Darkest Mysteries Online — The Strange and Unusual Podcast 2026
Creepy Times In A Remote Cabin In The Woods
08 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, I'm welcome. Stories all the time. Glad you are here. Let's get into it. I just left a job I couldn't stand in Richmond and signed a short-term lease on this old cabin up in the hills of Greenbury County, West Virginia. My sister had passed away earlier that spring, and being in my apartment just made it worse. Her stuff was everywhere. Her laugh was still in the wall somehow.
I needed space, even if it meant running from the memories instead of dealing with them. The owner of the place, an older lady named Mrs. Olga Kinley, mailed me the key with a short note written in shaky handwriting.
Chapter 2: Why did the narrator choose to stay in a remote cabin?
Hasn't been used in a while, watch out for the critters. I should have asked more questions, but I didn't. I just packed up my car and left. The drive was long, almost nine hours. There were a few other cabins along the same road, but they looked like no one had touched them in years. One had a truck parked out front that was completely overtaken by moss.
That first night, nothing dramatic happened. I unpacked a little, made some Luquanti on the old gas burner, and fell asleep on the couch with a book I wasn't really reading. Around 3am, I woke up to the sound of the front door creaking open. Not slamming. Just a lawn, slow drag like old wood scraping against the frame. I sat up fast.
The door was still locked when I checked, but it stuck in a way it hadn't earlier. Like the frame had shifted or swollen. I figured it was just humidity and went back to sleep trying to convince myself the sound had come from a dream. The second night was harder to shrug off. I was dozing off when I heard footsteps on the front deck. Slow, deliberate. Four steps, then nothing. Then three more.
It wasn't a raccoon or some deer. It was way too paced for that. I stood there in the dark with my hand hovering over the light switch, debating whether to look. When I finally turned on the porch light and peeked through the curtain, there was nothing, just trees and moonlight hitting a creek. But I stayed up the rest of the night.
By night four, I was jumpy enough that I started sleeping with the radio on, windows shut, a chair pushed into the doorknob. I even dragged my dresser across the back door that opened to the woods. That's how not okay I felt. Night six, though. That's the one that changed everything. When I got up that morning, I found the dresser pushed out of place. Not a lot, just off.
Like someone had nudged it and then felt better of it. I checked a door. Still locked, but there were new marks on the bottom edge. Long, rough scrapes like it had been dragged. My first thought? Sleepwalking. I hadn't done it since I was a kid, but suddenly that made more sense than anything else. I spent the whole day trying to convince myself that's all it was.
That evening, I found an old motion sensor light in one of the kitchen drawers and hooked it up just outside the back door, pointing toward the trees. Then I sat in the living room with a baseball bat across my lap, pretending to read. Around four in the morning, the light clicked on. I jumped up and ran to the window. At first, I didn't see anything, just trees.
But when I squinted, I noticed a shape. Someone was squatting way back between two trees. They weren't facing me. They weren't moving at all. She's crouched low, arms draped over their knees, like they were resting or waiting.
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Chapter 3: What unsettling experiences occurred during the first night?
I stood there staring, breath caught, until the light shut off again. When I looked back, they were gone. The next morning, I walked behind the cabin. I found bare footprints in the dirt. Not deep, not messy, just clean impressions like someone had been standing still for a long time. Some faced the house, some faced away. No drought in. No leaves kicked up, just feet.
That night, I poured flyer into a pie pan and left it out on the deck. I'd seen that trick online somewhere, meant to catch prints. I didn't sleep, just listened. At 2am, the light flipped on again. I didn't move. The next morning, there it was, one clear footprint in the flower.
Not bad at this time, some kind of boot, deep at the heel, twisted at the toe like the person had shifted their weight. But that wasn't even the worst part. The lock on the toolshed had been cut. I'd never opened it, didn't even have the key, but now the padlock was lying on the ground, clean as lice. Inside the shed, there wasn't much.
An old chainsaw that didn't look like it worked, a few empty oil cans, a frayed rope, and an army cot with a thin, dirty blanket. There were fresh prints in the dirt leading in and out. That same day, I drove twenty miles to the closest gas station and asked the guy at the register if anyone lived near the cabin I was renting. He looked at me for a second, then just said, not for a while.
I told him about the footprints, the share, everything.
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Chapter 4: How did the narrator react to strange noises on the second night?
He leaned in a little and said, you shouldn't stay out there alone. That land's not right. Then he just turned away and stopped talking to me. When I got back to the cabin, I found something tied to the back door knob, a piece of string stretched from the handle to a branch overhead. Thin, almost invisible if you aren't looking for it. It was pull-tight, tied in a neat little knot.
I hadn't put it there. I hadn't seen it when I left that morning. I stared at it for a long time, not really thinking, just staring. Then I grabbed a knife, cut the string, and wrapped it in a paper towel. I didn't sleep at all that night. The next morning, I packed up. Everything. My clothes, my books, the bat, the flyer pan. Before I left, I walked the property one last time.
I don't know what I was hoping to find. Reassurance. Closure. Near the creek, half buried in the mud, I spotted something metal catching the light. I dug it out. An old military canteen. Dentist scratched initials carved into the side ID. I called Mrs. Kinley to tell her I was leaving early. She asked if something had happened. I told her I thought someone had been living out by the shed.
She went really quiet. Then she said, did you find the cut? I said, yes. She hesitated, then told me it belonged to her brother, that he used to stay at the sometimes before he passed. Then she said, I thought we took all his things with us. I asked her when he died. She said, oh, years ago, before we ever put the cabin up for rent. I left the key on the porch and didn't look back.
I drove straight back to Richmond, paid out the rest of the lease, and never asked for a refund. A buddy of mine name-marked this old family cabin barrier deep in the mountains, somewhere near the line between Tennessee and Virginia. His grandfather had built it with hand tools back in the 60s, mostly for hunting trips, and apparently no one in his family had been up there in over a decade.
We were all fried from school, so the idea of no service actually sounded nice. We packed lights, sleeping bags, coolers, canned food, floss lights. The drive took most of the afternoon. We lost reception somewhere around a gas station that still had one of those old analogue pumps that click while they count the gallons.
After that, the GPS just froze, and we followed a printout Matt Mark had found in his dad's glove box. The road turned to dirt and kept winding uphill until the trees started pressing in close enough to scrape the sides of the car.
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Chapter 5: What discoveries were made about the cabin on the fourth night?
It felt like driving through a tunnel of branches. By the time we found the clearing with the cabin, the sun was already gone, and that last bit of twilight made the woods look washed out and silent, like everything was holding its breath. The place looked exactly like I expected. Old logs stacked tight, a crooked porch, one window cracked down the centre.
The door hung slightly crooked too, so you had to lift it a little to get it to close. Inside was a single room with a small loft, a couple of sagging couches, and a heavy iron stove sitting dead center. There was no electricity, no plumbing, not even a working lantern, just the faint musty smell that every old building has, mixed with a cold bite of wood smoke.
We dumped our stuff in a pile, lit some candles, and sat around the stove drinking from the cooler. The kind of night where everyone's tired enough to laugh too hard at dumb jokes. By midnight, one guy was already passed out on the couch, another on the floor. I tried to sleep, but the quiet was too loud. Every few minutes, I'd hear this soft snap, like a twig breaking somewhere outside.
Not close, but not far either. Sometimes two in a row. I told myself it was just animals, deer, raccoons, whatever. But I couldn't shake the rhythm of it. I'd start to drift off, then snap. I even tried plugging my ears with part of my hoodie, but the sounds seemed to crawl through anyway.
Eventually, I must have dozed off because I woke up to sunlight cutting through the window and the sound of someone clattering pans. Mark was making instant coffee over the stove. The air inside was freezing, our breath visible. We hiked later that morning, following a trail that led up to a ridge where the trees thinned out and you could see valleys rolling forever in both directions.
Mark pointed to a couple of rusted hooks nailed into a tree and said his family used to hang deer there. I tried to laugh, but something about the way he said it, like it was still recent, made me uneasy. By the time we got back, the shadows were long and the air felt heavier. That's when we noticed the cabin door was shut.
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Chapter 6: What eerie signs were found around the cabin after the sixth night?
We were sure we'd left it open because it never stayed closed properly. Mark asked if anyone had gone back for something, but everyone shook their heads. The door was too heavy to swing on its own, and there was no lock. We pushed it open slowly. Inside looked the same. Nothing missing, nothing moved. We stood there for a moment, each of us pretending it wasn't weird.
Mark mumbled something about the wind. We all nodded like that explained anything. That night, we got the stove going again, played cards, and tried to ignore the creaks of the place settling. Around midnight, I went out back to take a leak. The air had the sharp mountain chill that stings your lungs. That's when I saw it. A small stack of stones right past the tree line. Seven or eight of them.
Flat and balanced in a perfect little tower. At first, I thought one of the guys had been screwing around, but when I asked, everyone came outside to look and nobody claimed it. Mark's face went kind of blank. He said his uncle used to make rock stacks whenever he camped up here.
Chapter 7: How did the encounter with the mysterious figure unfold?
It was just something he did. The thing is, his uncle had died years ago. Nobody said much after that. We left the stones alone and went back inside. The next morning, I was the first one up again. I opened the door to get some water from the jug, and I froze.
There were two new stacks, one beside the fire pit, and another right in front of the cabin door close enough that I had to step over it to get outside. Same style, same height, perfectly balanced. I woke the others, and we stood there half-dressed, just staring at them. The dirt around them was smooth, no footprints, no signs of anything moved.
It didn't even look like anyone had touched the ground nearby. We talked about leaving, but Mark said the dirt road would be slick after the rain from the night before. He promised we'd go first thing in the morning once it dried out. That day dragged. We barely talked. Every sound outside made someone flinch. By evening, the tension was so thick we gave up pretending to have fun.
We made chilly, ate in silence, and moved all our stuff into one room so we could sleep together. I jerked that it was like a middle school sleepover, except everyone looked like they were waiting for something to happen. Nobody laughed. At some point past midnight, I heard a heavy thud on the porch. Not a knock, not footsteps.
Just a single, solid drop, like something heavy had fallen from a few feet up. My eyes snapped open. Across the room, Drew was awake too. His face was pale and he whispered, You heard that? We both held our breath. Nothing followed. No creak, no wind, just the faint ticking of the stove as it cooled.
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Chapter 8: What shocking revelation did the narrator uncover about the cabin's past?
We stayed like that for what felt like hours. Eventually, I lay back down, but every nerve in my body was still waiting for another sound. It never came. When I stepped outside at dawn, the light was thin and grey. The first thing I saw was a single stone sitting dead Santa on the porch. Round, smooth, grey like the others, but alone this time. We didn't speak. Nobody even finished packing.
We just grabbed what was nearest keys, wallets, jackets, and left everything else behind. Sleeping bags, coolers, lanterns, all of it. When we finally hit highway and our phones lit up again, the tension broke just enough for us to start breathing normally. We stopped at a gas station, and that's when Drew pulled me aside. He looked like he was about to be sick. He showed me his phone.
There was a photo in his camera roll he swore he hadn't taken. It was dark and grainy, but the shapes were clear enough. You could see four people sleeping in a small room, lit by a single lamp. It was us. He deleted it right there. None of us said a word for the rest of the drive. That was over three years ago, and I haven't been back anywhere near that mountain range since.
Last fall, I was managing a small cluster of rental cabins tucked deep in the Appalachian Hills. Then one group arrived that broke that rhythm a little. Four guys, surveyors hired by some energy company to map new routes for transmission lines. They booked two cabins for a few weeks, and I remember thinking they looked more like college buddies than contractors. Loud, but friendly.
They laughed a lot, cooked out in the fire pit every night, and left empty beer cans lined up like trophies in the porch rail. All except for one of them. His name was Eric. Eric was quiet in a way that didn't seem forced. He'd just listen more than he talked.
While the others joked and argued about football, he'd be sitting off to the side, sketching something in a small notebook or tightening a strap on his pack. The first time I met him, he asked if there was a trail that looped down by the creek behind Cabin Free. He said he liked walking alone before sunrise because it helped him reset.
I remember thinking that was a strange word to use, reset, but it stuck with me. Over time, I started trusting him. He'd offer to help carry cleaning supplies or move lumber if he saw me struggling. Once, when one of the porch hinges snapped, he fixed it without being asked. Didn't even mention it until I noticed. He just said, couldn't stand the noise it made.
There was something very steady about him, the way he moved, the way he spoke. I figured he was one of those quiet, capable types you rarely meet anymore. Lina, my co-worker, noticed him too. She worked midday shifts cleaning and restocking the cabins. She was younger than me, early twenties, trying to put her life together again after what she called a rough patch.
She'd laugh when she said it, but there was something brittle about the way she smiled. After a week or two, Eric started leaving little things for her. Nothing huge. A thermos of coffee, a protein bar, a folded note that just said thanks for keeping things nice. I teased her about her secret admirer, told her she was going to get herself proposed to in the woods one day, and she just laughed.
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