5 Unsettling Scary Stories to Help You to Sleep | Compilation
episodePreviously titled “5 Unsettling Scary Stories to Help You to Sleep” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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What happened when hikers found falsified cairns and a cut tent in the Gila?
Danny and I had done four trips together before the Gila. Two in the Wemenuche, one in the Pecos, one in the Superstitions that we cut short because of heat. We had a system. He carried the map and did the navigation. I carried the stove and did the water. Neither of us was new at this. I want that on the record before I tell you what happened. Because everything that went wrong out there went wrong on purpose, and it wasn't ours. this was the last week of april two thousand twenty four five days four nights we left my truck at the t j corral trailhead near the gila cliff dwellings in southwest new mexico and planned a loop down little bear canyon to the middle fork of the gila river Up the middle fork past Jordan Hot Springs, then a climb out of the canyon and a return along the high country.
41 miles, give or take. Danny had printed the maps himself and laminated them at his office. I had a compass, a filter, and a hundred feet of cord. Standard kit. A couple of details about the Gila for people who haven't been... There's no permit system in the wilderness itself. You don't register, you don't reserve, you just park and walk in, which means no ranger anywhere holds a list with your name and your route on it. We left an itinerary with my wife, the way we always do, with instructions to make calls if she hadn't heard from me by Saturday night. We topped off water and bought two candy bars at Doc Campbell's Post. the little store near the trailhead and i made my last phone call from the gravel lot out front because i knew the signal died a quarter mile up the road i told her the weather looked perfect it did low seventies cold nights the river running clear and about knee-deep at the crossings
The other detail is the emptiness. Late April is prime season down there, and in five days we saw 11 other human beings, 10 of them in the first day and a half within a few miles of the cliff dwellings. Past Jordan Hot Springs, nobody. That's normal for the Gila, and it's exactly why we chose it. Keep that in mind while you read the rest of this. Every decision we made, we made knowing that yelling for help was a waste of breath. Day one went the way day one always goes. Little Bear Canyon narrows down to a slot near the bottom, and then it opens up and dumps you at the middle fork. And the river country down there is honestly some of the prettiest walking in the state. Cliffs banded orange and gray, cottonwoods just leafing out.
We crossed the river maybe a dozen times before we made camp below Jordan Hot Springs. Soaked for an hour, ate dinner, slept fine. I'll say this now so it means something later. The Middle Fork Trail crosses the river constantly, and the crossings are marked with rock cairns. Somebody stacks four or five flat stones on one bank, and that tells you where to ford and where the trail picks up on the other side. In between, you get the occasional strip of orange flagging tape tied to a branch, usually where flood debris has erased the tread. You learn to trust the cairns. Everybody who walks that canyon trusts the cairns. Day two, the cairns started lying to us. The first one was small. A cairn put us across the river at a wide gravel bar, and on the far side there was nothing.
No tread, no tape, just willow thickets. Danny checked the map, found the actual trail 80 yards upstream, and we rode it off. Flood damage. Cairns get rebuilt wrong all the time by well-meaning people. The second one was not small. Around midday, we hit a junction where a side drainage came into the middle fork from the west. There was supposed to be a trail sign there. Danny's map showed one, and the map was only two years old. No sign. There was a fresh cairn though, a big one, knee high, sitting at the mouth of the side drainage, and a strip of orange tape 30 feet up it. The main canyon ahead of us looked choked with deadfall. The side drainage looked walked in. If you didn't have a map or if you trusted rocks more than paper, you'd have taken the side drainage without a second thought.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What happened when hikers found falsified cairns and a cut tent in the Gila?
0:22–17:46
2
How did the armed trap and stalking escalate toward the river and spring?
17:46–1:26:37
3
How did the Airbnb crawlspace intruder get discovered and what evidence did police find?
1:26:37–1:28:30
4
What happened at the gas station and how did the police confirm the stalker’s identity?
1:28:30–1:37:16
5
How did a pickup driver at a roadside diner escalate into an attempted kidnapping case?
1:37:16–1:46:38
6
How did Wayne Pritchard groom and stalk the narrator using family ties and a storage unit of keepsakes?
1:46:38–2:24:30
Speakers
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