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 … Read more
This train horror story took forty-one minutes. That’s how long I sat at a railroad crossing in western Kansas, in 2016, watching a freight train that should have passed in three. People around there trade very scary stories about that crossing. I never believed them until that night. I was twenty-two. I worked the closing … Read more
This scarecrow horror story happened on a county highway in northern Iowa on Halloween night, 2022. There was a scarecrow at every mile marker, and every one of them was facing the road. I’ve told this Halloween night story every October since, and I still can’t drive that road. I was driving home from my … Read more
This haunted elevator story comes from a night security guard in Phoenix and a fourth floor that had been gutted down to bare concrete. Nobody had any reason to go up there, but every night at 2:17, the elevator went up anyway. I worked nights as a security guard in an office building in Phoenix … Read more
This creepy geocaching story starts with an old ammo can on a ridge in western North Carolina and a paper log that should have been ordinary. Every name in that log was different, but every line was written by the same hand, and the last one was written for me. I’ve been geocaching for six … Read more
This trunk or treat horror story happened on Halloween night on a two-lane road in the middle of nowhere. I pulled into a church lot to ask for directions, and every car there was ready for kids, except there were no people at all. It was Halloween, around ten at night. I was driving back … Read more
This haunted hayride story comes from the fall I spent jumping out of the dark for twelve dollars an hour. We had nine actors on the roster that night, and on the last run I counted ten. I worked one season at a haunted hayride outside of Lancaster. It was a farm that did pumpkins … Read more