, man.
49:13 Cassandra Yahnian? There you go. There's your aliens.
49:15 Danielle LaRock? We were so close and we didn't even see them. I know exactly the town that this person is talking about also. And they didn't name it, so I don't know if I should. But I mean, it's not like a government secret or anything, but yeah,
49:31 Speaker 04 I'm curious.
49:33 Danielle LaRock? The mercantile gave it away.
49:34 Speaker 04 Oh, oh, okay, okay, okay.
49:37 Danielle LaRock? We were close to it. We didn't go. We didn't go on our trip, but just based on our own experience there recently, you know, a couple of weeks ago, the sky over Montana, I mean, big sky country for a reason. And just the amount that you can see, I don't doubt that people see strange things quite often. If you're paying attention to the sky, there's a lot to see on the ground, too. I mean, it's so stunning there, but erratic behavior by a light in the sky. It's hard to go anywhere else other than UFOs in your mind. It's just so hard, like nowadays with all the different technology and like things going on with
50:20 Danielle LaRock? the military and it's harder and harder to be like, that's definitely otherworldly because there's some crazy stuff that we're utilizing and stuff, especially in, I don't know, when somebody from the military themselves are like, that's not us.
50:34 Speaker 04 Right, right.
50:35 Danielle LaRock? That's harder to be like, oh, okay. I'm all team UFO, though, so I don't have to say it again.
50:42 Speaker 04 Well, I had actually, okay, so the clapping at the beginning, I think, is related to what everyone has was seeing in the sky at the park, because I had heard other stories about people who experienced UFOs or thought that they had experienced UFOs, where there does seem to be sound coming from every direction all around you. I had heard at one point, it sounds like kind of like monkeys chittering was one of the sounds someone described, but the clapping coming from every direction is really scary. And also, I'm a big believer that animals know more than we do. And so the dogs freaking out, too. Maybe the dogs had kind of caught on to the fact that there was like something there that wasn't supposed to be there with that clapping sound.
51:23 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, confirming that something's off.
51:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, right. Exactly.
51:28 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Well, not to take this in another direction, but when I first thought or was hearing you describe the clapping and the different intentional, like there's some sort of intelligence behind it. It's not random noise.
51:41 Speaker 04 Bigfoot.
51:42 Danielle LaRock? I was thinking Bigfoot, but not the clapping. I was thinking more of, because usually when people talk about Bigfoot or Sasquatch, they're talking about knocking because there's a behavior that's attributed to Bigfoot that is kind of like what our great apes and chimps do with territorial behavior as far as like taking wood and knocking it against a tree. And that's kind of like, that pops up in different Bigfoot stories as far as like, it's like maybe like a warning or something like that. But I've never heard of clapping with Bigfoot. I don't know. Have you, Cassie?
52:19 Cassandra Yahnian? I guess it is more knocking. Yeah.
52:22 Speaker 04 Are you guys all in on Bigfoot?
52:24 Danielle LaRock? Oh, yeah.
52:25 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
52:28 Speaker 04 Well, because you, I mean, you would know more than me. This is, this is your whole domain. You spend more time in the forest and you also spend more time like reading about the forest, talking about it. So you would know.
52:38 Cassandra Yahnian? Danielle is very much the Bigfoot. I believe that there is a version of Bigfoot that exists, but Danielle is very, she, she has the knowledge.
52:48 Danielle LaRock? It's so funny, like right out of camera sight, it's behind my camera, but I have a shelf and it literally has a ghost, a Bigfoot and an alien. And it's like, that's my trifecta. I love believing in things that are like the quote unquote, unbelievable. Like I just think it makes life more exciting and
53:09 Speaker 04 I agree. I totally agree.
53:11 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. It's just like, why not expand your mind and kind of consider different possibilities? It's, it is wild. It's hard to believe that there's a great ape thing in the woods of the world, but why not?
53:25 Speaker 04 I think so. It is very hard for people to believe, but I will say, we like, we cover a lot of folklore at Heart's is Pounding. We have episodes on Brazilian folklore, Appalachian folklore, and a really common theme in folklore spanning every single country, spanning every single time period is creatures in the woods that no one can explain. And the way that they're described don't make sense with any of the other wildlife that lives in the area at the time. In Brazil, they had these giant sloths that really resembled Bigfoot. And so people are like, is that actually Bigfoot that they were seeing and we just didn't know. But there are really big hairy giant creatures that have human-like, uh,
54:05 Speaker 04 Descriptions, I guess, that appear all over the world in every single time period, in folklore and stories that are passed orally to each other. So when I hear that, I'm like, there's, there is stuff deep within the woods that we just don't know about.
54:20 Danielle LaRock? There's something to that. To believe that we know everything there is to know about the world and every species and every single thing that lives here and has forever is crazy. There's so much unknown about the world and to be able to hear these stories and to have like some type of belief that something is out there. It's not only interesting and I think makes life more fun, but I think realistic. Like who's to say that these things don't exist?
54:48 Speaker 04 Yeah. Is there any region of the US where there's the most amount of Bigfoot sightings?
54:53 Danielle LaRock? Pacific Northwest.
54:54 Speaker 04 Probably, yeah, the PNW. Oh, interesting. Okay.
54:57 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. And that was like, one of the funnest parts about, I've, I've lived quite a few different places over time. I like to move a lot and I lived in Washington State for two years and that was just so fun because everything was Bigfoot themed. I mean, they definitely lean into it hard there. But yeah, Washington, Oregon area is just kind of like a hub for Bigfoot.
55:24 Speaker 04 Okay. Which is kind of the area, sort of, of Glacier National Park.
55:29 Danielle LaRock? No, that's Montana.
55:31 Speaker 04 It's Montana, but I guess like in the, in the grand scheme of the world, it's sort of the same area. Yeah. Up in that corner of the US.
55:40 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
55:40 Speaker 04 So it's a little different. No, I get that. Maybe that Bigfoot got lost and was in Montana instead of the Pacific Northwest.
55:47 Danielle LaRock? I mean, there's descriptions of creatures that are kind of run in the same vein as, I think Bigfoot is kind of like this umbrella term, but if you really think about it, people who are super into this stuff, I mean, I like to think that I'm pretty into it, but I'm by no means, I mean, there are so many other people who are way more knowledgeable, but you have like the skunk ape, you have the grass man, you have yeti, you have Bigfoot, you have. Yawi, you have all of these different names. I kind of think of it like when you think of wildlife that we actually know, not cryptozoology, but wildlife we know for a fact exists. Like in simple terms, bears, you know that bears exist, but there are different types of bears,
56:32 Danielle LaRock? depending on where you are in the world. And I think it's not super far off base to kind of attribute that to Bigfoot.
56:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, that there's different, not species.
56:42 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, species.
56:43 Speaker 04 Yeah, get the species, like with dogs.
56:45 Danielle LaRock? Right, yeah.
56:46 Speaker 04 Like, this is the golden retriever one, this is the lab. That's so interesting. But that kind of goes back to what I was talking about with just how many different cultures have independently seen things like that in the woods. It makes sense that it's something.
57:00 Danielle LaRock? It's gotta be.
57:01 Speaker 04 Yeah. Ooh, okay. So maybe that is what it was in Glacier National Park.
57:07 Danielle LaRock? Maybe they were two different, there's an alien and something else. I don't know. There's been, I'm not sure if I'm on board with this a hundred percent because I don't know enough, but people have been writing in to us specifically about this too, as far as like, I don't know if it's a new theory, but a lot of people think that Bigfoot and extraterrestrials are connected.
57:30 Speaker 04 I have heard that.
57:31 Danielle LaRock? There's some overlap with UFO sightings and Bigfoot sightings, like time wise and geographic wise. So I don't know, maybe it could be both.
57:39 Speaker 04 I had heard too that Bigfoot, there's maybe an interdimensional element to Bigfoot.
57:43 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
57:44 Speaker 04 That's why he's hard to nail down is because he can kind of come in and out of different dimensions and pop in different places. I know there's a lot of very supernatural stuff surrounding him. So yeah, maybe it's all tied together.
57:55 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Who's to say?
57:57 Speaker 04 Who's to say?
58:02 Speaker 06 Bonjour, compadre. It's the
58:06 Speaker 06 How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. And wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.
58:36 Speaker 04 All right. Do you want to read your next one?
58:38 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. So my next story is titled Scary Experience in Mount Rainier National Park by Reddit user recent underscore Fox underscore 2091. And I'm excited because I also lived here. I went to a Van Life meetup in Enham Claw, Washington over the weekend. The city is close to Mount Rainier National Park, and because I had already made the trip, I figured I might as well camp overnight nearby the park in a dispersed camping spot in the forest. I brought some ingredients to make carne asada tacos, downloaded some movies, and was ready for a nice cozy evening in my van, something which I do on most weekends in various campsites around the state. When I got there, I hiked around the campsite, which was very nice, save for the large amounts
59:20 Danielle LaRock? of trash, which was littered about, which actually made me really sad. The trail led to two fire pits not too far from where I had parked, and it ended at a quiet riverbank. It seemed like it was a good spot that local teens might go to drink and smoke weed. There was even a log bench with the word 420 painted colorfully on its seat. I wasn't sure how recently people had been here, and there were open half-drink cans around the fire pits that seemed cold. I wasn't quite sure if this meant anything in the moment. I decided that it likely wasn't an active camp, and that's where I chose to set up camp. The spot wasn't terribly isolated. Every 30 minutes or so, someone would drive by to claim another campsite down the lonely fire road, some trucks, and even an RV.
1:00:04 Danielle LaRock? People like me looking to spend time out in nature and who don't want to shell out the extra cash for a campsite. After exploring the area, I went back to my van to start making dinner. I used a satellite communicator to check in with my friends and family as I didn't have any service this deep into the forest. The sun was setting, and as I sat down to eat my tacos, I left my doors open to let the air flow, and the cool breeze felt amazing. But after eating and when it was quiet, I started noticing a sound in the distance. They sounded like gunshots, really almost like cannon shots. Deep rhythmic booms echoing in the valley every few seconds. What accompanied those noises was the noise of a chainsaw, much closer than the gunshots.
1:00:46 Danielle LaRock? Now, neither of these noises are very uncommon to hear when camping on fire roads, to be honest. It wouldn't be unheard of for someone to use a chainsaw to cut down a larger tree trunk into firewood. Summer fire ban be damned. But then saw some campers start to leave, including an RV, which was particularly unusual. Finding a campsite for an RV can be hard, but it is especially hard to find one at night. The rule is to always find camp before the sun sets, and the sun had only just disappeared from the sky. Something spooked them, and I wondered if it would be wise to follow their lead. However, I had unwashed dishes on the counter and was in no mood to move, and so I didn't. I did, however, triple check that all my doors and windows were locked before drifting to sleep.
1:01:31 Danielle LaRock? That night can only be described as hazy and disorienting. I have very little memory of anything that had happened, but the evidence that something had most definitely happened was very evident. I remember being awake in the pitch black of night, struggling to breathe. Not choking, my lungs were filled with air, but I remember the feeling of drowning. I remember the plating desperation for air. I remember trying to see with my sight being wholly consumed by the darkness in front of me. I have memory of trying to punch out a window to no avail. I remember making my way to the side doors of my van to open the door to breathe. And then I woke up in bed and the sun was in the sky. I would have chalked this up to a really bad dream, but all around me, my van was damaged.
1:02:17 Danielle LaRock? It looked like there had been a struggle. Some of my window blinds were sliced and ruined. One of my windows had a scratch mark from the inside. Even the air vent on my ceiling was obliterated from the inside. My curtain rack was pulled down from the ceiling, which was screwed into a beam. I didn't think I was even capable of this. The van was very well ventilated, so I am unsure as to why I would have had trouble breathing in the first place. My carbon monoxide detector was silent. And the van was very well ventilated after cooking. I have no idea what could have caused me to do this and ruin my lovely van. I saw no indication of any kind of forced entry, and all of the damage was done from the inside by me trying to get out, I guess. My knuckles
1:02:58 Danielle LaRock? were very sore, as well as my feet, as I had probably hit them hard on the various cabinets in the van on my way out. A pole I used to prop up my canopy was strangely out of place in the middle of the floor and broken at the ends. I have never had any form of night terrors or sleepwalking before this, except for one incident, also nearby mountain near National Park. A few months ago, my friends and I were driving once again through Enamclaw, trying to find a camping spot where we might be able to post up. It was nighttime already, and as I said before, finding camp at night can be pretty difficult. We were driving down the same road I had taken for my recent trip, and we had gotten a tip from a local about a mountain which had some good dispersed camping. We were tired and hungry and just wanted to start
1:03:43 Danielle LaRock? setting up camp. We passed a few spots, mostly mud and rock, none very appealing. We decided to pick the least muddy spot we could find, and I helped them set up their tents. It was one of my very first trips in my van, and I was excited to test it out. As we were setting up camp, we heard the wind blowing ominously through the trees, causing them to creak loudly, threatening us with a fall. And this particular area of the mountain was on very unleveled in the most unsettling way. So we thus refer to this campsite as the ominous slant. When we slept that night, a few things of note happened. My friend Melissa claims to have heard squeaking noises as if someone was wearing a latex bodysuit. She refers to the sound as the happy
1:04:26 Danielle LaRock? gimpers. Kurt, her boyfriend, swears he heard a bear that night. However, the worst of it was when, in the middle of the night, they both heard me yell bloody murder from my van. Kurt rushed out of the tent, tripping a few times in his haste, and rushed over to swing open the doors. But I was asleep. He asked what was wrong, and he thought that someone was attacking me. I had no idea what he was talking about. I have no memory at all of any nightmares preceding it or anything. I have no idea what any of this means. I've been on many trips in the van since with different people and nothing like this has ever happened anywhere else. It has only happened when I've been in Mount Rainier National Park. To be honest, thinking about the feeling of drowning in the darkness makes me very much
1:05:09 Danielle LaRock? not want to revisit the subject anytime soon. So I don't believe I'll be visiting the park anytime in the near future for camping either. There is something strange going on there.
1:05:20 Speaker 04 Do you agree as someone who's lived there?
1:05:22 Danielle LaRock? I don't know. I'm gonna say that I have certainly felt strange vibes in different locations, but I have personally never experienced them in Mount Rainier. I've actually had kind of the opposite experience. So I don't know. I can't say that I would be on board with like that feeling of, because I've been in that exact area. But at the same time, people have different experiences, you know? So who am I to say?
1:05:55 Speaker 04 Well, one thing that I've noticed in some of the camping and hiking mysterious disappearances that we've covered is there's this element of people making decisions when they're hiking and camping that they wouldn't normally make in their everyday lives. And so there, some investigators believe that there is maybe a level of hypnosis that can happen if you're by yourself in the woods, you're not around people, you don't have other people's perspectives on things, or you're trying to make decisions for yourself. Also, if you've been hiking a really long time, you could be dehydrated, you could be tired, you could be seeing the same thing over and over again. And so there maybe is this level in the wilderness of hypnosis
1:06:38 Speaker 04 that occurs inside of people that causes strange things to happen to their brains, which is what I thought of when she was saying, like, I don't ever get this weird sleep paralysis thing, except when I'm in this park. Like, maybe there really is something about this park that is doing that to her brain.
1:06:54 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:06:54 Speaker 04 As well.
1:06:55 Danielle LaRock? There's two things that I thought of when I was reading this story, and they're kind of unrelated. The first is Cassie and I have talked about this before, but when we're camping, which we've done a lot of.
1:07:09 Speaker 04 Many times.
1:07:10 Danielle LaRock? Is there something about?
1:07:13 Danielle LaRock? Camping regardless of if we had a particularly strenuous day or anything like that, but we just sleep and dream differently when we're camping. Interesting. Can you explain a little bit more?
1:07:27 Cassandra Yahnian? I almost always have vivid dreams every night that I'm camping and I don't have a theme to them, but I don't have a lot of vivid dreams just at home or in a hotel or anything. But whenever I'm sleeping outside on the ground, I have very, very vivid dreams.
1:07:46 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. And we do a lot of traveling and sleeping in different locations. I mean, we've been to almost every continent. Um, we've been on trains, boats, hotels, falukas, like we've been everywhere and kind of had pretty much every type of experience of like sleeping somewhere that you can. And there's just something different about when you're sleeping outdoors. It's this sort of like, I don't want to say hypnotic, but it really is different. It's a deeper, and I don't know if it's like you're returning to this connection in nature and something shifts in you. But we know we're not alone
1:08:28 Danielle LaRock? with that. We have plenty of friends who have had either just weird experiences at night when they're asleep. I don't think anything to this degree, but definitely like Cassie just said, like just there's this vividness that comes with sleeping outdoors and not really sure what that stems from, but we've experienced it. And of course, there's like this element of your mind playing tricks on you of like, I heard this, I heard that, you know, and attributing it, like your mind being like, oh, that was definitely X, Y, or Z, even though it's just like a squirrel walking in the brush. You know, your mind is like. On high alert. So there's that, but there's also, and this is not a story we've
1:09:10 Danielle LaRock? covered, but again, it is, I, you probably have just knowing your catalog, but the Dyatlov Pass.
1:09:19 Speaker 04 We haven't covered it. We covered something similar, the Kamar Dabin incident. But yeah, Dyatlov Pass is another one where I think they looked at that crime scene and felt like there was a possibility that all of those people made a decision in that moment that they couldn't explain, or that was different than what they would have normally done. Yeah.
1:09:37 Danielle LaRock? And it has elements of from being on the inside and trying to get out. Like there's not something coming from the outside in, which is what we see a lot with either a human attacking you or wildlife or a natural disaster. Like there's something coming at you or into your space. But here, like something's happening inside the van and her waking up and being like, I was trying to get out for some reason. And that's, that has similar elements to, you know, that story with what happened to those people.
1:10:14 Speaker 04 Which makes me think that it's something internal that's happening. It's something like within your mind or physiological that's happening where you're feeling this need to get out more than an external threat influencing that behavior, which that's really scary to me. And the fact that that does happen to people outdoors in the wilderness on long camping trips is so, so spooky.
1:10:37 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. And having just such a kind of violent reaction in your sleep where you're clawing at your whole van ripping off curtains and you have this memory when you wake up of not being able to breathe and trying to escape. And then you see everything around you. It's like, whatever I was feeling, I was up and about and I was like really physically trying to get out of this.
1:10:59 Speaker 04 I'm curious if anyone listening to this has sleep terror and if this mimics something that you've experienced. Cause I have, growing up, you know, when you're on a family vacation, you all sleep in the same hotel room. I have a sibling who has, I would describe it as mild sleep terror, not that they've ever gone to get help for it. But so when we would be all sleeping in the hotel room, Leo, my sibling, would wake up and start clawing at the ceiling or would look up as if there was someone above them and just would be clawing, clawing, clawing. And I remember this one time specifically, they're clawing, they sit up, they turn to me, eyes still closed, dead asleep. I start shaking them awake. And I was like, what just happened? What like, what were you seeing that I didn't see? And to them, there were people in a grate above
1:11:44 Speaker 04 their face that they were trying to claw at and help and save. But it was so visual, it was so real in that moment. And their body was acting out that exact scene. But I just had never heard, except for maybe a very few cases of someone getting up, because this, whoever wrote this account said that their whole van was basically destroyed. Like, they had gotten up and none of that woke them up. Like punching the windows didn't wake them up, destroying the tubes at the end of the van didn't wake them up. That is really intense to experience, I imagine.
1:12:15 Danielle LaRock? To be physically sore the next day.
1:12:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, like you fought.
1:12:19 Danielle LaRock? That's super interesting.
1:12:21 Speaker 04 It also begs the question, did someone get into the van?
1:12:24 Danielle LaRock? Right. Well, didn't they say the doors were locked?
1:12:26 Speaker 04 They did say that. But I guess you could have locked the door on the way out. Yeah, I don't know what that would have been. But that's always like a big fear of mine, too, is that I'm sleeping and I wake up and I learn that someone else has been in my space.
1:12:36 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:12:37 Speaker 04 Very, very spooky to me.
1:12:39 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, for all the times that Cassie and I have spent together at night, I don't think, you're not a big, Cassie's the most silent, like statuesque sleeper I have ever met. It's actually kind of weird, like on the other end of the spectrum. I just like find a spot and I don't move or make a peep until the morning. I'm so jealous. Yeah, she lays down like a vampire and just closes her eyes. She's like, I'm about to sleep. And she just like shuts down like a robot and then wakes up in the same way. It's wild. And I'm like, all right, I'm up.
1:13:17 Speaker 04 Oh my God, I am so jealous. I wish I could sleep like that.
1:13:20 Cassandra Yahnian? Ah, same.
1:13:21 Speaker 04 That's crazy. Well, I think that's, those are the stories that we have for today. I'm very curious. I always ask the audience at the end, what types of stories scare them the most? Some people really freak out with the supernatural stories. Some people really freak out with the more grounded, true crimey stories. I wonder if it's going to be different because these all took place in the woods and in national parks. Because for me, national parks, the woods, big foresty areas really represent the unknown in a way that you just don't encounter in your regular, everyday life. So the element of the supernatural existing within that to me is like so spooky, but also cool and enticing. And it makes me want to go even more, even though I do share these stories about how scary it is. Do you guys have any, if, for anyone
1:14:05 Speaker 04 who's listening, that is maybe scared to go camping because they hear all these stories, what advice do you have for them?
1:14:13 Cassandra Yahnian? That's a great question. If you are scared to go camping, but you want to go, I would, my advice would be to bring a friend with you so you're not alone and to start off easy. I mean, you can start off at a campground that has bathrooms, that has other people around, that has facilities. So you can start off kind of easy. Also, my favorite trick of camping, which I know probably is not for everybody, but is my favorite thing and has changed my life. Danielle hates it.
1:14:43 Speaker 04 I know what you're about to say. And I don't even know if I could time this, but I sleep with earplugs in.
1:14:50 Cassandra Yahnian? I just, I always say to Danielle, I'm like, whatever's happening outside my tent is none of my business. And it's only because with earplugs, I can still hear. Like if there is a big noise outside, I'm still going to hear it. It doesn't make me so I, I can't hear anything. But when I sleep, I'm such a delicate sleeper, where if there's, if it's quiet and there's any noise around me, I wake up and if I'm outside, I immediately freak myself out. I'm like, what is that? Who is that? And I found that it makes me sleeping at night not work well. And I'm just up all night. Even if a squirrel walks by, I'm like, a bear. And then I have to be like, okay, think about it. That was the smallest footstep. That's not a bear.
1:15:32 Cassandra Yahnian? And I just freaked myself out. So I found that if I wear earplugs at night, it kind of drowns out those small noises and I can sleep better.
1:15:41 Speaker 04 That's really good advice.
1:15:42 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. Unless you really want to hear anything that's coming.
1:15:45 Speaker 04 Yeah. If you want to freak yourself out.
1:15:46 Cassandra Yahnian? Which I totally understand that side of the coin too, but.
1:15:50 Speaker 04 What did she call it in the story? The happy gimpers? Just a man in full latex, maybe outside of their tent?
1:15:56 Cassandra Yahnian? I hate that so much.
1:15:58 Danielle LaRock? Like, that is so specific also.
1:16:03 Speaker 04 It's like an American horror story, the Evan Peters latex suit.
1:16:07 Cassandra Yahnian? That's the first thing that came to my mind. No, thank you.
1:16:12 Danielle LaRock? I mean, weirder things have happened out there. So that's, I'm not saying it's like completely impossible, but.
1:16:16 Speaker 04 True.
1:16:17 Danielle LaRock? That's what I'm talking about. Your mind attributing like making connections that probably aren't realistic, but.
1:16:24 Speaker 04 Yes, totally.
1:16:26 Danielle LaRock? I don't know. My advice is to just go for it for people who aren't accustomed to camping. And like Cassie said, you can start small. It doesn't have to be this huge expedition where you're solo through hiking in the middle of, you know, the Pacific Northwest and you've never been there or whatever. But just, I think that through our experiences with camping and traveling and recreating outdoors, whether together in a small group or even by ourselves, like alone, I think that recreating outdoors in whatever way, whether it's hiking or camping, or even taking your RV or your Sprinter van, it just gives you confidence.
1:17:07 Speaker 04 Yes. Yeah, I agree with that.
1:17:09 Danielle LaRock? You definitely, you know, you rely on yourself. And I think a lot of times in our day to day life, like even if you're doing things alone, you're, you have support, you know, whether it's the support of technology or other people or infrastructure, things like that. And when you're camping and you're just kind of reconnecting with nature, you have to be self-reliant and you have to problem solve on your own. And it just forces you to be independent in a way you don't get to be a lot. And that boosts your confidence and that will trickle out and definitely touch other parts of your life. So I don't think you have to be an avid outdoors person to get those benefits, but spending time in nature and. Whatever capacity you feel is best will definitely improve your life.
1:17:54 Speaker 04 I love that so much. I think that's so accurate. The idea of being in a situation where you have to problem solve for yourself, I think instills a lot of confidence in people.
1:18:02 Danielle LaRock? For sure. And usually it's not because like you're hearing Bigfoot or.
1:18:07 Speaker 04 Right, yeah. That's not the problem you have to solve. It's more like how to build a tent.
1:18:10 Danielle LaRock? Right, yeah. How to build a tent, how to get fresh water, how to ration, how to, you know, read a map, use a compass, like just things like that.
1:18:19 Speaker 04 Yes, yeah. Well, I love it. I hope everyone who's listening does not get too scared and still wants to go out and explore and camp and do all those things. At least my listeners. I know your, your listeners are like so into that and go on trips with you guys, which is very, very cool.
1:18:33 Cassandra Yahnian? Well, thanks for tuning in, everyone. If you want to hear more from Kaelyn and, and the Heart Starts Pounding podcast and more of these really interesting Reddit threads, you can find her on wherever you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple and YouTube. Check out her website at www.hartstarts pounding.com and follow her Instagram and TikTok at heartstarts pounding.
1:18:53 Danielle LaRock? Thanks for tuning in. See you next time.
1:18:55 Speaker 04 In the meantime, enjoy the view.
1:18:57 Danielle LaRock? But watch her back. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love National Park After Dark and want to hear exclusive bonus stories, join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Patreon subscribers have access to our National Park After Dark Book Club, live streams, Discord and much more. If you prefer to watch our episodes, video episodes are now available on YouTube. If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And to follow along with all our adventures, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X at National Park After Dark.
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