National Park Horror: True Stories Of Terror
Dangers inside of National Parks, both strangers and freak accidents. We'll hear about people who got the sense something was watching them, feral people potentially living in the parks, as well as horror stories of people falling into geysers and off of the Grand Canyon
Have your own story to share? Contact us.
SOURCES
https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall
https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-dies-falling-grand-canyon-taking-photos/story?id=71614036
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/grand-canyon-tourist-falls-to-his-death-while-taking-photos-2019-03-29/
https://www.latimes.com%2Fla-125fashionfirst102206-story.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46035739
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45175202
https://www.reference.com/history-geography/did-pioneers-treat-burns-37687cf79acfa2c2
https://www.nps.gov/places/000/giantess-geyser.htm
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/17/us/yellowstone-national-park-foot-thermal-pool-identified/index.html
https://www.newsweek.com/what-happens-fall-hot-spring-yellowstone-1735212
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/human-foot-found-yellowstone-hot-spring-may-linked-july-death-rcna44039
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/exploration-survival/brief-history-deaths-yellowstones-hot-springs/
Death in Yellowstone David Allen Kirwan (book)
https://parktrust.org/blog/scary-stories-from-national-parks/
https://www.thesouthernhighlander.org/wild-man-of-the-woods
https://nationalparksetc.com/are-there-feral-humans-in-the-smoky-mountains/
https://www.thesmokies.com/feral-humans-smoky-mountains/
https://smokymountains.com/park/hikes/spence-field-trail/
https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1917823&page=1
https://www.latimes.com%2Farchives%2Fla-xpm-2006-apr-30-bk-dolan30-story.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/05/08/rowlands.jentz/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/128716441/fannie-a-weeks
Over The Edge: Death In The Grand Canyon, Thomas M. Meyers, Michael P Ghiglieri (book)
TRANSCRIPT
Listener discretion is advised
Terry and Shayna started pitching a tent in the dark, enveloped by the sounds of crickets and the river they had decided to set up camp next to. It was June 22nd, 1977, in Cline Falls, an oregon state park. Their hair was still salty with sweat from their long bike ride that day. The two undergraduates were 7 days into a cross country bike ride, and they were eager to get to sleep.
To Terry, the forest represented freedom, an unbound individualism where you could have some space and be unbothered by anyone. But that night felt different, something felt off To terry, and judging by Shayna’s darting eyes, she felt it too. Thick in the air was the unmistakable sense that someone was watching them.
But maybe they were just tired, Terry thought as they curled up inside of their tent. They had another large chunk of the ride to do tomorrow and needed a goodnight sleep. Though the feeling of something lurking was getting worse, nothing strange presented itself in the woods. So they decided to go to sleep
But then, sometime in the night. Terry wakes up. She’s heard something. A car is pulling up right next to their tent. The park wasn’t that big but there was enough space for someone to set up a tent further than a few feet from them, why would this person need to park so close? Before she can think, shes hit with the sound of the engine revving, and then BAM the car plunges straight into their tent, running over Terry’s right side and pinning her. Before she can even muster the strength to try and get out from under the vehicle, she sees the outline of a man, carrying an ax, coming towards her.
INTRO
Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding. A podcast of Horrors, hauntings and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore
This is a community full of people who like to follow their dark curiosities where it leads them, and I’m so happy you’ve decided to join us. If you’d like to dive further into the community, you can follow the show on instagram and tik tok @heartstarts pounding, or support the show on Patreon, where you’ll find some bonus content, like extra disney death stories that didn’t make the episode. Stick around at the end for a shoutout of patrons who have recently joined
There are few things in this world more beautiful than a national park. Not much takes breath away, like Actually snatch the breath right out of my chest, but I remember seeing Zion national park for the first time after coming out of the tunnel from the east entrance. The sheer magnitude of the giant red rock was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I had never felt so small and insignificant but in a kind of beautiful way.
I’ve always been intrigued by the darkness that lies underneath beautiful things, however. The secrets bubbling below the geysers, the horrors lurking just beyond the treelines.
Today, were going to unzip the tent, if you will, and look at some of the horror that lurks inside of parks, both national and state, around the country. I’m going to start with creepy encounters people have had with other people, but then I want to dig into some horrifying experiences people have had with the parks themselves. And as always, listener discretion is advised
first, I want to jump back into the story from the beginning. The story of Terry and Shayna who were attacked that night in late June, 1977. Because the car running into their tent was just the beginning.
A hatchet wielding madman exited the car and attacked Shayna with the ax, striking in her in the head multiple times. Terry couldn’t see what was happening very well because she was still pinned down by the car, but she remembered hearing her roommate scream “leave us alone!” The stranger then turned to Terry, raised up the weapon, and as he came down on her with all of his strength, she stopped the ax from making contact. The two struggled for a moment, before the assailant gave up, hopped in his car and sped away. The tailights hung out in the distance for a beat. Unmoving as if the assailant was deciding whether or not to turn back and finish the job. After a moment, he drove off.
Terry hardly remembered what happened next, but she was able to recall a bizarre detail about the man. He was dressed pristinely in cowboy attire. Other than that, it was too dark to really see.
Both women triumphantly survived the attack, but the cowboy stranger was never caught. For all we know he could still be out in the woods of oregon, lurking just beyond the trails in his truck, waiting for the right moment to come back and finish the job.
The attack on the two women was horrific. But I want to focus on a small detail of the story I find terrifying. That feeling of being watched. That feeling on the back of your neck that makes the hair stand up. I’ve felt that before, and I’ve felt it while camping. Usually it’s nothing, or atleast, nothing that shows it’s face.
It reminded me of another story I read years ago, one that I still think about often. It’s from a park ranger who also got a strange feeling that he was being watched one night.
The ranger had taken a group of middle schoolers up to the top of Mt. Sterling in The great smokey mountain national park in tennessee. Great Smokey Mountain national park boasts that it’s the most visited national park in America, and it makes sense. The park has the beautiful, rolling hills of southern appalachia, often lightly dusted with fog, giving them that signature smokey look.
That night, the ranger had the kids set up their tents on the mountain, and after an evening of campfire tales and games, they all went to bed. There was another co-counselor on the trip who headed off to the tents with the kids. You coming? He asked the ranger
But the ranger wanted to stay up for a while. He had set up a hammock and wanted to lounge for a bit and read, without the insanity of the 13 year old boys. Something about going to bed in that moment, also didn’t feel just right. He had this feeling that he needed to stay up a little while longer, just to be safe.
About 30 minutes later he was ready for bed and switched off his headlamp. But before he closed his eyes he looked around at the surrounding camp site. That feeling was still looming over him. The feeling that something or someone was near. Watching his campsite. He scanned the area.
It was a beautiful night. Full moon, clear skies full of stars. And dead silent. The group was up a mountain, 6 miles from the nearest road. There was no sound of cars up here, no hums of civilization, not even rustling from wind. It was a completely still night.
And thats when he heard it. Suddenly, there was rustling in the distance (RUSTLE SOUNDS) too big to be a squirrel.
The ranger lifted his head to see what it was, even the full moon didn’t offer enough light to really see that far. Maybe an animal had smelled their site and was coming to look for scraps. Depending on how big the animal was, would determine the course of action. But no. Listening to the sound of the heavy, even footsteps, it sounded. Human?
Slowly, the ranger sees the form of a man emerge from a trail. About 5’6”, no gear. It’s pitch black out, and this stranger had no headlamp, no flashlight, nothing. It was just a solo traveler out in the woods at midnight.
The ranger thought to approach the man, but something told him not to. From where he sat in his hammock, he was almost certain the man couldnt see him. his only option was to sit there, perfectly still, until the man turned around and left
But he didn’t. Instead, for 30 minutes the stranger stood there, surveying the camp. He remained perfectly still, like a tiger crouching in the jungle, staring at the tents. Only moving when he sat down by a tree, never once taking his eyes off of the camp.
What is he doing, the ranger thought to himself, Afraid to even breathe in case an exhale revealed his location.
An hour went by, with the men frozen in place, the intruders eyes on the camp, and the rangers eyes on him. Then another hour. Then another. Soon it was 3:30 in the morning and the visitor was still just observing.
That’s when he stood up. The ranger braced himself for what was about to happen next. But the man just looked at the tents for a few moments longer, and then vanished back down the trail he came up on.
The ranger never told the children what happened, but couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them the next day. Instead of staying another night on the mountain, they moved their camp down to another site. and The stranger was never seen again.
Maybe the intruder in the woods was harmless. Or maybe that group got lucky. My paranoid brain thinks maybe he was casing the group, only to come back the next night and do something.
The story is creepy, the first time I read it the back of my neck got tingly, almost like I was feeling someone watching me. but the story becomes terrifying when you learn that something dark might actually be living in the park, and it’s been talked about in whispers for the last 150 years.
See, since the 1870’s there’s been rumors of feral people living in the Great Smokey mountains.
Some think it’s a group of people, others think it’s just one man dubbed “the wild man” after a group of gold miners spotted him in 1877. They described him as ““giant”—six-foot, five inches—with a funnel-shaped head and two-inch-long dark hair covering his body. When he spotted the miners, he pounded on his chest before turning and bounding off into the woods with the speed of a deer. The party tracked him with guns drawn to a cave deep in the mountains, where they found bones of many animals scattered about, indicating that he had been living there a while.”
This may be why so many people believe there’s a sasquatch living in the appalachian hills. Maybe what was spotted in the hills all those years ago was a cryptid.
But other stories about the feral people say that a group of people decided during the great depression to live off of the land in the woods, rather than die of starvation in their homes. This group of people stayed a small colony in the forrest, rejecting the rules of society and becoming more wild with every passing generation.
You can find plenty of eye witness accounts online of these feral people, but probably the most wildly reported case, the one most people look to as proof of the feral people, is the disappearance of Dennis Martin.
Dennis martin was 6 years old when his family took a camping trip to the great smokey mountains in June of 1969. It was family tradition to camp for fathers day weekend, and the family of 4 set up camp in a clearing known as Spence field.
I imagine the scene was incredibly similar to the ranger and his group of middle schoolers. Spence field is a slight trek up the mountains sitting at almost 5000 ft elevation, right on the edge of the north carolina and tennessee border. it’s known for it’s beautiful wildflower blooms in early summer, and is actually bisected by the famous appalachian trail. And on June 14th , the martin’s were there at the perfect time to take in all of it’s beauty.
But that withered away when Dennis’ older brother ran to his parents, claiming that he couldn’t find him anywhere. Dennis and his brother met two other young boys and were playing hide and go seek. That day, dennis was wearing a bright red and green shirt, and the other boys decided that he would give them away if they all hid together. So he was ordered to hide by himself, while the two other boys stuck together and Dennis’s brother counted. That was the last time anyone saw Dennis again.
His parents searched the trails to no avail, and alerted the park rangers who sent out a message to start a search party. Within hours of Dennis’s disappearance, it started downpouring, and the search party worried that any valuable evidence would be washed away in the storm. The only evidence that ever turned up was two footprints, one bare and one of an oxford shoe, which is what Dennis wore that day. The prints were leading to a stream nearby, but Both prints were believed to be too big to be Dennis’s, according to the boys parents
During the search however, 5 miles away from where Dennis went missing, a state highway engineer named Harold Key was camping with his family when he heard a child's scream echo out of the woods. When he went to see what was happening, he found an unkempt man running towards him. The man left behind a hand drawn map as he jumped into a white Chevrolet. The contents of the map were not revealed, and this lead wasn’t pursued by police
Many locals in appalachia are raised with local legends about the feral people in the mountains. Some legends say they’re cannibals, some say they look more like beasts than humans, with milky white eyes and more hair than is typical for a person. We’re not sure that this person running out of the woods actually was that.
No trace of Dennis was ever found, though in 1985, a forager called police to say that a few years after Dennis’ disappearance, he found a child’s skeleton 10 miles away from where Dennis was last seen. when police went to go check, however, no remains were found.
I don’t want to say definitively what happened, because I don’t know, and a lot of people feel the same way. But it does shed a new light on the park rangers story and the man who watched his camp…..
Ok, we've heard a couple stories about people being the threat in a park.
But I want to share with you some stories of the thing that I’M constantly afraid of in national parks. The parks themselves are also incredibly dangerous if you don’t follow proper safety measures, and each year, freak accidents within parks claim lives. A few of those stories, after the break.
I want to take you now, to yellowstone national park.
For those unfamiliar, Yellowstone is in the northwest corner of Wyoming, and it’s most known for its amazing wildlife. Seriously, almost every video you see on the internet of a bison in the middle of a road is from Yellowstone.
But the defining feature of Yellowstone are the geysers and hot springs. Bubbly Cauldrons spurting from the earth and teal pools of the clearest water you’ve ever seen. It’s magical.
Take Sapphire pool for instance. It’s a crystal clear pool of deep sapphire water, so blue it looks fake. It’s naturally heated by volcanic activity churning deep beneath the earth, and its surrounded by mountains and blue sky. On a frozen winter day, it’s tempting to want to just dive in.
But Sapphire pool is warmed to the temperature of 159 degrees F. that’s almost 66 degrees celsius. Do you know what would happen if you jumped in. Well, human skin is destroyed immediately at 162 degrees, so lets say you have a few seconds before that happens. After you dive in, you’d start experiencing the worst pain of your entire life, as every cell in the outer layer of your skin dies and the heat starts to damage the layers underneath. In some parts, so badly that theres no skin left in just a few minutes. This trauma to your body causes your skin to turn black and your organs to start failing. And this is assuming you were lucky enough to not fall into one of the acidic pools in yellowstone. If that were to happen, every cell in your body would start dissolving before you even knew what was happening.
If you’re able to, somehow, swim out of the pool, you’d be left with third degree burns all over your body so bad that survival would be a miracle. And all the while, you’re still in the worst pain of your life.
This is maybe what went through park rangers heads last year when they found a shoe with a foot still in it, floating around in Abyss pool, the deepest of the hot springs in Yellowstone. DNA evidence was able to identify him as 70 year old Il Hun Ro, but still no one is really sure how he ended up in the pool. It’s believed that the rest of his remains dissolved.
But the recorded history of people getting in to these hot springs, both accidentally and intentionally, spans over a hundred recorded years. And before that, the Kiowa and Tukudika tribes would use the springs for medicinal purposes. However, back then you sometimes found out which springs were not good for medicinal purposes the hard way.
In 1905, a 40 year old woman, Fannie Weeks, was traveling through yellowstone in a stagecoach with her travel companion, Ms. Hartman. It was reported that she was standing by the Giantess Geyser,cleaning her glasses, when she absent mindedly stepped backwards and fell directly into a surrounding spring. For reference, the Giantess Geyser has an average temperature of 196 degrees fahrenheit, and is boiling in the center. Fannie was pulled from the geyser and rushed to a local hotel. This was 1905, there weren’t really hospitals in the area.
Wound care back then wasn't great, pioneers would seal burns with something like animal fat, egg whites or beesewax. Then they’d apply sstrong tea or sometimes calf manuer overnight to the burn. Fannie died three weeks after the event.
Fannie was in Yellowstone before there was infrastructure, however. Back then you could just walk up to a hot spring, there were no guard rails or viewing stations.
But the deaths didn’t stop after those protections were put in place, however.
Don Cressey was a cook at the Old Faithful lodge located inside the national park. It was just summer work, and Cressey had spent the last three summers there, starting when he was 17. He knew the park better than most other employees, and according to others, he definitely acted like it. Because of this, Cressey was not really a fan favorite amongst the teen and early 20’s employees. But on Sunday June 29th, 1975, it seemed to not matter, because he was invited to a hot potting party, to be attended by 10-20 other employees and their friends.
A hot potting party was when after work, a bunch of the employees would go soak in one of the tepid hot springs.
But Cressey never made it to the party. And it seemed like no one missed his presence because that night, everyone at the party went back to their cabins without him, no one bothering to check where he went.
It wasn’t until the following Tuesday when a small child found Cresseys body floating in a hot spring that was 179 degrees F. Not all of his remains were remaining, if you know what I mean, as the water had been cooking his body for 2 days at that point.
Local legend says that he jumped into the wrong hot spring while trying to attend the party, but the evidence doesn’t point to that. Given the circumstances, the fact that Cressey knew the park and he knew which hot springs to not get into, mixed with the contempt others in the group had of him AND how he was found fully clothed, not stripped down like he was intending on being in the pool, lead to the FBI getting involved. They weren’t convinced that this was an accident. And neither were some of his closest friends.
Two of the girls working there that summer that knew Cressey, still believe 40 years later that someone may have pushed him. They remembered that his car was found back at his cabin, he had driven to the hot spring with someone. Yet to this day, it remains ruled accidental.
The hot spring that took Cressey's life was dubbed the Savage Killer after the event. And perhaps, something that lead investigators to feel as if his death were accidental, was how it had already killed another employee, 8 years prior.
On July 12th, 1967, Brian parsons was a college student in New York, working at yellowstone for the summer. That night was his birthday, so he and some friends wanted to go on a late night excursion to the Savage Killer hotspring, just north of Old Faithful Lodge, the area that Cressey and his friends worked in.
The boys didn’t bring really anything with them, no flashlights, no proper permit to be in the area. So maybe it was dark and he didn’t see the almost boiling hot spring in front of him. Or, it could be that he did and dove in head first, unaware.. But either way, Brian made his way into the Savage Killer. His friends could tell it was an emergency immediately, and one tried to rescue him, getting him out of the water and back into their car. His friend was panicking, he could tell by Brian’s raw red skin that he was in bad shape, and he was able to get him to a hospital. Brian stayed alive for 12 days, but eventually succumbed to his burns.
The Geysers in Yellowstone are a silent threat, and often it’s too late to do anything once youve accidentally fallen in. There are many other stories I could tell of the people who have been harmed in the hot springs, and I’ll do more episodes in the future.
But I want to talk about another park, however, even more famous for it’s silent threat. another park where once you start falling, no one can save you.
Let’s go The grand canyon, a 277 mile long chasm in the earth, cut by the colorado river. It’s one of the most awe inspiring sights on the entire planet, but also one of the most terrifying.
Many areas of this massive crevice are unprotected by guard rails, meaning there is nothing in place to protect guests from freefalling to their deaths.
Take one area, aptly named The Abyss for it’s 3,000 foot freefall into the canyon. Standing on the south rim of the park, you can walk straight up to the edge and look down at the over half mile fall to the bottom. Just one step, and you’ll spend the next 13 seconds falling until you hit the ground at almost 300 mph.
And though it may seem obvious at the edge that death would be imminent, people still love to get dangerously close.
Take fashion designer Dede Johnson, for instance, who in 1946 fell over the edge while modeling her new design, pedal pushers, which were essentially the first leggings for women. She was posing in front of a group of photographers when she stepped without looking and tumbled over a small wall off of the edge.
A ranger who was standing nearby, who moments before had been shouting at her to step away from the wall, ran to the edge and peered over, expecting the worst. From where she had fallen, she should have been a mangled heap at the bottom of a 300 foot drop, but when the ranger looked down, Dede was looking back at him.
She had slid down a small slope before the drop, and was now sitting about 5 feet away from the edge of a 300 foot plunge. The only thing holding her in place was the friction of her body against the rock, but her weight was slowly scooting her forward. One wrong move and she’d go over.
The ranger was able to throw a rope down to Dede and secure it under her arms, pulling her up. However, the force of the rope was stronger than the fabric on the halter top she was wearing, and the ranger pulledl her up over the side completely topless in front of the photographers. It was quite the sight, but it was wayyyy better than the alternative.
Not everyone is so lucky. Actually, the chance of surviving a fall off the side of the grand canyon is as likely as getting struck by lightening, twice. It usually does not work out in peoples favor.
Years after DeDe’s slip, on the same exact wall, 28 year old Lana Virginia Smith faced a very different outcome.
It was almost midnight on May 11th, 1997, when Clifton Reeder was inside the Bright Angel Lodge looking out of a window. It was a beautiful, clear night, but as his eyes scanned down from the starry night sky towards the canyon, he saw the shape of a woman, stumbling around the ledge
It was Lana Virginia Smith, and she was wasted out on the lip of the canyon. Clifton didn’t want to run outside and spook her, she looked like she was close enough to the edge where one jerky movement would send her over, so he quickly called the National Parks Service to report what he was seeing. He relayed everything to a dispatcher who told him they’d get a ranger on it. And juuuuuust after he hung up, he sees the wobbly outline of Lana, plummet over the side.
The emergency call made it’s way to Park Ranger Keith McCauliffe, who booked it over to the Lodge Area. But by the time McCauliffe got there, he saw Clifton standing over the edge, looking down.
“She’s over the edge “ he shouted. “You have to help her!”
McCauliffe ran over and looked down to see Lana, 20ft below, holding on with all she could to the steep, smooth ledge, just a few feet from the 300ft freefall. That would be like falling off the top of the statue of liberty's torch. Lana’s fretful sobbing wasn’t the only risk here, she was also still incredibly drunk. She tried to scooch herself up the slope, but that caused her to slide forward another 5 feet, closer to the edge.
McCauliffe had to act FAST. He radioed other rangers to bring supplies. Maybe he could somehow fasten a rope like they had done with DeDe years before and pull her up. But before anyone could get there, Lana tried to hoist herself up AGAIN and slid even further towards the edge. Now her toes were just about dangling over the side.
Soon, two rangers arrived, awoken by McCauliffes radio call. One had rope, the other had climbing equipment. The plan was to have one of the men repel down and grab Lana, who was now half on her back, half on her side, trying to hold on to a small shrub growing out of a crevice in the rock.
One of the men started down the side, but saw how urgently he needed to grab the wailing woman. He threw her some of his rope and shouted for her to catch it, but when Lana released one of her hands, she slid even further, her legs and torso going over the edge. just her hands and head visible to the rangers as she gripped the shrub with all of her strength. Loose rocks and dirt tumbled past her off the ledge and into the pitch black abyss.
The rope was now close enough for her to grab, but her clouded judgment wouldn’t let her release a hand from the shrub to reach for it. Her wailing was uncontrollable as one of the rangers tried to repel as quickly as possible to grab her.
Then, in a blink of an eye, the rangers watched in horror as her hands slipped from the shrub and the last of her disappeared from sight. Her scream was described as the doppler effect, three seconds of a siren scream before silence.
Lana’s body was discovered 230 feet below where she clung onto. There was never any chance she’d survive the fall, but the confirmation still hurt the rangers when they discovered her with their MagLite Flashlights.
These stories are both decades old, and you may think that in that time people have become more aware of their surroundings, the dangers of the canyon, and casualties have gone down.
I wish that were true, but there seems to be a new silent killer at these parks, the dreaded selfie. Each year brings a multitude of guest who plummet off the side of the canyon while trying to get the perfect shot. Like Maria Salgado Lopez who stepped off the side of the canyon while taking a photo in 2020. Or in 2019, when the body of a man in his 50’s who had been taking photos was recovered from 1000 feet below where his last photo was taken.
The chances of any of these stories happening to you is still low, as long as we pay attention to our surroundings in these parks. A lot of these tragedies were preventable, though still terrifying to hear about. I still love to travel to these places, but I know i’ve probably cut it a little too close in search of a perfect photo, and I’m lucky nothing happened.
I know I’m going to think of these stories often. And next time, as I’m setting up a tent or walking through the woods. When I get a chill down my spine and think it’s just the wind. Was it nothing, or is there something lurking?
This has been heart starts pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Music by artist. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request?
Until next time, stay curious. Woooooooooooooo