What I Saw in My Room | Campfire Stories with MrBallen

but I'm excited to be here tonight with my friend, Steve Ronella, who is the founder

“of Meet Eater, he's one of the most well-known people in hunting and outdoorsmanship.”

I mean, you're sort of like the face of Montana in my mind. When I was coming out here and I began Googling... -Vivisionella. -Vivisionella, yeah, no, but no, I have the pleasure today of coming out here and joining you on your show this morning, so thank you for that, and so tonight we're going to do is I asked Steve to come out here and to sort of the middle of nowhere, we're at this

the Lone Mountain Ranch in Montana, where I can't fire here, and we're going to hopefully swap some stories, I got a good one for you tonight, but Steve, thank you for being here tonight.

-Thanks, I'm excited to hear the story, especially because I understand it's a localish.

-Well, it's sort of localish, we originally had planned a couple of stories that were sort of geared towards Montana because we're going to have a ton of, of course, but I was thinking about it and my team is probably going to know this is going to happen, I have a habit of throwing in extra stories at the end, I'll probably get to those, but there's actually another story that I've been sort of waiting to do again, that I thought would be very apropos for a campfire

“setting and actually sort of before we even get into that, and I'll tell you why I think”

it's great for tonight, so you are someone in virtue of being like the hunter, the outdoors man, the conservationist, you've spent so much time out in the wild, I mean like you were what, just in Alaska for the last two weeks, some of the stories that you just sort of anecdotally throw down included like he recently had been, what would you call it with Narwhal oil, you were, how are you doing to that, I had occasion to render some Narwhal rendering Narwhal oil,

as one does, you know, in my life I do that frequently, but no, in your experience spending so much time outdoors, and in our podcast this morning you described it as your peaceful place, being out in the wild, but considering my domain ends up being more strange, dark and mysterious, I'm curious in your life, has there ever been a time when you're out in the wilds, right, out in the forest, whatever, in Alaska, doing your Narwhal thing, where

“something just felt off, something felt creepy, doesn't need to be outright paranormal”

or you're hinting towards it, but some experience where you're like, got one, there's been scary instances, like, fractions of seconds scare, but the most scary prolonged thing that happened was a group of us for camping in different tents, there was this, this is in Alaska, of course, unbeknownst to me, one of my companions, a woman had went down to get water from the creek, but got very lost in the dark, oh boy, so to wake up and hear

off in the distance, a screaming woman, oh boy, and then the moments before it was put together, that Jennifer was not in her tent, and in fact it was her, because we're nine miles from a road, that's a skinwalker, obviously, and so to be like, hold on a minute, we're here now, this is like the thing you, this is the making as a horror story, there was a woman screaming off in the mountains, but then pretty soon it was like, oh my

god, Jennifer's not in her tent, yeah, that's terrifying, but it was like, it was long, it was long scared, which is like, did you like go out and did you guys try to make sense of what you were hearing? Oh yeah, but once it made sense, but it was like minutes of horror, you know, minutes of horror, before someone put together, that it assembled, all the things are just fast,

like what are some fast ones that have, even one example of a fast moment of oh boy, this is not okay, oh, like some of the bear, for instance, bad, of course, you know, for instance, or there's no, there's like the, ah, you know, right, how do you come in and close contact with bear? I mean, obviously, yeah, but I'm talking about wanting close contact, very close,

yeah, very close, never been, well, maybe you had one step on me one time, but yeah,

but very close, yeah, and that's scary, quick, not scary long. Wow, I mean, so I have, over the course of, you know, the last several years that I've been doing the whole Mr. Ballon thing, I've covered so many stories of other people's horrors that have happened, mostly in the wilds, to be honest, I've always been fascinated with sort of like the terrifying things that happened outside of the city, out in the

forest, but, you know, basically I'm telling other people's stories, and I thought who

in the wild, then with you, the master of the outdoors here, so yeah, this story just

“is a preface, it's one that I've told live a number of times, it's pretty big reactions”

to it, people think that this story in a way is like my origin as to how I came to being like the strange dark and mysterious internet story, this is you, this is unique, and

I'll also say that before this instant, this story happened and after, I have never once

had anything happened to me that I would even remotely consider would fall into the camp of unexplainable, even paranormal, there's only one time, and to this day, I still can't really put it together, but I'm going to tell you that story, and I'm going to see what you think about it, okay. So when I was 16 years old, this is like 2004, 2005, I was an avid snowboarder, huge snowboarder, I taught snowboarding, even though I lived in Quincy

Mass, which is just south of Boston Mass, and it's like flat, there was like this little crappy hill, literally called Blue Hills, that was our ski resort, and I just snowboard there all the time, and I had two friends who were both named Nick, but one was Nick

named Wolf, so for the sake of the story, there's Nick and Wolf, and we always rode together,

so like every winter from the time I was like 12, so for like four consecutive seasons, we would go to Blue Hills and shred this like tiny hill, but the highlight of every winter was we would, for a weekend, or as long as we could, it's just like four or five days, we would go to the white mountains in New Hampshire. Oh, beautiful, no, no, it's no Montana, but it's pretty good. No, but that's one of the deadliest, that's one of the deadliest, but what

Mount Washington? Now I'm not watching, that is the area, yeah, that's one of the deadliest mountains. Yeah, it's crazy up there. People underestimate it. It's very true. So Nick, so of the two friends, Wolf is sort of a goofy guy, Nick is a very stoic, and Nick, his family had this cabin, that they had their family for generations up in the white mountains. In particular, this cabin was built on the side of a mountain. It used to be a thriving

ski resort when the family had bought this cabin, this little cabin, the ski resort shut down, but they kept the cabin. So basically this cabin is on the side of up in a abandoned ski resort. But every winter, for those several winters, up until I was 16, we would go to this cabin, and it was amazing. I mean, it was like the best time of the year. But whenever we

would go to this cabin, it was always me, Nick, Wolf, the three of us, and then Nick's mom and

dad, and we would drive up, Nick's mom would drive, but that was the dynamic, every time. And right before we were supposed to go for my 16 year old winter, Nick's father very unexpectedly

“passed away. Like, no warning sign. I think he had a heart attack any past away. And we're talking,”

I want to say it was like three days before we were supposed to go to this cabin. And when I found out about it, one, I knew him fairly well. I wasn't close with him, but I knew him. It was like really shocking. I felt so bad. But also practically speaking, I got in touch with Wolf to be like, hey, dude, this might seem sort of crass, but there's no way we're going to go on this trip to the White Mountains this year. Not that I was bummed about it, but it was just like we're not

even going to bring it up to Nick, his father who, by the way, that family was very tight in it. I'm just good. And so you made it the right call. Yeah, it was like you're not going to say anything. You're just going to let it be. So Wolf and I just were like, we're not going to say a word. But within like 24 hours, or maybe 48 hours of the father passing away, Wolf and I got a call from Nick, who he was obviously grieving, but he was like, hey,

we are still going to make the trip to the mountain. And he said, you know, my dad, he loved that place. He would go up there all the time on his own. Like this was his escape. He was a big outdoorsman as well. He was up there all the time on his own. I think he actually built the cabin, or he was involved in repairing it to some degree. And so quickly, even as a 16-year-old kid, my interpretation was like, okay, it seems like we're going to go on our next father

by going on this trip. That was my read. No questions asked me and Wolf are like,

“he's like a denial shock kind of thing to be the way. Remember that because that played a role in my mind.”

I think it does. So the day comes, which was about day or two later, it's like we're going to we're going to go up to the white mountains and, you know, Nick picked up Wolf first and they came by my house. And I look outside and it's the beat up white suburban and the front seat is like the passenger seat is conspicuously vacant because that's where the father would always set the mother's driving and to 16-year-old boys, Nick and Wolf are in the back. It's like

immediately super apparent he's not here. But I'm not taking the front seat. So I hop in the car

family. We don't know if this is denial, if this is whatever, we don't know what it is, but we love this family we're just going to go, no matter how weird it is. So we get in the car and I'm like listen to my CD player, I was listening to like system of the down, big fan of the system of the down, crushing music on the way up, like just trying to be cool about it. And so as we're going up to the white mountains, eventually Nick's mom chimed in and says, hey, you know, just so you guys know,

at some point while we're up here staying at the cabin, we're going to be there for three nights. Her older sons were going to stop by, possibly. Her older, so I was 16, they were in their 30s.

This was like a separate marriage, much older, I'd never met them before. And so the CD is planted that

you're going to be going to this cabin. It's going to be maybe a little weird. But at some point, it sounds like the dynamics going to shift when the older brothers get here and sort of fill in the gap that's been left behind. Yeah. So up to the mountain we go and I'm going to give you a seemingly overcomplicated description of the cabin itself. It's very important to the story and you'll see why.

“So we get up to New Hampshire, we reach, I think it was called King Pine and forget the name of”

this mountain where their cabin is located. It's a abandoned ski slope. It's still daytime. You can see all the slopes that are now overgrown, well, they're snow on them. And we start going up this main road that goes basically right up the mountain. And then at some point the road turns and you're sort of going parallel with the side of the mountain. Yeah. And you see the cabin. And the cabins are very disparate. Like there's no neighborhood. It's like one Z2Z cabins across the mountain.

And many of them have been knocked down after the slope had been abandoned. So this is like one of a few. But the cabin is built into the mountain. It's a slope. You build the cabin so it's level. And in order to do that, a portion of the cabin is sort of built into the mountain wall. And the other portion is on still supported outside the mountain. If you imagine approaching the cabin from the road that leads into it on the side, you'd be looking at the left side as the side that

kind of hangs off the mountain and the right side is tucked into the mountain. It's a small cabin though.

The door that brings you into the cabin is right in front of you. It sits basically right at that

point where the the wraparound porch begins that is the sort of section of the cabin that's out over stilts. So in order to get into the cabin, you step onto the wraparound porch and there's a couple of steps where you're sort of off the ground and you could hear someone's footsteps out there. And there's a door that leads into the cabin and there's that that wraparound porch goes all the way around the outside front of the cabin. When you go into the cabin, it's a it's a lofted

cabin. So when you first step in, you open the door and there are slaybells that are connected to the inside of the door that like sit in the insides. Every time it opens it can spick us. But you be standing with your right foot on Lnolium, with little tiny kitchen and then your left foot would be on Shag carpet. It was the dining room with no wall between them. It was like dining room,

kitchen, very small space. It's bigger straddling the two of them. And you're looking straight

out and there's no walls between you. It's just sort of feeds out into this common space where there's a TV, there's a couch and then if you go all the way to the back of this cabin and you just turn around, you'd be looking up at the lofted section up above. There's just a little flight of stairs the back right corner. They go up and up there is where the master suite was. If you go back to the front door, you go in the cabin, you got your right foot in the kitchen, left foot

in the dining room and you're looking into the cabin and you start walking is if you're going to go into that back section of the cabin but you stop halfway and you look into the mountain so to speak. There's a singular hallway that goes down, it turns and it reaches one door and that door leads to the bedroom where myself and I can wolf would sleep. So our bedroom is embedded in the mountain.

“There are no windows in our, it's not scary by any means but you need to picture this room that's”

sort of tucked away in the back of the cabin. This is all going to make perfect sense once we get into it. So we get to the cabin and we move in. We also in in the bedroom will reslapped as soon as you get in there's a bunk bed that's immediately hugging the wall on your right. I would sleep on the lower bunk, wolf would sleep on the top bunk and the nick would sleep on the full-size bed that sat in the middle of the floor and really there was virtually no space for anything.

They had crammed this additional bed in there but there was a little gap big enough where you could walk down to my bed. That was a space between the bunk beds and the full-size bed in the floor. So we arrive at the cabin. It's still daylight out and so we put our stuff in the cabin and immediately next mom brings us out. I think it was to add a touch mountain and we go snowboarding for the day and it's great we have this awesome like half day riding. We come back to the cabin and we're all

we're thinking okay great we got like three more days of riding we're going to go to bed early we're going to get up early we're going to hit the mountain we're like die hard snowboarding right and nicks older brothers have not arrived yet but they had a job that was like real

“hectic I think there were sales reps for Burton the snowboarding company and so it was a really”

unclear if they were going to be here or when and so we're just sort of like packing in for the night or in our bed or me nicken wolf nicks mom's gone to sleep and nicken wolf eventually they

staying up playing like playstation or whatever it was in that room and at some point I noticed it was

“getting pretty late and I'm like oh man I should probably go to bed because you know we're getting”

up early tomorrow to hit the slopes I got to get my rest and so I turned off the playstation and I crawl into bed and by this time it's you know it's past 10 o'clock it's it's dark I'm also in this room that again it's sort of like embedded in the mountain there isn't any light in there the only light in the room was there was a little digital clock with a red number face on it we're a little bit of light came off of that but it was effectively pitch black in there

but I lay down my feet are close to the door so my head is farther into the room wolf is again above me nicken's next to me they're asleep and I just close my eyes and I'd try to fall asleep but I can't I just can't fall asleep there's no issues I'm not worried there's there's nothing going on in my life and just a 16 year old kid who's just he can't fall asleep and so time's going by it gets to be midnight look over at the clock I'm like shoot like it's getting pretty late

one o'clock two o'clock now I'm doing that thing where you start like counting the hours you

“got left all boy if I was leaving now I'm at four hours of sleep I think that's not the insomnia”

death cycle right here I know that I know that scenario at about three in the morning I'm laying in my bed and the cabin is completely silent like eerily certain there's no sound machine there's no fans nothing it's just silent in the cabin and I hear footsteps out on the wrap around porch go didn't hear a car approach didn't hear anything I also I'm trying to fall asleep so in my sort of reptilian brain I immediately I'm like oh I must have not heard the car

approach it's got to be one of next older brothers but I hear footsteps on the wrap around porch because the porch I mean it's elevated any light steps echo or echo it makes it pretty distinctive sound and so immediately I think it's got to be one of next older brothers it's the middle of the night

I don't know these dudes I've never met him before I don't want to have like a social interaction

here like as if this dude's gonna walk and he'll wake up let's let's meet at 3 a.m he's not going to do that but I'm like I just I don't want to deal with the social stuff I'm if he comes in here to say hi to necker whatever I'm just going to pretend to be asleep so I don't know this guy whatever so I'm laying there I hear the footsteps and they stop outside the door and then I hear the door open and I hear the sound of the slavebells inside the door like it's a distinctive sound the door

has definitely opened because then I hear the sound of a pot there were these pots the like kitchen pots that were hanging on hooks right next to the door inside the kitchen and I heard the sound of a pot falling from the hook and it hits the linoleum in the kitchen and I actually was thinking how rude this dude was like it's you're coming at three in the morning like kind of making a scene coming in here but what I immediately clocked is the door didn't shut that or opened and I hear

these noises and then there's no sound of a door shutting and it's the middle of winter what are we doing here right and so I'm thinking about that but I'm not jumping to there's something seriously wrong I'm just kind of thinking this dude's done he's a little weird I don't know what's going on with this guy the footsteps continue into the cabin except the cabin there's no way that you were footsteps on those shag or even on the linoleum would make any sound it's completely

muffled it's on a slab like there's there's no sound that you make when you walk through the cabin it's it's silent but the same way I heard the footsteps out in the wrap around porch after the door opens the pot the bells I hear footsteps marching literally marching through the cabin and as it's happening I'm like losing my mind a little bit because it it doesn't compute it's not a sound that makes sense I can sort of rationalize the sloppiness of coming into

the house I don't know how these sounds are being made and at the same time I had this distinctive almost like ringing sound in my ear as whatever whoever this was was moving through the cabin was getting closer to me and so the footsteps they move and then stop right in the middle of the cabin I can almost sense with this ringing in my ear and literally the sounds they're making that there's someone's something standing in the middle of the cabin now it feels nefarious it

feels like there's there's literally something wrong here and I'm thinking it's like an intruder or

“something and so I'm I'm so scared I literally can't move I'm laying in my bed I remember like”

profusely sweating and just like being frozen worried that whoever whatever this was was going to come in the room and so I hear the footsteps come down that hallway in the direction of this room and again all I'm thinking is Jesus Christ like I'm about I'm about to die yeah I don't know what's gonna happen something's coming in the room there's nowhere else for this thing to go and so down the hallway and the footsteps come to a stop outside of the door which was close to our room and I remember from

where I was laying on the bed even though I'm in this like frozen state of terror there's a there's

a gap between the bed above me and where I am I can I can I can look out and basically see the door

in the gap between my bed and I'm just staring in the darkness I know what I'm looking at there is gonna be the door and I'm waiting for the store to open and and I tell people that even though

put yourself in the position of being a 16 year old kid in a cabinet on an abandoned mountain

“and there's just someone that's not supposed to be there walking around your cabinets it's truly”

like a terrifying scenario and so I'm I'm getting ready to die you know the door swings open and the ringing in my ears I don't know if it got worse or not but it was very pronounced and the way I describe it is like this dark figure walked into the room and I say that it was a dark figure because even in effectively pitch blackness minus the you know the little bit of light coming off of the alarm clock I could perfectly make out the silhouette of a human like bipedal

something that was darker than dark walk into the room and it appeared that its legs were so long that its torso should have been through the roof it's like an eight foot tall thing

that walks past the foot of my bed and I'm laying here and it's so tall that I can't see it's

upper half even with the view I have and it makes this like facing movement like a military facing movement and begins walking down the space between where I'm laying and where neck is laying and I'm just beyond terrified I literally am thinking I have no idea what's happening this is this is

“like something crazy it comes to a stop next to me and I'm laying here and I remember thinking like”

please just like don't look at me it'll like shatter my world view if this like creature looks at me but it makes another facing movement away from me and it bows forward into the queen size bed where we're neck was sleeping and neck and wool for dead asleep it like bows into neck and vanishes no and in real life it happens you don't have people vanishing into beds right doesn't happen so I'm not thinking oh few the the ghost has vanished into the bed I'm safe now I can go or go about my

night it's not where you want to go and so I'm just thinking where to go it's going to like pop its head up and look at me and so for the rest of the night at least for several more hours I lay there like looking out of the corner my expecting of course this this would whoever whatever it is to literally reappear but it doesn't don't ever shut like I'm just everything sort of remained and I for hours I'm laying there and then out of pure exhaustion at some point at like five or six in the

morning I fell I had to fall asleep because then I have this memory of realizing it's the morning and I can hear talking on the kitchen and it sounds like next mom and so I'm like up and out of bed I'm like thank God I survived the night I can't tell if it was a nightmare or not and I go I go running practically out to the kitchen but as soon as I get out there I realize I have a I have a conundrum here how am I going to talk about what just happened the night before like how can I talk about this without it

nearing a conversation around ghosts and I'm going to go talk to the the recently bereaved woman sure and say oh I saw like a ghost walking around last night in the in the cabin there isn't a good way to broach the subject without it borderline being a little bit insensitive and so I I have a work around because I really wanted to sense check if what happened last night is real this door open when you woke up I have a lot of questions it was not because she got up ahead of me

“so I go out into the kitchen and I the only thing I think to ask is I was like hey uh”

at any point did you're did your older sons did they come through here last night did they find the they come by last night and they're not here now I'm I'm not optimistic but she looked at me and she was like no and she could clearly see that I was very upset like Nick and Wolf they're getting their coffee they're sort of over here it's just me and his mom me and next mom having this conversation she's a very sweet woman but I was clearly upset about something I didn't know

how to talk about it she's now said something that takes away like the one rational explanation I had not that she knows that and at some point she goes John I heard my husband here last night too and I can tell you this is not reassuring dear that and I looked at her like with this look of like I haven't even said all I said to you was did your sons come this I didn't say this to her I'm thinking all I said to you was did your sons come through and she said no and she said unprompted effectively

don't worry I heard my husband here last night too and I was so actually more scared in some ways that I just didn't I walked away from where I couldn't even talk to her I was like wait a minute the one adult in the house is like go surreal like it's all good right and so I'm like I don't even know what to do and so I go over to Wolf you know because I'm thinking yeah I can

be honest with him and I tell him like Wolf like here's what happened to last night was crazy

and he's like so freaked out like he's he's kind of a scaredy cat he's like oh I don't know what to do man so he's making a worse because he's scared I tell Nick about it but gently because again it's his dad who's passed away I don't want to talk about ghosts and he liked didn't care and so quickly we're just like moving on we just went out to the mountain that day and suddenly it's like

dream I I have no I don't know to make of Nick's mom's comment no but come on like I must have just

had a really bad dream that's all there is to it so we go snowboarding for the day and we come back that night and I had the one thing I had done is I had made Wolf and Nick swear to me that like I know is bad dream but tonight let me fall asleep ahead of you just give me the courtesy of allowing me to fall asleep and then you guys fall asleep just do me that courtesy they're like all right do whatever so we get back to the cabin that night this is now night two the older brothers have not arrived yet

they are still potentially scheduled to arrive which was actually reassuring for me I'm thinking if I wear any weird stuff tonight it's just going to be done and so I go I go right in the bedroom that night it's like seven o'clock I'm tucked into bed trying to go to sleep but I just simply couldn't fall asleep because all I'm thinking about is how scared I was from last night

“and I had I remember I had I had tucked a butter knife into the springs of the bed right above”

me is like my protection remember thinking how pathetic it was that that was going to be what I was going to use to defend myself but I couldn't fall asleep Nick and Wolf are like hey do we're going to we're going to go bed now it's like 11 o'clock and I'm like kicking the bed like yelling at them to keep them awake but eventually they're like dude I'm going to bed so they eventually fall asleep and I once again find myself unable to sleep in this cabin it's dark it's quiet

and I'm just like looking at the clock and stressing about being in this cabin and so a couple

hours goes by I'm getting close to sleeping it's not happening and then finally right around three

a.m. I hear those footsteps out on the wrap around porch and you know in a way it was sort of reassuring to hear the sound because it's almost like I heard this play out yesterday and I lived through that but I hear the footsteps out on the wrap around porch and then I hear the door

“open I hear the sound of those the slave bells in the door I hear the pot fall it's it's the same”

is the same scenario I'm hearing it again and this time unlike the night before it's really hard to tell myself that I'm either imagining this or that this is simply Nick's older brothers arriving none of those things feel real and so I began thinking all I know is that yesterday when I heard these noises something a dark figure wandered into this room right here and bowed into Nick

what's to say it doesn't bow into me tonight and so I'm like frozen again in my stupid bed I'm

looking at my butter knife like can't move I'm so scared and I hear the footsteps that are like echoing through the cabin the ringing in my ear starts the the steps begin through the cabin the door hasn't shut yet the steps come down the hallway they stop outside the door I'm frozen looking at the foot of the bed waiting for the door to open the door opens up and again this this this this figure this darker than dark figure like marches into the room does the facing movement

“walks down next to the bed I'm like gearing up for it to lean into me this time but again”

most of the way it turns away from me and it folds into the into Nick and it vanishes into the floor and again it's sort of like oh well don't last night it folded into the ground and disappeared your safe now again you don't think that way again I'm like where is it where to go and so another restless night of just waiting expecting this thing to pop it said back up but eventually now it's effectively two nights with virtually no sleep I did fall asleep I woke up very early the next morning

like four in the morning five in the morning and I heard Nick's mom she was already out there and in this time I frankly didn't give a shit about being offensive about but the potential for touching the subject of your husband's dad I'm talking about ghosts I went out in the kitchen and practically angrily described like what is happening like what what did you mean yesterday when you said you heard your husband walking around like this isn't this isn't normal you know

there's like none of this makes any sense and so I'm like I'm almost crying I'm so emotional it's like I don't even know how what to feel about it it's like this isn't an experience it's supposed to be having and the whole time I'm having this just like dump of everything I'm thinking and I'm so scared she's just like looking at me and listening and nodding her head she's like sympathetic almost like okay listening to me and then when I was done she just said again she's

like John I'm telling you I heard him last night again too you have nothing to worry about it's just my husband he comes here he walks around it's not a big deal and and I'm telling you like I was angry about that was satisfying to her she said that's it and so I'm like so upset neck and wolf they come out and they see that I'm not having like a casual conversation with the next mom they can tell something's happened and I tell them the whole story about everything

and you know neck neck didn't really seem to care wolf was pretty freaked out about it but it was almost like again the adult in the room was like no no no there's nothing to worry about here and I gave some really serious thought to like at that moment calling my family and

my parents to be like the trip that I love doing every year you need to come get me you really

“shadow people or you're playing as a ghost so it was and then also yeah and I couldn't help”

but also feel like it is sort of rude you know I got one more night left what's the worst it can happen right so we end up getting through the morning and we're gonna go out to the mountain again for another day riding at this point we found out that next older brothers would not be joining us for the next night so there's now there's no hope that there's gonna be any explanation

for whatever happens in this cabin but on this third day or the second day here before we went

out to the mountain to ride to the day we went to this this wood shop where next mom had gotten a new coffee table this was sort of it didn't matter at the time it plays a role in the story we get this coffee table she needed us to physically lift it and put it in the car so we lift it we put in the car she drove us to the mountain we had this great day riding at the end of the day we come back I've made you know Nick and Wolf promised again they're gonna let me go to bed first

when we get back to the cabin and we unload this coffee table that we picked up in the morning and we bring it into the cabin and we put it at the base of the stairs that led up to the lofted sections there was like a little landline phone that a table would typically be there there

replace the table just a wood coffee table we put that there means nothing to us we go into our room

I'm trying to fall asleep I can't I'm trying to keep them awake I can't do it and would you know it before long it's the middle of the night I'm wired in my bed and I I'm just beside myself because I'm expecting at any moment I'm going to hear footsteps and so come 3am I'm laying there and when you know what I hear the footsteps out in the porch I hear the footsteps I hear the door open the bells the pot it's all the same I hear the footsteps into the cabin

my ears ringing it's like the whole thing's happening and I'm terrified but something different

“happens this night and it was like really jarring and honestly more upsetting in some ways than”

anything else was that it changed like there had been a pattern and now it's changing the footsteps came to the point where they would have normally stopped and walked down that hallway to our bedroom but instead of doing that this night they just kept on walking towards where the stairs are that lead up to the lofted section where next mom is and so as soon as I I almost literally felt and heard these footsteps I felt it in my ear the ringing sound and I can I can hear it moving across

the cabin I knew it had stopped at the foot of the stairs and I'm like waiting I don't even know what to make of this and then I hear the footsteps ascend the stairs and I can literally hear the creaking of the steps like this is real there's something putting weight on the stairs and so up the stairs the this thing goes and then at some point it just goes quiet it just goes utterly quiet and and if you think about the the mechanics of the past two nights assuming this is the same thing

whatever it is it bowed into the ground and vanished and next mom's bedroom is directly above ours and so I'm laying on the bed looking up at the bunk expecting a demon to come through the ceiling and so I'm like obviously beside myself terrified sleepless night and I actually don't even think I did necessarily fall asleep this was like I'm just going to wait and help I live through the night but I must have drifted off at some point because I do recall like having the experience of

waking up and once again hearing sounds out in the kitchen and it's definitely next mom but it didn't sound like normal morning sounds it sounded like somebody was upset and so I I'm not going out of bed I'm like thank God this is over I get to go home I leave the bedroom and I go rushing out expecting to see next mom in the kitchen just doing her thing but she isn't and I look over and she's she's kneeling by that coffee table we put at the base of the stairs

and she's she's crying and Nick and Wolf are still in their beds and I look at her and I'm

“sort of like mad that's really the only way I would describe it I was mad like the whole thing”

was just so messed up I sort of blamed her for somehow making it worse and before I could even launch into how I was feeling she just waved me over like come here come look at this and I get closer to her and I realize that she is crying but she's not crying tears of sadness she's she's crying tears of joy and she points to the surface of the coffee table and I look at it and I literally I first I don't even know what she's pointing at but then I can see pretty clearly etched into the surface of

this table where the words I love you and she goes I didn't write that and so she was like I think this was my husband from last night and you'd think this would be like wow what an uplifting

happy ending and then you always thought goes for real and they were so happy now this like totally

ruined my friendship with Nick and Wolf I never went back to the cabin really yeah because it's one of those things where like it was so awful in the time I didn't want to go back I frankly my initial reaction to that was not like oh ghosts it was more like his mom must have somehow picked

this story and so we made it seem like you know her her husband was walking around the cabin right

“but there's a couple issues with it one I didn't give you enough information on the first morning”

to make you have any idea I was doing that that would have been an unbelievable guess to assume that when I walked out and said did your sons come through your last night that that meant I had a visceral nightmare about figures wandering the cabin and then more than that even if you're grieving widow why would you do this to a 16 year old kid why would you just like make up this

incredibly traumatic thing but you basically convince me that goes surreal and so that is uh that is

my ghost story and it is haunted me since and it's actually I posted that there's one of my first long form videos I did when I first began post the the viral TikTok moment I was I'm going to be a youtuber and I whipped out the camera and I told that story with like no edits it's very very choppy and what do you think now so a couple of what's your explanation I don't really have one and it's not it's not even because I I want to believe or something it's it's more what I was just

sort of getting at that there it is entirely possible that next mother somehow knew she could sort of concoct us an area where between the devil that's the district man right exactly and she's this

wonderful doesn't that's not okay that's not okay the other thing is I and this doesn't really

fully explain it but I I have like pretty vicious sleepwalking like it's a big enough problem in my life I sleep in a separate room in my life and I alarms on my bedroom in case I go running out of my own really and it's not like all through GSD no I've had this since I was in college like I I pulled the viral arm in college and didn't even know what I like came to and I'm standing there and I have like a bloody knuckle because I'd punch through the plastic and pulled the viral arm

and evacuated my building but it's okay I know that sleep paralysis is a thing where like people they talk about being for they sort of half-flake up it's kind of like when you're like you're not

“imagining yourself wandering around everywhere I think about it the the the chief problem”

is somebody else corroborated the story and also and this is the question that it universally

comes up online is who shut the door I never asked I never asked it because of all the

problems that I was dealing with I wasn't about to get her tripped up on who's who over you get the detective on it yeah and so now it's like man that that would have sort of closed the loop because if the door was shut when you got up I could be like this never happened right but I never asked her so yeah that's the one the one time that I would say something akin to to paranormal has happened to me I got I got nothing for you on that man a body so a body mine is mum she bought a

used chair online and was convinced that chair had brought in like a ghost yeah to the point where she wanted the house to be exercised I'll have an exercism on the house right so is she are you is she equipped to accept because where my head would be my head would be like you know like Occam's razor right like I was talking about that the most logical expert like there has to be a less earth-shattering way to explain it then to think something has escaped

“physics as we understand it I wouldn't agree so but I think other people aren't as bound by”

like literal interpretations you know they're there's they're more elastic and I think for them the most plausible scenario would be yeah an apparition the most plausible scenario is an apparition so meaning we bring all of our prejudices to the interpretation but I'm sitting here telling me the story I'm trying to go like well I couldn't have been that no that wouldn't make sense yeah it doesn't really add up I'm trying to like I'm trying to come up with a a theory

you know I mean I can't settle in I can't settle into a ghost story because my head's trying to go like well I'm at now the brother yeah I mean you'd think that there be something the older brother's messing with them you know yeah I still don't know to this day and it's in a way like the fact that that happened to me has actually been tremendous in sort of giving me maybe a little more perspective and and but by my perspective what I mean is like we we read stories all the time

of people's accounts of things that that they claim have happened to them and some of them are are crazy stories like crazy stories and I have I have like an empathy for people when they are really trying to tell you a story that happened to them where they know it's sort of absurd what they're alleging you know the empathy I have is like for them that is their experience

like dear friends that that I would trust my children to like move in with them if something were

“to happen to me kind of friends who are like flat out I mean they flat out have ghost stories”

do you know what you have them I don't see rude I like no I can't settle into a ghost story I have to do the game of like well it could have been that okay I don't I don't I don't know they almost make me uneasy because I have to be able to explain stuff you are you're a very pragmatic matter I have to be able to be like wow what was going on and so when I can't it makes me uncomfortable which is probably good it's probably good do you think that your like pragmatism

and ability to quickly rationalize things has helped you in your career and in your your

passion which is sort of being outdoors men like the fact that you know you hear the the screaming

woman your friend and of course you have the initial visceral reaction of what is going on I'm in the middle of nowhere in Alaska what's that sound but then quickly you're able to say okay you

“know it's it's my friend problem solved obviously it's solved itself there are lots of people”

that are prone to panic it seems like you maybe are not because you're quick to say wait a minute there's got to be an explanation here I don't know that it's better to live life what is no room for magic he meant of that dude like I've spent time with like indigenous peoples indigenous cultures you know yeah and there's a lot of room for magic and I'm like man that is rich and I'm like I don't know is it is it really that great to have no room for Jimmy to have no

room in your mind to be like everything's explainable right yeah and then you talk to people who are just like very at ease with what I would call magic they would call something different but mythology whatever sure I don't know man that feels like a very rich existence you know I don't think it's better to have everything put into little compartments did they ever share stories with you were you sort of questioned like could that be really not oh 100% and also

describe to me like where you like and I'm this is maybe very ignorant to me like physically where are you located when you're with these folks out in Alaska doing your narwhal oil like are you in a to give you an example I'm so I'm in Guyana and I'm talking to some Makushi men and they're telling me we used to have a lot of white lip packerys which I like to hunt okay you like to eat them there's a shaman and another village and that village is very jealous of our village and their

shaman has locked our white lip packerys up in a mountain we have an up and coming shaman who is developing his skill set and when he's of the right age he will go unlock that mountain and bring our white lip packerys back wow no part of me no part of me is gonna say to them that's not what's happening no no no it's like that's not what it is I love it you know I mean it's like I love it but no I wouldn't I don't want to go like wow you don't

write a thing about a long enough you know it's probably no just like I'm like that's great dude that's a great I like everything you tell me it's great you you by heard some pretty good stories in your time and yeah but you know I keep thinking about I know why I thought when you're talking about that when you're talking about the ghost story there's a this is thing path ahead it's not even story but it's the thing I had to a friend of mine who's a writer he's a writer named Ian Fraser

okay and he writes about great music subjects like he wrote a whole book about Siberia he wrote a book about the great planes but at one time he had been he had been assigned a profile of a very prominent steelhead fisherman named steelhead joe okay aptly name so it's kind

of like a fun profile the guy never wore shirt other fisherman called a melanoma joe but steelhead joe

steelhead joe and he's traveling with steelhead joe and hanging out with steelhead joe while he's working on the profile with steelhead joe steelhead joe kills himself oh boy so then he's forced to react like now everything that's been happening when they camp together when they're in the boat together he has to replay everything that was said every interaction

“and here's the thing that tripped him up one night he gets up to take a piss he gets out of his”

tent to take a piss and steelhead joe is standing on the bang of the river and he thought to himself he looks like a ghost what in the world is he doing out there takes a piss in my back bed and he's like later it was like I saw his ghost ahead of time oh man do you know what I mean it was like days before we saw it like days in advance that's how it struck him oh on the while I was just

like that too and then does he ever question like that did he have something to do that might have

“led steelhead joe oh so it's a hole it's a hole it's a whole wild trip man yeah that just jumped”

in my mind that wasn't even anything that happened to me I don't have any good ghost stories there was a this is not even that related but it has to do it like guys out on expeditions and some weird stuff happen and there was this guy Eric Lewis who was a 50 something year old not like hardcore climber but he was like a he climbed Mount Rainier on on him fairly regular occasion and he had these two buddies I forget their name so I want to say like Dave and Mike but Eric Lewis is sort of

the centerpiece of the story and so these guys they they always went out hiking together and

some level of pretty serious climbing they would do and one day they go out to to climb Mount Rainier but it was a section of the trail where it was you could walk up and then the rest was like with climbing gear you literally had to climb up it was like 13,000 feet to 18,000 feet and they had done this before they were they were attached to a line where it was the other two

“call it Dave and Mike that are attached to the line they're spaced out by like I don't know 50 feet”

or something and then Eric Lewis is on the the bitter end of the look of the rope and so they're making their way up they've done this before they climbed enough together there's not much communication a lot of it's non-verbal or the canned signals or whatever and at some point as they're around 13,500 feet they stop the other two stop and the way it went is if the top rest stopped the next guy would catch up and stop as well and then Eric and they rest and so top

guy stops second guy makes his way up to the first guy sees he stop he takes a break as well and they're

waiting and Eric Lewis does not come up and they realize it was pretty like that's perfect timing there's where you add this in post production it's totally part of the story that it was cloudy that day and so they're sort of looking down into the mist and they just see this line that's dangling down and it was pretty slack before anyways even if you're connected to it they had a lot of slack

“but they start pulling the line up and quickly they realize there's nothing attached to it and they”

pull it up and the line had been tied off and like there's no tearing the line like Eric Lewis is just inexplicably gone from the line and he's he was experienced enough and these two knew he was experienced enough but they're thinking I have no idea what could have caused him to unclip at 13,000 somewhat feet here but something must have happened let's just down climb and find him so they start down climbing and they eventually actually I don't know where this happened but they eventually

do find prints that they believe belonged to him but they just sort of stopped as if he just like leapt off the mountain and he's nowhere to be found like he's nowhere to be found and they're thinking okay there's no way he could have climbed past us because again he's detached or he's reclaimed to the summit doesn't make any sense so they go down and they're hoping that Eric is going to magically beat the at the base of the mountain he's not turns into a whole search for

Eric Lewis they they calm the mountain looking for Eric Lewis and they can't find him but they end up finding about 200 feet up from where the top guy had stopped when this problem arose for them about 200 feet above them and off the line like off the route they were on so this would have required uncliping and climbing over there there was a small cave and in the cave neatly tucked away in the back of this cave was some of Eric's gear Eric's not in there there's

actually no sign that Eric was in there at all other than his gear being in there and but there's no Eric and so at first they're like oh my goodness like this doesn't really add up like let's keep looking like maybe he fell or something and he started here and he fell and he's somewhere else they search all over the place they can't find him but then they find even higher up the mountain I want to say like thousands of feet up the mountain they find signs of a cave that Eric actually

made I don't know what gave away that he was up there but this is like he managed to go with that any climbing gear thousands of feet up made like an indent in some snow created a snow cave and was huddled in this the space for some amount of times the same day he's gone missing

but he wasn't there that's all they found from Eric Lewis Eric Lewis has never been found

are you serious and reindeer no one has any idea where he is so somehow some way Eric Lewis uncliped climbed off their their line left his stuff you know and then wound up I want to say it was a couple thousand or two thousand feet up in the separate cave and then he's gone real to this day look him up Eric Lewis no one knows so be careful when you're out there climbing did I will not be on the lookout we'll do it it's been great to have you on here it's it's

a lot of fun just being around a campfire telling stories really appreciate it man thanks for being out thank you.