"The Masked":
I've been a park ranger in Yellowstone for over twenty years, and I’ve seen my fair share of strange things. But nothing compares to what happened that fall, when the park was nearly empty, its vast wilderness reclaimed by the eerie silence of the off-season. It was the kind of quiet that made your own breath sound too loud, that made you feel watched even when you were alone.
The call came in just after dawn—two hikers missing. A young couple, last seen near Trout Lake. A remote area, dense with trees, the kind of place where cell service was a fantasy and the trails twisted into an unforgiving maze. I was paired with Ranger Mike for the search. He was a seasoned guy, built like an old tree, his beard thick and untamed. We’d worked together for years, and if there was one thing I knew about Mike, it was that he could navigate these woods blindfolded.
We set out at first light. The air was crisp, laced with the scent of pine and damp earth. Our boots crunched through fallen leaves as we followed the trail where the hikers were last seen. Hours passed with no sign of them. Just the endless stretch of wilderness and the occasional whisper of the wind through the trees.
Then Mike suggested, "We should split up. Cover more ground."
Something in my gut twisted. I wasn’t a fan of the idea. But logic overruled instinct—two people searching separately meant twice the ground covered. I handed him the spare radio. "Check in every ten minutes."
"Got it," he said, disappearing into the trees.
I took the left fork, the path narrowing as the forest thickened around me. The silence grew heavier, pressing down like an invisible weight. Then, something caught my eye—a flash of orange buried beneath a pile of leaves. I crouched and brushed the debris aside, revealing a torn backpack. I recognized it immediately; it belonged to one of the missing hikers.
Grabbing my radio, I pressed the button. "Mike, I found something. You copy?"
Static.
I tried again. "Mike? Come in."
Nothing.
A cold dread crept up my spine. I turned, scanning the woods. It felt different now—like the trees were holding their breath, waiting. That’s when I heard it. A faint, muffled cry. It was coming from deeper in the forest, off-trail.
I moved cautiously, every step deliberate, my fingers grazing the handle of my knife. The cries led me to a small clearing, where I found him—a young man, bound to a tree, his face streaked with dirt and fear. His lips trembled as he whispered, "Please... you have to help. He took her."
"Who?" I asked, cutting through the ropes.
"I don’t know. He wore a mask. A gas mask. He came out of nowhere... He took Sarah. Said if I screamed, he’d kill her."
My pulse hammered in my ears. "Which way did he go?"
The hiker lifted a shaking hand, pointing into the darkened woods. I tried Mike again. "Mike, where the hell are you? We need backup."
More static.
I had no choice but to press on. The hiker leaned on me for support as we moved through the dense undergrowth. Minutes later, we stumbled onto something that made my stomach twist—a hidden campsite, crude but lived-in. A fire pit, scattered food wrappers, and a chilling collection of items—watches, wallets, torn pieces of clothing. Too many to belong to just two hikers.
And there, among the scattered belongings, was Mike’s ranger hat.
A twig snapped behind us. I spun around, pushing the hiker behind me, my hand hovering over my gun. A shadow emerged from the trees, moving with eerie precision. He was tall, broad-shouldered, his face obscured by a World War II-era gas mask.
"Stay back!" I ordered, my voice steady despite the terror curling in my chest.
The figure cocked his head, as if amused. Then, he spoke. His voice was distorted by the mask, but I knew it instantly.
"You shouldn’t have come here."
My blood ran ice-cold. "Mike?"
He stood there, motionless, the gas mask hiding whatever expression he wore. "They saw my camp," he said simply. "I couldn’t let them leave."
The world seemed to tilt. My partner—my friend—had been hunting people in the very park he was supposed to protect.
The distant wail of sirens cut through the trees, breaking the tense silence. Mike took a step back, then another. "This isn’t over," he said before disappearing into the shadows.
I didn’t chase him. My priority was getting the hiker to safety.
They found Mike a week later, hiding in an abandoned cabin miles from the park’s edge. He was armed, dangerous, but they got him. Turns out, this wasn’t the first time hikers had gone missing under his watch. It was just the first time anyone had survived to tell the story.
I still think about that day. About the evil that can wear a familiar face. People ask me if I believe in ghosts. I tell them no. The real monsters aren’t the ones hiding under the bed. They’re the ones standing right next to you, wearing a uniform and a name you thought you could trust.
"The Predator":
I’ve been a park ranger for over ten years. I’ve seen plenty of accidents, animal attacks, and lost hikers, but nothing compares to what happened in the summer of 2017. It still keeps me up at night.
I was stationed at a remote national park in the Northwest, a place known for its endless forests and deep, isolated valleys. It was mid-July, peak season, which meant our team was stretched thin, keeping up with hikers and campers scattered across the park.
One evening, I got a radio call about an abandoned campsite near one of the lesser-traveled trails. A hiker had reported it, saying the tent was torn open and there were signs of a struggle. That alone was enough to get my heart racing.
I grabbed my flashlight and radio, then hopped in my ATV. The site was about four miles from the nearest station. It was getting dark, and the deeper I drove into the forest, the more uneasy I felt. Something about the air was different—too quiet, too still.
When I reached the campsite, I immediately saw what the hiker had described. The tent was shredded, poles snapped, sleeping bags tossed around like someone had left in a panic. There was a backpack half-zipped with clothes spilling out, and next to it, a shoe. Just one.
I radioed back to the station. “I’ve got an abandoned camp here. Possible missing person. No sign of them yet.”
“Copy that. Any tracks?”
I looked around with my flashlight. The ground was a mess—boot prints, some animal tracks, and then something that made my stomach drop: drag marks leading away from the tent.
“I see something. Gonna follow the trail.”
I drew my sidearm, just in case, and started moving slowly. The marks led into the trees, down a slight incline, then stopped at a dry creek bed. That’s where I saw it—blood. A lot of it.
I stopped and listened. The forest was dead silent. No crickets, no rustling leaves, just my own breathing. My gut told me to turn back, but I couldn’t leave without knowing more. I followed the blood a few more yards until I found something that made my skin crawl.
A hand. Just a hand, half-buried under some leaves. It was fresh.
I stepped back and called it in. “Dispatch, I need backup and a forensic team. I found… remains.”
It took nearly two hours for more rangers and law enforcement to reach my location. By then, the sun was completely gone, and the forest felt like it was pressing in on me. When they arrived, we started a full search of the area.
We found more pieces. A torn shirt. A crushed phone. More blood.
The next morning, we got our answer. About half a mile from the campsite, we found the rest of him—or what was left. His body had been mutilated, the kind of damage you don’t see from animals. This was done by a person.
The search team expanded, and by noon, we found a small, makeshift camp hidden deep in the forest. Inside was a bloodstained knife, some rope, and a notebook filled with disturbing notes. The worst part? There were names in that book—dates, details, like someone had been keeping track of their victims.
One name was fresh, written just a few days earlier. The same name on the ID we found near the body.
The FBI got involved. Turned out, the killer had been living out there for years, hunting people. We found more burial sites. More victims.
They caught him two weeks later, trying to stalk another group of hikers. He had a hunting rifle and a knife on him. When they searched his old campsite, they found more notebooks—years of sick details, sketches, and maps. He had been watching people. Planning.
A week after his arrest, I was called to help search for more evidence. That meant going deeper into the woods than I ever had before. We uncovered more of his old camps, some barely big enough for one person to sleep in. In one, we found a collection of old belongings—watches, wallets, even pieces of clothing, trophies from his victims. It was like stepping into the mind of a monster.
One night, after the investigation wrapped up, I was back at the station finishing my report when another ranger, Chris, sat down beside me. He had been on the search team too. “You know,” he said quietly, “we probably didn’t find everything.”
I looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, this guy was smart. He lived out there for years. What if there are more camps? What if he’s not the only one?”
The thought sent a chill down my spine. Even with him behind bars, I knew Chris was right. The wilderness is vast. There are places so deep, so remote, that no one ever steps foot there. And who knows what—or who—could be out there waiting?
Since then, I don’t look at the forest the same way. It’s not the animals I fear anymore. It’s the people hiding in the dark, waiting.
"The Hidden Threat":
I’ve been a park ranger for over fifteen years. I’ve seen plenty of things that made me uneasy—wild animals, lost hikers, even the occasional weirdo lurking around—but nothing comes close to what happened in the summer of 2019.
The park I work at is in a remote part of the country. It’s big—miles and miles of dense forest, deep valleys, and hidden trails. The kind of place where you can disappear if you really want to. And sometimes, people do.
It started with a missing persons report. A woman in her late twenties, Jessica Martinez. Her brother called it in. She had planned a solo hiking trip for the weekend and was supposed to check in with him Sunday night. She never did. By Monday afternoon, we had a search team ready.
I led the first group out to where her car was found—an old Subaru parked neatly at a trailhead. The doors were locked, nothing seemed out of place. But the weird thing was her backpack was still in the backseat. Who goes hiking without their gear? Her phone was gone too, but there was no sign of any distress. It looked like she had left willingly—but something felt off.
“She had to have gone off-trail,” my partner, Rick, muttered as we scanned the area.
We followed the main trail for about two miles before we found something—a torn piece of fabric caught on a branch. It was a small scrap of blue, possibly from a jacket or shirt. Not far from it, fresh boot prints leading off into the woods.
“Jess!” I called out. Silence. The forest swallowed my voice.
The sun was starting to set when we stumbled onto a small clearing. And that’s when we saw it. A makeshift campsite, but not like anything I’d ever seen before. There was a small fire pit, burnt-out coals still warm. Nearby, an old tarp was stretched between two trees, forming a crude shelter.
Then Rick spotted something that made my stomach drop. A woman’s hiking boot, half-buried under leaves.
I crouched down, my heart pounding. “That’s not good.”
Rick turned his flashlight toward the shelter. Inside was a mess—torn-up blankets, empty food wrappers, and something worse. A knife, its blade stained dark. A closer look at the knife sent chills down my spine. The stains weren’t just dirt.
We called it in. Within the hour, more rangers and a few deputies arrived. We spread out, searching the area, but there was no sign of Jessica. Only more footprints leading deeper into the trees. The search continued into the night, flashlights cutting through the darkness, the quiet hum of radios filling the air.
By morning, the state police had joined the search. Bloodhounds picked up a scent and took off through the forest, leading us to an old hunting shack about three miles from the trail. The door was slightly open, a rusty padlock hanging loose.
“Sheriff?” I called out, stepping aside as he pushed the door open with his flashlight raised.
Inside, the smell hit us first. A mix of sweat, decay, and something metallic. The room was small, barely big enough for the old cot in the corner and a wooden table covered in garbage. Then I saw her.
Jessica was tied to the cot, her face pale, eyes wide with terror. She was alive—but barely. Rope burns covered her wrists. Her lips were cracked, her clothes torn. The second she saw us, she started sobbing.
“He’s still out there,” she whispered.
We got her out fast. An ambulance rushed her to the hospital, and she later told the police everything. She had been hiking when a man came out of nowhere. He had a knife, forced her to walk for miles before tying her up in that shack. He told her she’d never leave.
The worst part? He was watching us. The whole time we searched, he was there, hidden in the trees, waiting. She said she had heard him whispering at night, talking to himself, muttering about how the forest was his home and how she was never going to leave it. She had tried to escape once, but he had caught her easily, dragging her back and tightening the ropes.
They found him two days later, trying to slip out of the park. A drifter, no ID, no known address. Just a man who lived in the woods, hunting more than just animals. His campsite, discovered deeper in the forest, was littered with disturbing evidence—other personal items, wallets, torn clothing. He had done this before. Maybe not in our park, but somewhere.
I still think about that day. About Jessica, about the footprints in the dirt, about the way the forest suddenly felt like it was closing in. I love my job. But sometimes, the scariest thing out here isn’t the wilderness. It’s what’s hiding inside it.
Since that day, I’ve taken extra precautions. Every time I patrol the trails, I wonder who might be out there, watching, waiting. And every time a hiker goes missing, I pray it’s just a lost tourist and not something much, much worse.
"Brother":
I never thought I'd see something like this in my years as a park ranger. Big Bend National Park had its share of lost hikers, illegal campers, and the occasional wild animal encounter, but nothing like this. Nothing so unnervingly human.
It was a sweltering summer afternoon, the kind where the heat shimmers off the rocks, and the only sounds are the rhythmic chirping of cicadas and the occasional whisper of wind through the brush. I was patrolling a remote trail, one that twisted through dense mesquite and jagged cliffs, checking for signs of trouble—unauthorized campsites, lost tourists, maybe even a rattlesnake sunning itself on the path.
That’s when I spotted it—a small, makeshift campsite tucked away in a clearing that wasn’t on any map. A cold fire pit, empty cans, and two sleeping bags haphazardly tossed on the ground. It looked hastily abandoned, but something about it felt... wrong. There were no backpacks, no cooking gear, no sign of recent activity.
"Hello?" I called out, my voice swallowed by the stillness. No response.
I was about to leave a notice, advising whoever had camped there that they were violating park regulations, when I heard it—a noise so faint I almost thought I imagined it. A soft, muffled sound, like someone trying to yell but having their voice strangled before it could reach the air.
My hand instinctively went to my radio as I moved toward the sound. Pushing past a dense thicket of mesquite, I stumbled upon a sight that sent ice through my veins.
A man, bound and gagged, his wrists tied with what looked like frayed shoelaces. His wide, panicked eyes locked onto mine, silently pleading for help.
I didn’t hesitate. I crouched beside him, yanking the gag from his mouth. He gasped, sucking in air like a drowning man breaking the surface.
"Please," he rasped. "You have to help me. He’s coming back."
I cut through the binds with my pocket knife, keeping my ears sharp for any approaching footsteps. "Who did this to you? What happened?"
His hands trembled as he rubbed his freed wrists. "My brother," he whispered, his voice shaky. "We came here to hike, to reconnect, but something’s wrong with him. He… he planned this. He said he wanted to see how long I could last out here. He tied me up last night and left me. I think—" His voice broke. "I think he wanted me to die."
The words sank into me like stones. "Where is he now?"
"I don’t know. He left before dawn. But he’s still out there. Watching. Waiting."
A sharp crack of a twig in the distance made us both jump. My training kicked in—I grabbed my radio and called in for backup, giving them my coordinates and the situation in clipped, urgent tones.
"We need to move," I told him. "Can you walk?"
He nodded, but he kept looking over his shoulder, flinching at every rustle of the wind. "He’s not done. I know it. He’s playing a game."
We moved quickly, sticking to the cover of trees and keeping our voices low. The sun was beginning to dip, casting the landscape in eerie, elongated shadows. It wasn’t just the wilderness that made my skin prickle—it was the thought that someone was out there, watching us.
When my fellow rangers arrived, we wasted no time organizing a search. The victim, still too shaken to speak clearly, described his brother—tall, dark-haired, wearing a green jacket. We followed a trail of disturbed earth and broken branches, signs of someone moving deliberately, trying to cover their tracks.
Hours passed, the wilderness swallowing our voices as we searched. Then, just before dawn, a voice crackled through the radio: "We’ve got him. North ridge. Near the old mine shaft."
We hurried to the location, flashlights slicing through the dim morning light. There he was, sitting on a rock, legs crossed, calmly cleaning dirt from a hunting knife with a rag. He looked up as we approached, eyes gleaming with something unreadable.
"Oh, you found me," he said with a slow smile. "Is my brother okay?"
His voice was unsettlingly casual, like we’d just interrupted a quiet afternoon stroll. He let us cuff him without a fight, but the whole time, he wore that same amused expression, as if we were the ones playing into his game.
"I was just testing him," he said as we led him away. "Seeing how strong he really is."
At the station, his brother finally spoke more, his voice hollow with exhaustion. "He’s always been… different. But this was something else. He talked about survival, about how the weak don’t deserve to make it. I thought it was just talk until he tied me up. Until he left me there."
That was the part that stuck with me the most. Not the isolation of the park, not the looming darkness of the wilderness, but the way someone can turn on you in an instant. The way a trusted companion can become something else entirely—something dangerous.
That day, the park wasn’t just a place of beauty and solitude. It was a hunting ground. And the scariest predator wasn’t a mountain lion or a rattlesnake.
It was human.