What I Saw in My Room | Campfire Stories with MrBallen

All right we are here at this amazing campfire in Montana. I've never been to Montana but I'm excited to be here tonight with my friend Steve Rinella who is the founder of Meat Eater. He's one of the most well-known people in hunting and outdoorsmanship. I mean you're sort of like the face of Montana in my mind. Oh well. When I was coming out here and I began googling Steve Rinella via Michigan you know and but no I had the the pleasure today of coming out here and joining you on your show this morning so thank you for that. And so tonight what we're going to do is I ask Steve to come out here and to sort of middle of nowhere. We're at this the Lone Mountain Ranch in Montana. We're out at campfire here and we're going to hopefully swap some stories. I got I got a good one for you tonight but Steve thank you for being here tonight. Thanks I'm excited to I'm excited to hear the story especially because I understand it's it's a it's a local-ish. Well it's sort of local-ish. We originally we had planned a couple of stories that were sort of geared towards Montana because we're in Montana of course. But I was thinking about it and and I my team is probably going to know this is going to happen. I have a habit of throwing in extra stories at the end. I'll probably get to those but there's there's actually another story that I've been sort of waiting to to do again that I thought would be very apropos for uh for a campfire setting and actually sort of before we even get into that and I'll tell you why I think it's great for tonight. So you are someone in virtue of being like the hunter, the outdoorsman, the conservationist, you spent so much time out in the wild. I mean like you were what just in Alaska for the last two weeks. Some of the stories that you've just sort of anecdotally thrown out included like uh he recently had been uh what did you call it with narwhal oil you were what were you doing? Yeah I had I had occasion to render some narwhal oil. He's rendering narwhal oil as one does you know in my life I do that frequently but no in in your experience spending so much time outdoors and in our podcast this morning you described it as your peaceful place being out in the wild. But considering my domain ends up being more strange dark and mysterious I'm curious in your life has there ever been a time when you're out in in the wilds right out in the forest whatever in Alaska doing your narwhal thing where something just felt off something felt creepy doesn't need to be outright paranormal or even hinting towards if it's some experience where you're like got the there's been scary instances like fractions of seconds scare but the most scary prolonged thing that happened was a group of us were camping in different tents where was this this is in Alaska of course unbeknownst to me one of my companions a woman had went down to get water from the creek but got very lost in the dark oh boy so to wake up and hear off in the distance a screaming woman oh boy and then the moments before it was put together that Jennifer was not in her tent and in fact it was her because we're nine miles from a road that's a skinwalker obviously and so to be like hold on a minute we're here now there this is like the thing you like this is the makings of a horror story there was a woman screaming off in the mountains but then pretty soon it was like oh my god Jennifer's not in her tent yeah that's terrifying but it was like it was it was it was long it was long scare oh man did you like it was did you like go out and did you guys try to make sense of what you were here yeah yeah but once it made sense but it was like minutes of horror oh man you know minutes of horror before someone put together that it assembled other things are just fast like what are some fast ones that have come like even one example of a fast moment of oh boy this is not okay like something with a bear for instance oh yeah of course you know yeah well there's no there's like the time you know right have you have you come in close contact with bear I mean obviously yeah but I'm talking like unwanted close contact with bears yeah I mean obviously yeah but I'm talking like unwanted close contact very close yeah very close never been very close yeah very close never been very close yeah very close never been well I maybe had one step on me one time well I maybe had one step on me one time well I maybe had one step on me one time but yeah but don't very close geez yeah but yeah but don't very close geez yeah but yeah but don't very close geez yeah that's scary quick not scary long Wow I that's scary quick not scary long Wow I that's scary quick not scary long Wow I mean so I have over the course of you mean so I have over the course of you mean so I have over the course of you know the last several years that I've know the last several years that I've know the last several years that I've been doing the whole mr. ballin thing been doing the whole mr. ballin thing I've covered so many stories of other I've covered so many stories of other I've covered so many stories of other people's horrors that have happened out people's horrors that have happened out people's horrors that have happened out mostly in the wilds to be honest I've mostly in the wilds to be honest I've mostly in the wilds to be honest I've always been fascinated with sort of like always been fascinated with sort of like always been fascinated with sort of like the the terrifying things that happen the the terrifying things that happen the the terrifying things that happen outside of the city out in the forests outside of the city out in the forests outside of the city out in the forests but you know basically I'm telling other but you know basically I'm telling other but you know basically I'm telling other people's stories and I thought who people's stories and I thought who people's stories and I thought who could have done it so yeah this story could have done it so yeah this story could have done it so yeah this story just as a preface it's one that I've just as a preface it's one that I've just as a preface it's one that I've told live a number of times gets pretty told live a number of times gets pretty told live a number of times gets pretty big reactions to it people think that big reactions to it people think that big reactions to it people think that this story in a way is like my origin this story in a way is like my origin this story in a way is like my origin as to how I came to being like the as to how I came to being like the as to how I came to being like the strange dark and mysterious internet strange dark and mysterious internet strange dark and mysterious internet story this is you this is me okay and story this is you this is me okay and story this is you this is me okay and and I'll also say that before this this and I'll also say that before this this and I'll also say that before this this instant half this story happened and instant half this story happened and instant half this story happened and after I have never once had anything after I have never once had anything after I have never once had anything happened to me that I would even happened to me that I would even happened to me that I would even remotely consider would fall into the remotely consider would fall into the remotely consider would fall into the camp of unexplainable even paranormal camp of unexplainable even paranormal camp of unexplainable even paranormal there's only one time and to this day I there's only one time and to this day I there's only one time and to this day I still can't really put it together but I'm going to tell you that story and I'm going to see what you think about it. Okay. So when I was, when I was 16 years old, so this is like 2004, 2005, I was an avid snowboarder, huge snowboarder. I taught snowboarding, even though I lived in Quincy mass, which is just South of Boston mass. And it's like flat. There was like this little crappy hill, literally called blue Hills. That was our ski resort. And I'd go, I'd go snowboard there all the time. And I had two friends who were both named Nick, but one was nicknamed Wolf. So for the sake of the story, there's Nick and Wolf. Um, and we always rode together. So like every winter from the time I was like 12, so for like four consecutive seasons, we would go to blue Hills and shred this like tiny Hill. Uh, but the, the highlight of every winter was we would for a weekend or as long as we could, it's just like four or five days. We would go to the white mountains in New Hampshire. Oh yeah. I've been there. Oh, beautiful. And it's no Montana, but it's pretty good. No, but that's one of the deadliest. That's one of the deadliest. What? Mount Washington, not Mount Washington. That is the area. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. That's one of the deadliest mountains. Yeah. It's crazy up there. People don't appreciate it. People underestimate it. It's very true. And so Nick said of the two friends, Wolf is a sort of a goofy guy. Nick is like very stoic. Uh, and Nick, his family had this cabin that they had in their family for generations up in the white mountains. In particular, this cabin was, uh, it was built on the side of a mountain. It was this, it was, it used to be a thriving ski resort when the family had bought this cabin, this little cabin, uh, the ski resort shutdown, but they kept the cabin. So basically this cabin is, is on the side of, of an abandoned ski resort. Um, but every winter for those several winters up until I was 16, we would go to this cabin and it was amazing. Like, I mean, it was like the best time of the year. Uh, but whenever we would go to this cabin, it was always me, Nick Wolf, the three of us, and then Nick's mom and dad. And we would drive up Nick's mom would drive. Uh, but that was the dynamic every time. And, uh, right before we were supposed to go for my 16 year old winter, Nick's father very unexpectedly passed away. Like no warning sign. He had, I think he had a heart attack and he passed away. And we're talking, this is, I want to say it was like three days before we were supposed to go to this cabin. And, um, you know, when I found out about it, one, I knew him fairly well. I wasn't close with them, but I knew him. It was like really shocking. I felt so bad, but also practically speaking, I got in touch with Wolf to be like, Hey dude, uh, this might seem sort of crass, but there's no way we're going to go on this trip to, to the white mountains this year. Not that I was bummed about it, but it was just like, we're not even going to bring it up to Nick, his father, who, by the way, that family was very tight knit. And so you made the right call. Yeah. It was like, you're not going to say anything. You're just going to let it be. So Wolf and I just were like, we're not going to say a word, but within like 24 hours, we were able to go to this cabin and we were able to go to this or maybe 48 hours of the father passing away. Uh, Wolf and I got a call from Nick who he's, he was obviously grieving, but he was like, Hey, uh, we are still going to make the trip to the mountain. And he said, you know, my dad, he loved that place. He would go up there all the time on his own. Like this was his escape. He was, he was a big outdoorsman as well. He was up there all the time on his own. I think he actually built the cabin or he was involved in like repairing it to some degree. And so quickly, even as a 16 year old kid, my interpretation was like, okay, it seems like we're going to go honor Nick's father by going on this trip. That was my read. No questions asked me and Wolf are like, it seems to me like a denial shock kind of thing. But either way, remember that because that, that plays a role in my mind. I think it does. So the day comes, which was like a day or two later, it's like, we're going to, we're going to go up to the white mountains and you know, Nick picked up Wolf first and they came by my house. And I look outside, and it's the beat up white suburban. And the front seat is like the passenger seat is conspicuously vacant because that's where the father would always sit. The mother's driving and two 16 year old boys, Nick and Wolf are in the back. It's like, immediately super apparent he's not here like i'm not taking the front seat so i hop in the car but i went into this and wolf went into this really with the attitude of like we're here for the family we don't know if this is denial if this is whatever that we don't know what it is but we love this family we're just going to go no matter how weird it is so we get in the car and i'm like listening to my cd player i was listening to like system of the down big fan of system of the down crushing music on the way up like just trying to be cool about it and so as we're going up to the white mountains eventually nick's mom chimes in and says hey uh you know just so you guys know at some point while we're up here staying at the cabin we're going to be there for three nights uh her older sons were going to stop by possibly her older so i was 16 they were in their 30s this was like a separate marriage much older i'd never met them before and so the seed is planted that you're going to be going to this cabin it's going to be made up of people who are going to be going to be going to this cabin it's going to be made up of people who are going to be going to it's going to be made up of people who are going to be going to this cabin it's going to be made up maybe a little weird but at some point it sounds like the dynamic's going to shift when the older brothers get here and sort of fill in the gap that's been left behind yeah so up to the mountain we go and uh i'm going to give you an a seemingly over complicated description of the cabin itself it's very important to the story and you'll see why so we get up to new hampshire we reach i think it was called king pine i forget the name of this mountain where their cabin is located but it's abandoned ski slope it's still daytime you can see all the slopes that are now overgrown although on them and we start going up this main road that goes basically right up the the mountain and then at some point the road turns and you're sort of going parallel with the side of the mountain yeah and you see the cabin and the cabins are very disparate like there's no neighborhood it's like onesie twosie cabins across the mountain and many of them have been knocked down after the the slope had been abandoned so this is like one of a few but the cabin is built into the mountain it's a slope you build the cabin so it's level and in order to do that a portion of the cabin is sort of built into the mountain wall and the other portion is on stilts supported outside the mountain uh if you imagine approaching the cabin from the road that like leads into it on the side you'd be looking at the left side is the the side that kind of hangs off the mountain and the right side is tucked into the mountain it's a small cabin though the door that brings you into the cabin is right in front of you it sits basically right at that point where the uh the wraparound porch begins that is the sort of section of the cabin that's out over stilts so in order to get into the cabin you step onto the wraparound porch and there's a couple of steps where you're sort of off the ground and you could hear someone's footsteps out there and there's a door that leads into the cabin and there's that that wraparound porch goes all the way around the outside front of the cabin when you go into the cabin it's a it's a lofted cabin so when you first step in you open the door and there are sleigh bells that are connected to the inside of the door that like sit in the insides every time it opens conspicuous very loud you'd be standing with your right foot on linoleum a little tiny kitchen and then your left foot would be on shag carpet it was the dining room with no wall between them it was like dining room kitchen very small spaces but you're straddling the two of them and you're looking straight out and there's no walls between you it just sort of feeds out into this common space where there's a tv there's a couch and then if you go all the way to the back of this cabin and you just turn around you'd be looking up at the lofted section up above there's just a little flight of stairs the back right corner that go up and up there is where the master suite was if you go back to the front door you go in the cabin you got your right foot in the kitchen left foot in the dining room and you're looking into the cabin and you start walking as if you're going to go into that back section of the cabin but you stop halfway and you look into the mountain so to speak there is a singular hallway that goes down it turns and it reaches one door and that door leads to the bedroom where myself nick and wolf would sleep so our bedroom is embedded in the mountain there are no windows in our it's not scary by any means but you need to picture this room that's sort of tucked away in the back of the cabin this is all gonna make perfect sense once we get into it so we get to the cabin and we move in we and also in in the bedroom where we slept as soon as you get in there's a bunk bed that's immediately hugging the wall on your right i would sleep on the lower bunk wolf would sleep on the top bunk and then nick would sleep on the full-size bed that sat in the middle of the floor and really there was virtually no space for anything they had crammed this additional bed in there but there was a little gap big enough where you could walk down to my bed that was a space between the bunk beds and the full-size bed on the floor so we arrive at the cabin it's it's still daylight out and so we put our stuff in the cabin and immediately nick's mom brings us out i think it's the attitash mountain and we go snowboarding for the day and it's great we have this awesome like half day of riding we come back to the to the cabin and we're all we're thinking okay great we got like three more days of riding we're gonna go to bed early we're gonna get up early we're gonna hit the mountain we're like diehard snowboarding right and nick's older brothers have not arrived yet but they had a job that was like real hectic i think they were sales reps for burton the snowboarding company and so it was a great time to be able to get out of the cabin it's really unclear if they're going to be here or when and so we're just sort of like packing in for the night we're in our we're in our bedroom me nick and wolf nick's mom's gone to sleep and uh nick and wolf eventually they fall asleep pretty early um i didn't but it wasn't because there was anything wrong i was just staying up playing like playstation or whatever it was in that room yeah and at some point i noticed it was getting pretty late and i'm like oh man i should probably go to bed because you know we're getting up early tomorrow to hit the slopes i got to get my rest and so i turn off the playstation and um i crawl into bed and by this time it's you know it's past 10 o'clock it's it's dark i'm also in this room that again is sort of like embedded in the mountain there isn't any light in there the only light in the room was there was a little digital clock with a red number face on it where a little bit of light came off of that but it was effectively pitch black in there but i lay down my feet are close to the door so my head is farther into the room wolf is again above me nick is next to me they're asleep and i just close my eyes and i try to fall asleep but i can't i just can't fall asleep there's there's no issues i'm not worried there's there's nothing going on in my life i'm just a 16 year old kid who's just he can't fall asleep and so time's going by it gets to be midnight i look over at the clock i'm like shoot like it's getting it's getting pretty late one o'clock two o'clock now i'm doing that thing where you start like counting the hours you got left oh boy if i go to sleep now i'm at four hours of sleep i think that's the insomnia death cycle right here i know i know this scenario at about three in the morning i'm laying in my bed and the cabin is completely silent like eerily sudden there's no sound machine there's no fans nothing it's just silent in the cabin and i hear footsteps out on the wraparound porch didn't hear a car approach didn't hear anything i also i'm trying to fall asleep so in my sort of reptilian brain i immediately i'm like oh i must have not heard the car approach it's got to be one of nick's older brothers but i hear footsteps on the wraparound porch because the porch i mean it's elevated any light steps echo or not echo it makes a pretty distinctive sound and so immediately i think it's got to be one of nick's older brothers it's the middle of the night i don't know these dudes i've never met him before i don't want to have like a social interaction here like as if this dude's going to walk in and be like yo wake up let's let's meet at 3 a.m he's not going to do that but i'm like i just i don't want to deal with the social stuff i'm if he comes in here to say hi to nick or whatever i'm just going to pretend to be asleep because i don't know this guy whatever so i'm laying there i hear the footsteps and they stop outside the door and then i hear the door open and i hear the sound of the slave else inside the door like it's a distinctive sound the door has definitely opened because then i hear the sound of a pot there were these pops the like kitchen pots that were hanging on hooks right next to the door inside the kitchen and i heard the sound of a pot falling from the hook and it hits the linoleum in the kitchen okay and i actually was thinking like how rude this dude was like it's you're coming at three in the morning like kind of making a scene coming in here but what i immediately clocked is the door didn't shut the door opened and i hear these noises and then there's no sound of a door shutting and it's the middle of winter what are we doing here right and so i'm thinking about that but i'm not jumping to there's something seriously wrong i'm just kind of thinking this dude's done he's a little weirder i don't know what's going on with this guy the footsteps continue into the cabin except the cabin there's no way that your footsteps on those on the shag or even on the linoleum would make any sound it's completely muffled it's on a slab like there's there's no sound that you make when you walk through the cabin it's it's it's silent but the same way i heard the footsteps out in the wraparound porch after the door opens the pot the bells i hear footsteps marching literally marching through the cabin and as it's happening i'm like losing my mind a little bit because it doesn't compute it's not a sound that makes sense i can sort of rationalize the sloppiness of coming into the house i don't know how these sounds are being made and at the same time i had this distinctive almost like ringing sound in my ear as whatever whoever this was was moving through the cabin was getting closer to me and so the footsteps they move and then stop right in the middle of the cabin i can almost sense with this ringing in my ear and literally the sounds they're making that there's someone something standing in the middle of the cabin now it feels nefarious it feels like there's there's literally something wrong here and i'm thinking it's like an intruder or something and so i'm i'm so scared i literally can't move i'm laying in my bed and i remember like profusely sweating and just like being frozen worried that whoever or whatever this was was going to come in the room and so i hear the footsteps come down that hallway in the direction of this room and again all i'm thinking is jesus christ like i'm about i'm about to die yeah i don't know what's going to happen something's coming in the room there's nowhere else for this thing to go and so down the hallway and the footsteps come to a stop outside of the door which was closed to our room and i remember from where i was laying on the bed even though i'm in this like frozen state of terror there's a there's a gap between the bed above me and where i am i can i can look out and basically see the door in the gap between my bed and i'm just staring in the darkness i know what i'm looking at there's going to be the door and i'm waiting for the store to open and i tell people that even though you'll see as this story goes on that i don't have a great explanation for what all this stuff was put yourself in the position of being a 16 year old kid in a cabin on an abandoned mountain and there's just someone that's not supposed to be there walking around your cabinets it's truly like a terrifying scenario and so i'm i'm getting ready to die you know the door swings open and the ringing in my ears i don't know if it got worse or not but it was very pronounced and the way i describe it is like this dark figure walked into the room and i say that it was a dark figure because even in effectively pitch blackness minus the you know the little bit of light coming off of the alarm clock i could perfectly make out the silhouette of a human-like bipedal something that was darker than dark walk into the room and it appeared that its legs were so long that its torso should have been through the the roof that's like an eight foot tall thing it walks past the foot of my bed and i'm laying here and it's so tall that i can't see its upper half even with the view i have and it makes this like facing movement like a military facing movement and begins walking down the space between where i'm laying and where nick is laying and i'm just beyond terrified i i literally am thinking i have no idea what's happening this is this is like something crazy it comes to a stop next to me and i'm laying here and i remember thinking oh my god what's going on and i'm laying here and i remember thinking like please just like don't look at me it'll like shatter my world view if this like creature looks at me but it makes another facing movement away from me and it bows forward into the queen-size bed where where nick was sleeping and nick and wolf are dead asleep it like bows into nick and vanishes no and in real life doesn't happen you don't have people vanishing into beds right it doesn't happen so i'm not thinking oh phew the the ghost has vanished into the bed i'm safe now i can go or go about my night it's not where you wanted them no and so i'm just thinking where did it go it's gonna like pop its head up and look at me and so for the rest of the night at least for several more hours i'd lay there like looking out of the corner of my eye expecting of course this this whoever whatever it is to literally reappear but it doesn't door never shut like i'm just everything sort of remained and i for hours i'm laying there and then out of pure exhaustion at some point at like five or six in the morning i i felt i had to have fallen asleep because then i have this memory of realizing it's the morning and i can hear talking out in the kitchen and it sounds like nick's mom and so i'm like up and out of bed i'm like thank god i survived the night i can't tell if it was a nightmare or not and i go running practically out to the kitchen but as soon as i get out there i realize i have a i have a conundrum here how am i gonna talk about what just happened the night before like how can i talk about this without it nearing a conversation around ghosts and i'm going to go talk to the the recently bereaved woman sure and say oh i saw like a a ghost walking around last night in the in the cabin there isn't a good way to broach the subject without it borderline being a little bit insensitive and so i thought i have a workaround because i really wanted to sense check if what happened last night was real was the door open when you woke up i have a lot of questions it was not because she got up ahead of me so i go out into the kitchen and i the only thing i think to ask is i was like hey uh at any point did your did your older sons did they come through here last night did they find did they come by last night and they're not here now i'm i'm not optimistic but she looked at me and she was like no and she could clearly see that i was very upset like nick and wolf they're getting their coffee they're sort of over here it's just me and his mom me and nick's mom having this conversation she's a very sweet woman but i was clearly upset about something i didn't know how to talk about it she's now said something that takes away like the one rational explanation i had not that she knows that and at some point she goes john i heard my husband here last night too and i can tell you it's not reassuring to hear that yeah uh and i looked at her like with this look of like i i haven't even said all i said to you was did your sons come through this i didn't say this to her i'm thinking all i said to you was did your sons come through and she said no and she said unprompted effectively don't worry i heard my husband here last night too and i was so actually more scared in some ways that i just didn't i walked away from her i couldn't even talk to her i was like wait a minute the one adult in the house is in fact go surreal like it's all good right and so i'm like i don't even know what to do and so i go over to to wolf you know because i'm thinking i can be honest with him and i tell i'm like wolf like here's what happened dude last night was crazy and he's like so freaked out like he's kind of a scaredy cat he's like oh i don't know what to do man so he's making it worse because he's scared i tell nick about it but gently because again it's his dad who's passed away i don't want to talk about ghosts and he like didn't care and so quickly we're just like moving on we just went out to the mountain that day and suddenly it's like it's daylight i'm snowboarding we're away from the cabin before long i'm thinking it's just a bad dream i i have no i don't know what to make of nick's mom's comment yeah but come on like i i must have just had a really bad dream that's all there is to it and so we go snowboarding for the day and we come back that night and i had the one thing i had done is i had made wolf and nick swear to me that like i know it's a bad dream but tonight let me fall asleep ahead of you just give me the courtesy of allowing me to fall asleep and then you guys fall asleep just do me that favor and let me fall asleep and then you guys fall asleep just do me that courtesy they're like all right dude whatever so we get back to the cabin that night this is now night two the older brothers have not arrived yet they are still potentially scheduled to arrive which was actually reassuring for me i'm thinking if i hear any weird stuff tonight it's just gonna be them and so i go i go right in the bedroom that night it's like seven o'clock i'm tucked into bed trying to go to sleep but i just simply couldn't fall asleep because all i'm thinking about is how scared i was from last night and i remember i had uh i had tucked a butter knife into the springs of the bed right above me as like my protection i remember thinking how pathetic it was that that was going to be what i was going to use to defend myself but i i couldn't fall asleep nick and wolf are like hey dude we're gonna we're gonna go to bed now it's like 11 o'clock and i'm like kicking the bed like yelling at them to keep them awake but eventually they're like dude you don't go to bed so they eventually fall asleep and i once again find myself unable to sleep in this cabin it's dark it's quiet and i'm just like looking at the clock stressing about being in this cabin and so a couple hours goes by i'm getting close to sleeping it's not happening and then finally right around 3 a.m i hear those footsteps out on the wraparound porch and you know in a way it was sort of reassuring to hear the sound because it's almost like i heard this play out yesterday and i lived through that but i hear the footsteps out on the wraparound porch and then i hear the door open i hear the sound of those the sleigh bells in the door i hear the pot fall it's the same scenario i'm hearing it again uh and this time unlike the night before it's really hard to tell myself that i'm either imagining this or that this is simply nick's older brothers arriving none of those things feel real and so i began thinking all i know is that yesterday when i heard these noises something a dark figure wandered into this room right here and bowed into nick what's to say it doesn't bow into me tonight and so i'm like frozen again in my stupid bed i'm looking at my butter knife like can't move i'm so scared and i hear the footsteps that are like echoing through the cabin the ringing in my ear starts the the steps begin through the cabin the door hasn't shut yet the steps come down the hallway they stop outside the door i'm frozen looking at the foot of the bed waiting for the door to open the door opens up and again this this figure this darker than dark figure like marches into the room does the facing movement walks down next to the bed i'm like gearing up for it to lean into me this time but again mercifully it turns away from me and it folds into the into nick and it vanishes into the floor and again it's sort of like oh don't last night it folded into the ground and disappeared you're safe now again you don't think that way again i'm like where is it where did it go and so another restless night of just waiting expecting this thing to pop its head back up but eventually now it's effectively two nights with virtually no sleep i did fall asleep i woke up very early the next morning like four in the morning five in the morning and i heard nick's mom she was already out there and and this time i frankly didn't give a about being offensive about the potential for touching the subject of your your husband's dad i'm talking about ghosts i went out in the kitchen and practically angrily described like what is happening like what did you mean yesterday when you said you heard your husband walking around like this isn't this isn't normal yeah you know like none of this makes any sense and so i'm like i'm like almost crying i'm so emotional it's like i don't even know how what to feel about it it's like this isn't an experience you're supposed to be having and the whole time i'm having this just like dump of everything i'm thinking and i'm so scared she's just like looking at me and listening and nodding her head she's like sympathetic almost like okay listening to me and then when i was done she just said again she's like john i'm telling you i heard him last night again too you have nothing to worry about it's just my husband he comes here he walks around it's not a big deal and i'm telling you like i was angry about it that was satisfying to her she's like that's it and so i'm like so upset nick and wolf they come out and they see that i'm not having like a casual conversation with nick's mom they can tell something's happened and i tell them the whole story about everything um and uh you know nick didn't really seem to care wolf was pretty freaked out about it but it was almost like again the adult in the room was like no no no there's nothing to worry about here and i gave some really serious thought to like at that moment calling my family and being like get me the out of here oh yeah you know it's like but then it's like oh i have to call my parents and be like the trip that i love doing every year uh you need to come get me because shadow people are hard to explain there's a ghost so it was and then also conversation yeah and i and i couldn't help but also feel like i'm it is sort of rude you know i got one more night left what's the worst that can happen right so we end up getting through the morning and we're going to go out to the mountain again for another day of riding um at this point we found out that nick's older brothers would not be joining us for the next night so there's now there's no hope that there's going to be any explanation for whatever happens in this cabin yeah but on this third day or the second day here before we went out to the mountain to ride for the day we went to this this wood shop where nick's mom had gotten a new coffee table this was sort of it didn't matter at the time it plays a role in the story we get this coffee table she needed us to physically lift it and put it in the car so we lift it we put it in the car she drove us to the mountain we had this great day of riding at the end of the day we come back i've made you know nick and wolf promise again they're going to let me go to bed first but we get back to the cabin and we unload this coffee table that we picked up in the morning and we bring it into the cabin and we put it at the base of the stairs that led up to the lofted sections there was like a little landline phone that a table would typically be there they replaced the table just a wood coffee table we put that there means nothing to us we go into our room i'm trying to fall asleep i can't i'm trying to keep them awake i can't do it and wouldn't you know it before long it's the middle of the night i'm wired in my bed and i uh i'm just beside myself because i'm expecting at any moment i'm gonna hear footsteps and so come 3 a.m i'm laying there and wouldn't you know it i hear the footsteps out on the porch i hear the footsteps i hear the door open the bells the pot it's all the same i hear the the footsteps into the cabin my ears ringing it's like the whole thing's happening and i'm terrified but something different happens this night and and it was like really jarring and honestly more upsetting in some ways than anything else was that it changed like there had been a pattern and now it's changing the footsteps came to the point where they would have normally stopped and walked down that hallway to our bedroom but instead of doing that this night they just kept walking towards where the stairs are that lead up to the lofted section where nick's mom is and so as soon as i i almost literally felt and heard these footsteps i felt it in my ear the ringing sound and i can i can hear it moving across the cabin i knew it had stopped at the foot of the stairs and i'm like waiting i i don't even know what to make of this and then i hear the footsteps ascend the stairs and i can literally hear the creaking of the steps like this is real there's something putting weight on the stairs and so up the stairs the this thing goes and i'm like and then at some point it just goes quiet it just goes utterly quiet and if you think about the mechanics of the past two nights assuming this is the same thing whatever it is it bowed into the ground and vanished and Nick's mom's bedroom is directly above ours and so I'm laying on the bed looking up at the bunk expecting a demon to come through the ceiling and so I'm like obviously beside myself terrified sleepless night and I actually don't even think I did necessarily fall asleep this was like I'm just going to wait and hope I live through the night but I must have drifted off at some point because I do recall like having the experience of waking up and once again hearing sounds out in the kitchen and it's definitely Nick's mom but it didn't sound like normal morning sounds it sounded like somebody was upset and so I'm up and out of bed I'm like thank god this is over I get to go home I leave the bedroom and I go rushing out expecting to see my mom and my dad and I'm like what the hell are you doing in the kitchen just doing her thing but she isn't and I look over and she's she's kneeling by that coffee table we had put at the base of the stairs and she's she's crying and Nick and wolf are still in their beds and I look at her and I'm sort of like mad that's really the only way I would describe it I was mad like the whole thing was just so messed up I sort of blamed her for somehow making it worse and before I could even launch into how I was feeling she just waved me over like come here come look at this and I get closer to her and I realized that she is crying but she's not crying tears of sadness she's she's crying tears of joy and she points to the surface of the coffee table and I look at it and I literally I first I don't even know what she's pointing at but then I can see pretty clearly etched into the surface of this table were the words I love you and she and she goes I didn't write that and so she was like I think this was my husband from last night and you'd think this would be like wow what an uplifting happy ending and then you always thought ghosts were real and they were so happy no this like totally ruined my friendship with Nick and wolf I never went back to the cabin really yeah because it's like one of those things where like it was so awful in the time uh I didn't want to go back I frankly my initial reaction to that was not like oh ghosts it was more like his mom must have somehow picked up on that I had had some nightmare and then because maybe she was grieving she concocted this story and sort of made it seem like you know her her husband was walking around the cabin right but there's a couple issues with it one I didn't give you enough information on the first morning to make you have any idea I was doing that that would have been an unbelievable guess to assume that when I walked out and said did your sons come through here last night that that meant I had a visceral nightmare about figures wandering the cabin and then more than that even if you're a grieving widow why would you do this to a 16 year old kid why would you just like make up this incredibly traumatic thing that you basically convinced me that goes surreal uh and so that is uh that is my ghost story and it has haunted me since and it's actually I posted that there's one of my first long form videos I did when I first began post the the viral tiktok moment I was I'm gonna be a youtuber and I whipped out the camera and I told that story with like no edits very very choppy and what do you think now so a couple like what's your explanation yeah I don't really have one and it's not it's not even because I I want to believe or something yeah it's it's more what I was just sort of getting at that there it is entirely possible that Nick's mother somehow knew she could sort of concoct a scenario where between the two of us that's sadistic man right exactly and she's this wonderful person nasty that's not okay that's not okay the other thing is I and this doesn't really fully explain it but I I have like pretty vicious sleepwalking like it's a big enough problem in my life I I sleep in a separate room than my wife and I have alarms on my bedroom in case I go running out of my oh really and it's not like oh PTSD no I've had this since I was in college like I I pulled the fire alarm in college and didn't even know it I like came to and I'm standing there and I had like a bloody knuckle because I'd punched through the plastic and pulled the fire alarm and evacuated my building but it's like okay I know that uh sleep paralysis is a thing where they talk about being they sort of half wake up it's kind of like you're like you're not imagining yourself wandering around every way I think about it the the chief problem is somebody else corroborated the story and also and this is the question that universally comes up online is who shut the door I never asked I never asked it because of all the problems that I was dealing with I wasn't about to get her tripped up on who who were you were getting all the tech detective on it yeah and so now it's like man that would have sort of closed the loop because if the door was shut when you got up I could be like this never happened right but I never asked her um so yeah that's the one uh the one time that I would say something akin to paranormal has happened to me I got I got nothing for you on that man a buddy so a buddy of mine is mum she bought a used chair online that chair had brought in like a ghost yeah to the point where she wanted the house to be exercised oh boy to have an exorcism on the house right so is she are you is she equipped to accept because where my head would be my head would be like you know like Occam's razor right like I was talking about that the most logical like there has to be a less earth-shattering way to explain it than to think something has escaped physics as we understand it I would agree so but I think other people aren't as bound by like literal interpretations you know they're just they're more elastic and I think for them the most plausible scenario would be yeah an apparition the most plausible scenario is an apparition so meaning we bring all of our images to the interpretation but I'm sitting you're telling me the story I'm trying to go like well it could have been that no that wouldn't make sense yeah it doesn't really add up I'm trying like I'm trying to come up with a a theory you know yeah I mean like I could I can't settle in I can't settle into a ghost story because my head's trying to go like well I'm at now the brother yeah I mean you'd think that there'd be something the older brothers are messing with them you know yeah I I still don't know to this day and it's in a way like the fact that that happened to me has actually been tremendous in in sort of giving me maybe a little more perspective and and but by perspective what I mean is like we we read stories all the time of of people's accounts of things that that they claim have happened to them uh and some of them are are crazy stories like crazy stories and i have i have like an empathy for people when they are really trying to tell you a story that happened to them where they know it's sort of absurd what they're alleging you know and the empathy i have is like for them that is their experience they don't have a good explanation for it but i want to tell you one last thing oh please dear friends like dear friends that that i would trust my children to like move in with them if something were to happen to me kind of friends who are like flat out i mean they flat out have ghost stories do you believe them i don't want to seem rude i like no i can't settle into a ghost story i have to do the game of like wow it could have been that like i don't know i don't know they almost make me uneasy because i have to be able to explain stuff you are you're very pragmatic i have to be able to be like wow what was going on and so when i can't it makes me uncomfortable which is probably good it's probably good do you think that your like pragmatism and ability to quickly rationalize things has helped you in your career and in your your passion which is sort of being an outdoorsman like the fact that you know you hear the the screaming woman your friend and of course you have the initial visceral reaction of what is going on i'm in the middle of nowhere in alaska what's that sound but then quickly you're able to say okay you know it's it's it's my friend problem solved obviously it's solved itself but there are lots of people that are prone to panic it seems like you maybe are not because you're quick to say wait a minute there's got to be an explanation here i don't know that it's better to live life uh where there's no room for magic amen to that dude like i've spent time with like peoples indigenous cultures you know yeah um and there's a lot of room for magic and i'm like man that is rich and i'm like i don't know is it is it really that great to have no room for do you mean to have no room in your mind to be like everything's explainable right yeah and then you talk to people who are just like very at ease with what i would call magic they would call it something different but mythology whatever sure i don't know man that feels like a very rich existence you know i don't think it's better to to have everything put into little compartments did they ever share stories with you were you sort of questioned like could that be real or not oh 100 and also described to me like were you like in i'm this is maybe very ignorant of me like physically where are you located when you're with these folks out in alaska doing your narwhal oil like are you in a to give you an example i'm i'm in guyana and i'm talking to some makushi men and they're telling me we used to have a lot of white lit peccaries which they like to hunt okay they like to eat them there's a shaman in another village and that village is very jealous of our village and their shaman has locked our white lit peccaries up in a mountain we have an up-and-coming shaman who is developing his skill set and when he's of the right age he will go unlock that mountain and bring our white lit peccaries back wow no part of me no part of me is gonna say to them that's not what's happening no no no it's like that's not what it is i love it you know i mean it's like i love it but no i wouldn't like i don't want to go like wow you know i can think about it long enough you know it's probably no i just like i'm like that's great dude that's a great i like everything you're telling me it's great you you probably heard some pretty good stories in your time and yeah but you know what i keep thinking about i don't know why i thought of it when you're talking about that when you're talking about the ghost story there's a there's this thing popped in my head it's not even a story but it's the thing that happened to a friend of mine who's a who's a writer his name is he's a writer named ian frazier okay and he writes about great many subjects like he wrote a whole book about siberia he wrote a book about the great plains but at one time he had been he had been assigned a profile of a very prominent steelhead fisherman named steelhead joe okay happily so it's kind of like a fun profile the guy never wore a shirt other fishermen called him melanoma joe but steelhead joe still had joe and he's traveling with steelhead joe and hanging out with steelhead joe while he's working on the profile with steelhead joe steelhead joe kills himself oh boy so then he's forced to reimagine like now everything that's been happening when they camp together when they're in the boat together he has to replay everything that was said every interaction and here's the thing that tripped him up one night he gets up to take a piss he gets out of his tent to take a piss and steelhead joe is standing on the bank of the river and he thought to himself he looks like a ghost what in the world is he doing out there takes a piss and went back to bed and he's like later it was like i saw his ghost ahead of time oh man do you know what i mean it was like days before but he saw it like days in advance that's how it struck him oh i don't know why i was just thinking about that when you're telling that story you know how do you make sense of a story like that too and then does he ever question like did he have something to do that might have led steelhead joe oh no it's a whole it's a whole it's a whole wild trip man um yeah that just jumped in my mind that wasn't even anything that happened to me i don't have any good ghost stories there was a uh this is not even that related but it has to do with like guys out on expeditions and some more weird stuff happening there was this guy eric lewis who was a 50 something year old not like hardcore climber but he was like he climbed mount rainier on a fairly regular occasion and he had these two buddies i forget their names i want to say like dave and mike but eric lewis is sort of the centerpiece of the story and so these guys they they always went out hiking together and some level of pretty serious climbing they would do and one day they go out to climb mount rainier but it was a section of the day that they were climbing mount rainier but it was a section of the day that trail where it was you could walk up and then the rest was like with climbing gear you literally had to climb up it was like 13 000 feet to 18 000 feet and they had done this before they were they were attached to a line where it was the other two call it dave and mike that are attached a lot to the line they're spaced out by like i don't know 50 feet or something and then eric lewis is on the bitter end of the look of the rope and so they're making their way up they've done this before they've climbed enough together that there's not much communication a lot of it's non-verbal or like hand signals or whatever and at some point as they're around 13 500 feet they uh stopped the other two stop and the way it went is if the top guy stopped the next guy would catch up and stop as well and then eric and they'd rest and so top guy stops second guy makes his way up to the first guy sees he stopped he takes a break as well and they're waiting and eric lewis does not come up and they realize it was pretty like that's perfect timing you added this in post-production it's it was cloudy that day and so they're sort of looking down into the mist and they just see this line that's dangling down and it was pretty slack before anyways even if you're connected to it they had a lot of slack but they start pulling the line up and quickly they realize there's nothing attached to it and they pull it up and the line had been tied off and like there's no tear in the line like eric lewis has just inexplicably gone from the line and he's he was experienced enough and these two knew he was experienced enough that they're thinking i have no idea what's no idea what could have caused him to to unclip at 13 000 some odd feet here but something must have happened let's just down climb and find him so they start down climbing and they eventually actually i don't know where this happened but they eventually do find prints that they believe belong to him but they just sort of stopped as if he just like leapt off the mountain and he's nowhere to be found like he's nowhere to be found and they're thinking okay there's no way he could have climbed past us because again he's detached free climbed to the summit doesn't make any sense so they go down and they're hoping that eric is going to magically be at the base of the mountain he's not turns into a whole search for eric lewis they comb the mountain looking for eric lewis and they can't find him but they end up finding about 200 feet up from where the top guy had stopped when this problem arose for them about 200 feet above them and off the line like off the route they were on so this would have required unclipping and climbing over there and so they go down to the summit and they're hoping that eric is going to magically be there was a small cave um and in the cave neatly tucked away in the back of this cave was some of eric's gear eric's not in there there's actually no sign that eric was in there at all other than his gear being in there and but there's no eric and so at first they're like oh my goodness like this doesn't really add up like let's keep looking like maybe he fell or something and he started here and he fell and he's somewhere else they search all over the place they can't find him but then they find even higher up the mountain i want to say like thousands of feet up the mountain they find signs of a cave that eric actually made i don't know what gave away that he was up there but this is like he managed to go without any climbing gear thousands of feet up made like an indent in in some snow created a snow cave and was huddled in this the space for some amount of time it's the same day he's gone missing but he wasn't there that's all they found from eric lewis eric lewis has never been found are you serious and rainier no one has any idea where he is so somehow some way eric lewis unclipped climbed off their their line left his stuff you know and then wound up i want to say it was like a thousand or two thousand feet up in a separate cave and then he's gone really so this is it look him up Eric Lewis no one knows so be careful when you're out there climbing dude I will and I'll be on the lookout well dude it's been great to have you on here uh it's it's a lot of fun just being around a campfire telling stories uh really appreciate it man thanks for being on oh thank you you