These are 4 Scary PARK RANGER StoriesLinktree: https://linktr.ee/its_just_creepyStory Credits:►Sent in to https://www.justcreepy.net/Timestamps:00:00 Intro00:00:18 Story 100:20:03 Story 200:35:55 Story 300:51:38 Story 4Music by:►'Decoherence' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.auhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM_AjpJL5I4&t=0s► Myuu's channelhttp://bit.ly/1k1g4ey ►CO.AG Musichttp://bit.ly/2f9WQpeBusiness inquiries: ►[email protected]#scarystories #horrorstories #parkrangerstories #nationalpark #parkranger 💀As always, thanks for watching! 💀
Chapter 1: What is the first park ranger story about?
You're the closest unit to Section 32. We've got an unregistered fire ring reported in a ravine northwest of Dead Horse Ridge. Some hikers called it in yesterday. Probably just a bunch of kids poaching elk tags. But dispatch tried hailing the permit holders. Three hunters from Cheyenne. No response. I want eyes on it before nightfall. I didn't ask why they'd send just one guy into Wendigo Gulch.
I already knew. I'd been here seven years, long enough to get sent on the errands no one else wanted. I was the solo guy, the widowmaker slot. Just me, a badge, and a sidearm I rarely used. They gave me the calls that were more check it out and report back than send back up, which suited me fine, most of the time. Still, when she said Section 32, my stomach twisted just a little.
That wasn't the name printed on the map. Officially, it was just a chunk of low ravine backcountry with no trails and very little foot traffic, unless you counted the elk that bedded down there in the cold months. But if you asked the old-timers at the feed store down in Centennial, or the quiet-skinned ute guy who sold me jerky sometimes, they'd call it something else. Wendigo Gulch. Stupid name.
Myth stuff. I didn't care for it. Still, I felt that knot in my chest when I pulled off the gravel road and loaded up my pack with the usuals. trauma kit, Garmin, sidearm, flare gun, emergency sat phone, though I already knew from experience that the signal in that part of the forest was about as useful as a wet match.
It was a three mile hike in, over crusted snow and black rock, just steep enough to feel like the mountain was trying to shove you back down every time you found your footing. The trees out there were different, bigger, older, as if they'd been spared from the wildfires and thinning projects. Pine trunks black with age, moss grown thick enough to muffle your own footsteps.
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Chapter 2: What happens when the ranger encounters the camp?
When I reached the gulch the temperature dropped like a curtain being pulled. The campsite sat maybe ten yards off a frozen creek bed. No tents pitched, just three cots laid bare under a half-collapsed tarp. One of the camp chairs was overturned. I found a pot of coffee on a cold burner, half full, still warm. There was food on a metal plate, half eaten. Elk steak, from the smell, not even cold.
Which meant someone had been here, very recently. But the place had the kind of quiet that wasn't right. No birds, not even the tick of melting snow from the tree limbs. The rifles were what really set me off. All three leaned against a boulder by the fire ring, stocks still dry, safety off, no shell casings nearby. A box of ammunition, unopened, sat on a log.
No one left guns like that, not seasoned hunters, not unless they left in a hurry. I crouched down, tried to make sense of the tracks. At first glance, it looked like a mess of boots scuffed into the snow and pine needles. But as I traced it farther out, I realized what I was actually seeing. Bare footprints. Wide. Spread. No shoes. The toes dug into the frozen ground deep enough to split skin.
I followed them with my eyes until they vanished into the woods, toward a ridge that dropped off hard into the deeper gulch. They weren't walking. They were running.
Chapter 3: What do the footprints signify in the story?
i thumbed my radio dispatch this is ranger calloway i found the camp no sign of the hunters gear's all here but i hesitated something's off please advise static nothing else no squelch no carrier ping i waited then tried again still nothing sunlight was thinning behind the ridge now. That late afternoon gray that says you've got about an hour before it's too dark to matter.
I made the call to stay put. Mark the location, spend the night, hike out in the morning to get a better signal. If they came back, I'd be here. If not, I could guide a team back in tomorrow. I pitched my tent in a tight clearing maybe 30 yards from the site. I didn't like being that close to the gear, but I didn't like leaving it unmonitored either.
I set up a small perimeter with clacker wire and old soda cans, redneck motion sensors, but they'd worked more than once. Night fell fast. I lit no fire, not out of caution. I just didn't feel like warming myself while those empty boots sat by a cold campfire across from me, like ghosts waiting to be told what went wrong. Around midnight, I heard it. At first, I thought it was wind.
A low push through the trees, slow and rolling. But it had a rhythm to it. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Too wet. Too close to be the wind. I didn't move. Then it shifted. Off to the left of my tent. Maybe twenty feet out. Same sound. Same slow drag of breath. Like something was pacing. Heavy, but careful. something that knew how to move quiet even when it weighed a lot.
Chapter 4: What terrifying experience does the ranger have at night?
Pine needles crackled, but just barely. I held my breath, gripped the flare gun under my sleeping bag. I didn't call out, didn't want to break whatever thin veil of distance still held between us. It circled, slow as a clock hand. Then it stopped, right by my tent door. I could feel it, like pressure in my ears. No smell, no heat, just... presence. That's when the scream came. It wasn't close.
Not yet. It came from somewhere deeper in the gulch, echoing off the rock. But I'll never forget how it sounded. Not like a man yelling. Not like someone in pain. It was studied. Drawn out. Broken up in places like the thing doing it had heard screaming before but didn't understand where it started or ended. My chest went cold. Another scream followed, closer this time. Then silence.
I don't remember falling asleep, just that at some point I stopped shaking long enough to close my eyes. When I woke again just before dawn, the tent was still, but outside in the pale gray light I saw them, gouges in the bark of the trees, three of them. Clawed deep, twelve feet up, and in the snow, a new trail of barefoot prints, circling my tent.
When the sun finally broke over the ridge, it didn't bring any warmth with it. The light just made everything look worse. I sat hunched outside my tent, staring at those claw marks carved into the pine like something was trying to dig its way to the sky. Twelve feet up, maybe more. I don't spook easy.
I've been bluff charged by black bears, pulled bodies from snowmelt creeks, even been lost once in Yellowstone for a full 12 hours with nothing but a busted compass and a dying radio. But this, this was different. It wasn't panic, it wasn't even fear, not really. It was the kind of cold dread that settles in your gut and sits there. heavy as lead, whispering you're already too far gone.
I packed quickly, tent down, gear strapped, flare gun back on my hip. The snow had crusted overnight, and the prints around my tent had hardened into near-perfect casts. Five toes, wide ball, deep heel, human, barefoot. But they weren't mine, and they weren't here the day before. I followed them, against every instinct I had,
Not because I wanted to, but because something told me I needed to see where they went. Something in my bones said it mattered. They led away from the clearing in a jagged, looping pattern. Like whatever left them couldn't quite decide where it was going. The tracks twisted around trees, doubled back, then broke in a straight line toward the deeper gulch.
I followed them for maybe half a mile, until they stopped. Not faded, not obscured, just stopped. Like the thing had lifted itself clean off the ground. That's when I smelled it. Rot. Not the sharp, sweet kind that comes with a fresh kill, but the deep, earthy stench of something long dead. It came in waves, almost like heat. I took a few cautious steps forward, scanning the treeline.
Nothing moved. The forest was still frozen in that unnatural hush. No birds, no squirrels, not even the creak of branches. Then I saw it. A ribcage. Not human. Probably elk. But it was wrong. It had been hoisted into a tree, twenty feet off the ground, jammed between two limbs like a macabre offering.
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Chapter 5: How does the ranger escape from the creature?
The chimney rattled every time the wind picked up. The whole thing felt…lopsided, like the earth had tried to shake it off at some point but gave up halfway. The first few days were fine. The snow fell in long, drifting sheets. I set up my perimeter check-ins, took wind and humidity readings, and logged them by hand.
I monitored smoke columns and kept an eye on lightning strikes on the ridge, though they were few and far between. And then I started noticing the birds, dead ones, always crows or magpies, always around the base of the tower. I thought maybe they hit the structure during low visibility, but what stood out was the placement.
Four or five corpses a day, laid out in loose circular patterns, always facing the same direction, toward the western ridge. The trees out there leaned slightly too. At first, I chalked it up to heavy snowfall or wind shearing, but then I took a straight edge and held it up against the trunks. Every single one on the western line tilted the same way.
Not bowed, tilted, as if they were leaning toward something they couldn't quite reach. On day four, just after dusk, the radio crackled. Now I'm not talking normal static. I've heard faulty signals. This was a clipped, looped message that faded in like it was pushing through something thick. Fire line breach. Visual confirmation. Coordinates. Static. Request acknowledgement.
I responded like I was supposed to. Gave my callsign. Marked my location. Dead air. It played again exactly 47 minutes later. Same words. Same breathless male voice. I triangulated the coordinates. Figured maybe a repeater was malfunctioning. I pulled out my old topographic map and found the location. It led right back to me. Lookout 47. The next day, I called dispatch.
They brushed it off as interference from old relay station still bouncing signal. Said it happens sometimes, especially in the mountains. I asked about the station number, the one attached to the message. Silence on the other end, then. That's not a current call sign. Might be Cold War leftovers. Just ignore it. That night I kept the radio off. I figured if it wanted to talk, it could wait.
But around midnight, I woke up to something different. The tower was moving, swaying. I've felt windstorms before. This wasn't wind. It was like something huge had brushed the tower. Like something was moving through the forest. Slow, deliberate, and heavy enough to shift the snowpack. I climbed the ladder to the second floor and stared out the west-facing window.
There were no lights, no movement. But for a moment, just before I turned away, I saw something glint in the darkness between the trees, like glass catching moonlight. I watched for another hour, but it didn't happen again. The next morning, I found a new ring of birds, this time inside the perimeter fence. The weirdest part? No tracks. No paw prints. No drag marks.
Just a perfect circle of feather and bone melting slowly into the snow. I didn't say anything in my logs, didn't want to get flagged for a psyche val, but I did start sleeping with the hatchet next to my bed, just in case. And the trapdoor? It started rattling at night, not banging, not shaking, just rattling, like something underneath was breathing too hard.
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Chapter 6: What is the second story about the fire lookout?
Like a ritual. I'd come in from patrol. Mud on my boots, blood sometimes too, though I can't remember from what.
and i'd kneel in front of the shelf press my forehead to the floor and whisper i see you i see you i see you i don't remember when i started doing that but i do know what happened when i missed a night the next morning i woke up and found a fresh totem nailed to the inside of my door through the wood splinters everywhere it had no eyes no face just a hollow hole where the mouth should be filled with dirt and ants
Carved into the door next to it were the words, You're forgetting who you are. That was when the forest opened a path for me. A new trail. One I swear hadn't existed before. It wasn't on the map. It wasn't even possible. It cut through areas too steep, too dense, too far north.
but it was there now laid out with black stones and hanging bones from tree branches like wind chimes the air buzzed with electricity and the birds followed me silent heads cocked watching at the center of it all was the altar exactly as described in glenpower's journal Stone, cracked, covered in lichen and bloodstains that hadn't dried, even though the nearest human had vanished months ago.
Around it, totems, hundreds, some carved fresh, some ancient, weathered by time, some that looked just like the ones from my shelf. and a few that looked just like me one had my eyes one had my exact jacket stained with the same oil i spilled two nights ago one was whispering not speaking whispering its wooden mouth clicked open and shut as it muttered join us join us join us
I radioed for backup, or I thought I did. I hit the emergency beacon, held the button down. I screamed into the mic, but all I heard on the other end was my voice. Calm, confident, me. I'm fine, no assistance needed, just lost in the trees for a moment. Except I hadn't said that. I don't remember walking back to the cabin. The next thing I knew I was standing in front of it holding a totem.
It was bleeding. Not sap, blood. I dropped it and ran inside. Locked the door. Tried to write everything down. Tried to remember who I was. But the logbook wasn't mine anymore. The pages were filled with entries I hadn't written. In handwriting that wasn't mine. He walks deeper now. The forest knows his name. He is almost one of them. I tried burning everything.
The totems, the clothes, the furniture, the firewood and light. No matter how much fuel I poured, it just hissed. And laughed. A dry, choking sound coming from the chimney, even though the flue was closed. I think I'm already gone. Sometimes I catch glimpses of myself in the mirror, and the face looking back isn't mine. Sometimes I talk, and the voice isn't mine. The whispers used to be outside.
Now they're in my head, and they know every thought I've ever had. This is my last transmission. If you're hearing this, don't come looking. Don't try to find the altar. Don't follow the path lined with bones. Don't trust the voice on the radio if it says it's me, because I don't know if I'm still Elliot Hayes, and I don't think I'm the only one who looks like me anymore. They took my face.
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