Evan Mallory
Appearances
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Just the damp and the silence. Even when I called out to Liam, who was only 10 feet away, my voice sounded muffled, like we were talking through insulation. He was poking at the fire pit, trying to get a flame going. Caroline stood near the edge of camp, watching the trees like they might start moving. We all tried to play it cool. Mist happens, right? We packed up slow, hoping it would clear.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
That's when we heard it. Laughter. High-pitched. Definitely kids. At first just one giggle, then a few more, like a group playing tag just out of sight. We froze. I mean, we were deep in the woods, miles from any road or shelter. There shouldn't have been anyone else, let alone children. Ray said maybe it was a scout group. Josh shrugged.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Weird, but not impossible, he said, but even he sounded uncertain. Then the kids appeared, eight of them, pale, silent, walking in a line, with one tall figure behind them that I assumed was an adult. They didn't say anything at first, just moved past us, right through our camp, like they didn't see us or didn't care.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Their clothes were old-fashioned, muted grays and browns, buttoned up all the way to the neck. No bags, no water, no gear. They didn't look dirty, just… off. One of the girls stopped and turned to us. Her head tilted a little too far, like she wasn't used to how necks were supposed to work. "'Where are you going?' she asked. Liam, always the smartass, said, "'Heading north, through hiking the AT.'
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We parked at a barely marked pull-off late Friday afternoon. There was one other car there, older model with dust all over the windows, no people in sight. I double-checked the topo map, shouldered my pack, and we headed in. The trail was overgrown in parts, like it hadn't been maintained in years.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The girl blinked. Her lips twitched like she was trying to smile but didn't remember how. "'This isn't the Appalachian Trail,' she said. Then she turned and kept walking. The rest followed. The tall figure, hooded, face hidden, brought up the rear. And then they were gone, back into the fog. We just stood there.' No one said anything for a long time.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Eventually, Ray muttered, Okay, that was messed up. Caroline wanted to pack up and go back south. Liam said we should keep going. I didn't know what to think. Part of me figured it had to be some kind of elaborate prank, or we'd stumbled into a film crew or a live-action thing. But deep down, something didn't feel right. We voted. Three to two to push ahead.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
It kept going. The last one was 2021, our year. I don't scare easy, but that made my stomach drop. No one talked much after that. We kept moving, but the air felt heavier, like the forest was holding its breath. It never got brighter.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The fog stayed with us the whole day, and the worst part, every so often, faint and distant but unmistakable, we kept hearing that laughter, just behind the trees, never ahead of us, always behind. By late afternoon, none of us were talking. The fog hadn't let up at all. We kept waiting for it to burn off like normal, but it just hung there. Thick, still, and cold.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The kind of cold that settles into your clothes and never leaves. We hadn't seen another blaze in hours. No mileage markers, no trail junctions, nothing.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
it felt like we were walking in circles even though we stuck to a straight line as best we could we tried checking our compasses but they were all giving slightly different bearings josh said it was probably a mineral deposit but even he didn't sound confident Around dusk, we heard the kids again. Laughter. Same pitch, same cadence. Too close. It was different this time. Closer and sharper.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
It would pop up to the left of us, then to the right, then straight ahead. Like they were circling us, following us, not playing anymore. Josh stopped and pointed at a tree ahead. Carved into the bark was a spiral. Not a normal one. It was jagged and uneven, almost like it was scratched in with something sharp. Inside the spiral were eight small stick figures.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Oak and poplar trees pressed in tight from either side, and thick patches of rhododendron arched over the path like tunnels. The further we walked, the quieter it got. Not in the peaceful way, either. More like the woods were listening. I didn't say anything. I didn't want to freak Anna out.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Liam leaned in close, then backed away fast. They're all missing eyes, he muttered. We were losing it. Caroline wanted to set up camp before dark. Ray agreed, said hiking blind in fog was a bad idea. We found a spot near a rock wall, not ideal, but at least we had our backs covered. We set up quickly and agreed to keep watch in pairs. That night, I barely slept. I was on second watch with Ray.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Around one in the morning, we realized we hadn't heard Josh in a while. His tent was zipped but empty. No gear, no pack, no sign of him walking off. He didn't snore like usual, wasn't even rustling around. We started calling for him, first quietly, then louder. No response. Caroline joined us, barefoot, flashlight in one hand, knife in the other.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We didn't go far, just twenty yards from camp, when we saw him. He was standing perfectly still in the middle of a small clearing, surrounded by eight tiny piles of rocks. Each pile was stacked exactly the same. Three stones on the bottom, one small flat stone on top. The same eight pattern from before. Josh wasn't moving. Eyes open, but blank, pale. He looked right through us.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
When I called his name, he finally spoke. They showed me the real path. That's all he said. Then our flashlights all cut out at once. no flicker no warning just dead everything went pitch black and the fog got thicker i swear to god i heard something exhale not a person not an animal it was low and long and sounded wrong like it didn't come from lungs branches snapped all around us
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Ray grabbed Josh and we dragged him back to camp, stumbling the whole way. Liam was standing by the fire pit, holding a flare he hadn't lit yet. We got the tents zipped, huddled up, knives out. No one slept. When the light started coming back the next morning, I unzipped the tent. We were right back in that same clearing. Same piles of rocks.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
But now one of them had a small rotted child's shoe placed neatly on top. That's when Caroline lost it. She sat down, shaking, muttering that we needed to get off this trail immediately. Liam said we should retrace our steps, but that was impossible. We had no idea where we were. Josh didn't say a word. He just stared at the shoe. We tried to move fast that morning. No breakfast.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Just slammed energy bars and started hiking downhill. We figured if we kept going down, we'd hit a road or a stream, something. We didn't say it out loud, but we all knew the truth. We weren't on the Appalachian Trail anymore, and whatever trail we were on, someone had put us there. We didn't talk much that morning, not because we were tired, none of us had slept, but because we were scared.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We passed a couple weird markers nailed to trees, planks of faded wood with what looked like white paint or maybe old chalk markings. Most were too worn down to read. One had what looked like a symbol carved into it, a triangle with a circle in the middle. Someone had scratched it out with a knife. I told myself it was just an old forestry mark, nothing unusual.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Josh still hadn't said another word. He just followed us, eyes down, like he was being led. We moved fast, choosing the steepest downhill we could find, hoping it would lead us to water. A forest road. Anything. We tore through brush, tripped over roots. Didn't care. Compass needles kept twitching. Phones were still dead. Fog pressed in tighter the lower we went. And that feeling?
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Like we were being watched? It hadn't left. About an hour in, Ray spotted something ahead. A structure. We thought maybe it was a trail shelter or a ranger outpost. Turned out it was an old half-rotted lean-to with a collapsed roof and moss covering half the frame. We stepped inside anyway, just to breathe. Inside were drawings, dozens of them, nailed to the wooden walls.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Crayon, charcoal, blood-colored paint. All of them were the same. Stick figures walking in a line into a spiral. In one drawing, five stick figures were colored red. The rest were black. There was also a Polaroid tacked to the back wall. It was us. Standing at Springer Mountain two weeks earlier. Same clothes, same gear, same smiles. None of us remembered anyone taking that photo.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The moment I saw it, the nausea hit me. Not the kind you can walk off, the kind that comes from deep, like your body knows something before your mind does. Then we heard the dragging sound, metal scraping over stone, slow, heavy. Right outside, Liam whispered for everyone to shut up. We backed into the far corner behind a stack of old crates.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Through the cracks in the wall, we saw them, the children. Same eight kids, same dead expressions, same clothes. They weren't walking this time. They were standing still, in a semicircle, humming something tuneless. Their mouths didn't move. Behind them was the tall figure, the adult.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
still hooded still silent he stepped forward and unrolled a massive piece of paper a map our map same trail route same campsites but now there were new marks symbols we didn't recognize loops and slashes and spirals The trail didn't lead to Hot Springs anymore. It led right back to that clearing with the stone piles. At the center of the spiral, written in black ink, was one word. Return.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Josh stepped forward like he was about to walk out and join them. Caroline grabbed him. Ray flicked a lighter. That tiny flame felt like our last defense. We ran. Didn't look back. Just booked it through the trees, slicing through thornbush and undergrowth. I don't know how long we ran, maybe an hour, maybe three. At some point the fog started thinning. The air felt lighter. Sound returned. Birds.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Leaves rustling. Distant water. Then the trees opened up and we hit gravel. A fire road. Five minutes later, a green US Forest Service truck pulled around the bend. The ranger inside gave us a weird look when he saw our condition. Torn clothes. Dried blood. No packs. But didn't ask many questions. Just radioed for backup and drove us to the station near Hot Springs.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We told them we got turned around and lost our gear. That's all we said. No one mentioned the kids. No one mentioned the map. A few days later, I went back online and looked up missing persons reports. Found eight cases from the last 40 years. All from that same stretch of trail. All unsolved. Ages ranged from 6 to 12. A few were listed as runaways. Most weren't.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I also checked the lean-to, not on any map. Rangers said no such structure existed there. Josh still won't talk about it. He barely talks at all now. The rest of us don't hike together anymore. But sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think about that girl's voice. The way she said it. Calm. Sure. This isn't the Appalachian Trail. I believe her now.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
After about five miles we reached a decent campsite near a little creek. There was a fire ring someone had built years ago, half collapsed and full of soggy leaves. I cleaned it out while Anna unpacked, and we managed to get a small fire going before dark. Dinner was basic. Dehydrated chili mac and two lukewarm granola bars.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
And if you ever find yourself lost in the fog on that section of trail, and you hear laughter, don't look for where it's coming from. Just keep moving. And whatever you do, don't answer them back. The trail register at Massey Gap felt colder than the air. The metal box beaded with a dawn frost so fine it looked like powdered glass.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I signed my name, Evan Mallory, Asheville, North Carolina, then scribbled a note for my fiancé. Seven days of quiet, ten miles a day, back with a clearer head and better stories.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
i shut the lid the clang echoed through the high meadows where wild ponies pawed at frosted grass their breath foggy plumes in the dim blue light if there was a more peaceful place to put a restless mind right i hadn't found it For the first two miles the world felt brand new. Hooves clipped stone behind me, and a chestnut pony trotted close enough that I could stroke its shaggy mane.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Beyond the bald summit of Wilburn Ridge, spruce needles glittered under a rising sun, and somewhere to the east a pileated woodpecker hammered out a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. I breathed deep, tasting wood smoke on the wind, odd because campfires were banned until winter rains returned. I told myself a hunter down in the lowlands was burning crop stubble and pushed on.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
By late afternoon, I reached a sheltered saddle below buzzard rock and pitched my tent on ground padded with needles. While the jet boil hissed, I filmed a quick GoPro diary. Day one. Easy miles. Strange hint of smoke all day. Probably nothing. Missing you already, Jules. The stove clicked off.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Silence reclaimed the forest, save for an occasional pop hiss, like damp logs flashing to steam inside a distant blaze. I lay there afterward, headlamp off, letting darkness settle. But as night thickened, that firecrackle seemed closer, drifting between ridge pines and slow pulses, as though someone were coaxing reluctant coals back to life.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
cold pulled me from sleep just after midnight my breath floated white in the tent then a soft scrape fabric brushing against something rough and my vestibule wall flexed inward pressed by an unseen hand i froze Another pop hiss sounded inches from my ear, the unmistakable snap of sap boiling. I fumbled for the zipper, yanked it open, and shone my headlamp into the trees.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Nothing, except a faint orange glow hovering twenty yards away, a single ember brightening, dimming, brightening again like a firefly trapped in a bell jar.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
i tried to fix my eyes on it but the light winked out the moment i focused wind eased through spruce crowns yet the air smelled sharper the smoke thicker with no courage to investigate i zipped the door and lay stiff until dawn washed the ridge in gray Morning revealed something I couldn't explain.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The rainfly, once moss-green, bore a streak of soot the width of a hand that smeared down from the apex to the stake loop. I touched the mark, and the residue blackened my fingertip. Somehow a burning ember had brushed the fabric without melting it. I packed quickly, eager to leave Buzzard Rock.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
But the air was clean, and the forest smelled like wet leaves and wood smoke. For a little while, it felt good to be out there again. Anna said the woods were way quieter than she expected. She asked if there were coyotes out here, and I laughed. Then I showed her my old party trick. When I was younger, I used to mimic coyote howls to see if I could get them to respond.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The trail climbed toward Mount Rogers under a sky thin as milk, and every switchback delivered the same scent. Wood smoke. but layered now with the sour note of singed hair. At Wilburn Ridge I paused to drink and spotted hoof prints, yet several were scorched black, edges crisp as cookie cutters burned into the turf. Steam curled from one as though it had cooled only moments earlier.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
A pony herd grazed a hundred yards off, none limped or seemed hurt. Still, unease crawled up my spine like cold drizzle under a collar.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
late light slanted gold between rhododendron thickets when i found a level spot beneath two hemlocks their trunks leaned together like conspirators shielding me from bitter wind i gathered dead twigs careful not to break the fire ban and settled into my sleeping bag twilight painted the tent walls amber then violet
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Sometime in the black hours, a shape loomed against the fly, kneeling, shoulders hunched. Lightning, silent and distant, flashed on the horizon, illuminating a silhouette whose head was cocked as though listening to my heartbeat. I slapped the knife clipped to my ridgeline, unzipped the door, and jabbed my light forward. The figure was gone, but on the ground lay a neat pile of cedar shavings.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I've never posted anything like this before, but I can't get it out of my head. Maybe writing it down will help. I don't care if you believe me. Hell, part of me still doesn't believe it myself. But something followed us in the woods last weekend, and whatever it was, it wasn't human. And it damn sure wasn't an animal either. I'm a senior in college, pre-med.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
they formed an arrow its barbed point aimed south deeper into the wilderness the shavings smouldered at their tips tiny curls collapsing into gray dust without flame i scooped a handful still warm and scattered them in the wind sleep deserted me
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
with each hour the air grew warmer my breath no longer visible condensation beaded on the map inside my journal and when i turned the page to tomorrow's date the ink bubbled and ran the paper itself curling as if held above a candle i wanted to believe dawn would make sense of it that daylight would blow away childish dread instead sunrise lit the forest in bruised purple
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
and every step south felt like descending into a kiln my pulse drummed in my ears sweat traced icy rivulets down my ribs though the thermometer read forty-two around me sap bled from spruce knots and sizzled on the bark i quickened my pace repeating a quiet litany seven days ten miles clear head but behind that mantra another thought clawed for attention
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Something out here is burning, and it wants me to follow the smoke. The fallen hemlock looked as if a colossal hand had twisted it from the soil and slammed it across the white-blazed corridor. Its shattered crown blocked the trail so completely I could not even snake under the branches. I studied my map and spotted a faint dotted line. Devil's Ladder.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
an unofficial connector said to shave a mile off the ridge if you were willing to endure knee-busting grades at that moment the main trail felt like a chimney spewing smoke straight at me so i chose the detour and plunged into the understory almost at once the forest temperature leapt my breath no longer steamed instead a damp heat pressed against my skin warm enough that sweat pooled under my pack straps even though the thermometer on my watch still insisted it was forty-five degrees
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Sap blistered from spruce trunks and dripped to the duff with a hiss, as though the trees themselves were cooking from within. I checked my phone to mark the side trail, but the bars dropped to zero before the screen faded to black. Battery dead. I told myself I could navigate by compass just fine, yet something about the phone's abrupt silence felt like a door closing behind me.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Devil's Ladder earned its name with every step. The path pitched downward so steeply I half-skied on loose needles. Around me the air grew thicker, shimmering in waves that made the nearest boulders wobble like mirages. Then I smelled it again, burning hair mixed with scorched cedar, and my pulse pounded high in my throat. I rounded a switchback and halted.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Not exactly useful, but I was good at it. So I stood up, cupped my hands, and let out a long, shrill howl across the creek bed." She rolled her eyes. That was loud as hell. I grinned. Wait for it. We stood in silence, listening. Nothing. Just the hiss of the creek and a breeze shaking the branches overhead. I tried again, this time throwing in some yips at the end for good measure. Still nothing.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Five paces ahead, half concealed by rhododendron leaves, stood the man from last night. He faced away, shoulders hunched, blackened skin cracked in flakes that revealed depths of glowing red as if he were forged iron left too long in the coals. His clothes had melted to his flesh.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
tatters fluttered in wind that i could not feel smoke curled from his scalp in thin blue threads he turned and those ember eyes fixed on mine without blinking i wanted to scream but the air in my lungs tasted of ash the figure stepped forward every branch he brushed ignited in a brief tongue of flame that vanished the instant he passed
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
leaving needles intact yet smoldering at the tips their green turned ghost white he extended a hand sparks pinwheeled off his fingertips and died before touching the ground as if the fire existed only for him reflex broke the trance i stumbled backward boots skidding on gravel and the sudden movement seemed to startle the thing its head tilted cracking skin along its neck that glowed brighter hotter
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Without warning, the image fragmented, my vision wavered in ripples of heat distortion, and the GoPro strapped to my pack beeped an error tone, its display filling with static bands even though it was powered off. My nostrils flooded with the chemical tang of melting circuitry. I turned and ran.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The grade was so steep I barely controlled each stride, careening off trunks, branches whipping my arms. Behind me came slow, deliberate footsteps, charcoal crunching under burned feet. No matter how wildly I zigzagged, the cadence never quickened, but it never paused either. It sounded patient, inevitable, like the tick of a metronome marking the moment the forest would ignite.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
by the time dusk bled through the canopy i had lost the tread of devil's ladder and found myself in a narrow hollow choked with hemlock skeletons dead man's draw if the locals warnings were right even here the ground sweated heat I slashed at vines to clear a flat patch no bigger than a coffin and threw up my tent, hands trembling so badly the poles clicked like chattering teeth.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Night sealed the hollow, and at once the forest began to breathe. A low, rasping inhale, then a bellows, soft exhale, again and again, each breath exuding a faint red glow that rolled over the hillsides like banked coals stirred by wind. Inside the tent, darkness pressed against the nylon. My watch read 92 degrees, though outside it had to be near freezing. Sweat soaked my base layers.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Then the footsteps returned, shuffling in a widening spiral, circling. I heard skin crackle with every step, like ice shifting on a thawing lake. The thing whispered my name, drawn out, syllables stretched thin, as if exhaling through shredded vocal cords. Even. Each time it spoke the temperature spiked and my water bladder ballooned with expanding air until seams creaked. Hours dragged past.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I held my multi-tool like a charm that could fend off fire. Just before dawn the footsteps stopped. Silence settled so suddenly my ears rang. Then something pressed against the tent wall directly over my heart. A hard, irregular shape, smaller than a fist yet impossibly hot. Nylon sizzled. I jerked away, stuffing my sleeping bag into the corner.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The object slid down the outside and thumped to the ground with a sound like wet ash falling. Through the thin fabric a faint red glow pulsed. I forced myself to unzip the door. Outside lay a child's sneaker, or what remained of one, canvas mostly burned away, rubber warped and cracked. The toe melted into a bleak grin. Inside the blackened sole, numbers blistered through the char.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
One-nine-eight-six. As I stared, a single ember flared in the hollow toe, then winked out, leaving the shoe cold and silent. The sun crested the ridge, but Deadman's Draw stayed dim, as if light itself feared to linger. I packed in minutes, every motion punctuated by the thought hammering in my skull. The fire was following me, and it had just shown me the year it first learned my name.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Maybe they're all curled up in a den somewhere, I said shrugging. And then it came. A sound echoed back to us, but it wasn't a coyote. It started low, like a whistle caught in the wind, and then climbed into this piercing, unnatural screech that seemed to stretch too long, like it didn't need to breathe. It came from up the ridge behind us. Not far. Anna stiffened. What the hell was that?
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I ran until my lungs tasted like copper, and the heat behind me faded to the faint rustle of cooling ash. At a bend in the hollow the trees gave way to a rutted service road, slick with last night's rain. Dawn had not truly broken, only a dim pewter glow seeped through the clouds, but steam already curled from the gravel in lazy spirals.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The farther I hiked, the more the air smelled of wet cinders and something sweeter, like pine pitch boiling on a stove. An hour later I saw it, a farmhouse crouched at the road's end, nothing left but black ribs of framing and a stubborn stone chimney that leaked grey vapour. The porch roof had collapsed.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
charred rafters lay like snapped wings across the stoop heat still bled from the wreckage shimmering in waves that bent the world behind it out of shape i wanted to skirt the place entirely but my legs buckled at the sight of a black and white cruiser nosed into the weeds county emblem flaking from the door emergency lights cold i staggered closer
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
With a hiss, the driver's window rolled down, and a woman in a tan uniform leaned out, exhaustion etched in the creases around her eyes. "'You all right, sir?' Her badge read Riddle. The name fit the morning. Words tangled in my throat, but I managed. "'Something's after me. It's... it's on fire, and it walks.'
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Sheriff Ada Riddle studied me for a heartbeat too long, then popped the passenger door." Get in. We'll talk where there's water between us and the ruins. The vinyl seat scorched my palms with residual heat, too hot for fabric untouched by flame. We rolled forward thirty yards and stopped beside a rusted stock trough half full of rainwater. Steam coiled from the hood where my gloves had landed.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
House went up four nights ago, she said, watching the ruins in her side mirror. Neighbors smelled burning bacon at 3 a.m. and fire brigade found the family huddled near that back door. Father, mother, teenage boy, no accelerant, no wiring fault, just combustion. Her gaze flicked to the blistered streak across my pack. You saw someone. Saw him, heard him. He followed me down Devil's Ladder.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. I was 12 that year. Three hikers burned to death in a cabin off Green Cove Road. Volunteer rescue found only footprints burned into the floor. Case went cold. Folks blame a vagrant who died in his own chimney fire that winter. Swear his spirit brands anyone intruding on these ridges. She laughed once, brittle. I never put stock in ghost stories until this week.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
She flicked the dash cam on, just in case, and handed me a lukewarm canteen. I drank in ragged gulps. The instant metal touched my lips, a hot wind whooshed across the field, curling smoke skyward. From the treeline beyond the house a shape unfolded, taller than before, every joint glowing deeper, as if stoked to white heat. The temperature inside the cruiser jumped.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Plastic on the steering wheel softened. The entity stepped onto the lane. Grass beneath its feet withered to gray stalks that burst into wisps of flame and died. Its gaze locked on me through the windshield. The cruiser's engine ticked, metal expanding. Sheriff Riddle threw the vehicle into reverse, but the tires only hissed on melting tar.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
She cursed, then bolted out, grabbed a canvas fire blanket from the trunk, and hurled it at the apparition.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
the fabric unfurled mid-air like a sail striking the creature's shoulders for an instant the flames dimmed the form flickered edges swimming i staggered after her yanked a half barrel off its stand and tipped a torrent of cold rainwater across the lane steam roared upward enveloping us in scalding fog
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I froze. Bobcat, maybe, I said. But I knew that wasn't right. I've heard bobcats. This sounded higher, like metal tearing, like a scream that didn't know how to stop. Anna backed closer to the fire. That was not a bobcat. I didn't answer. I just scanned the trees. That part of the ridge is dense with undergrowth, especially in fall.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Through the cloud I heard the entity howl, wood exploding in a kiln, and felt the wash of heat surge, then ebb, as if something vital had been banked. When the steam cleared, the blanket lay smoldering atop a dark, man-shaped smear on the asphalt. No figure, only a circle of char so black it ate the morning light. The sheriff exhaled a shaky breath.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
let's hope that buys us some time we drove two miles felt like 20 engine knocking from overheated oil at sparrow gap ranger station she guided the cruiser beneath a corrugated overhang and killed the ignition rangers emerged radios already alive with chatter about flare-ups on the ridge grass fires that vanished ada ordered them to fetch extinguishers and wet sheets inside the cramped office i scrubbed soot off my hands
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Skin sloughed away in tender pink sheets, and beneath it new blisters rose, perfect ovals mirroring the burned fingerprints left on my tent. I wrapped them in gauze, but heat seeped through, a pulse that matched my own heart. Through the window, I saw Ada lean against her cruiser's hood.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Where my palms had braced earlier, a black handprint still glowed, faint threads of smoke curling upward like incense. A ranger aimed the hose, but water broke around an invisible shield. Droplets hissed and slid off, unable to touch the scorch mark. The sheriff met my eyes across the lot, and in her expression was the hollow certainty that what we'd faced had not been defeated, only delayed.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
A gust of wind carried the smell of fresh smoke from somewhere higher on the mountain. The radio crackled. Control, we've got a new hotspot flaring above Buzzard Rock. Looks like a column. Ada's shoulders sagged. I felt the heat blooming under my bandages, traveling cheek to collarbone, as if mapping the path of fire yet to come.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Somewhere out in the timber, a slow, deliberate footstep crunched across charcoal, and I realized the entity was already moving again, patient, methodical, unhurried, taking the long way down the mountain to find me.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Seven days, I had promised Jules, ten miles a day and back with a clearer head, but some journeys once lit burn far longer than planned, and some trails once followed never truly let you leave their smoke behind. I caught the first glint of sunrise off the Wolf Creek trailhead sign and felt my nerves twitch. Someone had hammered a splintered board across the kiosk. Keep quiet after dark.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Then half ripped it away, as if they changed their mind mid-warning. I pried it loose and slipped it into my pack, telling Jenna I wanted it as a souvenir. Truth was, I hated leaving omens behind me. The air smelled of wet stones and cold pine sap. Fog lay so thick across the switchbacks that each exhale bounced back against my cheeks.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Jenna's trekking poles clicked a steady rhythm beside me, but everything else—wind, birds, distant road noise—had been muffled to nothing. We climbed in silence until the damp reached through my shirt and tightened across my shoulders. Just past the first saddle, the fog thinned enough to show the trail's dirt spine, and that was when I noticed the boot prints.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
One set, deep and alone in the mud, size 13 at least. They stretched maybe 50 yards, veered to the left, then vanished where the path cut across bare rock. I searched for the next print in the leaf litter beyond, but the earth there looked untouched. No crushed twigs, no skid marks, nothing. My stomach knotted.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The fog had started to roll in heavy, thickening between the trunks like smoke. My skin prickled, and I could feel the warmth of the fire only in theory. We didn't stay up much longer. We doused the fire, zipped into the tent and lay there listening. I kept my headlamp and my knife by my side. Anna fell asleep eventually.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Whoever made those tracks walked off trail into brush so dense even deer left obvious tunnels. Yet he, or it, left no trace. I told myself a hunter in lightweight boots might manage that, but I kept glancing over my shoulder for the next half mile. By early afternoon the sun punched holes through the whiteout, and we stopped by an unnamed seep the guidebook promised was year-round.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Water trickled out of moss-cloaked limestone, clear as glass. But when Jenna knelt to fill the filter bag, she froze. Alex, look! A latticework of sharpened twigs lay wedged beneath the surface, each stick shaved to twin points, crisscrossed like an amateur catcher's trap. They stank of sweetness gone rotten, fermented fruit and wet mulch. I lifted one with my knife tip.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The bark sloughed off slick as eel skin, exposing pale wood riddled with pinholes the size of sewing needles. I dropped it and tasted copper in my mouth. We camped a little uphill where the ground leveled off, a narrow bench just wide enough for the two-person tent. I forced a laugh while tying the last guy line. Bear cans 30 yards that way, exits over here, no problem.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Jenna nodded and squeezed my hand, but I felt the pulse in her fingers racing faster than mine. Night sealed the forest by nine. Fog drifted back in thicker than before, and moonlight flickered like a dying bulb behind the clouds. I woke with a start to a sound that did not belong. Crunch. Pause. Crunch. Not leaves rustling. Footfalls. Deliberate and measured. Circling.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
My watch read 2.03 in the morning. Jenna's eyes shone in the dim as I unzipped the tent halfway and slid the headlamp strap around my wrist. The beam pierced maybe twenty feet before the vapor swallowed it, but in that cone of light three shapes crouched among the laurels, scarecrow thin, limbs wrapped in what looked like burlap ribbon clotted with moss.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Their heads turned flatly, no bobbing like people adjusting balance, just a single fluid pivot toward me. Eye sockets reflected nothing, matte and dull, as if someone had sculpted faces from river stones. I stepped forward, instincts screamed to drive them off. Hey! My voice cracked and the figures flinched.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
One uncoiled to its full height, at least seven feet, and raised two dead branches in each hand. Click, click. The sticks met, perfectly mimicking Jenna's laugh from dinner, brittle and bright in the stillness. My skin crawled so hard it almost tore. "'Leave!' I shouted, taking another step, but the headlamp trembled in my fist and the beam jittered across tree trunks.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
In that strobe the figures scattered, no stumbling, no snapping brush, only a blur of gray limbs melting upslope, then absolute silence. Even the creak we'd heard all evening had gone mute." I backed inside, zipped the flap, and pressed my shoulder against Jenna's. We sat like that until dawn turned the fog a dingy silver. Outside, the dew-heavy ground around the tent was pocked with prints.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I didn't, because I kept hearing something moving just past the tree line, something that clicked when it walked, something that stopped moving every time I held my breath.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Bare, narrow, each foot six toes wide, and ending in tiny claw points. They formed a perfect circle. Toes aimed inward, as though the three had stood equidistant all night simply watching the nylon walls breathe. Jenna whispered, "'We're leaving now.' I nodded, unable to answer. As I shouldered my pack, the souvenir board shifted against my spine."
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I almost hurled it into the woods, but I couldn't bring myself to let it go. We hiked out without breakfast. The forest gave nothing but the hollow echo of our own footsteps, and every so often I swore I heard sticks tapping together, click-click, deep in the fog behind us. The fog never quite lifted, only stretched itself thinner as we hustled south.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
By what I guessed was late morning, my watch kept skipping minutes. We had chewed through nearly 20 miles of switchbacks. The pack straps sawed at my collarbones, but I refused to slow. Every birdsong perched above us in the canopy, as if the warblers were escorting our flight but wouldn't dare land on the trail itself.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Whenever I stopped to sip water, the woods went pin drop still, then resumed the moment I moved again, like a show restarting after the critic leaves the room. We gained the spine below Chestnut Knob just before noon. Gray clouds stacked like stone blocks overhead, and the forest floor bled a sour metallic scent. Wet pennies baked in sun that never reached the ground.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
and sometime after midnight i swear to god i saw two pale eyes watching from just beyond the trees they didn't glow they just reflected i don't know when i fell asleep must have been sometime after three when the movement outside finally stopped or maybe it didn't Maybe I just passed out from pure exhaustion, adrenaline finally giving up on me. Either way, I woke up with a start just before dawn.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Along a mossy cut bank, we found pine trunks, skinned of bark. The strips had been trimmed into human shapes and nailed head high, all of them facing the cliff wall, as if some deranged sculptor wanted the effigies to watch the rock instead of the trail. Rust streaked under every nail, but when I touched the streaks, my fingers came away clean.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The red was embedded in the wood grain itself, dark as dried liver. Jenna's breath started a quick cadence between her teeth. I tucked an arm around her pack and guided her forward, promising that two more ridges would drop us onto the service road. I no longer believed my own words. By deep afternoon we found a sliver of level ground pressed tight against a shale cliff.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
No approach possible from behind, and only a five-foot mouth for entry. We pitched the tent there, doors out, rainfly cinched low. I loaded both pistols and placed them within an easy reach. Jenna threaded our last length of paracord across the only entrance, hitching it to her titanium stakes and dangling my titanium mug so it would clang if anything brushed the line. Sunset never brightened.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The clouds merely thickened until day and night became the same dark slate. some time passed midnight i know because my phone pinged once then died we both jerked awake to the faintest tink of metal my mug shivering against itself i rolled onto one elbow pistol in hand listening Something crouched just outside the fly, breathing slow as a diver conserving air.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The paracord twanged again, quieter, as though fingertips traced its length. Then a voice spoke inches from the nylon. Why'd you bring the gun? My own voice, tone, timbre, the hitch on the word gun I'd made earlier that day when coaxing Jenna downhill. A perfect mimic, whispered with the warmth leeched out of it. The same sentence repeated, but now in Jenna's tone, fragile and cracking.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
She clamped a hand over her mouth. I felt her heartbeat banging through her wrist. I cleared my throat. We're armed, I said, voice low but steady. Step away now, or I will shoot. The forest exhaled. Cicadas, crickets, everything that had been humming went dead. A two count later, footsteps retreated.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
two measured paces pause two paces like a drill squad marching in felt slippers the cadence faded but the hush remained an oppressive vacuum that pressed against my eardrums until they rang we lay awake until dawn seeped through the fly in a colorless smear when i crawled out my boots slid on damp shale the paracord was gone every inch of it yet the stakes still stood
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
My mug lay on its side, handle threaded by a braided loop that hadn't existed the night before. Boot laces, our boot laces, had been sliced from both pairs of boots while we slept and woven into an elegant hangman's noose. A gray clay fingerprint smeared the tent zipper, flecked with grit that glittered like bone dust. Jenna stared, then turned the color of paste. We didn't speak.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We broke camp in six minutes flat. No coffee, no filter stop. As we shouldered our packs, the clouds above the cliff tilted, and for the briefest heartbeat, I thought I saw a thin figure perched on the rock face itself, limbs folded like a mantis. A blink later, only wet shale remained. We started downhill, the trail slick and narrow.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Behind us, far up the ridge, two sticks clacked together, talk-talk, in perfect imitation of Jenna's laugh. I tightened my grip on the pistol and kept walking, counting each breath until I lost track of the number entirely. Wind scratched the ridge like sandpaper, but thunder refused to crack, just a low, endless growl that chased us downslope.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
GPS bars winked on and off, even though the sky stayed open. Every time the screen froze, the mileage ticked backward, chewing away our progress toward Burke's Garden. My watch claimed mid-morning, yet the air tasted of approaching night. We power-walked the narrow spine until the forest thinned into scrubby grass. That was where we saw it, the silhouette waiting on the next rise.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
That hazy blue light was barely bleeding through the nylon of our tent, and my mouth felt dry, like I'd been grinding my teeth all night. Anna was still asleep beside me, but she was twitching, her legs jerking under the sleeping bag like she was dreaming of running. And then I heard it again. That clicking.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Tall, too thin, shoulders draped in something that fluttered without wind, its head listed to one side like a dog trying to puzzle a strange sound. Then with brutal deliberation, it raised one impossibly long arm, no bend at the elbow, and pointed downhill, the same direction we were already moving. Jenna whispered, it's hurting us. I could not disagree.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We cut left onto the faint connector trail racing the slope. Minutes later, a sharp digital click broke the hush behind a maple trunk, followed by another farther uphill. When I searched the bark, I found a black cube, an old Bluetooth speaker wedged in a knot hole, red light blinking. A delayed echo of our own footfalls spilled from it, three seconds behind.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The tiny cadence ricocheted through the hollows, multiplying until it felt like dozens of boots closing in. I smashed the speaker with a rock. The moment the plastic cracked, a whistle erupted from somewhere beyond sight. An elk bugle, pitched far too low, vibrato so deep my ribs hummed. Birds pinwheeled from the canopy. Some dropping stunned onto the duff.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We had two trails left on the map, both through Dead Oak's Hollow. The first dissolved beneath a landslide, so we plunged into the second, a drainage choked with limestone and slick leaves. Halfway down, the ground opened under Jenna's boot.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
she yelped flailing and i grabbed her pack just in time pulling her back from the lip of a sinkhole maybe fifteen feet across and twice that deep its floor looked like a trophy dump deer mandibles bare jaws a mountain lion skull bleached white
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
human teeth molars incisors glinted among the bones like seashells on dark sand a fresh pair of upper incisors rested on a flat rock the roots still pink i gagged above us voices began to chant in unison neither loud nor hurried coordinates read out in monotone descending numbers between each line thirteen twelve eleven
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
figures ringed the sinkhole rim a full circle of pale watchers crouched so low their wrists dangled past their knees they rocked together synchronized until their joints popped like breaking sticks lightning finally tore open the clouds in the flash every watcher stood at full height arms spread ragged bark capes snapping like cloth Thunder hammered the basin.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
A slab of limestone sheared off the lip and crashed into the sinkhole, tilting high enough to form a rough ramp. Move! I shoved Jenna up the rock and scrambled behind her. Limestone rang beneath our boots. Something, someone, slid after us, bare feet slapping in counter-rhythm. But the next lightning strike blinded my night vision. and all I saw were afterimages.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We broke into a downhill sprint, branches clawing our packs, the slope steep enough to tumble if we missed a step. Behind us, the coordinated stomp of many feet burst into a run, no shouts, no barking dogs, only that same precise cadence driving faster. At the service road, a hunter's truck idled, tailgate open, decoys rattling in the bed. I waved both arms, gun still in my hand.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
It was faint this time, slower than the night before, like hooves gently tapping against stone or wood. I held my breath. It was circling us. I didn't dare look through the mesh this time. I just lay there, paralyzed, trying to convince myself it was a deer, maybe a curious buck, maybe something explainable. Then I heard a voice. It sounded like Anna, but it was coming from outside the tent.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The man's eyes went wide. He thumbed the safety off his shotgun, but didn't raise it. Jenna collapsed beside the bumper, sobbing. Gravel dust rose behind us, but nothing emerged from the tree line. Forest Ranger Hal Teague arrived ten minutes later in a green pickup. He listened in silence while I poured out the story, leaving out nothing this time.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
When I finished, he rubbed the brim of his hat and asked only one question. "'You two cross Dead Oaks Hollow?' We nodded." Locals call them ridge watchers, he said, voice soft enough I almost missed it. They follow noise, don't let a thing go that rattles the ridge after dark. He offered hot coffee in a paper cup. I wrapped trembling fingers around it, then froze.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The cup's handle was looped by a neat braided string. My boot lace, though I had replaced the laces with paracord that morning. Three weeks later, back home in Richmond, a padded envelope arrived with no return address. Inside lay the splintered warning board from the kiosk and a microSD card labeled 203AM in cramped graphite. I slid the card into my laptop. A single audio file played.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
My own voice whispered, ''Why'd you bring the gun?'' Thirteen times, flawless and cold, each repetition tailed by a wet exhale that fogged the laptop microphone somehow on the recording itself. When the loop ended, a faint click-click echoed, like sticks tapping out Jenna's laughter. I keep the board locked in the attic.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Some nights, quiet nights after dark, I swear I hear that distant whistle, impossibly low, threading through the rafters while the house holds its breath.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
It was soft. almost whispering. Hey, come out here. Her exact cadence, her exact tone. But Anna was still asleep next to me. I watched her breathing, her lips slack and pale in the cold. I didn't move. I didn't make a sound. I just waited. The voice repeated, same words, same softness. Come out here. And then everything went quiet again. No birds, no wind, not even the creek.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I don't know how long I lay there, but when Anna finally woke up, she said she had the worst dream of her life. That she saw me standing over her in the woods, asking her to follow me into the trees. Only I wasn't wearing a shirt, and my chest was covered in blood. We broke camp in silence. No jokes. No breakfast. We didn't even talk about going home. We just knew.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I grew up in western North Carolina, about 40 minutes from the Tennessee border. My parents still live in a small house tucked off a gravel road about 15 minutes from the Appalachian Trail. We're used to isolation, spotty power, no internet unless you're lucky enough to park near the library, no neighbors for miles. It's the kind of place people think is peaceful until the sun goes down.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
This wasn't just a creepy night in the woods. Something was wrong here. Wrong in a way I can't fully explain. We started hiking fast, packs bouncing, barely checking the map. But the trail felt off. Places I remembered weren't where they should have been. A footbridge that should have crossed the creek was gone. We found stone piles, cairns, stacked neatly in rows beside the trail. Dozens of them.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Some small, some tall. Some had bones placed carefully in the center. Little ones. And then we saw the tree. It was maybe 50 yards off trail. A big poplar, gnarled and dead. Nailed into the side of it was an old iron horseshoe. Hanging from the horseshoe was a rope, and tied to the rope, no BS, was a deer skull. But the skull had carvings in it.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Weird symbols like spirals and claw marks etched into the bone. Anna wanted to turn around right there, but I was too stubborn. I kept thinking if we just kept going, we'd hit the old trail shelter I remembered from years ago. A small A-frame near the ridgeline where we could get our bearings. So we pushed on. The fog got thicker, the trail got thinner.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
At one point I swear we passed the same tree three different times. One with a split trunk and a slash of orange lichen across the side. That's when I started to think maybe we weren't just lost. Maybe something was leading us. Or worse, circling us. When we finally stumbled into the clearing, I almost cried from relief. The old trail shelter was still standing. Barely.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Roof half-caved, moss all over the north wall, and some raccoon poop in the corner. But it was shelter. It was a place. We huddled up inside, ate some protein bars with shaking hands, and tried to get warm. I told Anna to rest while I checked the area. Didn't want to admit I was looking for signs of whatever that thing was. Tracks, fur, anything. But there was nothing. Just the quiet again.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I climbed back into the shelter and must have drifted off, because the next thing I remember is Anna screaming. She was standing outside the shelter, staring at the ground. No, no, no. What is that? What is that? At her feet was a perfect circle of stones. We hadn't made it. It hadn't been there when we arrived. Inside the circle was her boot, one of the ones she was wearing the night before.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
It was dry, clean, the laces perfectly tied. She checked her feet. Both boots were on. I've never seen her that pale in my life. She couldn't stop crying. She kept asking me, how did it get that? How did it know? I had no answers. I just knew we couldn't stay. We packed and left that shelter without looking back. But even then, I had the feeling we were still being watched.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Not hunted exactly, more like studied. Like something out there was learning us. By the time we left that shelter, I'd given up on the map. Nothing made sense anymore. The landscape felt like it had folded in on itself. Trees were repeating. I'd walk 30 feet and swear we were back where we started. Even Anna noticed it. She stopped asking if we were going the right way. We both knew we weren't.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
i don't think there was a right way any more the fog was thicker than ever rolling low across the forest floor coiling around the trees like it was alive the light never changed morning never really became day There was just this dull gray half-light filtering through bare branches that looked wrong, like we were trapped inside a dream where the sun never quite rose.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Anyway, between school and work and stress, I hadn't been home in months. When I saw a break in my schedule, I jumped on it. And when my girlfriend Anna said she was free that same weekend, I figured why not take her somewhere real, somewhere without traffic or phone notifications, just quiet. Anna grew up in Atlanta. She's the kind of person who's never had to check for ticks or hang a bear bag.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We didn't speak much, just walked. Fast, packs bouncing. Every few steps I'd check over my shoulder. And eventually I saw them. Figures, not close, not even fully visible. Just dark shapes slipping between trees up on the ridge, always just out of sight. Too thin to be human, moving too fast, but always upright, always two-legged.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The air started to smell like wet fur and decay, like something had died days ago and never cooled. At one point, Anna gagged and dropped to her knees. Her nose started bleeding.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
i pulled her up and we kept moving somewhere around late afternoon if that even means anything in that place we reached a small rocky clearing it looked like a dried-up creek bed maybe twenty feet wide there was a tree in the center completely stripped of bark around it were piles of bones big bones
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
some looked like deer but others others looked human long pale femurs ribcages jaws but not fresh these had been picked clean arranged even laid in spirals patterns some were buried upright in the dirt like markers anna whispered This isn't random. And she was right. Something had put them here. Something had made this. That's when we heard it again. The clicking. Not from one direction.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
From all around us. Then the shriek. Only this time it was louder. Closer. And it didn't echo. It just hit us. Like a pressure wave that made our ears ring and our stomachs flip. Anna clutched my arm and screamed, and I grabbed her and ran. We didn't look back, we just bolted. Branches clawed at our faces. Mud sucked at our shoes. Somewhere behind us, I heard another shriek.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
Then another, and another. Higher and higher, all overlapping. They were calling to each other. We tore through the woods until the fog broke and the trees thinned. And suddenly, we were standing on a rocky overlook. Below us, winding like a ribbon through the valley, was the trail. The real trail. Switchbacks and all, and far down near the base of the ridge, was the goddamn parking lot.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We didn't even stop to breathe. We just scrambled down, sliding, grabbing branches, half falling the whole way. At the last switchback, I looked back.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
And there it was, standing alone at the edge of the treeline, tall, gaunt, its limbs too long for its frame, legs bent backward, hooves sunk into the dirt, its torso heaved slowly like it was panting, the skin was so thin I could see its ribs rising and falling, and its face, still twisted into that horrific almost human snarl, looked straight at me.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
The eyes were clouded, like cataracts, but I felt them lock with mine. Then it opened its mouth, and in my voice it said, Don't leave me. Anna heard it too. I felt her grip my hand tighter. Then more of them stepped out from the trees. Five. Six. Maybe more. All identical, yet slightly off. Wrong in different ways. One with a crooked neck. One with broken antlers. One missing a jaw entirely.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
All of them watching. We ran. We reached the car, shaking and filthy, and I barely got the keys in the ignition. As we drove away, I glanced in the rearview mirror. They were still standing there, just watching. We didn't stop driving until we hit Asheville. I didn't sleep for two days. Anna hasn't spoken about it since. She dropped the class we shared and hasn't returned my texts.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
I tried reporting it. The ranger I spoke to looked at me like I was insane. said that section of trail had been closed years ago after a wildfire no maintained shelters up there no known campsites i asked him if he'd heard of walker's hollow he paused said that name hadn't been used in decades Then he told me, quietly, that the last time someone reported going up there, it was a rescue mission.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
But she's adventurous. I told her I wanted to take her on a backpacking trip, just a short two-nighter on an old loop that connects to a forgotten spur of the Appalachian Trail. Through this place my granddad always warned me to avoid called Walker's Hollow. She thought the name was creepy in a fun way. I figured it'd make the trip more memorable.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
A couple of hikers had gone missing. Their gear was found. Their boots were found. But not them. No bodies, just bones. Arranged in spirals. I'm not saying you have to believe me. But if you're ever on the Appalachian Trail and you see a tree marked with a triangle and a circle inside, turn around. Don't answer the call. And if you hear your own voice echoing from the woods, it's already too late.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
This happened in the fall of 2021, somewhere between Max Patch and Hot Springs on the Appalachian Trail. I haven't told many people about it, partly because I still don't understand it myself, and partly because I know how insane it sounds. There were five of us. Me, Liam, Caroline, Josh, and Ray. We were all experienced hikers, not just weekend warriors.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
We'd planned a 10-day section hike, aimed for early October to avoid the crowds and the worst of the bugs. No one brought GPS. We were trying to keep it old school. Paper maps, compasses, and instinct. We were about three days in when this happened.
Just Creepy: Scary Stories
4 Scary Appalachian Mountain Horror Stories
we camped on a flat shelf just off the trail it had rained the night before so we expected a bit of morning mist what we woke up to was something else entirely the fog was thick but it wasn't moving it didn't roll or lift with the sun it just sat there still and dense like it was pinned in place I couldn't see more than 15, maybe 20 feet in any direction. No birds, no bugs, no wind.