Darkest Mysteries Online — The Strange and Unusual Podcast 2026
Horror Stories From Those Unsettling Holidays
07 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. My cousin Leela and I had rented a cabin way out near Pine Hollow for Christmas week. That's in the eastern part of Kentucky, not too far from the West Virginia line. She'd just moved back east after a brutal breakup in Washington state, not D.C., and needed a change of scenery.
I was working warehouse nights back in Greenville, loading trucks and living in a studio I never really unpacked. Neither of us had holiday plans that we cared about, so we figured why not? A week in the woods, just us, some cards, and no extended family breathing down our necks. Leela found the place online.
Chapter 2: What led to the unsettling Christmas cabin experience?
We brought plenty of food, a Bluetooth speaker, some games, and two bottles of bourbon. The plan was drink, decompress, and not think about anyone or anything else for a few days. Christmas Eve, we made dinner, boxed mac and cheese with hot dogs, real fancy stuff, and played cards until our hands got clumsy.
The fire crackled, the bourbon worked its way through our systems, and we queued up some movie Leela had downloaded, but it froze halfway through. That was fine. We weren't really watching it anyway. She drifted off on the couch, and I turned in early. I remember thinking, as I pulled the blankets over me, that it had been a good call to come out here.
Then I woke up around three, not from a noise or a nightmare, just that full-body alertness that only comes from a bladder that's officially out of patience. I lay there for a minute, trying to will it away, but no dice. The cabin didn't have indoor plumbing. The listing had said rustic amenities, which turned out to mean a freezing cold outhouse about 20 yards behind the cabin.
I threw on my coat and boots, grabbed the flashlight, and stepped outside. The cold hit hard like it had teeth. A palatian cold is different. It doesn't care how many layers you're wearing. It goes straight for your bones. The snow was deep and freshly crusted, so every step crunched loud like breaking glass underfoot. The air was hairy. No wind, no night sounds, just breathe and boots.
And then, just as I was rounding the back corner of the cabin, I heard it. Harper stopped me dead. The voice came from the tree line, maybe twenty feet away. Female, calm, familiar. It sounded like Leela. The flashlight flicked over the snow and landed on nothing, just trees. No footprints, no movement. But the voice had been right there, right there. Then again, quieter.
Harper, come here a second. Same tone. Same cadence. Same voice. But off. I can't explain it well. It was like hearing your best friend's voice for a bad phone connection. Mostly right. But just a little too... clean. There was no reason Leela would have followed me out here, barefoot in the snow, whispering from the trees. I turned toward the cabin. She was in the window.
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Chapter 3: What happened during the eerie Christmas Eve night?
Inside. Wrapped in a blanket, standing still behind the frost glass, watching me, I looked back toward the trees again. Still nothing. Just a strip of pine trunks and darkness beyond the flashlight's beam. My stomach nodded in this slow, crawling way. I said, loud enough to carry, not funny.
Then I power walked the rest of the way to the outhouse, and took care of things without ever turning my back fully to the woods. When I got back inside, the warmth felt wrong. The air was heavy and still, like the cabin had been holding its breath. Leela hadn't moved. She was still standing at the window. Same blanket. Same vacant expression. I asked, you good? Nothing. No blink, no nod.
I stepped closer and touched her shoulder gently. She flinched like I pulled ice water down her back. Then, without looking at me, she whispered, you heard it too. We didn't sleep that night. Not really. We sat up by the fire, each holding our own bourbon bottle like it was a weapon. At some point, we pulled the curtains closed, but it didn't help.
I kept checking the front door, like I was expecting someone to knock. The next morning, we pretended. Made coffee. Ate dry cereal. Talked about foxcalls and bourbon dreams. The usual nonsense you reach for when you don't want to believe you were scared out of your mind. But we didn't go outside. Not until late afternoon when the cabin started closing in on us.
Lila offered to take the trash out to the shed behind the cabin, said she needed some air. She threw on her coat, half-sibbed butylose, and headed out with the garbage bag slung over her shoulder. Ten minutes passed. Then. Fifteen. I figured she got distracted, maybe spotted some animal tracks. Then twenty minutes ticked by. I got that deep stomach hollow kind of dread.
Went to the back door and opened it. The trash bag was lying in the snow, halfway between the porch and the shed. But Lila was gone. I called her name. Nothing. Not even an echo. I grabbed the flashlight and did a fast loop around the shed. Nothing behind it. No fresh prints going further. Then, just as I was about to head down the slope, past the tree line, I saw her.
She was crawling, literally crawling through the snow. About 30 feet out. Her eyes were wild. Her face was scraped up and her hair was stuck to her cheeks in frozen strands. She wasn't wearing boots anymore. Her hands were bare and red and bleeding and she kept whispering, don't let it call me again, don't let it call me again. I ran out, yanked her up and half dragged her back inside.
Her whole body was trembling. The coat had come open and her jeans were soaked through with snow. I wrapped her in everything we had, blankets, towels, my coat and sat her in front of the fire. She clutched the blanket to her face and rocked a little like a kid trying to wake up from a nightmare. It took nearly an hour before she said anything coherent.
She told me when she stepped outside, she'd heard my voice. Harvard, it said. Come help me. She thought I was in trouble. She followed the sound past the shed. But every time she got close, it moved. Just a few steps ahead, always just out of sight. It stayed calm, friendly, until she stopped walking.
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Chapter 4: How did the main character react to the strange voice outside?
Then it changed. Don't stop now, it said. You're almost here. She turned to run, slipped on the ice. That's how she scraped her face. But what really scared her, she said, wasn't the fall. It was what came after. Nothing. That night, we pushed the couch against the front door. Sat by the fire with knives in her laps, not speaking, not even pretending to be okay. We didn't sleep.
We didn't turn on any lights. When the sun finally came up, we packed everything into the car. Didn't even wash the dishes. We just left. Vila moved back to Spokane a couple weeks later. I've seen her twice since. She won't talk about that trip. Anytime I bring it up, she goes quiet like the conversation never started.
As for me, I don't do cabins anymore, and I definitely don't step outside after dark when it's snowing. My uncle Silas had invited us up to his place for Christmas that year. Me, my mom, and my cousin Ellis, who was 16, Silas lived by himself on this high ridge way out in Redfin County. He built the place himself years back, and he barely ever left it.
We'd never done the holidays up in the mountains before. Honestly, the idea seemed kind of cool at first. Snowy getaway, no distractions, a break from the usual Christmas chaos. But by the second day, Ellis and I were seriously climbing the walls. The internet was out. The satellite was frozen, and Sila's idea of entertainment was a stack of old readers, digest issues, and a wither radio.
So we did what bored teenagers do. We went snooping around in the garage. That's where we found it. This weird, rolled-up ice fishing tent tucked behind a wall of neatly stacked firewood. It still had the plastic tag from the manufacturer dangling off the side. We dragged it out, dusted it off, and showed it to Silas.
He barely glanced at it, just nodded and said something like, oh yeah, forgot about that thing. Put it in a trade from some guy a long time ago. Ellie's, and I decided to set it up just below the house, near the tree line. There was a wide, flat spot with barely any slope. Perfect for what we had in mind.
Tent was dome-shaped, pop-up style, and once we got it open, we saw it was in surprisingly good condition. Stiff vinyl walls, plastic flooring, barely any signs of wear. It looked like no one had ever actually used it. That night, we loaded it up with double sleeping bags, layered ourselves in thermals and hoodies, and zipped ourselves in. It felt like this weird kind of freedom.
Like we were camping out on the edge of the world. No adults. No rules. Just the snow, the trees, and us. At some point after midnight, I woke up. At first, I couldn't tell why. Elise was snoring. This low, weird little whistling sound he makes when he's really out, and everything was pitch black inside. But then I heard it. This soft, dragging noise right outside the tent.
It was subtle, like something brushing against the vinyl wall. Not fast or frantic, just slow. Methodical. Like someone was running a stick gently along the outside. I held my breath. The sound came again, and this time, I saw the wall closest to me push in slightly. Just a small, smooth indentation. Curve.
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Chapter 5: What was the significance of the footprints found in the snow?
It looked like something had slashed through the back wall. Three long jagged tears, each one maybe three feet long. The weirdest part, the cuts didn't go all the way through, they just sent partway into the vinyl like whatever did. It had pressed hard, but not hard enough to rip clean through. We called sealers over. He stood there looking at the tears without saying much.
After a while, he just said must have been a branch, even though there wasn't a single tree within 20 feet of that spot. Then he picked it up and carried it out back without another word. That night, he burned it in the fire pit. Didn't even ask us if we wanted to try fixing it, just stood there in the falling snow, watching the plastic warp and curl in the flames. No explanation. No discussion.
Just gone. Christmas morning was quiet. The roads were still snowed over, so we stayed inside all day. Around five in the morning, I was lying in the guest room, just staring at the ceiling, not really sleeping, when I heard a sound that didn't belong. It started low, almost like a vibration under the floor. Then it rose fast into this high-pitched screech. Not like metal on metal or brakes.
It was thinner than that, like something mechanical trying to imitate a scream and not quite getting it right. It hit this frequency that made my eyes sting. I remember that part clearly. It didn't sound like anything I could name. Then it stopped. Just like that. I mentioned it over breakfast. CLS didn't even look at me. Just said, you'll hear things up here. Ignore them.
That was the last time I tried bringing it up. That night, I didn't sleep at all. On the 26th, just before dinner, Sears opened his Bible. It was kind of his tradition. He'd always read a passage after big meals, especially around the holidays. This time, he'd barely gotten through the opening lines. Something about shepherds and angels. When the scream came again, only now, it was right above us.
It sounded like it tore straight through the roof, loud enough that the windows shook in their frames. Sealist wrote the Bible. Ellies, who had been trying to act tough the whole trip, started crying. Not just tearing up. Full-on crying. We searched everything. The attic. The crawlspace. We went outside with flashlights crunching through the snow. Nothing. Not a single track.
Not a branch out of place. But I swear I could still feel that sound in my chest. Like it was lodged somewhere deep behind my ribs. Humming. That night, Sealers locked every door and deadbolted the front and back. He shoved a heavy chest against the back door and nailed the window shutters closed. Told us not to open anything, not even to peek. And after that, everything just felt wrong.
We couldn't leave because the road down the ridge was still snowed in. So we stayed. Two more nights, and each night, just after dark, we'd hear the scream again. Always once. Always from a different direction. Never closer, never farther. Like it was circling. By the time the road cleared, all of us were jumpy. Ellie's wouldn't even go near the edge of the tree line.
Celis didn't say a word on the drive back down, just stared straight ahead the whole time. I didn't visit again for almost a year. By then I was in college and decided to drive up during fall break just for the weekend. I figured I'd check in on Celis, maybe help him with some winter prep.
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Chapter 6: What strange occurrences happened at the tree lot?
No smoke, no lights. But the door was unlocked, so I bolted inside and locked it behind me. I crouched behind a metal filing cabinet, legs shaking so hard I kept bumping the drawers. Then the doorknob started to turn, softly, just testing, then harder. I couldn't breathe. The front door opened. Cold air rushed in, along with bits of snow.
He stepped inside, didn't say anything, didn't look around, just walked in slow and steady and placed the bundle of holly still wrapped and barbed wire right on the doormat. Then he turned around and left. I stayed hidden until it was fully dark. Then I slept out through the back and followed the road until I found the luthers. I didn't tell them any of it.
She just said I got lost and had to leave the sled. They didn't ask questions. I think they were just relieved I came back in one piece. My cousin Carl and I were staying at our aunt's place the week before Christmas. She and her family had gone down to visit her in-laws in Knoxville, so we were house-sitting in a log cabin up on Sugar Ridge.
We grew up around here, knew the usual wildlife, the local folks. Nothing about it really bothered us. The only extra task was helping her decorate for the holidays. She left a list, lights around the porch, pangolins in the hallway, and a big old wooden santa she kept in the shed out back. The santa was weird. Kind of a family relic. Hand-painted, tall, and a little unnerving.
It had this carved grin that didn't look particularly jolly. My aunt always set it out by the front steps with the lantern in one hand. Getting to it was a pain. The shed was tucked into the hill behind the house, so no line of sight from any of the windows, and it was packed full of bins and junk.
By the time I dragged the thing out, my gloves were soaked, and I could feel snow melting down the back of my wrists. I stood it up next to the porch like she always did, and that's when I noticed someone watching from the woods. Just beyond the tree line, maybe fifteen yards out, was a man in a branco. I thought maybe it was a hunter at first.
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Chapter 7: How did the protagonist feel about the mysterious man at the tree lot?
It's not unheard of around here, but he was moving, just standing there, not even shifting his weight. I looked for a few seconds, then turned to call for Cal. When I turned back, the man was gone. I figured it was just the light messing with my eyes. Still falling through branches can look like movement, and honestly, I hadn't slept much. Still, I went back inside and locked the door behind me.
That night we made Coco settled into the couch and started one of those horror movie marathons. Around ten I glanced out the window. The Santa had moved. It wasn't where I'd left it. It had turned a few degrees, just enough that it was now facing sideways toward the yard. I asked Cal if he'd nest with it, expecting a laugh or some kind of jerk. He swore he hadn't touched it.
So we both put on boots and went outside to check. Sure enough, there were drug marks in the snow, not footsteps, just two grooves, like someone had rotated it in place. Cal thought I was messing with him. He gave me this look, like I was clearly trying too hard to set up some prank. I didn't push it.
Next morning, the Santa was back to its original position, front-facing, center, like nothing had happened. I assumed Kyle had moved it back and was now pretending it hadn't happened to mess with me. When I brought it up, he got kind of annoyed, swore up and down he hadn't touched it. I could tell he made it, but we still ended up rushing it off, calling each other weirdos, and letting it go.
Later that day, I went out back to grab more firewood. On my way back to the house, I noticed something in the snow behind the shed footprints. Airfoot. Heman. They were small, like a kid's, but the gate was off. One foot turned inward, and the spacing between steps didn't look right. Anaven. I followed them a little way, maybe twenty feet. Then they just ended. No melting. No trail fading off.
Just clean snow beyond that point, like the prints had never been there at all. That night, Cal called it early and went to bed.
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of the Christmas Eve delivery?
I stayed up reading in the living room. Around midnight, the porch motion light clicked on. I pulled the curtain aside. The Santa was gone. I grabbed a flashlight and stepped outside. You could see the drag marks in the snow leading down the steps and off into the woods. I followed them, probably thirty yards, until they stopped at the base of a tree.
And there it was, the Santa, propped up neatly and facing me. No footprints, just a line where it had been dragged. I didn't touch it. I turned around and walked back inside. Cal was standing in the hallway pale. He said he'd heard tapping on the upstairs window. Soft, steady, not fast, not frantic, just this odd little rhythm.
He figured it was a branch, until he remembered there weren't any trees that close, especially not behind the house on that slope above the shed. We made sure every door and window was locked, shut all the curtains. That night, we both crashed on the couches in the living room with the lights on. At dawn, I went to check on the set again. It was back in its original place. plane.
No trail in the snow. No marks. Like someone had just carried it there and set it down without leaving any sign. That evening, a neighbor came by to drop off a pie. She's friendly, the type who always knows what's going on before you do. While she was handing it over, she asked, very casually, if one of us had been out walking near the ridge the night before in a brown coat. We said no.
She said her husband had seen someone out past the tree line, pacing back and forth. No flashlight. Just walking. We asked what time. She said it was sometime between 11 and midnight. That night, we didn't even pretend to sleep. We sat at the kitchen table with all the lights on, mugs overheated coffee, watching the windows like two kids trying not to admit we was burped.
Sometime after 1, we heard it again. Appling. Not at the windows this time. On the glass of the back door. It went on for a while. At least a full minute. We just sat there, barely breathing. Finally, I stood up and moved toward the door.
When I looked through the glass, there was a face, not pressed right against it, just hovering in the light a few inches back, eyes wide, mouth slightly open, like someone had caught the breath in frozen missings. It was Greg. We hadn't seen him in two years. He used to be one of Cal's friends. Came to cookouts, bonfires, that kind of thing.
But he'd gotten strange, started showing up uninvited, fixated on people, especially me. I'd blocked him after he sent me a strain of messages that made my skin crawl. Cal had warned him to knock it off. And now he was just there, standing at the back door like he was part of the porch decor. We called the sheriff. Greg didn't move.
Just stood there under the porch light, staring like that wouldn't say anything. When the deputy finally arrived, Greg was gone. But they found footprints. Not leading to the door, just circling the house. Over and over. Around the base of the cabin. They followed the tracks out into the woods, but after a while, they just stopped. Same as the barefoot ones behind the shed. The sander?
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