“The Last Night at Missinaibi Lake”:
I wish I could forget.
God, I wish I could reach into my mind and pull out the memory like a splinter. But it's lodged too deep—embedded under skin, under bone. I try not to think about her face when the screaming stopped, or the way the trees looked under the moonlight that night. I try not to hear her voice. But it’s all still there, sharper than it has any right to be.
This isn’t a ghost story. There’s no creature in the woods, no ancient curse, nothing supernatural. Just me, my wife Jacqueline, and the way nature can kill you without a second thought. What happened was real. Too real.
It was September 2005, early fall, the air just starting to bite with that crispness that says summer’s over. Jacqueline had always loved the fall. She said it made everything feel more alive, like the trees were holding their breath. We’d planned the trip for weeks—a weekend in Missinaibi Lake Provincial Park, way up in northern Ontario. Remote. Untouched. Wild.
We needed it. The city was grinding us down. I was drowning in work, and Jacqueline… she always smiled through it, but I could see the tiredness under her eyes. The kind you can’t sleep off. This was going to be our escape. Just the two of us and the forest.
We left before sunrise on Friday. I still remember how she looked in the passenger seat—feet up on the dash, her auburn hair tied back, sunglasses on despite the dawn gloom. The highway stretched ahead like a ribbon of silver, trees flanking us like sentries. She leaned out the window at one point and breathed in deep.
"Smells like the earth’s waking up," she said, grinning. “No phones, no emails. Just us and the wild.”
We got to the park late afternoon. It was breathtaking. Miles and miles of dense boreal forest, pine and spruce so tall they looked like they held up the sky. The lake was like glass—perfectly still, reflecting the clouds and trees like a mirror someone had laid flat on the ground.
We picked a spot close to the shore, a little clearing tucked between some trees. Secluded, but not too far from a trail. I hammered in the tent pegs while Jacqueline sorted our gear, laying out sleeping bags, unloading the cooler. She always brought too much—extra socks, three flashlights, instant coffee she insisted tasted better out here.
That first day felt like a dream. We kayaked across the lake, the paddles slicing through the water with a sound like whispers. Jacqueline laughed when I splashed her, her laugh echoing across the still water, so full of life. She leaned back at one point, paddle across her lap, eyes closed.
"Let’s buy a cabin someday,” she said. “Right here. With a porch swing, and a telescope for the stars. Somewhere we can grow old.”
“You picking the swing or am I?”
“You’d pick some awful plastic thing, just to spite me.”
I grinned. “Obviously.”
That night, we sat by the fire, cooking hot dogs and toasting marshmallows. The sky went from cobalt to black, filled with more stars than you ever see near the city. Jacqueline curled up next to me, head on my shoulder, warm under a blanket.
“This is all I need,” she said. “You, me, and this.”
I kissed her temple. “Forever, Jacq.”
We slept wrapped together in our tent, the kind of deep sleep that only happens after a day outdoors. I remember how quiet it was. Just the hoot of an owl, the wind in the trees. Peace, pure and whole.
The next morning, I woke to her unzipping the tent, sunlight spilling in.
“Coffee’s on,” she called, cheerful, voice full of light. “Come on, sleepyhead!”
We hiked after breakfast, exploring a trail that curved along the lake. She took photos of everything—squirrels, mushrooms, moss on stones. At one point a red fox darted across the path, and she gasped like a kid at Christmas.
“This is gonna be our best photo album yet,” she said, snapping picture after picture. Her joy was contagious. It was the kind of day that makes you forget anything bad could ever happen.
But by the time we got back to camp that afternoon, something felt… different.
I was chopping wood for the evening fire when I noticed it. The forest had gone still. No birdsong. No rustling. Just a blanket of silence, pressing down. The kind of silence that makes your ears ring.
“Mark?” Jacqueline called, tossing me a water bottle. “You okay? You’re just standing there.”
I shook myself. “Yeah, yeah. Just thought I heard something.”
She smirked. “Bear, right? You’ve been talking about bears since we got here.”
I laughed it off. “Guess I’m just jumpy.”
But the feeling didn’t go away.
That night, we sat around the fire again, but it wasn’t like the first night. Jacqueline was still chatting, pointing out constellations, but I kept glancing at the tree line. Something about the dark seemed… thicker. Like the shadows moved when I wasn’t looking.
We zipped into the tent around ten. Jacqueline fell asleep quickly, warm against my side. I couldn’t. The silence was louder than before. The kind of silence that hums with pressure, with tension.
Then I heard it.
A low huff—like something exhaling. Heavy. Deep. Not close, but not far either.
I froze. Sat up, straining to hear. Another huff, this time nearer. Then a sharp crack—a branch breaking under weight.
Something was out there.
“Jacq,” I whispered, shaking her gently. “Wake up.”
She groaned. “What is it?”
“I think… I think something’s outside.”
“Probably a raccoon,” she mumbled, still half asleep.
“No. Bigger.”
I grabbed my flashlight and clicked it on. The beam trembled in my hand, scanning across the tent wall.
Then I saw it.
A shadow moved—huge, broad, ears like pointed cones.
Then the tent ripped open. A massive black bear, eyes reflecting the light like coals, teeth bared in a snarl. Its fur was thick, tangled, stinking of musk and rot.
Jacqueline screamed as the bear lunged, clamping its jaws onto her arm. Blood sprayed the tent walls, her cries turning raw. I grabbed my Swiss Army knife—my only weapon—and threw myself at the bear, stabbing wildly.
“Get off her!” I shouted, over and over.
The blade barely cut through the thick hide. The bear swatted me with one massive paw, and I felt claws rake through my thigh, white-hot pain exploding. I went down hard, but crawled back up, stabbing again—its face, neck, anything.
Jacqueline was sobbing, trying to crawl away, her arm mangled, useless.
“Mark… help me…”
The bear turned on her again, teeth sinking into her shoulder. I screamed and lunged, driving the knife into its side, again and again. It roared, finally backing off, staggering. Blood poured from its wounds, mixing with Jacqueline’s.
Then it vanished into the trees.
I dropped the knife and crawled to her. Her eyes fluttered, lips pale.
“Jacq,” I sobbed. “Stay with me. Please.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
I carried her—don’t ask me how, my leg torn open, body screaming with pain. I hauled her into the kayak, pushed off, and paddled like a madman. Screaming for help into the endless night.
Eventually, I saw lights.
A campsite on the far shore. Two figures running toward us. I screamed until my voice broke. They dragged us onto the shore, their faces white when they saw her. They radioed for help, tried to stop the bleeding.
But I knew.
I knew.
She was gone before the helicopter arrived.
I spent a week in the hospital. Dozens of stitches. But nothing they gave me numbed the hollow inside my chest. The rangers found the bear two days later, put it down. They said it was acting abnormally—predatory, not defensive. Maybe sick. Maybe just old and desperate. Doesn’t matter.
I live with the memory. Every damn day.
The way she looked in that kayak. The blood on my hands. Her voice, whispering my name one last time.
People say nature is healing. That it’s peaceful. But nature doesn’t care about your love story. Nature doesn’t care about fairness.
It’s beautiful. But it’s cruel.
So if you go into the woods—remember this:
It’s not your home. It never was.
“The Ski Mask Man”:
I was nineteen, home from college for winter break, visiting my cousins in a tiny, frozen town in North Dakota—the kind of place that looks like it stopped growing in the '70s and never looked back. It was December, and the cold didn’t just sting—it pressed into your bones, settled behind your eyes. Snow blanketed everything in sight, weighing down rooftops and trees, swallowing sound. The wind never really stopped; it hissed and howled like something alive, especially at night, curling through the bare branches of the woods that surrounded the outskirts of town like a border between the world of the living and something else.
I’d visited a few times over the years, always around the holidays. It was usually uneventful—board games, reruns of old movies, too much food—but this time… this time felt different. Maybe it was how the snow seemed to glow under the full moon, casting the forest in an otherworldly light. Or maybe it was the stories—half-whispered tales that clung to this town like frost on a window, impossible to wipe away. Even during the day, there was a kind of emptiness out there in the trees, like something was waiting.
My cousins lived on the very edge of town, where the last few scattered houses gave way to dense pine forest and narrow paths carved out by years of foot traffic. One of those paths led through the woods to their friend Jake’s place—a half-hour walk in the summer, maybe twenty minutes if you didn’t mind braving the cold and snow. That night, we were all at Jake’s, a beat-up two-story house that smelled like damp wood and microwave dinners. We sat around a cluttered kitchen table with creaky chairs and chipped mugs, drinking cheap beer and talking about nothing. The kind of night that feels harmless until you look back on it later and realize it was the last moment before something changed.
It was past 2 a.m. when the mood shifted. The warmth from the beer had dulled the cold, and the laughter had slowed. Jake leaned back in his chair, eyes hooded, scratching his patchy beard.
“You hear about that hiker who went missing last month?” he asked, his voice low and deliberate, like he was testing the air with it. “Out by Black Creek Trail?”
I glanced up, suddenly alert.
“They found his backpack in the woods,” he went on, “but no sign of him. No blood. No tracks. Nothing. Just… gone.”
“Probably froze out there,” Sarah muttered from across the table. She was trying to sound casual, but she was gripping her beer a little too tight, her knuckles white against the can.
Jake’s buddy, Mike, laughed—short and dry. “Or he ran into the Ski Mask Man.”
The room fell quiet. Even the wind seemed to hush against the windows.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, forcing a smirk.
Mike looked at me, his eyes dark and unreadable. “You never heard of him?”
“It’s just a stupid story,” Sarah said quickly, but no one echoed her.
“No, tell it,” I said. “I want to hear.”
Jake leaned forward, elbows on the table. “They say there’s this guy who lives out there in the woods. Been out there for years. Wears a black ski mask. Some say he’s just a drifter, others say he used to be a hunter who snapped. Carries an axe, moves like he knows the woods better than anyone. Doesn’t talk. Doesn’t run. Just… watches.”
Mike nodded. “My uncle saw him once. Last winter. Said he was standing between two trees, middle of a snowstorm, not moving. Just staring. He turned his back for a second, and when he looked again, the guy was gone.”
I laughed, a little too loud. “You guys trying to scare me, or what?”
Sarah nudged me under the table. “You better be careful walking home, city boy. That path’s creepy as hell at night.”
I rolled my eyes, playing it cool. “It’s twenty minutes. I’ve walked it before.”
But even then, something was beginning to twist in my gut.
By 3 a.m., the party had tapered off. The beer was gone, and everyone looked half-asleep or lost in thought. I stood and zipped up my jacket, brushing snow off my hat by the door. Jake offered to drive me, and so did Mike, but I shook my head.
“I’m good,” I said, trying to sound confident. “See you tomorrow.”
“Text when you get home,” Sarah called, her voice half-joking, half-not.
The cold outside was immediate and punishing. The air bit into my skin the second I stepped off the porch. My breath fogged out in front of me like smoke. Everything was silent—so quiet it was almost loud. The snow squeaked beneath my boots as I started down the narrow path, the only sound in an otherwise frozen world.
The trees loomed on either side, skeletal branches clawing at the sky. The moon hung low and full above the canopy, casting a silver-blue light that made the snow glitter like broken glass. I tried to focus on my footsteps, on the crunch-crunch rhythm that reminded me I was still moving, still alive.
Five minutes in, something shifted. I heard a sound—barely a sound, really. Just a soft brushing, like fabric or fur dragging across bark. I stopped in my tracks. My breath caught.
“Hello?” I called, trying to sound casual. My voice felt too loud, like it didn’t belong here.
Silence.
I chuckled nervously. “Probably a deer,” I whispered to myself, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. My skin prickled. I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets and walked faster, eyes flicking over my shoulder every few steps.
The deeper into the woods I went, the darker it got. The trees thickened, and the moonlight thinned until it was little more than a soft glow behind clouds. My phone had no signal out here. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to think about the stories, about the missing hiker, about the man in the ski mask who didn’t run, didn’t speak.
Another sound. Closer this time.
Rustling, off to my right. Like something was moving through the brush.
I froze. My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Who’s there?” I shouted, my voice cracking.
And then—I saw him.
About seventy-five yards ahead, just off the path, between two pine trees dusted with snow… a figure.
Tall. Still. Wearing a black coat and a ski mask, the kind with holes for the eyes and mouth, except his mouth was nothing. Just darkness. The eye holes were pits, empty and hollow. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He just stood there. Watching.
I stared back, unsure if I was even breathing.
“Hey, man… you good?” I called, my voice shaking.
Nothing.
He didn’t wave. Didn’t blink. He was like a statue, half-buried in the snow, but I knew he was alive. I felt it. Something radiated off him—something wrong.
My mind raced. I took a step back, and my boot slipped, nearly sending me sprawling.
“Okay… I’m going,” I muttered. “I’m just gonna go.”
I turned and walked fast—too fast. My ears strained for sound, and sure enough, behind me came a crunch—louder than my own steps. One single footstep in the snow.
That was it.
I ran.
Branches lashed at my face as I tore through the woods, my boots slipping on the ice-slick path. The cold stabbed into my lungs, but I didn’t care. I could hear my own pulse pounding, but beneath that—God, I swear—I could hear him. I could feel him behind me. Gaining.
I didn’t dare look back.
I burst from the woods like something had shot me from a gun. The sight of my cousins’ house lit up like a lifeline. I fumbled with my keys, dropped them, picked them up with numb fingers, barely able to breathe.
I slammed the door shut behind me, locked it, then locked it again. I pressed my back to the wood, sliding to the floor, gasping, shaking.
I checked every window, expecting him to be there. Watching. Waiting.
But there was nothing. Just the snow and the darkness and the wind curling around the house.
I texted Sarah: “Home. Don’t ask.”
The next morning, I told them everything. The figure. The mask. The silence. The step.
“You saw him?” Sarah whispered. “The Ski Mask Man?”
“I don’t know what I saw,” I said, but even then, I knew I was lying. I knew what I saw.
“You should call the cops,” Tom said. “Might be connected to that hiker.”
But what was I going to say? That I saw a man in a mask? That he didn’t speak? That he didn’t chase me—but I ran anyway, like something inside me knew I had to?
There was no crime. No proof. Just fear.
I left town two days later and never went back. Haven’t seen my cousins in years. Haven’t walked in the woods alone since.
But sometimes—late at night—I still see him. In my mind. Standing between those trees. Silent. Watching.
And I wonder: what if I hadn’t turned around? What if I’d frozen? What if I’d waited one second longer?
I think about that step I heard in the snow.
And I think that maybe… it wasn’t his first.
Maybe it was just the first I heard.
"The Quiet Side of Blood Mountain":
It was New Year’s Day, 2008. The sky was a clean, brittle blue, the kind that only winter can carve into the sky, and I needed air in my lungs that didn’t taste like tension and leftover wine. The holidays had worn me raw—too much noise, too many questions, too many people crammed into too little space. My name’s Nathan Caldwell, and I’ve always turned to the woods when things get loud. That morning, I tossed a pack into the backseat of my car and set off for a place that always seemed to quiet the chaos: Blood Mountain, nestled in the chill ribs of northern Georgia.
The drive up was almost eerie in its stillness. Frost shimmered along the roadside like a dusting of glass, and not a single other car passed me on the winding roads. Most people were still asleep, heads heavy with champagne and late-night promises they wouldn’t keep. I pulled into the nearly empty parking lot near the Byron Reece Trailhead around 9:30. A single truck sat there, engine cold, windows dusted with rime. No sign of anyone nearby.
I zipped up my jacket, slid on my gloves, and shouldered my pack. Nothing fancy—just water, a sandwich wrapped in foil, a map, and a compass clipped to my belt. I took my first step onto the Spur Trail, boots crunching over frozen gravel. The air bit at my cheeks, sharp and invigorating. The trees, stripped of their leaves, reached toward the sky like skeletal arms, and the wind whispered through them in a language only winter understands. I breathed in deep, letting the cold sting my lungs. This was what I needed—no phones, no voices, just the trail and my thoughts.
At first, the trail sloped gently, winding through tall pines and brush dusted with frost. I fell into a rhythm, the steady sound of boots on packed dirt, the soft creak of my backpack, the quiet puff of my breath fogging in the air. My legs warmed, my heart settled, and for the first time in days, I felt present.
About an hour in, the ascent steepened. Jagged rocks jutted from the trail like the worn teeth of some buried animal. My calves burned, my forehead damp beneath my knit cap. I paused to catch my breath, and that’s when I saw him.
He stood just off the trail to my right, half-shadowed beneath a cluster of bare-limbed oaks. He wasn’t hiking. No pack. No gear. Just… standing there. Watching.
He looked to be in his mid-sixties, maybe older. Wiry, with greasy gray hair sticking out from under a threadbare ball cap. He wore a faded denim jacket, stained and fraying at the cuffs, and brown work pants stiff with old dirt. In one hand, he leaned on a gnarled stick—too thick to be a proper walking stick, more like a limb broken off a tree. His boots were scuffed, unlaced at the top. But it was his eyes that stopped me. Pale, sharp, unwavering. Like he was reading something in me I didn’t know I was showing.
I slowed, my heartbeat skipping, unsure whether to say something or just pass by.
“Morning,” I said, voice casual, my breath still heavy from the climb.
He didn’t respond right away. Just looked at me. That stick shifted in his grip slightly, not threatening, but not relaxed either.
“You out here alone?” he asked finally, voice low and ragged, like gravel being scraped from under a boot.
Something in me tensed. I forced a smile. “Yeah. Just needed some air. New Year’s detox, you know?”
He tilted his head, his stare never breaking. The skin around his eyes was weathered, deep lines etched into his face like tree bark. There was something sour and unwashed clinging to him—a smell that hit me faintly even from a few feet away. Old sweat, maybe. Something worse underneath.
“Not many people on the mountain today,” he said slowly, eyes narrowing. “Holiday’s got most folks at home.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I haven’t seen anyone all morning.”
He shifted again, took half a step toward me. Still not blocking the trail, but close enough that my instincts flared.
“You heading to the shelter?” he asked.
I hesitated. “Thought I might stop there for lunch.”
His hands tightened on the stick. The cracked skin on his knuckles was black with dirt, and I noticed now how yellow and thick his fingernails were. The wind stirred behind me, and the trees creaked like old bones.
“Shelter’s probably empty,” he said. “Quiet spot. Real quiet.”
I swallowed. Forced another smile. “I won’t be long. Just passing through.”
He didn’t answer this time. Just stared, and for a long moment, neither of us moved. Then, without a word, he stepped aside—not much, just enough to let me pass.
“Be careful up there,” he said as I edged by, his voice almost a whisper. “These woods can turn on you if you’re not paying attention.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Thanks.”
As I walked past, I could feel his eyes burning into my back. I didn’t look over my shoulder until the next bend in the trail. When I did, he was still there. Watching.
Something had shifted in the forest. The stillness wasn’t peaceful anymore—it felt poised. Like something holding its breath, waiting. Every snap of a twig made me jump. I no longer cared about the view or the quiet. I just wanted to get out of the trees.
I reached the fork in the trail maybe twenty minutes later. One path led up toward the shelter—a simple three-sided lean-to where I’d originally planned to eat. The other dipped back down the mountain in a loop. I stopped there for a long time, listening. I couldn’t hear anything, but my nerves were on fire.
I turned toward the loop and started downhill, faster than before. Not quite running, but close. The icy patches made the descent treacherous, but I didn’t care. My only thought was distance. Between me and him.
When I reached the trailhead again, my heart was hammering in my chest. I unlocked my car with shaking hands and climbed inside, locking the doors immediately. I sat there for a long time, gripping the wheel, breath fogging the windshield. Telling myself I was being paranoid. That he was just some old drifter. Strange, sure—but not dangerous.
But I didn’t believe it. Not really.
Three days later, I was sitting on my couch, half-watching the local news while reheating some chili. I wasn’t even really listening until a name punched through the fog of my thoughts.
“Meredith Emerson, 24, was last seen hiking with her dog on Blood Mountain on January 1st…”
I froze. The anchor’s voice went on, flat and clinical. A smiling photo of her filled the screen. Blonde, athletic, vibrant. Gone.
Then they mentioned the man she was last seen with. Older. Gray hair. Unkempt. Possibly transient.
The stick.
The stare.
The smell.
I barely heard the rest. My mind was back on the trail, hearing his voice again: These woods can turn on you.
A week later, they found her body. She’d been taken, held for days, then killed. The man they arrested—Gary Michael Hilton—matched every detail. Gray hair. Denim jacket. A known drifter with a record of violence. The authorities believed he had been hunting for someone on that mountain that day. Anyone alone.
I sat in the dark for hours that night. Replay after replay. Every word he said. Every glance. The weight of his silence. I thought about how close I’d come—how random it must have been. A choice. A decision he made in a single moment.
Sometimes I try to rationalize it. Maybe I looked too confident. Maybe I moved too fast. Maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe he saw something in me that made him wait.
But then I remember the way he stared. Like he was trying to decide if I was worth the trouble.
I never went back to Blood Mountain. I’m not sure I ever will.
And even now, when the forest is quiet, and the wind moves just right, I still hear his voice, low and cracked, telling me: The woods can turn on you.
He was right. They can.