People always ask wilderness rangers for scary park ranger stories. I usually tell them about the bear that took a whole cooler or the guy who tried to hike out in flip-flops. I don’t tell this one. This is the empty tent that moved closer to my cabin every night. Other rangers trade park ranger scary stories at the end of the season. I’ve never traded this one.
In 2021 I was a seasonal wilderness ranger in central Idaho. I spent most of the summer and fall alone in a small log patrol cabin at the edge of a lake basin, about nine miles from the nearest trailhead. My job was simple. Hike the trails, check permits, pack out trash, talk to campers about fire rules. Radio in to the district office at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.
By late September the basin was nearly empty. The nights were below freezing. Most days I didn’t see a single person.
The Tent at the Lake
On September 24th, I hiked around the lake on my afternoon patrol. On the far shore, in a flat spot in the trees, there was a tent.
A small green dome tent. Old style, with the poles on the outside. It was pitched perfectly. Every stake in. Every guy line tight. The rain fly was square.
A pair of leather hiking boots sat side by side in the vestibule. A small camp stove was set up on a flat rock, with a pot on it. I touched the pot. The water inside was warm.
I called out. “Hello? Wilderness ranger.” Nothing.
I waited. I walked around the area. I checked the shoreline. Nobody.
I told myself they’d gone for a walk. People leave their camp to fish or take pictures at sunset. Except the boots were right there. Who goes for a walk without their boots?
Camp shoes, I told myself. Plenty of people carry camp shoes.
I left a note on the tent asking them to stop by the ranger cabin to fill out a permit. I hiked back. Nobody came.
Closer Every Morning
The next morning, the tent wasn’t on the far shore anymore.
I saw it from my cabin porch with my coffee. It was on the near side of the lake now, maybe four hundred yards from me. Same green tent. Pitched perfectly. Boots in the vestibule.
I walked over. My note was gone. The pot on the stove was warm again.
I radioed the district office at 7 a.m. I said there was an unattended camp that had moved. The dispatcher, a guy named Wes, said people move their camp all the time. He said probably somebody who didn’t want to talk to a ranger. He told me to keep an eye on it.
I kept an eye on it.
The next morning it was two hundred yards from my cabin, in the meadow. The morning after that, it was in the trees about a hundred yards away.
It always moved at night. I never heard a thing. No footsteps, no zippers, no stakes being pulled. I started sleeping with my bear spray on the floor next to my bunk.
Every time I checked it, the boots were in the same spot in the vestibule. The water in the pot was always warm.
“Is This Site Taken?”
On the fourth night, I woke up at 3:20 a.m.
The cabin was dead quiet. No wind. Then I heard a voice outside my window. A man’s voice, soft and polite, like he didn’t want to wake anybody.
“Is this site taken?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t breathe. I lay in my bunk with the bear spray in my hand and my heart going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
After a while, I heard something very quiet. The soft sound of nylon. And a small rhythmic tapping, like a rock on a tent stake.
Then nothing until morning.
At first light I looked out the window.
The green tent was pitched ten feet from my cabin wall. Right outside my window. Every stake in. Every line tight.
I radioed Wes and told him I was opening the tent. I stood there with the radio on my shoulder and unzipped the door.
There was a sleeping bag inside, an old blue mummy bag, zipped all the way up. Lumpy, like someone was in it. I called out again. I poked it with the end of my hiking pole.
It was clothes. Just clothes, stuffed inside to fill it out.
They were my clothes. My spare uniform shirt, my fleece, my other pants. They’d been in a duffel bag on the floor of my cabin. In the cabin, where I’d been sleeping.
On top of the sleeping bag, there was a wilderness permit. The old paper kind we used to have campers fill out at the trailhead box. It was soft and yellow. The name on it said R. Ashcombe. One person. Seven nights. Entry date: September 20th, 1989.
The Scary Park Ranger Stories Nobody at the District Tells
A district law enforcement officer hiked in that afternoon. He photographed everything and packed the tent and the permit out. My clothes, I told him he could keep.
A week after my season ended, Wes called me at home. He’d looked it up. In September of 1989, a solo hiker named Ray Ashcombe entered that same wilderness area for a seven-night trip. He never came out. They searched for two weeks. They never found his camp. They never found him.
Wes said the most likely explanation was a prank. Somebody who knew the old story, maybe a former employee, hiked in with an old tent and an old permit to mess with the new ranger. He said people have done stranger things for a joke.
I asked him how they got into my cabin while I was sleeping in it.
He didn’t have an answer.
I didn’t go back the next season. I work a desk job at a district office in Oregon now.
Every September, around the 20th, I get an email forwarded from the old district. It’s from whoever has the patrol cabin that year. They always mention the same thing, like it’s a funny little mystery.
An old green tent on the far shore of the lake. Pitched perfectly. Boots in the vestibule.
Nobody home.
If scary forest ranger stories keep you up, read the trail cam horror story about a jacket in the trees, our Appalachian mountain scary stories post about orange ribbons on a trail, or one of our cemetery ghost stories about fresh dahlias on a grave.
Do you know any scary park ranger stories?
If you’ve worked in the backcountry, you’ve probably found a camp that didn’t make sense. Share your scary park ranger stories, or any solo camping horror stories from a lake basin far from the trailhead, in the comments below.
How scary was it?
More Scary Camping Stories
Every Morning There Was a New Roasting Stick Carved With One of Our Initials
Someone Marked My Trail With Orange Ribbons While I Walked It
My Trail Cam Caught a Man Wearing My Dad’s Jacket
A Tree Stand Moved Closer to Mine Every Weekend
Something in the Trees Learned My Dad’s Knock
A Stranger Sat in Our Spare Chair and Told a Story About Us