Some trails are just trails, a good workout, fresh air, a chance to clear your head, and maybe a nice view.

And then there are the other ones, the ones that feel different.

Maybe it's the way the trees seem to close in around you, or how the silence gets heavier the farther you go.

Sometimes it's the way the hair on the back of your neck stands up when you catch a shadow.

In this episode, these are trails that are beautiful by day and eerie by night.

I'm Megan, I'm Danielle, and this is the last Sunday Scary of Off the Trails for this year.

It's funny because my memory is so short term that because I wrote these I don't like a week, week and a half ago, it's gonna be like I'm reading it for the first time.

You're learning about them as you were reading them.

I feel the same way.

I was just going through and refreshing my memory on my stories and I'm like, oh, tell me more like girl, you wrote it.

I know, Oh goodness.

The uh.

The thing I've experienced recently is I panic all of a sudden because I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't do that thing.

Like it's like work related or whatever.

And I'm panicking because I'm like, I forgot to do that very important thing.

And then I go to look and it's like, no, you did that, It's done, this is complete.

What is wrong with you?

Your way ahead of the game.

I know my anxiety just can't can't accept when we do things in advance, like no, no, no, you always wait until the last possible second.

This can't be done already, It's impossible.

Yeah.

I haven't filled out the weekly planner probably since I my move, and so my thought and task organization has been non existent.

So today I started filling out this week's for my personal planner and the podcast planner, and I'm like, oh, my mind is starting to feel better.

The pieces are falling into place and going into the week feeling organized, and it's such a good feeling.

New month, New month, knew us.

I think we need that every month.

We do one day it'll stick.

Maybe maybe all right, So, as the intro alluded to, you know, some trails have this just sense of calm, peace, just quiet, and then others have just like a heavier feeling for whatever reason.

I think a lot of times it's a feeling you can't describe it.

You can't put your finger on what feels weird.

It's just something feels off.

And one of those trails is out in Wildwood, Missouri.

It's officially part of the Rock Hollow Trail system, but it's called Zombie Trail.

Oh, so, I mean everything about that feels ominous.

It does.

I hate zombies.

I used to have nightmares all the time about zombies, but I never actually saw them in the dreams.

I just knew they were there.

Oh that's weird.

So I'm sure that means something, but I don't know what.

The trail itself is popular for hikers and mountain bikers.

It's a few miles of winding path that cuts through some pretty dense forests and some rocky ridge areas that do have some steep drop offs, and there's also a creek in the area.

In the daytime, it is beautiful.

The spooky reputation here isn't just about the trail.

It's tied to an old road that used to run through that same.

Stretch of woods.

Locals called it Zombie Road, and for decades it's been one of Missouri's most haunted locations.

Zombie Road goes back to the eighteen sixties.

It was originally built to give access to the Merrimeck River and to the railroad lines and small quarries that were in the valley below, and some claim the area was once home to Native American burial grounds or a children's only cemetery, which I've seen pet cemeteries, but I've never seen a children's only cemetery.

No, I'm not familiar with those.

I don't like it.

Over the years, this area did see plenty of tragedy.

There were workers killed in accidents, people hit by trains, drownings in the creek, and some visitors claim to see lights in the trees that they can't explain, or hear the ghostly laughter of children just echoing through the woods, which I hate that.

It's never good to hear ghost children laugh.

No.

By the mid nineteen hundreds, the police had earned a different kind of legend, and that's when these stories of the zombie killer started.

So, according to local legend, back in the nineteen fifties or so, Zombie Road was a favorite hangout spot for teenagers kind of going to hang out, party, make out, do whatever teenagers in the nineteen fifties were doing.

But that decade also brought some of the infamous legends and tales from this trail.

So, as the story goes, a man escaped from a nearby mental hospital and just vanished somewhere along the road.

Searchers supposedly found just bloody clothing left behind.

At the edge of the woods.

That's never good.

There's always a mental hospital escapee in these.

Locals.

Clean that he built himself a small shack deep in the woods, and he just lived there, and he would sneak out at night to attack those teenagers who wandered too close to his shack.

Some versions of the story say that he just died of old age eventually out there, but that his spirit stuck around and is now haunting the area as a zombie like figure.

So the zombie description kind of came from supposedly came from the description of the missing patient.

He was like tall, pale, like very thin, like gaunt.

I guess kind of given the appearance of a zombie.

I guess that's not how I would describe a zombie.

But I didn't make this legend up, so that's not for me to decide.

Even after the original road was closed to vehicles, hikers and locals kept reporting strange things.

People say they saw shadow figures running across the path in front of them, cold spots that appeared up of nowhere.

I'd explained footsteps when no one else was around.

Even a few people claimed to hear a sound of a train, and there is no longer a train in that area, so that's spooky, And some people say that they just hear like whispering amongst the trees.

Eventually, this area was developed into part of the Rock Hollo Trail, and the haunting sort of migrated with it.

Today, Zombie Trail is technical a new trail.

It's maintained, well marked, and it's open to the public, but people say the eerie feeling isn't completely gone.

Hikers and visitors say the best time to visit Zombie Trails early in the morning or during golden hour, just before the sun sets.

But once darkness falls, the woods feel very different, very ominous, and officially the trail is closed after dusk, and in this area they really do mean it because they will issue fines for trespassing, and they have previously issued fines, so it's not just like a hollow threat.

But still the stories persist.

People talk about headlights that appear on the old road when there are no cars there.

They talk about voices following them along the switchbacks, or just a sense of unease and that someone is walking behind them when no one's there.

I think that's what bothers would bother me the most.

It's feeling like someone is behind you and.

There's not anyone.

Yeah.

But what I love about places like this is how it is a mix of like the natural landscape and the history and supernatural and just folklore.

And even though the stories sometimes are very far fetched and silly, I do love these stories.

Oh absolutely.

It's it's fun to just sort of lean into them.

All right.

Well, you talked about the combination of the history of a place combined with the with with nature and the supernatural, and I think my story checks that box too, so I think.

You'll tee it.

So we are heading to Maine and this place is called the Maiden Cliff Trail, which is about a mile long, and though it's considered moderate, it definitely gets your heart rate up.

The path starts out easy enough, winding gently along a brook for about half a mile before it gets steeper and when you finally reach the top.

The reward is incredible.

It's a wide plateau with open ledges that look out over Magunticook Lake and that's more than eight hundred feet or about two hundred and forty meters below.

But that view comes with a very somber landmark, a large steel cross standing near the edge.

Most hikers pause there.

Did you just highlight the lake?

Because I was going to google where it was?

I wanted to where it was.

I was thinking you were going to Google to see if I pronounced it correctly.

No, I want to know where it was.

That was going to look it up on a map.

Sorry, Oh, you're good.

So most hikers do take a moment here to take in the view and to learn a little bit about the story behind this large cross.

And that's the story of a young girl named Eleanora French.

Long before this area was known as Lincolnville Beach, it belonged to the French family.

Connie Parker with the Lincolnville Historical Society said that they were the founders of Lincolnville Beach, which was actually originally called French's Beach.

Eleanora was one of Zadig French's youngest daughters, and on May sixth, eighteen sixty four, twelve year old Eleanora joined some of her siblings and friends for a picnic at the top of what's now called Maiden Cliff.

What happened next hasn't really been able to be fully confirmed, but one of her sisters gave an account years later that's been passed down, and according to her, while Eleanora's sister had her back turned, a sudden gust of wind blew Eleanora's bonnet off her head and she just instinctively reached for it, not realizing how close she was to the edge of the cliff.

She lost her footing and fell nearly three hundred feet or ninety meters down the cliff.

Heather Moran, who's an archivist for the Camden Public Library, said there were no visible injuries to her.

She didn't have any obvious broken bones, but presumably it was her internal injuries that were ultimately very severe and what she succumbed to later that night.

Her story left a deep mark on the Camden Lincolnville area, and decades later, a wealthy visitor named Joseph B.

Stearns, who was an inventor who had come to know the story, decided that Eleanora should not be forgotten.

He paid for the first cross to be erected at the edge of the cliff, and it's been replaced a few times over the years due to web they're in vandalism, but each new cross is placed in the same spot, keeping her memory alive.

Over time, though her story began to blur into legend.

Some say the cliff got its name from a young woman who threw herself from the top of it, heartbroken over a lost lover.

And we've read countless legends of places where this is where it stemmed from.

Because it's the kind of story that sticks.

It's tragic and romantic, but ultimately it's not typically true.

Is it romantic though, or is it?

I think what's romantic is the love that took place prior to whatever tragedy took place.

I think once someone starts questioning their will to live due to a romance with someone, and it's no longer romantic.

But it's not before that, I'm sure it is for them.

That's when the romance turns to tragedy.

Okay, I've I've been single so long.

I'm like, romance isn't real liking other people, it's not real.

I don't know what you're talking about.

You're like, romance is someone showing up at my door with vegetarian taco bell.

Oh my gosh.

Seriously though, So the real story, while far less romantic, is every bit as haunting today.

If you visit Lincolnville, you can find Eleanor French's grave in the small French Cemetery, and if you make the climb to Maiden Cliff, you'll see the cross that stands for her as a quiet reminder of a twelve year old girl whose story never faded with time.

I love the Camden area, but I don't know that I want to go somewhere where someone fell off a cliff because I'm a nervous cliff stander.

I'll be honest, same very much.

So you got to stay at least twenty feet back from the edge.

My knees are like like buckle.

Even just thinking about it, I.

Get stressed out when like other people are just letting their kids or dogs roam around, and I'm like, I gotta leave yep.

Okay.

So the Grand Canyon is beautiful and awe inspiring a location for sure, but it's also home to some spooky ghost stories, including the story of the Whaling women of the Transept Trail, and this trail runs along the North Rim, connecting the Grand Canyon Lodge to the North Ramt Campground.

It's just it's just in a four miles long with about four hundred feet of elevation gain, so for the Grand Canyon at least the mild elevation gain halfway along Visitors Pass and Ancestral Pueblo in Ruin.

And it's just a reminder that people have been living in this area and along these cliffs for a very very long time.

Oh yeah, sos there say that if you're hiking as it starts to get dark, first of all, don't the end.

Definitely don't do that.

Yep, that's it.

That's it.

You might hear the wailing of a woman.

Ledgin goes back about a century to the late nineteen twenties, not long after the Grand Canyon Lodge was first built.

A young woman was staying there with her husband and son, and one afternoon, the husband and the child went out for a hike along what is now the Transept Trail, and unfortunately a sudden storm rolled in and the father and son never returned.

When the woman learned that they had both died, she was obviously overcome with grief, and as all these stories seemed to go, she was wearing a white dress with blue flowers on it, and she took her life inside the lodge, and since then people think that she never really left.

In nineteen thirty two, just four years after the lodge was built, the original building burned to the ground, and some witnesses swore that they saw a woman in white in the flames, just standing in the fire, in the firelight, and then she just vanished.

Creepy.

I would hate to be the firefighters on scene for that, no kidding.

Hikers along the Transept trail have reported hearing her cries echoing through the canyon.

They are described as long, low and mournful, the kind that you can't necessarily eat, a tribute to the wind.

Some claim that they've seen her as well, a pale figure wandering the cliffs in that same white in blue dress, calling out for her family, which is gut wrenching.

So whether you believe in ghosts or not, the atmosphere here does make it easy to see why legend like that would stick around.

Because if you're hiking at dusk, the shadows stretch out very long against the canyon walls, which I think is very creepy feeling, and the wind through the canyons definitely can create some eerie sound effects.

Is it an animal?

Is it the acoustics of the canyon.

It's hard to tell.

Yeah, I don't like that.

No, the backdrop of just a canyon anyway.

Like you said, it's just already a bit on the spooky, said.

M I think in a large location like that, I don't know.

I just feel like I already feel on edge, being dwarfed by my surroundings.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it, too, all right.

Deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, near Bluff Mountain, hikers sometimes report strange whispers, cold chills, or the fleeting shape of a small child on the trail.

Locals say it's the spirit of four year old Addie Klein Powell, a little boy whose life was cut short here in eighteen ninety one.

Addie was the fifth of eight children born to Edwin and Emma Bell Powell, and the family lived near Dancing Creek on farmland shared with Ed's brother James when Ed wasn't tending the fields, he worked as a traveling preacher.

It was a cold November morning when Oddie's teacher, Miss Nanny Gilbert, sent her students outside to gather firewood for the classroom stove.

Oddie, who was just weeks shy of his fifth birthday, went out with the others, but unfortunately, when they all returned, he did not.

Miss Gilbert sent the other kids home to alert their families while she started searching near the school house herself, and very quickly more locals joined in the search for the missing boy.

Unfortunately, cold rain had started to fall that night.

As the search continued, and news of the missing boys spread quickly, papers across central Virginia carried the story of Addie lost in the mountains, and within days hundreds of volunteers joined the search.

They scoured the woods around the schoolhouse, calling his name over and over, and searchers even brought his dog to the school, hoping that he might lead them to the boy.

Instead, the dog ran straight toward Bluff Mountain, which was about seven miles or eleven kilometers from the school house, and he was just gone for a while, but no one followed him because it was a steep climb, there were rough trails that wound up the mountain, and no one thought that Addie would have ended up that far away.

So they figured the dog just sort of deviated from the mission and just went.

But why breed the dog?

Asked the dog for its opinion and be like, Oh, I'm not going to take your advice.

Dog, just not take it seriously after you bring it in for this very specific task.

Right as winter set in, snow after snow buried the ridges and the hollows.

Reverend Powell even posted a reward in the Lynchburg Virginian for the safe return of his son, but no one came forward.

As the cold deepened, hope for finding the boy alive began to fade.

But months later, in April, as the mountains began to thaw from the long harsh winter, a group of hunters on Bluff Mountain followed their dog off the trail and stumbled upon a heartbreaking discovery.

Okay, before you tell us this terrible news, these people listened to their dog.

Yeah, they shared it, always listen to your dog.

Near the summit, they found the remains of little Addie.

A doctor later determined that he had likely died that first night, succumbing pretty quickly to the cold.

The discovery devastated his family, and in the weeks that followed, Emma sank deeper into grief.

Her husband moved his son's small casket from the cemetery to a pasture where she could actually see it from their home, like from the kitchen window, hoping that maybe having him closer would make her feel a little better.

I guess as good as you can in a situation like that.

However, her health did continue to decline, so Ed relocated the family to a crossroads near Buena Vista, where he ended up running a general store, but Emma died there in eighteen ninety seven, still mourning the loss of her son.

Years passed, but Audie's story was not to be forgotten.

In nineteen twenty five, a local teacher named J.

B.

Huffman wrote a book about the tragedy, and he also carried a cement cross to the top of the mountain himself, creating a memorial that would later be replaced by the bronze plaque that hikers can see today, and it reads, this is the exact spot little Addie Klein Powell's body was found April fifth, eighteen ninety one, after straying away from Tower Hills Schoolhouse November ninth, a distance of seven miles.

Age four years, eleven months.

I hate that it's like this is the exact spot, because you know that anywhere you go there's likely been some sort of unfortunate event that has taken place there.

But to have it landmarked like that is just I love that, you know, it memorializes him, but it's also just a very kind of eerie, unnerving, unsettling feeling.

Yeah, because I feel like it's the difference between like knowing that someone passed away in your house and have a chalk outline permanently in your living room, in your living room.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Hikers on Bluff Mountain have long reported feeling an eerie presence near the summit.

Locals say Audie Spirit can sometimes be seen wandering the woods around the anniversary of his disappearance, still searching for his way home.

Oh, I hate that.

Than you.

Next for going to Witch Castle in Portland, Oregon.

And actually I'm drinking what's called a witch's brew right now.

It's delicious, it's very fitting.

It is so have you ever find yourself hiking through Forest Park in Portland, Oregon, you might stumble upon something that feels like it doesn't belong there.

The stone ruin tucked into the woods, the walls are moss covered, and graffiti's paints it all over them.

Okay, no, I'm sorry.

Graffiti never has never made sense to me.

Like I don't look at something outside in nature, whether it's pretty or not.

I just don't say I should.

I should definitely draw all over that.

That's spray paint.

You've never driven under a bridge and been like, wow, there is not enough color and profanity here.

No, you know, you look at and you're like, oh, this this beautiful historic stone wall.

I think it needs a pentagram.

It does, it does.

I will never understand graffiti, to be honest, You're probably not going to change my mind.

I'm not trying to offend anyone who does appreciate or do graffiti.

I just don't get it, and I'm not a huge fan of it.

I'm with you, but I think my reasoning is more that my artistic level is, like, like I tapped out at like first grade.

So if you'd like to see some really cool stick figures as graffiti.

I could probably do that, but beyond that.

No, no graffiti, not even stick figures.

No, I know, like, get at easough, stay home.

I know.

I will say though, that some of those people are very talented and they should get an easel and do it at all.

Yeah, super talented, like very very impressive with like their fonts and their the pictures that they're able to draw.

It's very impressive and very creative.

Just it doesn't need to be on like a rock.

It doesn't.

You're right, and that everyone is our soapbox this afternoon.

Or do you know how mad I would be if I owned a train and everyone's just using it as their own personal easel, Like, do you know how hard it would be to like control people not graffiting all over it.

I get so sad when I see train cars, and I love trains, and I get sad when I see them defaced like that.

I have never once thought about myself as a train car owner and the perils and the responsibility of having that just wide open canvas of a train car.

Oh man, I'm small minded.

I've never thought of these things, the losing battle that would be.

Yeah, it's true, though, you need a big garage for the trains.

Yeah, and you'd never be able to stop it in long enough to prevent people from daggy.

Oh boy.

All right, so we're not on a train, we're out in the woods.

And if you find this ruined, graffitied.

Shamble of a shelter building whatever, you've found the witch's castle.

And despite the name, it's not actually a castle.

Far from it.

I don't.

I don't know that the United States really has any true castles.

Madame Cherie's castle in New Hampshire, well, the remnants of it.

She was not a real queen rude.

I know we should cover that story sometime, have we not?

I don't.

Maybe maybe we did.

I think we did last year.

Short term memory showing up again, let us know.

Okay, so it's not a castle, and maybe there's not a confirmed witch either, but people don't care.

They're like, you know what this place is creepy.

It's a witch's castle.

Oh yeah, So I guess you don't have to be a queen or a king to have a castle because they're giving this to a witch.

Yeah.

So maybe America does have some witch or wizard castles.

There's the Wizard's castle that story land, right.

Yes, So this story goes back to the eighteen fifties when the land belonged to a settler named dan Forth Balch.

His wife why, I made like a hard.

Stop after his name, and then I was like, it's a very it's a very harsh sounding.

Those were those letters together.

In all fairness.

Yeah, So Danfth his wife and there are nine children lived here and it was a very isolated area.

The woods were very dense there, and it was long Balch Creek.

And I'm unsure if it was always named Balch Creek, if Danfth was like I hereby dubbed this Balch Creek, or if it was named it after But.

I appreciate back in the day when people could just be like, I live near this meadow, so that meadow is now Megan Meadow mm hm, and you can just claim it.

You're like, yeah, this road, that's what this Danielle Street, it's true, it's true.

Put it in the books, yeah, put it on the map.

And that's how it worked.

It's zerous.

Their oldest daughter, Anna, fell in love, but when dan Forth refused to approve their marriage, the young couple opted to Elope Wamp A few weeks later, the family's cross paths again while boarding a ferry into town, and that's when things turned deadly.

In front of a whole bunch of witnesses.

Dan Forth pulled out a shotgun and just killed his daughter's new husband on the spot.

Feels extreme.

Yeah, no duel, no count ten, just done for.

He was arrested and he became the first person legally executed in Oregon.

Oh wow, that's what happens when you shoot someone with a dozen witnesses.

That is what will happen.

And after that the story does start to twist a little bit.

Some say his wife Mary turned to witchcraft out of grief and rage.

Others say her spirit still lingers in the woods, whispering to hikers who wander a little too close after dark.

Overtime, people started to say that the area was cursed.

So jump ahead to the nineteen thirties.

The city built a small stone shelter for a ranger station, officially known as the Stone House or maclay Park Shelter.

It had restrooms and a storage area.

You know, just.

Really just like an off it arranger office.

I guess, okay, But in nineteen sixty two, a storm destroyed the plumbing, and I was like, what kind of storm destroyed the plumbing.

Just specifically the plumbing.

I had an agenda, I don't know, but the city opted not to repair it, and the structure was just abandoned.

They're like, oh, it's broken, we gotta go.

And slowly nature just started to reclaim the area and the building.

The roof eventually collapsed, moss and plants grew up beside the walls, and you know, plants, kind of plants and trees just grew right back in and that's when it started becoming the Witch's Castle.

And there's not really any one specific ghost story because I think this location it gives off spooky ghost vibes.

People are like, I don't need to know a ghost story to be spooked out here.

That's fair.

And this is another spot that the came a destination for teenagers in the area to hang out, you know, a spot to tell spooky stories, to party, to dare each other, to stay overnight or after sunset, what have you.

And as always, stories kind of grew from there.

People say they see floating orbs, they hear strange laughter in the dark.

There's cold spots.

Some hikers say that they've seen shadowy figures moving inside the walls of the shelter when no one's there.

Others swear they've heard whispers just echoing from inside, saying their names.

I don't know, there's something really terrifying about Spooky's personalized experience.

Yes, it is not just like hey, lady, but it's like Danielle Spooky.

Some say if that it's the ghost of both dan Forth and his murdered son in law that haunt the area.

Other people think it's the ghost of Mary, who was deemed the witch of the house.

Honestly, though, imagine being stuck as a spirit with your father in law who killed you.

That is a very specific type.

Of hell right here.

Neither of us are enjoying this.

No, no, not a lot to talk about.

I wouldn't think so, Like, hey, remember the time you murdered me?

Great love that for me.

So if you ever visit, it's only about a half mile hike from the Upper McLay trailhead, so it's easy enough during the day, and it's not recommended.

Going near Dusk Forest Park is beautiful but can be deceptively wild, and you know it's always recommended bring a flashlight, good shoes, and a buddy who.

Is not going to scared too easily.

That last one's probably important.

Mm hmmm, all right, well, some trails are marked with distance and elevation.

Others are marked with memory, and sometimes with something you can't quite name.

Maybe it's the echo of a story you once heard, or the sense that you're not the only one out there.

From the cliffs of Maine to the forests of Missouri, the Grand Canyon to the hills of Virginia, every one of these trails has its beauty and its shadows there remind us that nature holds onto everything, the light, the loss, and the legends.

So until next time, stay curious, stay safe out there, and don't forget to look over your shoulder once in a while.