This is Dan.

I haven't talked to Chris in a couple of weeks, and so I tried to reach out to him. No answer to my phone calls or text, no answers to any messages I've sent him on any sort of social media or online service. I started to get worried.

I had forgotten about this blog. I know I was the one who told him to make it, but after a while, it just sort of slipped my mind. What reminded me of it was a story I saw on the news last night:

"Fifteen Acres of Local Nature Trail Burned to the Ground."

Looking over this blog again, I can see Chris was careful about not giving out any specific information about names of people or places, and I'm going to try to hold to that, but I feel I can say this: That was Chris' trail. That was the trail he walked to most, the one I've driven him to and from hundreds of times over the years.

That's what reminded me of the blog. So when I checked, and I found his last post, I kind of panicked. I went to his house, and then I broke in when he didn't answer. Inside, I found empty beer bottles, a empty gas can, a bunch of torn up rags, and his computer, still booted up and logged into this blog.

I don't know where he is. I don't know if he's okay or if he's hurt, or if god forbid he got caught in that fire. I submitted a missing person's report to the police station, but I don't know if that will help.

I don't even know why I'm writing this. Maybe some of you actually give a shit, I don't know. Hell, maybe he reached out to one of you and you know where he is.

I just hope he's okay. He hasn't been all there recently, so I really hope he didn't do what he seemed to think he had to do.

[4/28/15] Going Back

You're all likely to think I'm crazy for this, but I'm just going to go ahead and say it.

I need to go back to the trail.

I've spent the last few days researching, if you can call it that. It's not like there are peer-reviewed journals talking about whatever the hell I'm dealing with here and how to get rid of it. I don't even know what the goddamned thing is called.

I've found some cryptozoology websites that talk about things that sound kind of similar. Really, though, the most useful resource for me was a collection of websites dedicated to mythology and legends from around the world. In particular, various Native American legends kind of seem to fit. Nothing checked all the boxes of what I've been experiencing, but I'm honestly not sure what's been a part of this thing screwing with me and what's just been in my head. There's enough out there though that, if I think about some of the legends as incomplete parts of the same picture, I can kind of start to piece it together.

I know, researching paranormal creatures on the internet sounds like a great way to find a bunch of shit that people have made up, but I honestly have no where else to turn. Something is clearly going on, and I either work with the resources I have, or I stop trying to put up a fight.

Like I said, I don't know what it's called. Even the legends that have specific names often mention that the given name is only an English name for it, and that the original Native American name is never spoken for fear of attracting the thing. There's also a lot of different ideas about what things like this want, but none of them are particularly reassuring. I'm going to assume the worst.

There was only one story I could find about any of the creatures I've been researching that explained how to get rid of it. The creature the legend dealt with is a malevolent nature spirit. You piss it off by entering its domain, and then it treats you as a threat until... well, until it ensures that you're not. The legends didn't talk about the smell, the whispers, or the event from a few nights ago, but the physical description is mostly the same, and it's the only thing I have to go off of, so hopefully it'll do.

The spirit is linked to a tree or a grove of trees. It protects it, or it's born from it, depending on what source you're following. And if you burn down its tree, it ceases to exist. I don't know if it 'dies' or if this thing can even die, but this is the only option I've got. I have to go back, find its tree, and burn it down.

I have gasoline and a lighter. I can do it. I'm just not sure how it's going to react to me trying.

But I have to try. Before I head out, I wanted to put this up, just so any of you who are still reading can know what's going on. I don't know if I'll be able to update the blog again after this, but I wanted to let you know what was happening.

I also wanted to say thank you. I know I don't know any of you, and I know none of you have really interacted with me, but I think this blog has helped me. Honestly, I do. I think it's let me get my feelings out, acting as a sort of silent therapist for me. It's kept me sane, and for that I'm thankful.

See you next time, I hope.

[4/25/15] That wasn't a burgler

The bars on the windows didn't help. The locked doors didn't help. Everything was still locked when I woke up.

I slept last night, and last night I had another episode. I've talked before about how, in my worst episodes, I can't even move. My muscles don't work, no matter how hard I try to just get my fingers to twitch or my mouth to open, I'm trapped in my own body. In every episode I remember, though, the common factor is always that something else is there. There's a monster under my bed or in my closet. There's a man, standing in the doorway, waiting for me to move. There's something just out of the corner of my eye, watching me to see if I'll notice it, and that's what always puts me on edge. Whatever I think is there is watching me, waiting, and it's always just out of my view or just deep enough in the darkness that I can't make it out.

Last night I saw it. I was jolted awake, as sometimes happens in these cases, and I know something is there with me, and as usual, I try to scream. It isn't something I really choose to do, it's just what always seems to happen during these events. As much as I try, though, I can't make a noise. My mouth won't open to let me scream, my vocal cords won't produce any sound, and my tongue won't move to articulate anything, if I had anything sensible to say in the first place.

Nothing was working. I couldn't move my mouth, my fingers, my arms or my legs, and my head felt like it was held in a vice.

But I could move my eyes. I opened them, hoping to stare into empty blackness, and something stared back.

It was vaguely man-shaped, with what could have been called an arm on either side of what could have been called a torso. It was the differences that made it worse. It had no skin, but what might have been bark; an off-white color like the bark of a birch tree, covered in splits and cracks and gnarls. Through the cracks I saw something squirm and wriggle, and whenever it pressed too hard against the cracks, black liquid would ooze out. Branches, thorns, and spikes sprouted from its arms and shoulders, and formed what could have been a crown around its head. Its mouth was a gape of thorns and barbs, and its eyes looked as if they had been gouged and burnt into its face, with embers still burning deep in the pits. It was holding me down, pressing against my chest with its body while its arms pinned mine to the bed.

The stench of smoke and dead animals clogged my senses, and I realized then that I wasn't breathing. I don't know how long I sat staring at it, but my vision eventually turned black, and I passed out again.

I need to figure out what the hell that thing was, and I need to figure out what I can do about it. I haven't spoken to Dan in a while, and I don't want him to know what's going on. I'm going to handle this on my own, and I think if I told him, he'd only think I had gone off the deep end.

[4/16/15] Not Going Back

I'm never going back to that goddamned trail again.

I needed to clear my head after everything that's happened this week. I'm sleeping, some, but stress always make it worse, and the walking almost always relieves my stress. Dan was working again, so I drove myself, and not being as familiar with the roads to the other trails nearby, I picked what is quickly becoming my most walked and least favorite park of all time.

Things got bad this time. The sounds started again, about fifteen minutes into the trail. Maybe it's just because I haven't slept much lately, but they sounded different. The whispers weren't just there, they sounded pissed off. You ever hear two people having a heated argument in public, but they don't want to make a scene, so they're trying to whisper it. The noises had gone from barely-heard murmurs to that. The laughter had changed too, from what could have just been a chuckle or giggle here or there. It sounded cruel now, and it set me on edge.

What's worse were the new noises. Someone else was on the trail, and they always seemed to be following me just out of site and just within hearing. They weren't saying anything, but I could hear the constant crunch of their footsteps. Every time I looked back though, no matter how far along the path I could see, all my flashlight illuminated was trees. I never saw whoever was following me, but the footsteps kept getting closer.

I panicked.

I don't know if it was the best decision, and I don't really know why I did it, but it felt like they were right now on my heels, so I ran. I ran, and I kept running. I don't know how long I ran for, but I couldn't hear whoever was following me while I was running, so I didn't know if they were running after me. All I could hear was the leaves crunching under my feet and the blood pounding in my ears. When I finally stopped, I couldn't hear much of anything at all, except for the sound of my own breathing. No owls, no coyotes, and certainly no whispers or footsteps.

I stopped for a while, to catch my breath. I put my back up against a tree and closed my eyes for a moment, all the while expecting to hear something. Whoever had been following me must have chased me, right? Or whatever the hell those whispers were had come after me. I kept expecting to hear or see something that would tell me I wasn't safe.

All I heard was my breathing and a ringing in my ears, and so I stood there, in what I thought was safety, trying to catch my breath and for the ringing in my ears to go away.

When it did, I heard the whispers again, except they weren't whispers. I still couldn't make out what they were saying, but instead of a conversion from afar, this was a roar, right in my ears, rising in volume until it hurt to listen. The worst part was the smell, coming from right behind me. The too-familiar smell of smoke and dead animals.

Whatever was behind me put a hand that felt like wood on my shoulder, and then I was running again. I don't even remember getting back to the parking lot or driving home, but I must have been running purely on adrenaline, because I made it back without stopping.

All the doors in my house are locked. My bedroom door has a chair pushed up under the handle, so it can't be opened even if it was unlocked. I took my mattress and placed it over my window. Tomorrow, I'm going to go out and buy bars for my windows, deadbolts for my doors, and maybe a gun, if anyone is willing to sell to a man who looks like he hasn't slept in a weak. Maybe I was just fooling myself, and I didn't actually recognize the smell, and whatever that was hasn't been in my house before.

I hope so. Either way, I need to protect myself, just in case. Hopefully I can be safe in my own home. At the very least, I'm never going back there again.

You think you have a choice.

[4/15/15] Molly

Molly's dead.

I woke up this morning and she wasn't moving. I dunno what happened. She was fine last night, before I fell asleep. She hasn't been sick or anything, at least not as far as I know, and she's only four years old. Maybe she ate something she shouldn't have.

I just don't know.

I dropped her off at our vet this morning, and they said they're going to cremate her.

Just figured I should let anyone who might care know.

[4/13/15] I think I had a break-in

This one is going to be quick, since I apparently need to go down to the local precinct so I can sign the police report.

I think someone broke into my house. I was on the couch in my living room, when Molly started barking at something down the hall, as she's done fairly often recently. I said in my other post that she seems to be barking at nothing, and I stand by that, but this time, when I looked up at whatever she was barking at, I saw someone.

A person in some sort of ratty greyish-white outfit was stepping into my bedroom. I grabbed the nearest semi-heavy object I could get my hands on and ran after them, but when I got to my room (fire poker in hand) they were already gone.

They must have gone out the window, because my room doesn't have any doors to the outside. Probably came in that way, too, since they didn't come by me when they came in, so they didn't come in the front door.

I'm not sure why they chose to close my window on their way out, though.

So I'm going to be keeping all of my windows locked tight from now on, at least once I air my room out. For some reason, it smells like smoke and dead animals.

...Also, I think I'm doing better. I know I've said that before, but I actually got six hours after my last post, and I haven't really had any episodes since then. It's pretty short-term, but I'm hopeful.

Maybe I never left.

[4/12/15] Well, Dan thinks I'm nuts

And here I was, thinking I was doing better. I mean, I haven't gotten what many would consider a healthy amount of sleep recently, but I was getting more than I had last week. I thought everything was finally settling back down. I thought the hallucinations were stopping.

As with most things though, I just keep having the best luck in this area, too. I've never had an episode this bad. What's worse, I'm not sure I've truly convinced myself that it was an episode. Usually, when I talk to Dan about the kind of stuff I see or hear when I haven't slept in several days, he kinda takes it in stride. He reminds me that it's all just my mind playing tricks on me, and he helps me stay grounded. I know that, if I think I saw something and Dan definitely didn't, I'm probably just imagining it.

It was different this time. I told him what I was seeing, and for the first time as far as I can remember, Dan, didn't give me a look that said he understood, or that he thought what I had said was funny. He looked at me like I was crazy. You know the look you get, or the look you exchange between friends, when someone says something that's completely nuts? Maybe your cousin claimed that the Illuminati controls the World Health Organization, or the waitress serving you breakfast just said that vaccines cause autism. It's the look you get on your face when someone says something that ludicrous, the kind of look that you don't really want others to see but that you can't help yourself from making, because you're not sure you can believe anyone would be crazy enough to say something like that. That's the look Dan had on his face when I asked him if he was seeing what I was seeing.

Right, I should probably explain what I saw.

I went on another hike tonight. Different trail from the one I've mentioned before- this one is a little more mountainous, but I enjoy it when I'm in a decent mood. Nothing abnormal happened, no weird noises in the woods and no fake horror movie dolls. The weird shit only started on the drive back home. See, Dan was driving (as always- it really isn't a great idea to let the insomniac operate a motor vehicle) and I was staring out the window, watching the world go by. It was pretty misty out tonight where I live, so the woods and the house we passed looked like something out of a horror movie: Thick fog keeping you from seeing more than a football field away, with the woods packed tight around this tiny, lonely looking cabin. The house itself was pretty nice for how deserted it looked. Wrap around porch, low white fence, and shack just to the left that might have been a tool shed. It was quaint, the kinda place I wouldn't mind moving out to.

Fifteen minutes go by, just more woods, more fog, and Roger Waters on the radio. Soon, another house comes into view. Wrap around porch, low white fence, and shack just to the left that might have been a tool shed. It was quaint, the kinda place I wouldn't mind moving out to.

If you haven't picked up on it yet, I'll make it clear: We passed the same damn house at least a dozen times. We never made any turns, we weren't taking any sort of curved road. The road behind us disappeared into the fog, and into the fog we drove. Only one thing changed, on that entire stretch of road. Someone moved in the yard around the house. At first, I didn't even notice him, because he stood so goddamned still every time we drove passed. But each pass, he got a little closer. First, he was by the trees in the back, wearing some sort of camo, because I didn't notice him standing against all the birch. But every time we passed, he was closer. Not moving, still just watching us go by, but definitely closer. I think it was the third pass that I noticed him, standing on the porch at the side of the house, perfectly still. The last time we passed, he was almost up to the fence, just far enough away that I couldn't really make out his face.

Then we took a turn, and Dan pulled into my driveway.

There isn't a stretch of road like that anywhere near my house, much less one that passes the same house a dozen times without taking a turn. I asked Dan about it, asked if we had been going in circles for a while or something, hoping maybe I just hadn't been paying close enough attention. The look he gave me was a mixture of amusement and confusion, but he said we hadn't; he had just driven straight to my place. When I explained what I thought I had seen, that's when he gave me the look that said he thought what I was saying was crazy, but he didn't say that. Instead, he told me that maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me, in a voice that seemed a lot less certain than his usual way of speaking.

I dunno. Maybe he was right. Maybe I dozed off while he was driving, and just dreamt the whole thing.

So why do I feel like I haven't slept in days?

[4/9/15] Molly's been pretty unruly lately

I've mentioned Molly, right? My Australian Shepherd? If not, I have a dog named Molly. She's an Australian Shepherd. There, now I've mentioned Molly.

Generally, she's a good dog. She can be overly friendly at times, since she doesn't seem to realize that not everyone wants to play, but she's never aggressive, and she's generally well behaved. Housebroken, decently trained, and smart enough to generally know what I'm trying to get her to do or how to get me to know what she wants. I adopted her a couple of years ago after a suggestion from my mother, that maybe a comforting presence would help me deal with my episodes. I think she might have been trying to get me to move back in with her or to find someone to settle down with, but a dog seemed like a much better idea.

Molly's been weird the last couple of days, is why I bring all this up. She's been barking at nothing, growling at doors, and sometimes she refuses to come into rooms when I call her. I'm not talking about just her ignoring me, I mean she runs right the the edge of the room, and then just refuses to come any closer. She also will occasionally jump up from where ever she might be laying at the time, start barking at nothing, and then book it out of the room.

I've no clue what's gotten into her lately, but I think I might need to take her to a vet or a dog trainer soon if she doesn't calm down. She's throwing off the small amounts of sleep I'm actually getting.

That's because she's more observant than you, Christopher.

[4/7/15] Sleep deprivation sucks

So for those of you who have never dealt with it, sleep deprivation sucks.

I'm not just talking about the once-in-a-while case of staying up all night or even for a day or two straight, where you'll start to lose focus on what you're doing, your reaction times start to slow, and you can't ever really think of the words you want to say. That's not fun, either, but it's cake in comparison.

I'm talking about a situation in which you haven't slept more than maybe four hours in as many days. See, when you pull an all-nighter, you eventually hit your second wind. Usually this comes at about the 24-hour mark, from my experience. You feel more awake, more focused. It isn't like you've gotten a full night's sleep, but you definitely feel better than you have the last couple of hours, and you can usually comfortably stay up for another six to ten.

But at a certain point, your body runs out of second winds. In my experience, that's usually around the three day mark. You're tired constantly, you have trouble focusing on even the most mundane things, and you can't form a well-said sentence to save your life. That last part, I can usually get around in text, but vocally I sometimes even lose my train of thought in the middle of a sentence. You get distracted very easily, and generally your coordination starts to go to shit.

Did you know that sleep deprivation can make you hallucinate, though? Most people never get to that point. They stay up all night, either working on a paper they put off till the last minute or trying to finish that last season of Breaking Bad on Netflix, and then they go to bed sometime the next morning or, at the latest, when they'd normally go to bed the next night. Most people only stay up a night or two, so most people never get to the point where the floor shifts and seems to spread out whenever they look at it, about four days in. Sometimes, you see things move out of the corner of your eye in a completely empty room. It's not just visual, either. I've sworn I've smelt someone cooking in my kitchen at times, even though I leave alone. What's worst, though, are the physical hallucinations: It might feel like bugs are crawling across your legs, or (and this is one of the worst things I've ever experienced) it might feel like something is in your head, scratching at the backs of your eyes.

It's either day four or day five, I'm not quite sure, but everything is just gonna go downhill from here.

Also, the stick bugs are back. Joy.

Not everything is in your mind.

[4/6/15] Update

I meant to mention this in my post the other night, but it slipped my mind: I tried to get a recording of the sounds in the woods the other night, before I found the doll. Dan suggested I should, and talking to him was the only reason I remembered that I tried to record it. Weirdly enough, all I got when Dan and I listened to it was static. Maybe something's wrong with my phone.

Speaking of Dan, he and I talked. I got him to admit that he made the Blair Witch Doll and set it up before he went to work, but he claims to have nothing to do with the noises in the woods the last couple of times I've been on the trail.

As much of a dick as he might be sometimes, I believe him on this one. He's never been one to be that persistent when it comes to any sort of prank.

In other news, I had an exterminator come out to the house to try to take care of the stick bugs today. I haven't seen any since, and hopefully that means they're gone. I still need to replace my plants, though.

You're not truly listening.

[4/5/15] Yep, someone's definitely screwing with me.

Tonight I went back to the trail where I dealt with the whole laughter thing a couple of weeks ago. Dan didn't drive me- he's busy tonight, working a graveyard shift. Instead, I drove myself, and parked my car on the side of the road about half a mile from the trail and hoofed it from there. I'm not a fan of leaving my car unattended in the woods in the middle of the night, but I needed to unwind, and I couldn't get anyone else to drive.

Like I said, I needed to unwind. Over the last couple of nights, I've had some pretty bad episodes- the kind where I can't move and I can't speak and I can barely breath. Like I've said before, when I get like that, I think something's in the room with me. Something is just past the corner of my eye, or just deep enough in the darkness of my bedroom that I can't make it out against the background.

My great grandmother, she was full-blooded Spokane Indian. She used to tell us scary stories when we were kids, supposedly taken from myths of the Spokane and other groups that lived in the same area. Now, Nana's stories changed depending on how much she drank, but there's always been one that's stuck with me. She would tell us about these things. Sometimes she called them hags, sometimes shadow people. These beings, whatever they originally were in the old tales, always had one thing in common: someone would piss them off, and they would punish that person. Whether it was a child who disrespected their parents, or a man who made his money exploiting others (again, depending on Nana's mood), the shadow people would appear in their house, and watch them sleep. And then, when it came time to punish the person, the creature would sit on their chest, hold them down so they couldn't move, and then consume their spirit.

The reason I bring this up is so you all understand why the last couple of nights have been bothering me more than usual. Like I said, when my episodes hit, they usually involve me believing that something else is in the room with me, watching me. It's been worse the last couple of nights. Instead, there's something on top of me. I can't see it and I can't even really feel it, but I know it's there because my arms and my chest is pinned to the bed, and even though I can't see anything, I just know it's there. So the first episode like this got me thinking about Nana and her stories, and it's likely that contributed to me having the same experience several nights in a row.

Hence why I needed to walk tonight. I would have gone to a different trail,but this one was the closest, and using the same logic as millions of people who eat McDonalds every day, I chose convenience over comfort. I just needed to walk.

I get maybe fifteen minutes into my trek, and the noises start again. I don't know if these guys (and I'm not even sure whether it was one person or a group, or whether they, if there was a they, were all male) lived near the trail or what, but I swear they were the same noises from last time. The same laughter, at least.

So I put up with it. Headphones in the ears, Pink Floyd at full volume, and eyes focused on beam of my headlamp, I just paid attention to moving forward. After a couple of miles, the trail usually splits off into two directions: one heads up a steep set of switchbacks, goes over the peak of what is more of a large hill than a mountain, and then winds its way slowly around the nearby lake. The other follows the lake in the other direction, but is much easier and more relaxed, both to start and because it goes down the switchbacks, rather than up them. At the intersection of the two trails is what used to be a signpost featuring a map of the trail. Nowadays, though, its primary feature a smattering of graffiti. Usually, I take a quick breather here, to decide which way I want to go and see if anything new and interesting has been added to the sign.

Now, the reason I'm in a bad mood is because I'm definitely being screwed with, and there are two possible culprits: It's either Dan, or it's one of the five or six other people who seem to be reading what I'm posting here.

I say this because, nailed to the signpost, dead center, is one of those Blair Witch Dolls. I wish I had taken a picture of the one stuck up on the signpost, but I didn't, so for those of you who haven't a clue, this is what I'm talking about.

Now, in case you missed my post from the other day (or this is your first time here, in which case, welcome, I guess), The Blair Witch Project freaks me out. Dan knows this. Hell, any of you reading this know this. And I'm reasonably convinced that whoever put the doll out there put it there to mess with me. It looked fairly fresh (as 'fresh' as a doll made of twigs could look), and it seems to me that any park rangers that had seen it after the park closed would have taken it down, so it couldn't have been up there for more than a couple hours.

Honestly, Dan's the only person who could have done it. Unless one of you (of the six people who are reading this) somehow found out where I live, what trails I like to hike, and when I would be hiking this specific trail, Dan is the only person who would know I'd be out here. I'm gonna try to talk to him as soon as he answers his damn phone.

But hey, maybe it's just coincidence? Otherwise, I'm pissed.