Darkest Mysteries Online — The Strange and Unusual Podcast 2025
Note To Self, Never Touch The Old Grave Off The Beaten Path
20 Dec 2025
Note To Self, Never Touch The Old Grave Off The Beaten PathBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/darkest-mysteries-online-the-strange-and-unusual-podcast-2025--5684156/support.Darkest Mysteries Online
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. Sitting at his table, illuminated by a small bedside lamp, Robert Francis pored over a map, jotting down notes each time his eyes fell onto some point of interest.
It was 10.30pm, and he reckoned that, if he set off at 6 in the morning, he'd be able to avoid the early traffic and catch the first train to Melgar before Sykes and from there, making it to Aberfoyle Village in a couple of hours. His itinerary was set, and he was filled with excitement at the thought of finally being on holiday.
It had been 11 months since he had so much as taken one day off from his work, so the thought of spending eight whole days cycling through the Scottish wilderness with only his backpack and tent for company was frankly exhilarating.
He owned a number of bikes, but for this adventure, he would take his favorite and most trusted one, with a custom paint job reading Robin large white letters across a frame of black. This was a bike which had never failed him.
Chapter 2: What adventure does Robert Francis embark on in the Scottish wilderness?
No bumps, no bruises, not so much as a punctured tire. In the morning, Robert woke filled with excitement, starting the day with purpose. negotiating the little traffic there was in the city with glee. Before he knew it, he was hopping off the train in Malgai and making his way along quiet country roads toward Aberfoyle.
Scottish summers are notoriously unpredictable and it was colder than Robert had expected, but he didn't care. As he made his way through the open countryside, passing the occasional car or rural household, a smile crept across his face. Cycling was his passion and Robert was in his element.
A couple of hours passed as the sparse yet rolling green hills soon gave way to a more imposing and altogether impressive setting. Slight hills soon became domineering mountains, pockets of woodland soon gave way to thick and visually impenetrable forests, and wide-open roads soon made way for their narrower and less trodden counterparts.
It was not long before the welcome sight of the village in Aberfoyle came into view, flanked on one side by a steep incline dotted with picturesque cottages, and on the other a wide-open plain stretching out towards a mountain range in the distance. A childish excitement grew in the pit of Robert's stomach.
Aberfoyle was the last evidence of humanity which he wished to see for the next eight days, and on leaving it behind, he would truly be alone, able to relax in the serene beauty of the Scottish countryside. It was now on to Queen Elizabeth Park, one of Scotland's largest nature reserves, and into the true wilderness which it contained.
After stretching his legs on the unusually deserted Aberfoyle Main Street, Robert embarked on the last leg of his for the day. Within minutes, he was out of that small innocuous town and into the unknown. For the past three months, he'd been in a quandary about where to go on his adventure.
But when he passed over an old stone bridge with a babbling stream underneath like a thousand voices whispering for attention, and found himself face to face with a forest which covered the hills, mountains, and valleys like a blanket... For as far as the eye could see, he knew he'd made the right decision.
The dirt road cut through the labyrinth of trees, and it occurred to Robert that, as he cycled farther into the reserve, the sun seemed to diminish with each mile, blocked by the huge pine trees on either side as if flight itself were an unwelcome visitor. By six o'clock, the sun was dipping toward a line of craggy mountains on the horizon.
It was time for Robert to find a suitable place to camp for the night. He continued onward, struggling over uneven hills and patches of wet mud, scanning his surroundings for a suitable location to camp in. Finally, he spotted a small clearing in the forest not far from the road.
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Chapter 3: How does Robert prepare for his cycling journey through Aberfoyle Village?
Clambering through some thick underfoot and entangled bushes, Robert managed to haul his bike through the tree line and then into the clearing. It was a small pocket of grass, and several fallen trees were spread across the area, trees which Robert assumed had created the clearing in the first place.
After finding a flat patch of grass, he set his tent up for the night, gathering some dry wood nearby which he gleefully turned into a campfire with the aid of some lighter fluid and matches. Building fires was one of Robert's favourite parts of camping in remote areas.
He often thought that there was something of an arsonist about himself, but that was a fact he only kept for his trips into the wild. And in any case, he loved nature and was always careful not to harm it. Night fell and unimpeded by the false light of man, the stars shone bright and bold.
After a few hours of sitting next to the warm glow of the fire, Robert reluctantly turned in for the night, excited by the prospect of another day's adventure in the morning. In the early hours, the fire still smouldering and Robert still refreshed and rested, more so than he had been for many years. Packing up his belongings and making sure the fire was extinguished, he set off once again.
It had rained slightly during the night, but thankfully the road was relatively dry. After cycling for another hour, Robert noticed a change in the landscape. it had become more unkempt, less constrained. The tree seemed closer together, and any occasional gaps in the forest scenery were filled by clearings and small fields, which had obviously been left unattended for countless years.
Robert realized that he traveled far enough into the forest that he was now out of reach of even the park rangers who would normally maintain such a place. It seemed as though, beyond this point, the land had been neglected by its carers for some reason.
The thought that even those familiar with that wilderness were afraid to tread there flirted with his attention momentarily before quickly being dismissed as a flight of fancy. The sky grew grey as the day wore on and it was clear that rain of a substantial volume was well on its way.
After brushing his bike up a steep incline, which he felt was too uneven to cycle on, Robert reached its peak, revealing a landscape which opened out sprawling forward between pockets of woodland and still stagnant pools of water slumbering in a deep set valley below which stretched across the land for miles.
It was populated by sparse areas of lawn, vibrant grass, which in places give way to the wandering boundary of the forest. With rain imminent, Robert decided that he would set up camp early in a wide circle of grass he could see at the foot of hill. Not half an hour later, he was there. The tent was up and all that was left was to gather some firewood.
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Chapter 4: What unexpected challenges does Robert face while cycling in the countryside?
Indeed, while it was daylight outside, the woodland trees were now blotting the sun from the sky, and if he had not known better, he would have sworn it was dusk. At last, he found a collection of broken branches and logs which were dry.
Robert knew this was as far as he should go as it was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate through the trees, which seemed to be growing closer together, their branches often interlinked and touching, as if trying to keep those inside from escaping. What a silly thought, Robert smirked to himself.
It had started to rain, and although he could hear the drops of water pelting off the leaves above, his surroundings were perfectly dry. It made sense to make his way back and get a fire started as soon as possible, because once everything was wet, it would prove increasingly difficult to do so.
He quickly gathered the last of the wood up into his arms, but just as he turned to leave and follow his own tracks and the pine-covered floor out of those unnerving woods, something caught his eye. Several feet away, obscured by a ring of trees particularly close to one another, appeared to be a strange arrangement of stones and the ground. Robert being Robert, he just had to investigate.
After clawing his way through a net of branches, he found himself staring at what looked suspiciously like a grave. Hundreds of uneven grey stones the size of a fist and some substantially bigger had been piled on top of one another about three feet wide, seven feet long, and a couple of feet off the ground. It looked as though a mourner had marked the resting place of a body.
A shudder crept up Robert's spine as he momentarily experienced a feeling as of being watched. He soon abandoned this frightened state when he noticed that lying around the stones was a collection of randomly scattered belongings.
Several empty beer cans lay strewn in the floor, a jumper covered in rotting leaves sat on the ground, while a sleeping bag, scraps of newspaper, and even some old fruit cans betrayed the grave for what it really was, someone's campsite.
Robert breathed a sigh of relief and surmised from his surroundings that a few students had probably come here in the summer, got caught up in the rain, moving into the woods to remain dry. The stones were probably just placed there out of boredom, or even as a prank to creep out any passerby in the future.
University summers really were great, Robber thought, casting a fleeting eye back to memories of summer trips with his friends. One thing about the stone configuration, however, intrigued him. Sticking out between two plain grey rocks on the side of the pile was a stone, which appeared to be markedly different from the rest.
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Chapter 5: What strange discovery does Robert make in the woods?
Touching its cold black surface, he'd completely forgotten about the unusual stone he'd picked up from the collection of all the arranged rocks. Removing it from his jacket pocket and observing it in the low red light of the campfire, Robert was certain that it had been shaped by human hands. It felt old, ancient even.
But he would wait to contact his archaeologist friend before getting his hopes up too much. He would have to admit, though, that the idea of finding a relic from the past was something which thrilled him deeply.
Since he was a child, he'd always been obsessed with hidden or undiscovered history, which perhaps explained his fascination with exploring the Scottish countryside, a land steeped in stalwarts and myths of strange and forgotten peoples.
Above all else, he hoped that it was of Pictish origin, that mysterious indigenous people who vanished without a trace over a thousand years ago, something which historians still ponder and puzzle over. Of course, in all probability, it was a modern replica, but the romantic side of Robert's personality hoped that it was so much more and enjoyed entertaining that hope.
As he stared at a relic, something unusual began to filter into his awareness. Something different. Above the crackling sound of the fire, the now subtle wind and the occasional rustle of a woodland animal never came a noise. It was distant. How far Robert could not tell, but it echoed out through the ridges and valleys nearby, scattering through the trees in the dark.
It repeated again and again, with only a moment's pause before utterances, and it was an utterance of some description. An animal, perhaps? Robert could not identify it, despite his impressive knowledge of the local wildlife. This sound possessed strange characteristics of a creature unknown to him.
In some ways, it was reminiscent of a bird of prey, parts high-pitched and shrieking, but under this lay a painful, wretched noise, more akin to that of a fox crying in the night looking for its young. That was it. Exactly. It sounded like it was looking for something.
For the next three hours, Robert lay awake listening to the screeching noise ebb and flow as whatever was producing it moved closer, then farther away. As he eventually drifted towards sleep, the thought occurred to him that the movement of the sound was not unlike that of a search party, yelling and shouting, looking for someone lost in the wilderness, following a distinct search pattern.
In the cold light of day, the noise was gone, and while Robert had accepted that what had scared him yesterday was simply a timid camper cautious of a stranger nearby, he could not shake a feeling of impending dread deep from the pit of his stomach. The day passed quickly, and while Robert made good progress, he did not do so with the delight that he had previously exhibited.
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