A Trail of Questions Vol. II

0:00Today's podcast will feature three hiking-related horror stories that are actually all still shrouded in mystery. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called Stephen Thomas, and it's about a hiker who leaves his tent to confront someone or something and does not return. The second story you'll hear is called Just Curious, and it's about a Boy Scout who goes missing just seconds after being seen. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Into the Forest, and it's about a woman who's recorded on CCTV entering an infamous forest in China, but that might be the only part of the story that's grounded in reality.

0:43But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, please offer the follow button your seat at the table. But as they go to sit down, pull the chair away right at the last second. Okay, let's get into our first story called Stephen Thomas.

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2:18In April of 1976, 19-year-old Stephen Thomas was asked by his good friend Bruce Weaver if he wanted to join Bruce and Bruce's four other friends on a hike in New York State. Steve didn't know these four others, but he really liked Bruce and he loved hiking, so he agreed to go. The mountain they were going to climb was Mount Marcy. It's one of the biggest mountains on the East Coast, and it's very rugged. It's very windy. The temperatures drop dramatically towards the summit, it's a dangerous place unless you treat it with respect. On the morning that Steve was leaving for this hike, his mother told him that she had a bad feeling about the hike and that maybe he should just cancel because it didn't seem like a good idea to be hiking such a rugged mountain with people he didn't know.

2:56But Steve, who had a lot of experience hiking, said it was totally fine, he was eager to go, and that he would see her in a couple of days. On April 12th, 1976, the six men are making their way up Mount Marcy and they get near the summit by about 3 30 p.m. in the afternoon. And even though they could have pressed on and made their way up to the summit, they were all really exhausted from the trip so far. And they decided they would make camp where they were and they would attack the summit the next day. And they were all eager to do that, with the exception of Steve. Steve didn't want to stop.

3:25Steve was sitting in Bruce's tent, looking at the map of Mount Marcy. And he said to Bruce, hey, do you want to go for a quick walk with me? I just want to walk up the path a little ways. And Bruce was like, no, man, I'm tired. Let's just go tomorrow. And so Steve just continued to stay up looking at this map. He made tea for himself and at some point he folded the map up and said hey Bruce I'm just gonna walk up the path a little ways I'll be right back. Bruce told Steve this was a bad idea don't go up there on your own the temperatures are dropping it's getting dark it's windy it's just a disaster waiting to happen plus we're all going to be up there first thing in the morning so there's no reason to go up right now but Steve was like you know I just don't want to sit here I'm gonna just go.

4:01So Steve begins to walk out the other hikers that he didn't know too well are like hey man just stay here but again Steve's not listening and Steve continues up the trail. When Steve left he must have thought he was only going to be gone for a few minutes because he threw on a rain jacket, this yellow rain jacket, over a t-shirt and pants because he'd been sitting in a warm tent. He just threw on a jacket and he left his backpack. He just walked out with no supplies and began walking up this trail. At the time Steve was walking down that path the snow was very hard packed so it was easy to walk on and there was a full moon so there was great visibility.

4:32So it was a good night to be doing what Steve was doing, albeit if it had just been for a few minutes. So as Steve is walking away from the camp, even though the other hikers were annoyed with him, they weren't concerned. He had loads of hiking experience in Washington state. He was very eager to do this. And again, it was well lit. The snow was hard packed. They're thinking, okay, he'll be gone for a couple of minutes and then we'll see him again and it'll be just fine. After about an hour, it was dark and the temperatures are now well below freezing and Steve has not come back yet. And he was not dressed for the sub-freezing temperatures.

5:04So the hikers walk a little ways down the path and they're yelling out for Steve but there's no response. They decide that they have to go up the path and look for him because the conditions are going to kill him if he doesn't come back and get in his tent soon. When they go back to their tent to get some of their equipment to go make this trek to go find Steve, one of those four hikers that Steve did not know particularly well had brought his dog along for this hike, which apparently he always did. This dog was highly energetic, went everywhere with this guy. He loved hiking. Anytime the dog could go out and go run around, it would do it in a heartbeat.

5:34And when this hiker went in his tent to not only get his own gear, but to get his dog and bring his dog with him to go look for Steve, the dog refused to leave the tent. In fact, it cowered in the back of the tent and acted like it was scared of something that was outside of the tent. The dog's owner would tell investigators later that he's never seen his dog act that way. He was acting scared of something to the point where he would stay in the tent and all the hikers would go looking for Steve, the dog would rather be alone in a tent, totally isolated, than leave that tent. That's how scared he was of whatever it was that was out there.

6:07So the men go out looking and they can't find Steve and after a little bit they end up going back because it's just so dangerous to look for him in the middle of the night. So the group heads back to their tents and they're just praying that he found shelter somewhere on the mountain. The next morning as soon as the sun came up the hikers immediately start looking for Steve, yelling for Steve there's no sign of him and at some point half the group leaves and walks the four hours down the trail to a vehicle where they could go drive and get authorities while the other three continue to look and stay near the camp just in case Steve were to return.

6:37Once authorities were notified they launched one of the largest search and rescue efforts in the history of New York. They spent two weeks combing this entire mountain. Helicopters, dog teams, searchers on the ground they are looking everywhere there is no sign of Steve even though he had this bright yellow jacket on they can't find anything. He's just totally gone. After the official search was terminated after about two weeks, Steve's older brother, Bob, who is 26 years old, in amazing shape, and very close with his brother Steve, he quits his job and moves to the Mount Marcy area and spent a whole year searching every inch of this mountain.

7:15Veteran park rangers at Mount Marcy would joke that Bob knew the mountain than they did. Bob had apparently walked over 2 ,500 miles on Mount Marcy and had summited 600 times or more and every time he would take a different route and search all along the mountain. He has looked everywhere and he can't find his brother. Although Bob would never find his brother, he did locate the remains of a hiker who had gone missing three years earlier so he was able to provide closure for that family. So why did Steve feel the need to walk up this trail in the first place and then what was the dog so scared of after Steve vanished because the dog never acted that way but suddenly something was so terrifying on the outside of their tents that it abandoned its owner and huddled in the tent in fear and then how could Bob have missed his brother Steve who was wearing a bright yellow jacket after combing every inch of this mountain the only logical answer is that Steve is not on the mountain but if he's not on the mountain where is he

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10:37on february 7th 1970 16 year old jeff haig was hiking along the appalachian trail with his boy scout troop jeff had been a boy scout for three years and he had been on similar hikes in the past and so he was very comfortable with hiking with camping and being outdoors the hike they had planned was only about two miles long and it was a beginner trail that was very well marked and it was broad daylight so it was a very easy hike to make. About three quarters of the way through their hike the scoutmaster had the group stop and sit down and take a break and Jeff wound up being the last one to kind of make it into this rest stop.

11:10He had kind of fallen behind the group, he looked tired and ragged and the scoutmaster asked him you know are you okay? Do you need food? Do you need water? And Jeff would say he's just fine he's just a little bit tired. And so after a few minutes when the group was getting ready to stand back up again and start hiking again, one of the senior scouts was not done eating. And so they asked the scoutmaster if they could be the last to leave the site and meet up with them farther down the trail. Scoutmaster said that was fine. You know, we're pretty close to the end of the hike anyways. And so we'll see in a few minutes.

11:37And so Jeff, the scoutmaster, the rest of the troop, they all get up, they start hiking down the trail while this one senior scout stays back to finish eating. After only a few minutes of walking down the trail, Jeff once again began falling to the back of the line until he finally stopped and he called out to the scoutmaster and said, you know, he's not feeling great. He's going to sit down in the middle of the trail and wait for the senior scout who he knew was still eating at the rest stop. He said he was going to wait for him to catch up with him and then he and the senior scout would walk together the rest of the way.

12:07Now at this point, the scoutmaster's thinking they're only about, you know, five, ten minutes from the end of the hike and so he didn't want him to sit there, but he figured, okay, he's tired. The senior scout's going to be coming through this really well-marked trail any minute, so not a big deal. And he told Jeff, no big deal. We'll see at the end. And so the scoutmaster, along with the other scouts, makes their way to the end of the trail, which comes to an end in a parking lot. They turn around and they just wait for Jeff and the senior scout to come out of the trail. A couple of minutes later, the senior scout emerges, but there's no Jeff.

12:38And so the scoutmaster goes over to him and he says, you know where's Jeff and the senior scout is like what I didn't see Jeff I was alone and then I walked down the trail and I didn't see anyone and so the scoutmaster's like Jeff was sitting in the middle of the trail like maybe a couple hundred meters away from you he was waiting for you and the senior scout says no I didn't see him and so in a panic the scoutmaster and the rest of the scouts ran back up the trail because it wasn't that far to get back to that rest stop and they're looking for signs of Jeff the whole way and there's none. At the rest stop they turned around and were yelling for Jeff the whole way back down to the parking lot and again they didn't see him so they hopped in the van they had left in this parking lot and they drove to the park headquarters where they informed park services that they're missing one of their scouts.

13:24The park service immediately sent teams out to the area where Jeff had gotten lost and they called the police who sent out a whole another crew of people to assist in the search. Considering how well marked the trail was, everybody was baffled that Jeff could get lost so quickly and so completely. Luckily, Jeff had a pack on that contained warm clothes, a sleeping bag, food, water, and matches. And so they're looking around and there's snow on the ground and it's already starting to snow some more. And they're thinking, you know, he does have basic survival skills and he's got some supplies. He should be able to survive on his own out here for a couple of days if we can't find him.

13:58Over the following week, despite hundreds of people out looking for Jeff in this area, they couldn't find him, and making matters worse is the temperature was plummeting every single day to the point where every night was well below freezing. On the 16th, almost exactly a week from when Jeff went missing, they made a big discovery. They found his pack sitting on a rock in the middle of this icy river, where the only way it could have been placed on this rock is if he was standing in the water, which would have been at least waist deep. And even more strangely is all the contents of the bag had been pulled out and placed neatly on the rock as if someone was taking careful inventory of what was inside.

14:37And it didn't look like anything was missing. Although at the time there was no good theory as to why the pack was where it was and why it looked the way it did, what basically everyone could agree to at this point is now that Jeff does not have his supplies, he's almost certainly dead or going to die soon. And sure enough, two days later, Jeff's body was found approximately a thousand meters upstream of where the pack had been found in the river. Jeff was found sitting up against a tree. His jacket was unzipped. His pants were unzipped and pulled down slightly. He did not have a hat on. He didn't have gloves on.

15:11He had removed his socks but put one of his boots back on. His body didn't have any scratches on it and he didn't have any broken bones. It was determined he died from exposure. So with Jeff's discovery, there were naturally a lot of questions. The first one being, why did Jeff wade into an icy river and place his pack on a rock and then take everything out and lay it out on this rock, only to then abandon his pack and walk 1 ,000 meters upstream and sit down at a tree and start taking his clothes off? And even if he had a good reason to leave his pack and go upstream to that tree, he would have known that if he doesn't go back down to get the contents from in that pack, he was going to die.

15:50His legs weren't broken, he could walk, but he didn't. He sat at the tree until he died. And regardless of the pack mystery, why did he leave the trail in the first place? The last thing he said to his scoutmaster was he was going to sit on the trail and wait for the senior scout to finish eating and come meet him. He was not indicating that he was going to go anywhere, he was actually saying, I'm going to be right here. So there's nothing about his behavior that indicated he wanted to voluntarily leave the trail. Yet based on what they saw, it looked like as soon as the Scoutmaster turned around and walked down the trail, Jeff must have hopped up and ran off the trail and jumped into the river and taken his pack off and ran up to the tree and taken some clothes off and sat down and slowly died.

16:33Now of course, none of this makes any sense, unless you consider an alternative theory put forth by people involved in the search, and that was Jeff was abducted. In that moment of time when he was sitting on the trail and his scoutmaster had walked away and the senior scout had not finished eating yet so had not seen Jeff yet, while he's sitting there by himself, somebody was in the tree line watching Jeff, saw this moment of weakness and rushed up and took him. That theory does explain a lot of the strangeness around the scene where Jeff was found, but it requires someone to abduct Jeff for no clear reason.

17:08They weren't even interested in Jeff. They brought him down to the tree and then were just kind of curious about him. They didn't physically harm him. They kept him from going anywhere and that ultimately harmed him, but there were no marks on him. He was not attacked. And then after he passed or shortly before, they just took his pack and were rifling through it and putting it on the rock and looking at each piece inside the pack, but they didn't take anything. They left it where it was and then they vanished. But what kind of a person is just hanging out along the Appalachian Trail, randomly abducting people and toying with them as if they're a child toying with an ant.

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19:04Early on the morning of February 16, 2020, a 39-year-old woman named Fei stepped out of a convenience store in a small village in China. She was wearing a bright red distinctive coat and in her hands were a whole bunch of snacks that she had just purchased. So, Fei had lived in this village her whole life. She was a very simple person and she had a really specific daily schedule that she basically always adhered to. And it was, she would get up early, she would throw in her jacket, and she would head out to this convenience store, get some snacks, and then she would either go back home where she lived with her husband, or she would go to her parents' house or her sister's house to pay them a visit.

19:41And that was basically what she did every single day. And so this day had started exactly the same as every other day, and after she left the store and she began eating some snacks and, you know, thinking about where she was going to go next, whether it was her house or a relative's house, she's walking down this road when suddenly she hears people calling out to her. And so she stops and she turns and there are these five people that are clustered together standing at the top of this trailhead. So Faye's village was home to this beautiful hiking trail that started right where these people were standing.

20:10The trail went up this mountainside and up into this huge forest where there were all these ponds and waterfalls. I mean, it was strikingly beautiful. And that area, the forest with all the ponds, was called the 18 Ponds of the Dragon King. It was called that because there were literally 18 ponds sort of scattered throughout this forest, and then also the village where Fei lived that was right up against it, well, it meant Dragon King in Chinese. But even though Fei had grown up here, she had never once gone on that hiking trail. She had heard about it, and loads of her friends and family had all been up there and talked about its striking beauty, but Fei, she had always stayed away.

20:47But there was actually a pretty good reason for that. So Fei, when she was younger, she had this tumor, And in order to get rid of it, she had to take all this medication that was pretty physically harmful and left her with some pretty serious long-term effects. And even though the tumor, you know, did go away and she recovered, you know, that process of recovering and taking all those medications and going to the doctor, it sort of instilled in her this mentality that she was frail and delicate and that she shouldn't take any chances and risk getting hurt. And so she really never did anything that was even remotely risky or even perceived to be risky.

21:20Like, for example, hiking up into the mountains. Too risky for her, and so she avoided it. And instead, you know, she kind of developed this really simple, safe daily routine of getting snacks and visiting family, and that's all she ever did. And while in some ways this did, you know, keep Faye safe, it also made her very isolated and lonely. You know, she didn't really have any friends or do anything. She was just kind of stuck in her ways. And so Faye is on this road, and these villagers, these five villagers over at the trailhead, have just deliberately called to her. By name. They're saying, hey, Faye, over here.

21:51And Faye's turn, and she's looking at them, and they're clearly getting ready to go hike up into the 18 ponds of the Dragon King. And they tell her, hey, come with us. Come hiking with us. Like, come check it out. And for Faye, this was so unusual. This was not even remotely how her life went. That there was something in her that for a second just felt really excited. I mean, she did sort of rely on her schedule and her discipline of doing the same thing every day. It kept her safe. But like this sudden invitation from these people, these villagers, it just felt like, why not? Why not do something different for once?

22:24And she's also thinking, you know, how dangerous can it be? You know, I'm with other people. They seem really competent. You know, maybe this is a good idea. Maybe I'll just go with them. You know, what the heck? See what happens. And so Faye found herself just sort of drifting over to these very friendly five people and saying, you know what? What the heck? Yeah, I'll come with you. I've never been up there. I'm sure it's great. Let's go. And so sure enough, Faye and her newfound five friends from the village, they begin hiking up this trail. And over the next couple of hours, I mean, Faye is seeing a beautiful landscape that she was so close to her whole life that now she's seeing for the first time.

22:56And it's like revelatory. She can't believe that she's lived this close to this majesty for so long and she's never seen it. Like this was a life-changing experience for her. And so her mood is just so good. And these five people are so wonderful and they're all chattering and talking about their lives. And, you know, Faye's opening up about hers and her health scares and all these different things. And eventually they make their way into this forest, which is really dense, but they eventually reach one of these ponds, one of the 18 ponds. And it's got this huge clearing and all the sunlight's pouring in and there's a waterfall leading into the pond.

23:28I mean, it's truly stunningly beautiful. Faye's friends, they all take a seat right on the shore of the pond and they break out some snacks. And Faye, she sits down, she's got those snacks she bought from the convenience store, and they basically have a picnic right on the shore. And for Faye, it was like this was the most amazing day potentially of her whole life. She had broken out of her comfort zone, she had met these wonderful people who were so inclusive, and here she is experiencing this unbelievable natural beauty like the day couldn't get any better. But as she was sitting there on the side of the pond enjoying this beautiful scene, she started to feel really intensely fatigued.