Growing up in West Virginia, I heard a lot of Appalachian mountain scary stories. Lights on the ridge, voices that call your name, things you don’t whistle at after dark. I never believed any of them. Then I went mushroom hunting alone in the Monongahela National Forest, and somebody marked my trail behind me with orange ribbon. I’d always filed it with the other scary forest stories you hear at the post office.
I’m a rural mail carrier out of Elkins. I’ve driven every holler in Randolph County. On my days off, in the fall, I hunt mushrooms. Hen-of-the-woods mostly. They grow at the base of big old oaks, and in a good year you can find one the size of a basketball. A good hen sells for real money at the farmers market.
I don’t use flagging tape when I hunt. A lot of people do. They tie little strips of bright orange surveyor’s ribbon on branches so they can find their way back. I think it’s trashy, and I think it shows other hunters where your spots are. I use a GPS app on my phone that records my track.
In October of 2023, I drove up a forest road on a Saturday morning to an area I’d scouted in the summer. Big oaks on a north-facing slope. I parked at a pull-off at about 8 a.m. There was one other vehicle there, an old white pickup with a man sitting inside it, drinking coffee with the window down.
He nodded at me and said, “Hunting hens?”
I said maybe. You never tell anybody exactly.
He said, “Mind the ribbons. Folks lose their way up there.” Then he rolled his window up.
Ribbons Behind Me
I walked in about a mile, off trail, following the contour of the slope. It was a beautiful morning. Cold, a little foggy down in the hollows, the leaves just starting to turn. I found two small hens in the first hour. I was happy.
Around ten, I turned around to look back down the slope at the fog, and I saw a strip of orange ribbon tied to a spicebush about thirty feet behind me.
I’d just walked past that spicebush. It hadn’t had a ribbon on it.
I told myself I’d missed it. You look at the ground when you hunt mushrooms. You don’t look at the bushes.
I went on. Twenty minutes later I turned around again. There was another ribbon, on a dogwood I’d stepped around. And past it, farther down, I could see the first one.
They were in a line. They were on my path. Exactly my path. Somebody was walking behind me and tying a ribbon every time I changed direction.
I stood very still and listened. Birds. A squirrel cutting nuts somewhere above me. The creek, far down the hill. No footsteps.
I said, out loud, “Hello?” My voice sounded small in the trees.
Nothing answered.
What Appalachian Mountain Scary Stories Warn You About
I decided to go back to the truck. I opened my GPS app to follow my track back. The track was there, a little blue line, winding along the slope.
I started walking it. I passed the dogwood. The ribbon on it was gone.
So was the one on the spicebush.
But up ahead, there were new ribbons. Bright orange, every twenty or thirty feet, leading off the slope and down into a narrow hollow. Away from my blue line. Away from the truck.
They were tied neatly. Little double knots. The tails all hanging the same length. Somebody took care with them.
My grandma used to say that in the mountains, when something wants you to go somewhere, it makes the way easy. She said that about a lot of things. Bad men. Liquor. The river in spring. I hadn’t thought about it in twenty years.
I didn’t follow the ribbons. I followed my blue line, which went up and along the slope, through thick laurel, the hard way.
About ten minutes later, my phone died.
It had been at sixty percent. I’d checked. It went from sixty to black in the time it took me to climb over a log. It wouldn’t turn back on.
“That’s Not the Way You Came”
I had a compass in my bag. I always do, because my dad made me promise when I was a teenager. I knew the forest road was north and uphill. I put the needle on north and started climbing.
The ribbons followed me.
Not behind me now. Ahead of me, off to the side, always leading a little to the left, back down toward the hollow. Every time I looked up there was another one, bright orange in the gray trees, double knotted.
And then I heard a voice. Off to my left, down the slope, maybe fifty yards away in the laurel. A man. Calm. Not loud.
“That’s not the way you came.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t look. I kept the compass needle on north and I climbed. My legs were shaking. I could smell the laurel and wet leaves and something else, faint. Coffee.
The voice said it again, closer. “That’s not the way you came.”
I started running. Uphill, through the laurel, falling, getting up. I don’t know how long. Maybe fifteen minutes. Then I came out of the trees onto the forest road, a quarter mile above the pull-off, and I almost cried.
I walked down the road to my truck. The white pickup was gone.
There was an orange ribbon tied to my antenna. Double knot. Tails exactly the same length.
Since Then
I reported it to the forest service office in Elkins. The ranger I talked to was polite. She said the national forest has a lot of active timber sale areas, and surveyors use orange ribbon to mark boundaries. She said it was probably a surveyor who thought I was lost and was trying to help. She said phones die in the cold.
I asked her if there were any timber sales on that slope. She checked. There weren’t.
I asked her if anyone had ever reported anything like it. She hesitated, and then she said she’d only been there two years.
I still hunt mushrooms. Not alone, and not on that slope. I sold my two hens at the market the next Saturday for forty dollars. I didn’t want them in my house.
Last month, I came out of my house in Elkins at six in the morning to go to work. There was a strip of orange surveyor’s ribbon tied to my mailbox post.
Double knot. Tails exactly the same length.
I’m a mail carrier. I know everybody on my road. Nobody on my road uses flagging tape.
I left it there. I don’t know why. I think I’m afraid of what happens if I untie it.
If you collect Appalachian mountain hauntings, read the creepy geocaching story about the logbook, our scary campfire stories post about a stranger who told a story about us, or the small town urban legend of the Lantern Lady in Kentucky.
Know any Appalachian mountain scary stories?
The mountains have a way of leading people where they didn’t mean to go. If you grew up with Appalachian mountain scary stories, or you have creepy forest stories from a trail that changed behind you, tell us about them 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
A Stranger Sat in Our Spare Chair and Told a Story About Us
My Trail Cam Caught a Man Wearing My Dad’s Jacket
An Empty Tent Moved Closer to My Ranger Cabin Every Night
A Tree Stand Moved Closer to Mine Every Weekend
Something in the Trees Learned My Dad’s Knock