Part 1

Hey, all. It’s me again.

First of all, wow. I didn’t expect this sort of response.

Thanks for all the great feedback on my previous post. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how interested anyone would be in some of the things going on out here, and I was more than a little surprised when I got back to my cabin yesterday and saw all the responses. Before I get rolling with some more experiences I’ve had out here, I just wanted to address a few questions or comments that folks have made on my last update.

Someone suggested that I should try to capture the shades with my camera. That’s a good suggestion, and I’ve already tried that on a couple of occasions. The issue I’ve run into is that, because of the darkness and the snow, I only really have two options: either use a flash or some other light source, or else use a long shutter speed on my cameras. Even though I was pretty sure neither one would work, I have actually tried both methods.

Unfortunately, as anyone who has driven in a snowstorm can attest, snow is great at reflecting light, which is why you can’t use your high beams when driving in it – the light just reflects off the snow and back into your eyes, effectively blinding you. My results using this method were about what you’d expect – nothing but a complete white-out of the captured images. Using a slow shutter speed didn’t yield any better results; all I got were images of completely incomprehensible motion blurs. I suppose there are probably better camera rigs out there that may be able to overcome these challenges, but I don’t know of them. Even if they do exist, they’re probably well outside of my budget. The National Parks Service doesn’t exactly pay seasonal caretakers in gold bullion.

There was also a concern that, even though I’m trying to remain anonymous, I’ve given away enough details about myself that my employers could easily identify me. Don’t worry about that – firstly, there are more than twenty national parks in Alaska, covering over fifty million acres of land. Believe it or not, it actually contains the majority of the national park land in the entire United States – something like 65% of it. As you can imagine, there are a lot of folks spread across the state doing similar jobs to mine. It’s hard to envision exactly how expansive Alaska is and how much of it is covered with stark wilderness unless you’ve been here and seen it for yourself. I know that I didn’t have the faintest clue before I got here from the lower-48. I guess the bottom line is that it’s pretty unlikely that anyone from the NPS will be able to identify me from what I’ve told you about myself. If they do, I guess we’ll cross that bridge then.

Finally, someone asked about the license plates on some of the vehicles that mysteriously appear out here in the wilderness, and whether they were all from one area or from all over. I’ve previously mentioned that I tend to avoid them if I come across them anymore, but I can tell you that the first car I ran across – the BMW – had a European-style license plate on the front. I assumed at the time that it was just one of those trendy plates that folks in the US sometimes put on the front of their Europeans cars for decoration, but it’s possible that it was legitimately from somewhere in Europe. I’m not sure. I recall that it was white and blue, but beyond that, I don’t remember much about it. Of course, the bus that the ranger found had Texas plates on it, but I don’t know about any others. Sorry.

Okay, so now that I’ve cleared those points up, let’s dive into some of the other things going on out here.

Since I mentioned it in my previous post, I’ll start off with the bears.

So, you probably already know this, but Alaska has some of the largest and most dangerous bears in the entire world. Fortunately, the Kodiak and the Polar bear aren’t generally found inland up here, but we still have more than our fair share of Grizzlies and large Black bears, both of which are apex predators and will make quick work of the unwary or unprepared.

Now, since my contract covers the colder winter months, most of these bears are hibernating during my time here. That being said, not all bears hibernate, especially if they’re in an area of plentiful food supply. Also, even when they are hibernating, they’ll still become active from time to time, so you definitely can’t let your guard down if you want to stay on this side of the grave. It's a pretty safe bet that anyone who works up here, especially alone, tends to carry a rifle as well as a large-caliber handgun whenever they’re outside of their cabin. I’m no exception to that. I carry a 45-70 lever-action over my shoulder and a .500 magnum revolver in a chest holster.

At first glance, it may seem like overkill. That is a tremendous amount of firepower, after all.

However, the first time you catch a glimpse of a mama Grizzly with her cubs and realize that you’re looking at an 800 pound predator that can run you down in a heartbeat, you’ll start wondering why I don’t carry even more.

The reason I mention all this isn’t to give you the impression that they’re some sort of mythical monsters hiding behind every tree just waiting to pounce; only that they represent the top of the food chain up here – period. Nothing, and I mean nothing, short of a pack of starving wolves, will even threaten one, and even that’s only been documented on a handful of occasions. They’re massive, powerful, and aggressive, and if you live out in their territory and don’t keep your head on a swivel, you’re an idiot, and probably soon to be converted into bear shit.

So, all that being the case, I’m sure you’ll understand what it means when I tell you that something is killing big Grizzlies out here. I’m not talking about poachers or indigenous hunters or anything like that. I’m talking about something. As in, not humans and definitely not hungry wolves.

But let me back up a step. My first season up here as a winter caretaker was a hell of a learning experience. Just trying to figure out the necessary maintenance routines and learning to navigate around my area of responsibility was a little overwhelming. One day, I was returning from making my rounds out to one of the ranger stations that was shut down for the winter and ended up taking a wrong turn on the trail. By the time I realized my mistake, I was already a fair distance along the new path and wandering into unfamiliar territory.

Just as I was getting ready to turn around and retrace my steps, I topped a rise and was suddenly faced with the unmistakable form of a Grizzly, not thirty feet along the path ahead and facing away from me.

I’ve got to tell you – I almost pissed myself as I fumbled to unsling the rifle from my shoulder. It’s a damned good thing I didn’t actually need it at that moment, because I discovered to my dismay that I had stupidly slung my shoulder pack over top of the rifle sling, effectively trapping it against my body.

Stupidity and complacency are what get you killed out here, folks, and I could have been a perfect example of both at that moment.

As it turns out, the bear wasn’t moving. It was just standing there perfectly still, its hind quarters facing me, and I knew instinctively that something was wrong with it. Giving up on my rifle, I grabbed my handgun from its holster and cautiously approached the Grizzly, my eyes intent on the bear and prepared for the slightest hint of movement. The closer I got to it, though, the more I certain I became that it wasn’t going to suddenly lunge at me and give me a lesson on exactly where on the food chain I placed.

Here's where it gets surreal. Before I got close to it, I had already recognized that it was dead. What I couldn’t explain was why it was still standing.

It had clearly been there a while, as there were no paw prints leading up to it in the snow and, as I rounded to the front of it, I could see the flesh around its muzzle was already starting to decompose and pull back from its skull. When I got a good look at it, I could also see that it was missing tufts of fur here and there. Despite all that, it was still standing, like it had died and just forgotten to fall down.

I looked it over pretty closely, which was still an unnerving exercise, dead or not, but I couldn’t find any sort of wounds or blood that might indicate why it had died.

It was then that I realized a couple of things: firstly, that there were Grizzlies in the area that were active, and, secondly, nothing had scavenged the carcass. To say this is unusual is an understatement. Most of the top carnivores in this area, including wolves, wolverines, and foxes, supplement their diets by scavenging on carrion. The fact that this bear had died and remained completely intact wasn’t just perplexing; it was… unnatural.

I reported the find to the ranger station and heard back later from Rick that there had been nearly a dozen other similar discoveries within that general area in the last two months. The NPS had even brought in some fancy zoological pathologists from Anchorage to figure out what had killed the bears. They spent two weeks in the field with the rangers examining the carcasses and then one morning they were just gone – they had apparently been abruptly recalled without so much as a ‘by your leave’. Immediately after that, the carcasses were destroyed, and the investigation shut down.

A week later, a rushed and astonishingly brief report came back indicating, “death by natural predation – no further investigation indicated”.

Natural predation. I’m not sure how a predator could have killed the bear I found without leaving a single mark on it or trace of blood, let alone somehow keep it standing upright after death and then deciding it wasn’t even going to feed on the kill.

I call bullshit, and so did the rangers.

Rick told me his boss had tried to contact the pathologists for more information but was told that they had all been reassigned and were no longer working with the Parks Service.

Not one to easily give up, Rick’s boss tried calling a private cell number he had gotten from one of the pathologists during their visit. It went to a disconnected message indicating the phone was no longer in service. This was strange, because he had just spoken to the investigator using that very number only a couple weeks prior, so he knew it was a good number.

But, late that night, he received a call from an unknown caller. When he answered it, he recognized the hushed voice of the pathologist he had befriended, sounding like they were whispering into their phone.

“Leave it alone. Forget about it,” was all they said before the line went dead. He tried calling the number back several times, but it just went to dead air each time. That was the last time he heard anything about it. He tried following up within the NPS, but somehow nobody was able to find records that such an investigation had ever existed or even that any reports of the dead bears had been filed in the first place.

Rick told me that, for a while, it was all his boss wanted to talk about – it had become like a splinter in his hand that he couldn’t ignore. He called anyone he could think of in the chain of command at the NPS and any other agencies he thought might be able to provide some clue about what was going on but couldn’t make an inch of headway.

Then, one day, he just stopped talking about it, like a switch had been thrown. One evening, Rick and his boss were having beers at a local bar after their shift and talking about how strange the whole thing was.

And then the next morning, his boss walked in, looking a little shaky and out of sorts, went into his office and closed the door, and didn’t say two words to Rick that day.

He never mentioned the incident again. A few times Rick had brought it up in conversation with him later on and his boss just brushed the whole thing off and changed subjects, looking very uncomfortable about the whole thing.

I don’t know what happened, but if I had to guess, I’m thinking that his boss was probably digging into something that wasn’t meant to be dug into, and someone had convinced him it was better if he just forgot about it.

Look, I’m not some conspiracy theorist nutjob, okay? I just know that the whole thing stinks to high hell and I’ll just leave it at that.

The other thing I’ll tell you about today is what we call the Witch’s lodge. I’m not sure what it was originally – it’s really not much more than a single-room log cabin built out in the deep bush. I’ve seen it a couple of times and been inside once. It’s a bit of a hike from my post and not somewhere easily traveled, even by snowmobile, so I don’t get out that way very often.

Old, abandoned cabins aren’t really that unusual up here. You’ll trip across them from time to time, although most aren’t much more than a few walls and a collapsed roof after the years and harsh Alaskan winters get through with them.

The Witch’s lodge is a little different, though. As far as I’m aware, nobody’s lived there for long time, but whoever built it must have known what they were doing, because it looks every bit as solid and maintained as my own cabin. I’m not even sure how it got its name, honestly – I just know that’s how it was introduced to me the first time, so that’s how I’m introducing it to you.

A couple of years ago, my ranger buddy, Rick, radioed me up asking if I wouldn’t mind joining him in a search for a couple of missing hikers – a father and his twelve-year-old son. I’m just a caretaker – I don’t normally participate in ranger or search-and-rescue related activities, but apparently there wasn’t anyone else available to accompany him on that day, and he had gotten a lead that the hikers may have been heading out into my section of the park. In S&R efforts, especially during the dark Alaska winters, finding someone quickly is critical if you want to find them alive, so he wanted to follow up on it sooner than later.

Of course, I couldn’t exactly refuse to help him, especially not when one of them was just a kid. So, a couple hours later, I found myself trailing behind him through the knee-deep snow. We moved along a semi-familiar path for a while before he turned left at a fork, and we started making our way along another that I wasn’t familiar with. He seemed like he knew where he was headed, like he had a particular destination in mind, though, and we really didn’t talk much during the hike. We stopped a couple times to rest and sip some hot coffee from our thermoses, but even then, we were both quiet. I think there was some sort of dark cloud hanging over his mood – I could see it in his narrowed eyes and drawn brow. It was infectious, and soon started manifesting itself in the back of my own mind.

An hour later, we came upon the place. I was surprised to see this perfectly preserved little cedar log cabin, just sitting out here among the trees and looking for all the world like someone would come walking out of the front door at any moment.

Something about the place seemed off, though. Somehow, I knew that nobody lived there – that nobody had lived there in a long time. I can’t explain it, but at that moment, I had this strange feeling that we weren’t welcome here, like something was telling me to turn around and head back while I still could.

Before I had the chance to open my mouth about it, Rick turned to me and pointed towards the closed front door, where I could clearly see the boot prints at its threshold.

“Come on,” he said over the wind that had just blown up, and I could see the grim set to his expression before he turned away from me and started making his way towards the door.

I noticed that he had drawn his handgun, so I did the same, though I had no idea why. We reached the entryway to the cabin, and he put his hand on the latch. Before he lifted it, he paused and looked back at me with that same dark expression.

“We’re going to have to look inside,” he said. “If there’s nothing to be found in there, fine. We’ll just turn around and head back to your cabin for a couple glasses of whiskey by the fire. Maybe the other groups will find them, then.” His eyes fixed hard on mine, like he wanted to make sure I was paying damned good attention to him. “But if we find anyone other than this idiot hiker and his kid inside, we’re not going look at them and we’re not going to say a single word to them, understand? Even if they talk to us first.”

I nodded at him, more confused than anything else, but that wasn’t good enough.

“I need you to say it, John, to make sure you understand what I’m telling you,” he said, and the set of his eyes was so serious and determined that I repeated his instructions back to him without a second thought. When I did, he gave a brief nod and lifted the latch, pushing the door inward.

We stepped through the doorway into the darkened room beyond. As soon as we did, I was overwhelmed by the stench of decay, mixed with the strong scents of herbs and something else, something sickly riding just under the surface of all that.

My eyes had just started to adjust to the dim light of the interior, and I was able to make out the sparse furnishings of the room – an old rickety table with a solitary low-backed chair in front of a cold stone fireplace. Along the far wall, I thought I could just make out a cot, but I couldn’t be sure.

“Dammit. It’s happened again,” Rick said, almost under his breath, and the tone of warning in his voice drew my attention immediately. I turned to find him kneeling next to the desiccated husk of a man’s body, dressed in gray snowpants and a red down jacket, slumped back against the wall. It looked like it had been there for years, and I stumbled backwards in shock without realizing it.

“What the shit?” I exclaimed, not really knowing what else to say.

Rick picked up something that was resting on the floor near the man’s skeletal hand, looked around briefly at the room, and then nodded to the door. “Time to go. I’ll let the S&R team know that we found the hikers,” he said.

I was more than a little confused. The body we were looking at was almost mummified – it had clearly been there a long time, and I told him as much. Not to mention the fact that there was only one of them; if it was possible that this was the father, that still meant that the son was somewhere out here.

“It’s too late, John,” was all he said, pressing something into my hands as he passed me and stepped out the door. I looked down and realized I was holding a small notebook, like the kind a person might keep in their pocket just in case they needed to write something down.

Numbly, I flipped it open. It was mostly empty, except for the first two pages, which were scrawled in a sloppy cursive in pencil. I don’t have it anymore, so this is going to be as well as I remember it, but it should be close enough that you get the gist of it:

We found her cabin. God, I wish we hadn’t. Nathan’s gone – she took him. I’ve been wandering around in here for days, but I can’t find my way out. I haven’t seen Nathan or her since that first day. My boy is gone!

How can I not find my way out?

What’s happening?

I can hear her whispers taunting me, but it’s always just a little farther forward, around the next corner.

I don’t understand any of this.

I’m so sorry.

As it turns out, we did end up heading back to my cabin. Rick radioed the S&R team that he’d found the hikers in the lodge, and the person on the other end paused a long moment before replying with a simple acknowledgement.

No questions.

Nothing else.

Just, “Acknowledged, Rick.”

We didn’t say much to each other that night. We just sat in front of my fire and drank the rest of my Jameson until we both passed out.

When I returned to consciousness the next morning, Rick had already gotten up and left.

We haven’t spoken about it since that day. The notebook was gone when I awoke, so I assume he took that with him. Clearly, he knows something about what happened, about that cabin, but I’ve never asked him about it.

I’m not too sure I really want to know.

It’s hard enough to sleep at night out here sometimes.

Speaking of which, I suppose it’s time for me to sign off and get some shut eye. It’s already almost 2AM and I’ve got a long day’s work ahead of me tomorrow. It snowed pretty good today, and I was already behind in clearing the roof of the storage sheds over near the old fire watch tower.

I’d rather not have to deal with the damage if the roof collapses, so I’d better get over there as soon as it lets up some outside.

I’ll write some more soon.

Good night, all.

Part 3