Transcript of 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 MeatEater. 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.

Via Michigan. You know, and, but no, I had 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 gonna do is I asked Steve to come out here into sort of the middle of nowhere. We're at this, the Lone Mountain Ranch in Montana. We're at a campfire here and we're gonna hopefully swap some stories. I got a good one for you tonight. But Steve, thank you for being here tonight.

Thanks, I'm excited to hear the story, especially 'cause I understand it's 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, 'cause we're in Montana, of course. But I was thinking about it, and my team's probably gonna know this is gonna happen. I have a habit of throwing in extra stories at the end. I'll probably get to those, but there's actually another story that I've been sort of waiting to do again. Oh yeah, okay. That I thought would be very apropos 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 2 weeks? Yep, I was. 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 to that?

Oh 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 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 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 it.

Yeah.

But some experience where you're like, Got one.

The— there's been scary instances.

Mm-hmm.

Like fractions of seconds scary, but the most scary prolonged thing that happened was a group of us were camping in different tents.

Mm-hmm. 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 9 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 I 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, and did you like— did you like go out and did you guys try to make sense of what you were hearing?

Oh 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.

Chris the Bear.

Well, there's no— there's like the, ah, you know, right?

Have you come in close contact with bears? I mean, obviously, yeah, but I'm talking like unwanted close contact.

Very close, yeah, very close. Never been— well, I maybe had one step on me one time, but felt very close.

Geez.

Yeah. And that's scary quick, not scary long.

Wow. I mean, so I have, over the course of, you know, the last several years that I've been doing the whole Mr. Ballen thing, I've covered so many stories of other people's horrors that have happened out, mostly in the wilds, to be honest. I've always been fascinated with sort of like the terrifying things that happen outside of the city, out in the forests. But, you know, basically I'm telling other people's stories, and I thought, who better to share my one and only experience with something strange that happened to me in the wild than with you?

Okay.

The master of the outdoors here. So yeah, this story, just as a preface, it's one that I've told live a number of times, gets pretty big reactions to it. People think that this story in a way is like my origin as to how I came to being like the strange, dark, and mysterious internet story guy.

So this is you, a story with you?

This is me.

Okay, I got it.

And I'll also say that before this instant, this story happened, and after, I have never once had anything happen to me that I would even remotely consider would fall into the camp of unexplainable, even paranormal. There's only one time. And to this day, I still can't really put it together, but I'm gonna tell you that story and I'm gonna see what you think about it.

Okay. Okay?

So when I was, uh, 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 snowboard there all the time. And I had 2 friends who were both named Nick, but one was nicknamed Wolf. So for the sake of the story, there's Nick and Wolf. And we always rode together. So like every winter from the time I was like 12, so for like 4 consecutive seasons, we would go to Blue Hills and shred this like tiny hill. But the highlight of every winter was we would, for a weekend or as long as we could, it was usually like 4 or 5 days, we would go to the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

Oh yeah, I've been there.

Oh, beautiful. I mean, it's no Montana, but it's pretty good.

No, but that's one of the deadliest. That's one of the deadliest. But what, Mount Washington?

Not Mount Washington. That is the area. Yeah, that's—

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. So Nick— so of the 2 friends, Wolf is, uh, 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 used to be a thriving ski resort when the family had bought this cabin, this little cabin. Uh, the ski resort shut down, but they kept the cabin.

Got it.

So basically this cabin is, is on the side 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. But whenever we would go to this cabin, it was always me, Nick, Wolf, the 3 of us, and then Nick's mom and dad. And we would drive up, Nick's mom would drive, but that was the dynamic every time.

Yeah.

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 wanna say it was like 3 days before we were supposed to go to this cabin. And, you know, when I found out about it, one, I knew him fairly well. I wasn't close with him, 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, this might seem sort of crass, but there's no way we're gonna go on this trip to the White Mountains this year.

Yeah.

Not that I was bummed about it, but it was just like, we're not even gonna bring it up to Nick. His father, who by the way, that family was very tight-knit.

Understood.

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 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 gonna go honor Nick's father by going on this trip. That was my read, no questions asked. Me and Wolf are like—

Seems to me like a denial shock kind of thing, but either way.

Remember that, because 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 gonna, we're gonna go up to the White Mountains. And, you know, Nick picked up Wolf first, and they came by my house.

Mm-hmm.

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 2 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 gonna 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 a Down, big fan of System of a 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, you know, just so you guys know, at some point while we're up here staying at the cabin, we're gonna be there for 3 nights, her older sons were gonna stop by.

Gah.

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 gonna be going to this cabin, It's gonna be maybe a little weird, but at some point it sounds like the dynamic's gonna 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 I'm gonna give you a seemingly overcomplicated 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 an abandoned ski slope. It's still daytime. You can see all the slopes that are now overgrown, although there's snow on them. And we start going up this main road that goes basically right up 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 had been knocked down after the slope had been abandoned. So this was 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.

Into the wall.

And the other portion is on stilts supported outside the mountain. 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 as 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, 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 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 inside, so every time it opens it's conspicuous, very loud.

Sure.

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 at 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.

Yeah.

and you look into the mountain, so to speak, there's 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.

Yeah.

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 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. There was a space between the bunk beds and the full-size bed and the floor.

Yeah.

So we arrive at the cabin, 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 was to 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 3 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 really unclear if they were 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 gotta get my rest. And so I turn off the PlayStation and I crawl into bed. And by this time it's, you know, it's past 10 o'clock, 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 closest to the door, so my head is farther into the room. Wolf is again above me, Nick is next to me. 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 no issues. I'm not worried. 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 pretty late. 1 o'clock, 2 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 4 hours of sleep.

I think that's the insomnia death cycle right here. I know the scenario.

At about 3 in the morning, I'm laying in my bed and the cabin is completely silent, like eerily silent. 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.

Okay.

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 am 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 them before. I don't want to have like a social interaction here.

Yeah.

Like as if this dude's going to walk in and be like, yo, wake up, let's meet at 3 AM. He's not going to do that, but I'm like, ah, 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 gonna pretend to be asleep. 'Cause 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 sleigh bells inside the door. Like, it's a distinctive sound. The door has definitely opened.

Okay.

Then I hear the sound of a pot. There were these pots, 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.

Yeah.

And I actually was thinking like how rude this dude was. Like, it's— you're coming at 3 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 weird. 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 shag— 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 silent. But the same way I heard the footsteps out on the wraparound porch, after the door opens, the pot, the bells, I hear footsteps. Oh my God. 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.

Mm-hmm.

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 gonna 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 gonna be the door, and I'm waiting for this door to open.

Oh.

And I tell people that even though you'll see as the 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 cabin. 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.

Mm-hmm.

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.

Hmm.

And it appeared that its legs were so long that its torso should have been through the roof. It's like an 8-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 literally am thinking, I have no idea what's happening. This is like something crazy. It comes to a stop next to me, and I'm laying here, and I remember thinking like, please, just like don't look at me. It'll like shatter my worldview if this like creature looks at me.

Yeah.

But it makes another facing movement away from me, and it bows forward into the queen-size bed where Nick was sleeping, and Nick and Wolf are dead asleep. It like bows into Nick and vanishes.

No.

And in real life, it doesn't happen. You don't have people vanishing into beds, right? It doesn't happen. So I'm not thinking, oh, phew, the ghost has vanished into the bed. I'm safe now. I can go about my night.

It's not where you wanted him. 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 5 or 6 in the morning, I fell— 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 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 gonna go talk to the recently bereaved woman.

Sure.

And say, oh, I saw like a ghost walking around last night 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, oh, 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. Okay, 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 was not reassuring to hear that.

No.

And I looked at her like with this look of like, I haven't even said— all I said to you was, did your sons come through? 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 relieved. 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 ghost 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 Wolf, you know, because I'm thinking I can be honest with him. And I tell him, 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 have no— I don't know what to make of Nick's mom's comment.

Yeah.

But come on, like 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 was 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 courtesy. They're like, all right, dude, whatever. So, we get back to the cabin that night. This is now night 2. 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 7 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 the last night.

Yeah.

And I had— 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 were 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, fuck you, I'm going 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.

Mm-hmm.

And so a couple hours goes by, I'm getting close to sleeping, it's not happening, and then finally right around 3 AM 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. Oh my gosh. I hear the pot fall. It's the same scenario. I'm hearing it again. 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 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 figure, this darker than dark figure, Whoa. 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, well, 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.

Mm-hmm.

But eventually, now it's effectively 2 nights with virtually no sleep. I did fall asleep. I woke up very early the next morning, like 4 in the morning, 5 in the morning, and I heard Nick's mom. She was already out there. And this time, I frankly didn't give a shit about being offensive, about the potential for touching the subject of your husband's dead, and 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 normal.

Yeah.

You know, there's like— none of this makes any sense. And so 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, and I'm, I'm telling you, like, I was angry about it.

And 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, 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 fuck 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. These shadow people are walking around the cabin. Sorry, he's a ghost. So it was—

and also— Self-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 gonna 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 3rd day, or the 2nd day here, before we went out to the mountain to ride for the day, we went to this woodshop 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 Nick and Wolf promise again they're gonna 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 AM, I'm laying there, and wouldn't you know it, I hear the footsteps out on the porch.

Mm-hmm.

So 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. 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 on walking towards where the stairs are that lead up to the lofted section where Nick's mom is. And so as soon as 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 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 this thing goes, and then at some point it just goes quiet. It just goes utterly quiet. And if you think about the mechanics of the past 2 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 gonna wait and hope I live through the night. But I must've 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 hopping 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 Nick's mom in the kitchen just doing her thing, but she isn't.

And I look over and she's kneeling by that coffee table we had put at the base of the stairs, and she's crying. Oh my God.

Mm-hmm.

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 realize that she is crying, but she's not crying tears of sadness. She's crying tears of joy. And she points to the surface of the coffee table. And I look at it, and I literally— at 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.

Hmm.

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 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.

Yeah.

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 ghosts are real? And so that is, uh, that is my ghost story, and it has haunted me since. And it's actually— I posted that. It was one of my first long-form videos I did when I first began post the, the viral TikTok moment.

Yeah.

I was like, I'm gonna be a YouTuber, and I whipped out the camera and I told that story with like no edits. It's very, very choppy. And what do you think now? So a couple of things.

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.

Yeah, that's sadistic, man.

Right, exactly. And she's this wonderful person.

That's nasty.

That's not okay. Not okay. The other thing is I— and this doesn't really fully explain it, but I have like pretty vicious sleepwalking. Like, it's a big enough problem in my life. 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 pulled the fire alarm in college and didn't even know it. I like came to And I'm standing there and I have like a bloody knuckle because I punched through the plastic and pulled the fire alarm and evacuated my building. But it's like, okay, I know that sleep paralysis is a thing where like people, they talk about being fro— they sort of half wake up. It's kind of like sleepwalking.

Yeah, but wouldn't it be that you're a man, like you're not imagining yourself wandering around?

Every way I think about it, 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 opened or shut the door.

You were getting all 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. So yeah, that's the one time that I would say something akin to paranormal has happened.

I got, I got nothing for you on that, man. A buddy— so a buddy of mine is Hmong. She bought a used chair online and was convinced that that chair had brought in like a ghost.

Yeah.

To the point where she wanted the house to be exorcised. Oh boy. Like 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 the most logical—

Oh, we were just talking about that.

The most logical explanation. 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 prejudice to the interpretation, but I'm sitting here 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 to like, I'm trying to come up with a, a theory, you know? Yeah, I mean, I can't settle in. I can't settle into a ghost story because my head's trying to go like, well, hold on a minute now, the brother.

Yeah, I mean, you'd think that there'd be something.

The older brother's messing with him, 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 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 people's accounts of things that they claim have happened to them. And some of them 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.

Mm-hmm.

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 and they don't have a good explanation for it.

But I want to tell you one last thing.

Oh, please.

I have 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 passion, which is sort of being an outdoorsman? Like the fact that, you know, you hear 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 my friend, problem solved. Obviously it 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 indigenous 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 know what I mean? To have no room in your mind to be like, everything's explainable. Right? 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 have everything put into little compartments.

Did they ever share stories with you where you sort of questioned, like, could that be real or not?

Oh.

100%. And also describe 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 sitting— 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-lipped 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-lipped 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-lipped peccaries back.

Wow.

No part of me, no part of me is going to 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 what I mean? It's like, I love it. But no, I wouldn't— I don't want to go like, wow, you know, really, if you 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 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 were talking about that. When you're talking about the ghost story, there's a— this thing popped in my head. It's not even a story, but it's a thing that happened to a friend of mine who's a writer. His name is— he's a writer named Ian Fraser.

Okay.

And he writes about a 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 assigned a profile of a very prominent steelhead fisherman named Steelhead Joe.

Okay, aptly named.

So it's kind of like a fun profile. The guy never wore a shirt. Other fishermen called him Melanoma Joe, but Steelhead Joe.

Steelhead 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, like, 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 to—

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 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 2 buddies I forget their names. I wanna say like Dave and Mike, but Eric Lewis is sort of the centerpiece of the story.

Mm-hmm.

And so these guys, 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 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 attached to a line where it was the other 2, call it Dave and Mike, that are attached 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 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 nonverbal or like hand signals or whatever. And at some point, As they're around 13,500 feet, they stop. The other 2 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.

They're going to think you added this in post-production. It's totally part of the story.

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 is just inexplicably gone from the line. And he's ex— he was experienced enough, and these 2 knew he was experienced that they're thinking, I have no idea what could have caused him to unclip at 13,000-some-odd feet here, but something must have happened. Let's just downclimb and find him. So they start downclimbing 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. 'Cause again, he's detached.

Yeah.

Free climbed to the summit doesn't make any sense. So they go down and they're hoping that Eric is gonna magically be at the base of the mountain.

Sure.

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. There was a small cave, 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.

Mm-hmm.

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 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.

That's it?

Eric Lewis has never been found.

Are you serious? On Rainier?

No one has any idea where he is. So somehow, someway, Eric Lewis unclipped, climbed off their line, left his stuff, and then wound up— I want to say it was like 1,000 or 2,000 feet up. In a separate cave, and then he's gone. Really? To this day? 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.