'The Skull":
It was a Monday morning in the fall of 1993, one of those crisp autumn days where the cold nipped at your skin, but the promise of warmth lingered in the sun’s slow climb. The air smelled of pine and damp earth, fresh from the night’s lingering dew. Leaves crunched under my boots as I stepped out of my truck, slinging my backpack over one shoulder and adjusting my jacket. I had no destination in mind, no goal beyond losing myself in the quiet.
Rampart Range Road had always been one of my favorite places to hike. The trails stretched for miles through thick forests, winding around rocky hills and dipping into valleys where the only sounds were the wind and the occasional scurry of wildlife. I’d been coming out here for years, since I was a teenager, and I knew most of the trails like the back of my hand. There was something about these mountains that made the world feel bigger, like all the noise and stress of everyday life couldn’t reach me here.
I picked a familiar path, one that curved through dense trees before opening up to a ridge with a breathtaking view of the valley below. The trail was empty, just the way I liked it. I had my water bottle, a ham sandwich wrapped in wax paper, and enough time to wander at my own pace. The morning sunlight filtered through the trees in golden beams, flickering across the forest floor as I walked.
About an hour in, I caught a glint of metal through the underbrush. It was subtle, just a sliver of dull reflection between the trees, but enough to make me slow down. At first, I thought it might be a broken fence or maybe some old equipment someone had left behind. But as I moved closer, pushing aside low-hanging branches, the shape became clearer.
It was a car.
An old sedan, probably from the ‘70s or ‘80s, half-buried in the brush like it had been sitting there for years. The once-white paint was streaked with rust, the windows were cracked, and the tires had long since gone flat. The way it was positioned—crooked, tilted slightly forward—made it seem like whoever had driven it there had left in a hurry.
Something about it made my skin crawl.
It wasn’t uncommon to find abandoned cars out in places like this. People dumped vehicles in the woods all the time, whether to avoid towing fees or to hide something they didn’t want to be found. But something about this one felt different.
I hesitated, then stepped off the trail, moving carefully through the brush. My boots crunched on twigs and dry leaves as I approached. The closer I got, the heavier the air seemed, like the forest itself was holding its breath.
And then I saw it.
At first, my brain didn’t register what I was looking at. Just a pale, rounded shape on the ground near the car’s rear tire, half-hidden beneath a layer of dirt and dead leaves. But then my eyes focused, and everything inside me went still.
A skull.
Not an animal. Human.
I stopped breathing.
The lower jaw was missing, leaving only the upper portion of the skull intact. It wasn’t clean like the ones you see in movies or museums. It was grimy, weathered by time, with bits of dirt clinging to the bone. Dark stains marked one side, old and crusted but unmistakable. Blood.
A cold wave rolled through me, and my stomach clenched. My fingers went numb, and I realized I had dropped my water bottle. I barely heard it rolling downhill, too focused on the empty eye sockets staring up at me.
I wanted to move, to step back, to do anything but stand there frozen. But I couldn’t. My legs felt locked in place, my body refusing to listen to the part of my brain that was screaming at me to get out of there.
And then, from somewhere behind me, I heard a sound.
A rustling in the bushes.
Every hair on my body stood on end.
Slowly, I turned my head, scanning the trees. The forest was still, the only movement coming from the shifting sunlight filtering through the leaves. But I wasn’t imagining it. I had heard something.
I swallowed hard, my throat dry as sandpaper. The thought hit me like a punch to the gut—what if whoever left this skull here was still around? Watching me?
I forced myself to take a step back, my boot snapping a twig beneath me. The sound was too loud, echoing in the silence. My pulse pounded in my ears, my breath coming in quick, uneven bursts. I needed to get out of there.
I turned and started walking, fast at first, then faster, until I was practically jogging down the trail. Every few steps, I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting to see someone stepping out from the trees. The woods didn’t feel quiet anymore. They felt suffocating, the branches overhead closing in, shadows stretching too long across the ground.
By the time I reached the trailhead, my legs were shaking.
A pickup truck was parked nearby, an old Ford with rust along the wheel wells. A man sat inside, cigarette hanging from his fingers, watching me with mild curiosity. He looked like the kind of guy who worked with his hands—scruffy beard, flannel shirt, face weathered from years in the sun.
I ran up to his truck, waving my arms. “Hey! I need help.”
He flicked ash out the window. “What’s going on?”
I tried to catch my breath. “I—I found something. A skull. A human skull. Up the trail, by an old car.”
His expression changed. He sat up straighter, the cigarette forgotten. “You serious?”
I nodded. “I don’t have a phone. Can you call the police?”
Without hesitation, he reached inside and grabbed a car phone—one of those big, clunky models that were common back then. He punched in a number while I stood there, shifting on my feet, my nerves buzzing like live wires.
“Yeah,” he said into the receiver, glancing at me. “Some hiker says he found a skull up on Rampart Range. Uh-huh. Near the trailhead. Okay, we’ll wait.”
He hung up, exhaling slowly. “Cops are on their way.”
I crossed my arms, trying to steady my breathing.
“You okay?” he asked after a moment. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I let out a hollow laugh. “Not a ghost. Something worse.”
It took nearly an hour for the police to arrive—two officers in a dusty patrol car. One was young, dark-haired, serious. The other was older, his face lined with years of dealing with things nobody should have to see.
I led them up the trail, my legs stiff, my stomach twisting tighter with every step. When we reached the car, they didn’t let me get too close this time. Yellow tape went up, voices crackled on radios, and I stood back, watching.
“You touch anything?” one of them asked, scribbling in a notebook.
I shook my head. “Just my water bottle. I dropped it.”
“Good,” he said. “We’ll take it from here.”
I gave them my name and number, then hiked back to my truck alone. The whole way, I felt like something was watching me. Maybe it was just nerves. Maybe it wasn’t.
A few weeks later, I saw it on the news. The skull belonged to a girl—Heather Dawn Church. She had been thirteen when she vanished from her home in 1991. For two years, her family had been searching for answers. I had stumbled onto them by accident.
The police found more of her bones near that abandoned car. Then they found her killer. Robert Browne—a drifter, a monster who had strangled her and dumped her like garbage. He confessed to her murder, along with several others.
I never hiked those trails again. I never shook the feeling that, that day, someone had been watching me. And to this day, I still wonder if I barely got away.
"The Stone Circle":
It was a warm, golden day in August 1993 when my buddy Dave and I decided we needed to get out of the city for the weekend. We were in our twenties, stuck in the routine of work and the same old bars, and we both had the itch for a little adventure. Nothing too wild—just a couple of nights camping somewhere quiet, away from the noise and traffic of Sydney.
Dave had heard about Belanglo State Forest from a guy at work. “Great place for a hike,” he told me. “Big trees, quiet trails, hardly anyone around. Good camping spots too.” It sounded perfect. Neither of us had been there before, but that just made it more appealing—new ground to cover, a break from the usual.
We loaded up my old, beat-up station wagon and hit the road early on Saturday morning. I had my backpack stuffed with a sleeping bag, a flashlight, a couple of bottles of water, some snacks, and a pocketknife I barely knew how to use. Dave was always the more prepared one. He brought a proper hiking map, a small camping stove, extra batteries, and a first-aid kit.
As we drove, the city gave way to rolling hills and dense bushland. The air smelled different out there—cleaner, fresher, with that distinct earthy scent of trees and dry grass. The last stretch of the drive was along a winding dirt road, bumpier than I expected, but eventually, we reached the edge of the forest. We parked near the start of a narrow trail that led into the trees.
The first few hours of hiking were amazing. The towering pines stretched high above us, their branches filtering the sunlight into a golden glow that dappled the forest floor. The ground was soft underfoot, covered in fallen needles and leaves. The air was thick with the scent of pine resin, damp soil, and the occasional whiff of eucalyptus when the wind shifted.
Dave and I talked about everything and nothing as we walked. We rehashed old stories—like the time he got lost in a shopping mall parking lot and had to call his sister to find his car. We debated pointless things, like whether a bear could beat a gorilla in a fight, even though neither of those animals had anything to do with Australia. It was just easy, the way it always was when we got away from the city.
As the afternoon wore on, something shifted. It was subtle at first—just a feeling that settled in the back of my mind, like a faint pressure. The trails got narrower, the trees pressed in closer, and the light seemed to dim, even though the sun was still high. The sounds of the forest changed, too. Earlier, there had been birds calling from the branches, the rustling of small animals in the underbrush, the occasional crack of a twig somewhere in the distance. Now, it felt… too quiet.
We stopped for a break in a small clearing, dropping our packs and stretching our legs. I pulled out a sandwich and took a bite, letting my eyes wander across the trees. That’s when I noticed it—something just beyond the clearing, maybe thirty yards away.
A pile of rocks.
At first, I thought it was just a natural formation, but as I kept staring, I realized it was too deliberate. The rocks were stacked in a perfect circle, about six feet wide. In the center sat a flat, smooth stone, almost like a table. No moss, no dirt—like it had been placed there recently. Next to it was a small pile of feathers and what looked like tiny bones.
I swallowed hard.
“Dave, check that out,” I said, nodding toward it.
He looked up, wiping crumbs off his shirt. “What is that? Some kind of marker?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it doesn’t look natural.”
Curiosity got the better of us. We grabbed our stuff and walked over. The closer we got, the more unsettling it felt. The rocks were arranged too neatly, too purposefully. The little pile of bones and feathers looked like they had been placed there, not scattered naturally.
“This is weird,” I muttered. “Who’d build this out here?”
Dave, ever the skeptic, climbed onto the flat stone and stood there, hands on his hips. “Maybe it’s for hikers to rest on. Or some hippie thing—like meditation or whatever.”
I frowned. “With feathers and bones? That’s no rest stop.”
He hopped down, picking up one of the feathers and twirling it between his fingers. “Could be an animal did that. Birds drop stuff all the time.”
I wasn’t convinced. The air around the circle felt colder, heavier. I found myself glancing at the trees, half-expecting to see someone watching us from the shadows.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets. “This place gives me the creeps.”
Dave laughed. “You’re paranoid. It’s just rocks.”
Still, I felt relieved when we left. We hiked for another hour before finding a decent spot near a small creek to set up camp. As the sun set, we lit a fire and sat around it, eating canned beans and passing a flask of cheap whiskey between us.
Neither of us mentioned the stone circle at first, but as the fire crackled and the night deepened, it crept back into the conversation.
“You think someone’s out there doing weird rituals or something?” Dave asked, poking at the fire with a stick.
I forced a laugh. “Don’t say that. I just wanna sleep without nightmares.”
“Relax,” he said, grinning. “It’s probably nothing. Just kids messing around.”
I nodded, but that night, I barely slept. Every little sound put me on edge—the rustling leaves, the distant hoot of an owl, the occasional snap of a twig. At one point, I could have sworn I heard footsteps, but when I sat up and listened, there was only silence.
We hiked out the next morning, and by the time we were back in the city, the stone circle was just another weird story—something to bring up at parties, a creepy little mystery with no real answer.
Then, in May 1994, everything changed.
I was at home, flipping through TV channels, when a news report caught my attention. A man named Ivan Milat had been arrested for the murders of seven backpackers in Belanglo State Forest. The footage showed the trails, the trees, the same damn places we had walked.
Then the reporter said something that made my stomach drop.
“Police have discovered strange rock formations near the burial sites, possibly used by the killer.”
The screen showed an image of a stone circle with a flat rock in the middle.
It was the same one.
My hands were shaking as I grabbed the phone and dialed Dave.
“Turn on the news,” I said the second he answered.
“What?” He sounded groggy.
“That stone thing we found—it’s on TV. They’re saying it’s tied to that Milat guy. The serial killer.”
There was silence on the other end. Then, finally: “Wait… are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They’re showing pictures. It’s the same damn thing.”
“Holy crap,” he muttered. “So we were standing on a murderer’s… whatever that was?”
“I think so,” I said.
After that, I read everything I could about Milat. He’d pick up hitchhikers, take them into the forest, and kill them. Stabbed them, shot them, buried them in shallow graves. The stone circles weren’t for rituals—they were markers. Some were only a few hundred yards from the graves.
Had Milat been out there that day? Watching us? Waiting?
Now, whenever I hike, I can’t shake the feeling of being watched. Every rustle, every shadow makes me jump. Belanglo was beautiful, sure, but it hid something awful. And the scariest part?
We didn’t even know how close we’d come.
"The Trail Remembers":
I’m Earl—just a guy who loves the outdoors. Always have been. There’s something about the way the world quiets down when you’re deep in the woods, far from the noise of the world. No traffic, no blaring televisions, just the wind moving through the trees and the distant calls of unseen creatures. It’s the kind of silence that settles into your bones, makes you feel small in a way that’s humbling, not scary.
Back in July of 1990, I was hiking the Appalachian Trail, taking my time, not rushing the miles. I had started at Mount Katahdin in Maine, planning to work my way south slowly, soaking in everything the trail had to offer. The Appalachian Trail is a beast—more than 2,000 miles of rugged wilderness, stretching from Maine all the way down to Georgia. People take it at different paces. Some hike it all in one go, a thru-hike, trying to finish in a few months. Others take their time, splitting it up over years. I wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted to feel every step, every shift in the air as I moved from one state to another.
That night, I made camp near Jeffers Brook in New Hampshire. It was a good spot, with a cold, clear creek running nearby, the kind of water that numbs your hands when you fill your bottle. The air smelled of damp earth and pine, and the sun had started dipping low behind the trees by the time I got my fire going. The only sounds were the occasional rustle of something moving in the underbrush and the steady hum of crickets.
That’s when I met Geoff and Molly.
They arrived just before dark, setting up their tent about twenty feet from mine. Close enough for conversation, but with enough space to keep things comfortable. They were young, in their mid-twenties, and they had that easy energy of people who felt at home in the woods. Geoff was tall and wiry, with a Tennessee drawl and a grin that made you like him instantly. He was a rock climber and worked with troubled kids back home, taking them out on climbing trips, trying to give them a sense of purpose. “Man, I love this trail,” he told me as we sat by the fire, stirring his coffee with a stick. “It’s freedom, you know? I wanna bring kids out here, teach ‘em grit.”
Molly was the artistic type, always sketching. She had curly hair tucked under a bandana, fingers smudged with charcoal even out in the middle of nowhere. “And I’m gonna draw it all,” she said, flipping through her sketchbook. “Maybe sell some sketches to fund it.” She showed me a few pages—detailed drawings of the trees, the mountains, the little things most people wouldn’t notice, like the way the light hit the rocks at dusk.
I liked them. They were dreamers, the good kind. The kind that saw the world as something worth experiencing fully, not just passing through.
We sat up late, talking about everything—the best and worst parts of the trail, what we’d seen so far, where we were headed. They were making their way south, planning to camp as they went, just like me. I decided to stay put an extra day to rest my legs, so when morning came, we said our goodbyes, promising to swap stories if we ran into each other again. Their tent disappeared into the trees, their voices fading with the rustling leaves.
I figured that was that.
Months passed, and I kept moving south, making my way down through Vermont, into Massachusetts, through the rolling hills and dense forests that made up the heart of the trail. I got used to the rhythm of it—the long days of walking, the quiet nights under the stars. Sometimes you’d run into other hikers, share a meal, trade stories. Other times, it was just you and the woods, nothing but the sound of your own footsteps crunching the dirt.
By September, I had made it down into Pennsylvania, stopping in a small town just off the trail to restock on supplies and grab a hot meal. I found a little diner, the kind with a long counter and red vinyl booths, the air thick with the smell of coffee and frying bacon. I was halfway through a burger, enjoying the simple pleasure of a real meal, when I caught part of a conversation from two men sitting at the counter.
“Heard about those hikers near Duncannon? Killed in their tent. Brutal stuff.”
The words made my stomach clench. I put my burger down.
“Who was it?” I asked, my voice tighter than I expected.
One of the men turned, chewing on a toothpick. “Young couple. Geoff somethin’ and Molly LaRue.”
I nearly choked. The names hit like a punch.
Geoff and Molly.
I pushed my plate away, my appetite gone, and bolted to a payphone outside. My hands shook as I dialed the number of a ranger I had met earlier on the trail. He picked up on the first ring, his voice heavy.
“Yeah, it’s true,” he said. “We found them September 13, just off the trail near the Thelma Marks shelter. It was bad, Earl. Real bad.”
Geoff had been shot—three bullets, straight through his body. Molly… I felt sick hearing it. She had been raped, her hands bound with rope, stabbed eight times in the neck and back. Their tent had been shredded, their sleeping bags soaked in blood.
Another hiker couple had found them days later, following trail markers Geoff and Molly had left behind. But by then, it was too late.
A week later, they caught the man responsible in Harpers Ferry.
Paul David Crews. Thirty-eight. A drifter, a farmhand, a man with a violent past. He had already been wanted for a murder in Florida from 1986. When they found him, he was wearing Geoff’s boots and jacket. Blood still on his pants.
I kept picturing it—him sneaking up in the dark, the tent flap rustling, Geoff and Molly sleeping, unaware. The papers said it happened between 5 and 7 a.m., in that dead-quiet part of the morning before the sun rises.
I couldn’t sleep after that. Every snap of a twig outside my tent sent my heart racing, my knife clenched in my fist. The trail didn’t feel the same anymore. The trees seemed taller, the shadows deeper, the silence heavier.
In May 1991, I sat in the courtroom in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, surrounded by their families, their friends. Sixty witnesses, stacks of evidence, photos of the crime scene that made my stomach turn.
Crews sat there, cold and empty, as they described the way Geoff’s body had been found, the way Molly had suffered.
Molly’s mother, Connie, cried quietly the whole time. Her father, Jim, spoke to reporters afterward, his voice steady but broken. “She was my light. He took her future.”
Geoff’s mother, Glenda, never took her eyes off Crews.
They sentenced him to death, but in 2006, after years of appeals, it was reduced to life without parole. Jim LaRue—Molly’s father—stood in court and forgave him. “Find peace,” he said.
I don’t know how he did it. I still haven’t.
Years passed, but in the spring of 2015, I went back.
The old campsite is gone now, swallowed by the forest. They built a new shelter nearby, like they could erase the memory. But you can’t erase something like that.
That night, I sat by the fire with a few hikers, the air warm, the stars bright. One of them, a guy named Greg, nodded when I asked if he knew about what had happened in ‘90.
“Yeah,” he said. “Makes you wonder who’s out there.”
Another hiker, Marcus, younger, scruffier, chimed in. “I camp with a hatchet now. Can’t be too safe.”
I sat there, staring into the fire, hearing Geoff’s voice—“freedom, you know?”—and Molly’s laugh. The trail is still beautiful, still wild.
But it’s got teeth.