What I Saw in My Room | Campfire Stories with MrBallen

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1:53All right, we are here at this amazing campfire in Montana. I've never been to Montana, but I'm excited to be here tonight with my friend Steve Rinella, who is the founder of Meat 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. Oh, wow. When I was coming out here and I began Googling Steve Rinella. Via Michigan. You know, but no, I had the pleasure today of coming out here and joining you on your show this morning. So thank you for that. And so tonight what we're going to do is I ask Steve to come out here into sort of the middle of nowhere.

2:31We're at the Lone Mountain Ranch in Montana. We're out at Camp 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 local-ish. It's sort of local-ish. We originally, we had planned a couple of stories that were sort of geared towards Montana. Because we're in Montana, 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.

3:05But 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 outdoorsman, the conservationist, you 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've just sort of anecdotally thrown out included like he recently had been, what did you call it, with narwhal oil? I had occasion to render some narwhal oil.

3:43He's 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 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 even hinting towards if it's some experience where you're like god the there's been scary instances mm-hmm like fractions of seconds scare But the most scary, prolonged thing that happened was a group of us were camping in different tents.

4:32Where 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 the makings of 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.

5:23Yeah, that's terrifying. But it was like, it was long. It was long scare. Oh, man. Which was minutes. 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. Oh, man. You know, minutes of horror before someone put together that it assembled. Other things are just fast. Like, what are some fast ones that have come? Even one example of a fast moment of, oh, boy, this is not okay. Like something with a bear, for instance. Oh, yeah, of course. Well, no, there's like the, ah, you know, right? Have you come in close contact with bear?

5:57I mean, obviously, yeah, but I'm talking like unwanted close contact. Very close, yeah, very close. Never been, well, maybe you had one step on me one time, but very close. Jeez. 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. Bond thing, I've covered so many stories of of other people's horrors that have happened out mostly in the wilds. To be honest, I've always been fascinated with sort of like the terrifying things that happen outside of the city, out in the forests. But, you know, basically, I'm telling other people's stories.

6:35and I thought who better to share my one and only experience with something strange that happened to me in the wild then with you go the master of the outdoors here so yeah this story just as a preface it's one that I've told live a number of times gets 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 stories this is you this is me okay and and I'll also say that before this this instant hat 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 gonna tell you that story I'm gonna see what you think about it okay so when I was 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'd go snowboard there all the time and I had two friends who were both named Nick but one was nicknamed 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 uh but the 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 yeah i've been there oh beautiful yeah and 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 not mount washington that is the area yeah that's i'm saying that's one of the deadliest mountains.

8:29Yeah, it's crazy up there. People don't appreciate it. People underestimate it. It's very true. So Nick, so of the two friends, Wolf is a sort of a goofy guy. Nick is like very stoic. And Nick, his family had this cabin that they had in their family for generations up in the White Mountains. In particular, this cabin was, it was built on the side of a mountain. It was this, it used to be a thriving ski resort when the family had bought this cabin this little cabin uh the ski resort shut down but they kept the cabin so basically this cabin is on the side of of an abandoned ski resort um but every winter for those several winters up until i was 16 we would go to this cabin and it was amazing like 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 yeah 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 he had I think he had a heart attack and he passed away and we're talking this I want to say it was like three days before we were supposed to go to this cabin and you know when I found out about it one I knew him fairly well I wasn't close with them 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.

10:03Not 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 knit. Understood. And so. You made 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 uh wolf and i got a call from nick who he's he was obviously grieving but he was like hey uh 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 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 like repairing it to some degree.

10:47And so quickly, even as a 16-year-old kid, my interpretation was like, okay, it seems like we're going to go honor Nick's father by going on this trip. That was my read. No questions asked. Me and Wolfer, like, of course we'll go. Seems to be like a denial, shock kind of thing. Either way. Remember that because that plays a role in my mind. I think it does. After a busy summer, fall always feels like the time to get back on track. Schedules are more structured, routines come back, and I try to be a little bit more consistent with the things I know I should be doing every day. And so the weather flips, the routine flips, the food flips, and that's exactly when nutrition slips.

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12:52And Nick picked up wool 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 We sit, the mother's driving, and two 16-year-old boys, Nick and Wolf, are in the back. It's like immediately super apparent he's not here. Like, I'm not taking the front seat. So I hop in the car. But I went into this, and Wolf went into this really with the attitude of, like, we're here for the family. We don't know if this is denial, if this is whatever. We don't know what it is.

13:25But 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, listening to my CD player. I was listening to, like, System of the Down. Big fan of 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 chimes 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 gonna be there for three nights her older sons were gonna 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 seed 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 an a seemingly over complicated 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 i forget the name of this mountain where their cabin is located but it's abandoned ski slope it's still daytime you can see all the slopes that are now overgrown although there's snow on them and we start going up this main road that goes basically right up the the mountain and then at some point the road turns and you're sort of going parallel with the side of the mountain and you see the cabin and the cabins are very disparate like there's no neighborhood it's like onesie twosie cabins across the mountain and many of them have been knocked down after the 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, and the other portion is on stilts supported outside the mountain.

15:09If 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 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.

15:41And there's a door that leads into the cabin and there's that wraparound porch goes all the way around the outside front of the cabin. When you go into the cabin, it's a lofted cabin. So when you first step in, you open the door, And there are sleigh bells that are connected to the inside of the door that like sit in the insides. Every time it opens, it's conspicuous, very loud. You'd be standing with your right foot on linoleum, a 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 spaces, but you're straddling the two of them.

16:13And you're looking straight out and there's no walls between you. It 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 that 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 as if you're gonna go into that back section of the cabin But you stop halfway and you look into the mountain so to speak There is a singular hallway that goes down it turns and it reaches one door and that door leads to the bedroom where myself Nick and Wolf would sleep.

16:54So 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 sort of tucked away in the back of the cabin This is all gonna make perfect sense once we get into it So we get to the cabin and we move in we and also in in the bedroom where we slept 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 then 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.

17:24They 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 on the floor. So we arrive at the cabin. It's still daylight out. And so we put our stuff in the cabin and immediately Nick's mom brings us out. I think it was to Aditash Mountain and we go snowboarding for the day. and it's great we have this awesome like half day of riding we come back to the to the cabin and we're all we're thinking okay great we got like three more days of riding we're gonna go to bed early we're gonna get up early we're gonna hit the mountain we're like diehard snowboarding right and nick's older brothers have not arrived yet but they had a job that was like real hectic i think they were sales reps for burton the snowboarding company and so it was really unclear if they were going to be here or when and so we're just sort of like packing in for the night We're in our in our bedroom me Nick and wolf Nick's mom's gone to sleep and Nick and wolf eventually they fall asleep pretty early I didn't but it wasn't because there's anything wrong I was just staying up playing like PlayStation or whatever it was in that room Yeah, 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 turn off the PlayStation and and I crawl into bed.

18:37And by this time, it's past 10 o 'clock. It's dark. I'm also in this room that, again, is 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 where a little bit of light came off of that. But it was effectively pitch black in there. But I lay down. My feet are closest to the door. So my head is farther into the room. Wolf is again above me. Nick is next to me. They're asleep. And I just close my eyes and I try to fall asleep. But I can't. I just can't fall asleep. There's no issues. I'm not worried.

19:07There's nothing going on in my life. I'm 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. I look over at the clock. I'm like, shoot, it's getting pretty late. One o 'clock, two o 'clock. Now I'm doing that thing where you start counting the hours you got left. Oh boy, if I go to sleep now, I'm at four hours of sleep. I think that's enough. This is the insomnia death cycle right here. I know this scenario. At about three in the morning, I'm laying in my bed and the cabin is completely silent, like eerily silent. There's no sound machine. There's no fans, nothing.

19:39It's just silent in the cabin. And I hear footsteps out on the wraparound porch. 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 am like, oh, I must have not heard the car approach. It's got to be one of Nick's older brothers. But I hear footsteps on the wraparound porch because the porch, I mean, it's elevated. Any light steps echo or echo, It makes a pretty distinctive sound. And so immediately, I think, it's got to be one of Nick's older brothers. It's the middle of the night. I don't know these dudes. I've never met him before.

20:12I don't want to have like a social interaction here. Like as if this dude's going to walk in and be like, yo, wake up, let's meet at 3 a.m. He's not going to do that. But I'm like, I don't want to deal with the social stuff. If he comes in here to say hi to Nick or whatever, I'm just going to pretend to be asleep. Because 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 sleigh bells inside the door like it's a distinctive sound the door has definitely opened then I hear the sound of a pot there were these pops 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 okay and I actually was thinking like 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.

21:01The door 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 your footsteps on the 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 it's silent but the same way i heard the footsteps out in the wraparound 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 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 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 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 or whatever this was was gonna 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 closed 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 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's gonna be the door and I'm waiting for the store to open and I tell people that even though you'll see as this story goes on that I don't have a great explanation for what all this stuff was put yourself in the position of being a 16 year old kid in a cabin on an abandoned mountain and there's just someone that's not supposed to be there walking around your cabin it's 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 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.

24:04And 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. It walks past the foot of my bed, and I'm laying here, and it's so tall that I can't see its 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 nick is laying and i'm just beyond terrified i 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 worldview 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 where nick was sleeping and nick and wolf are dead asleep it like bows into nick and vanishes no and in real life it happens you don't have people vanishing into beds right it doesn't happen so i'm not thinking oh phew the the ghost has vanished into the bed i'm safe now i can go go about my night it's not where you wanted them no and so I'm just thinking where did it go it's gonna like pop its head up and look at me and so for the rest of the night at least for several more hours I'd lay there like looking out of the corner of my eye expecting of course this this whatever whatever it is to literally reappear but it doesn't door never 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 I felt I had to have fallen asleep because then I have this memory of Realizing it's the morning and I can hear talking out in the kitchen and it sounds like Nick's mom And so I'm like up and out of bed.

25:47I'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 recently bereaved woman and say, oh, I saw a ghost walking around last night in the cabin. There isn't a good way to broach the subject without it borderline being a little bit insensitive. And so I thought, oh, I have a workaround.

26:21Because I really wanted to sense check if what happened last night was real. Was the 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 the only thing I think to ask is, I was like, hey, at any point, did your older sons, did they come through here last night? Did they come by last night? They're not here now. 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 Nick's mom having this conversation.

26:55She'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 that was not reassuring to hear that yeah 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 through 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.

27:36And I was so, actually more scared in some ways that I just didn't, I walked away from her. I couldn't even talk to her. I was like, wait a minute, the one adult in the house is in fact, 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, cause I'm thinking, I can be honest with him. And I tell him like, Wolf, like, here's what happened, dude. 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 it worse because he's scared. I tell Nick about it, but gently, because again, it's his dad who's passed away.

28:08I don't want to talk about ghosts. And he like 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 it's daylight. I'm snowboarding. We're away from the cabin. Before long, I'm thinking, it's just a bad dream. I don't know what to make of Nick's mom's comment. Yeah. But come on. Like, I must have just had a really bad dream. That's all there is to it. Finding the right size rug can be hard. Enter Ernesta. Designer-quality, custom-sized rugs cut to the exact size of your room and delivered in as little as two weeks. Not sure of the size or the material?

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29:21Head to GlowGummies.com, that's G-L-O-W, gummies.com, and use code podcast20 for 20 % off. And 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 it was a 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 give me that courtesy. They're like, all right, dude, whatever. So we get back to the cabin that night. This is now night two. The older brothers have not arrived yet. They're still potentially scheduled to arrive, which was actually reassuring for me.

29:58I'm thinking if I hear any weird stuff tonight It's just gonna be them 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 as like my protection I remember thinking how pathetic it was that that was gonna be what I was gonna use to defend myself but I couldn't fall asleep Nick and Wolf are like hey dude we're gonna we're gonna go to 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 you don't go 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 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 3 a.m.

30:53I hear those footsteps out on the wraparound 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 wraparound porch and then I hear the door open I hear the sound of those the sleigh bells in the door I hear the pot fall it's the same it's 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.

31:28And 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 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.

32:05The door opens up and again, 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 mercifully 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 you're safe now again you don't think that way again i'm like where is it where did it go and so another restless night of just waiting expecting this thing to pop its head 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.