Witch's Pass

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. If you're following me on Instagram, you'll notice an obvious connection between what I've been doing and today's story. It's about a trail. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. I scrambled through the backpack early in the morning. Four was too early to be awake. Although I remembered what it was like getting to the factories in my early years, six days a week, coming in at four forty five in the morning, those four dollars and twenty five cents per hour seemed like nothing now, and still every once in a while I think of everything it took to get me here. Those four dollars and twenty five cents were part of that too. It was a strange silence that morning. Normally there would be the sound of plastic and people clearing their throats, teeth being broughtushed, and the occasional alarm clock that had not yet been silenced. It had all registered for the trail along the Northeast Mountain Range. This would be one of those rare flat areas of it, miles and miles of flat terrain, a river that would come along about halfway through, and yet most of the hikers had decided to wait for one of the buses that would take them over the next hill instead. I found it silly, it really did. It was such a widely accepted story that businesses had sprouted for those who decided to skip that area of the trail. Most would be getting around the corner of a rock in the shape of a tower just before sunrise, but by that time it would be too late to get past the rest of the area with no shade and the scorching sun. Everyone like me had to be up and ready to leave by four fifteen and maintain the past given on the guide books in order to get to the next stop just before noon the heat. And yet no one wanted to pass by the ruins of Gertha in the dark. There was a section through the trees and stones, some called them the Witches Pass, just before leaving the forest. But like with all trails, we had some options. We could cross it just before sunset and to the rest of the distance in the dark, or we could get one of those buses I just told you about. He could even hire an ATV to take you in a caravan through the pass just after sunrise. Stories had circulated for some time. It was even in one of the original guide books, the tale of a man who had written his name down Nicholas Bauman in a notebook at the start of that day's section, but he never made it out. When he was found weeks later, his fist was crawling with ants, and upon being opened, they found loosely wrapped hard candy, melted, no brand, no color, supposedly part of the Witch's curse, just off that pass. I knew to avoid those types of stories. I wouldn't call myself afraid of it, but I avoid them because of the mindset everyone got from them, a way to be lazy and not go through when we were supposed to. Victor, a man I had met at the start of the trail just two days before, had mentioned the Witch's Pass when you were at one of the campsites, and he was telling a story of a friend of his. Bob was his name. He walked out of Orgison sometime in the fall. He had always been one of those silent people who didn't mind doing the work alone. He woke up before four in the morning and walked out on his own. He was about to make it through the corner by the ruins when he heard the voice of a woman calling him. He looked over at her and was able to describe a haunched old woman walking to the top of one of the stones. Slowly she crawled the rocks. First he saw her hair, it was messy and tangled, and then her eyes and pale face. This way she whispered, smiling and trying to invite him to come to her. Startled, knowing exactly what he was looking at, he turned around and ran back to camp, something he later found out was the best decision he could have made. Had he chosen to run past her, his fate would have been the same as Nicholas Bauman from the guidebook. He shared a story with everyone at the campsite, some believing him completely, while others, of course teased them to no end. Bob put his trail short and went home on the next bus back. But Victor, the guy who had been telling me this story, said that a few of the guys knew him from that and other trails they had hiked over the years. But they said that Bob was never the same after that at might have been the teasing that got to him, or might have been the thing he saw that morning I asked Victor if he believed in the story of the Witches Pass, and he chuckled. No, but I'm not risking it, he said. He laughed to himself for a bit before letting the silence take over, with only the sound of the fire crackling in front of us. Not everyone knew each other as we hiked the trails. Some people joined us at Pacific campsites, while others were planning to end where others started. Somehow, the story held everyone together. Once we get past it, the tone of the hike changes as we complained about other things, like our packs or the bugs, and the Witch's Pass becomes just another tale of the trail. The night before the Witches Pass was as you would expect it to be. The dozen or so people doing the trail were split to either being nervous about seeing something at the end of the forest by the ruins or nervous but trying to hide it. Everyone, though, had a plant to detour the walk by the ruins before sunrise. I met a couple from Australia that night as we sat by the fire. The man was noticeably nervous about going through it, but his wife had figured out away around the Witch's Pass, a trail that would take them an extra two hours. It isn't just about the past, they said, since not making hikers go through there. The trails are barely marked now, but the last year's rains the bunny trails are the only guides that remain, and even those take you deeper into the woods before you make it out. She could tell she had studied the guide books and maps. She said the were alternative routes from the inside of the forest, though they were rough, some requiring some steep climbs up jagged rocks. I wanted to learn more about these alternative routes, you know, just in case I told no one about my plan to leave at the scheduled time and walk through the woods and through the ruins just before sunrise. I wanted none of that negativity, especially now. Say what you want about haunted forests or whatever, but our mind is more powerful than that. If I go out there expecting to see a witch, you can bet I'm going to see a witch out there, and she's gonna take my shoes and give me some candy and leave me for dead, or whatever the story say. As I stared at the fire, the Australian couple got up and got all zipped into their tent, saying good night to everyone, and then everyone shushed down. There's a standard rule for anyone trying to go to sleep earlier than the rest of the group. I looked around, noticing a new face in the group. The man's gray beard glowed orange with the fire as he looked at me and held up his metal cup with his right hand. I raised mine, and he got up to walk over to the log I was sitting on. You're planning on sticking to the trail, laurn't you? He said, guilty, I shot back. He smiled and asked if I could tell that he was going to do it too, so that we would see each other out on the trail that morning. Like all conversations about the topic, I asked him if he was afraid of what we were about to see that next morning, what he thought of everything, and most importantly, if he believed in the story of the Witch's Pass. He stayed silent for a bit, saying he was ready for it now. He had tried it many years ago and let everyone's talk get to him, but now this time he was ready. I looked at his necklace with a crucifix, and asked if he knew the stories behind that that it pisces her off. Yeah, I've heard of that, he said, chuckling. He believed the stories, and he knew of many more encounters with the witch for decades she had lived in there, And if there were any logical explanations about it, researchers had failed to find one. Several privately founded investigations, mainly from television shows and radio stations, had tried to make stories about it, some even coming up with the movie. They never made anything happen intentions, He said, how are you going to find a story when you're looking to take advantage of it? Like that? Come on? He looked at me right in the eye. There was a strange calmness in his voice that made me question all of these other stories I had heard about the Witch's past. The debates had largely become a thing of do we believe in it? Do we not believe in it? And if you do, why, if you don't, why not? This was different. You can accept a story as it is and then decide if you want to go through it or not. My decision, for example, had been made. I wanted to go through the hike as it was intended to happen, and it did not matter to me if the witch existed or not. It was okay to be nervous about it. That would be alone, well, maybe not anymore. During the walk that next morning, I turned my head toward the man as I stood up to go to my tent to say good night. Pride had called it a night while I was lost in my introspection, and he was no longer there, And with that I got to my tent. I zipped everything up, listened to the sound with the dying fire against the soft wind coming from the dark woods behind us. The second part of Witch's pass was coming upward. After this stay with me, the alarm pluck vibrated under my sleeping bag. I had not slept much anyway, so I was waiting for the darn thing to go off at any moment. For the past couple of hours, almost everything was ready. I rolled everything up and collapsed a tent with the light of my head lamp and walked out of the group of blue and yellow tarps, my boots crunching against the dried up dirt as I left the camp site and entered the dark valley just before the forest, and I heard some one walking up behind me. Quickly I turned around, following the beam of my head lamp as it moved across the open field and the campsite off in the distance. The stories, even though I didn't want to admit it, then had gotten to me. I was about to walk into a site known for its ghost or which, whatever you want to call it. It was part of history for that trail. Locals had talked about it for decades, and it was part of the reason why so many people chose to walk the trail in the fall every year. It was a thrill to be so close to it and yet still cautious enough to walk around it. No designated trails, they said, too dangerous or too dark, And sometimes the stories would play with your mind and disorient you enough to see things in the dark, maybe go into a panic, and even cause an accident. And so I looked forward and continued, and about half an hour later I was at the tree line alone. Wouldn't sign with the carved letters ruins of Gertha and an arrow pointing into the woods, That's what everyone knew. As the witches pass, I looked around for any hikers, but couldn't see any lights in there. With one big breath, that took a step forward, but I was interrupted by the sounds of someone behind me. Again. I turned around and nearly screamed when I saw the same man I had been talking to the night before. He had said he was ready for the trail. This time. His brown jacket was barely visible from the light of a headlamp. Howdy, he said, as he walked up the dirt trail and towerts sign are you ready? The small nood I wanted to give was enlarged by the beam of light against the edge of the trees, and with a silent agreement, he continued into the dark woods. We didn't say much this time. We were walking in unison through the trail between the trees, and he could tell that not many hikers had gone through the woods past a certain point. The path had become thin and overgrown with plants that grew by the roots of the trees. There were no silhouettes, just darkness all around us. The sky was barely visible through the caps and branches the crooked trunks that seemed to swirl around us with every step. The man started humming to himself of about twenty minutes in the familiar song with no lyrics that matched the rhythm of our steps as we moved around the woods. But suddenly the humming stopped. I turned back to look at him, the light reflecting off the cross of his cold necklace. Are you scared, he asked me, put a serious tone in his voice. I don't know what I'm doing, I confessed, trying to hide the fact that I had felt that way longer than I wanted to admit, always trying to do things as they were supposed to get done, even if there wasn't a reason to other than to do them right. I thought of the sacrifices I had made to keep my house and the wife happy, giving away my days at the factory that could not care any less for me. This was the only time I had to get away from everything. After a short silence in the darkness, I asked him if he wasn't scared already, said that a crucifix would piss off the witch even more, and yet there he was wearing a bright one outside of a shirt. He chuck Golden said, this is the only thing that will be protecting us. They'll thank me. Later I asked him again why he thought this thing was real, and he said that he did not question reality anymore, just how he didn't question light or darkness, earth or water. That we're just there and not a matter of belief. So you're saying that we're going to get to the Witch's Pass the Ruins of Gertha, and we're going to see a witch and she's going to give us candy, and we're going to be found dead. A week later, I asked, in a slightly angrier tone that I had imagined would come out. Something's there, he replied quietly. He started walking again. They meet all sorts of people out in the woods. I knew of that, some claiming to see things out there. The funny story of a guy who was out in search of a place where elementals lived, tiny mythical creatures from the woods. He had them drawn out in everything. The rest of us had a laugh at his story. But he went out with the most confidence I had ever seen from a man early one morning, and the later came out drawing everything he had witnessed with an enormous smile on his face. But this guy was different. He had no flashlight on him I don't know how he was expecting to do the trail that morning. He believed in the thing from the ruins of Gertha. He walked with a confident limp. He had no reason to do the trail, just like me, and so we walked until we got to a section of rocks that seemed to appear from the darkness. By this time, the troll had completely disappeared, and we were basing our steps solely on the directions from the guide books. The two large, sharp rocks would lead to a flat one, and between them the trail followed an ancient river wash up a hill. This was the last section before the witches passed. Everyone knew it. We passed the rocks and climbed past the enormous routes before everything went still. I looked behind me as a man looked past me, and continued to step. The ruins were there, large stones lined up along the trees, like walls of an enormous palace without a roof, walls all around it, half of it missing from the forest, taking it over once again. You were still a good distance away from it, and yet you could feel its presence in its entirety all around you. This was the infamous Witches Pass that was there, that had made it. I walked slowly at first, amazed by being in the place many people avoided if only they knew what they were missing. But as we walked, I heard it, a whisper from the trees. I couldn't tell what it said at first, but the place was so still that any sounds, even from an animal, would stand out. This way, I heard it say that froze in place. This was not my hiking companion that morning. There was the voice of a woman, flat and tired. Don't look, I heard from behind me. Who was that? I asked him, You're almost through, Just keep going, I heard him say. I picked up the step as I watched the bruins get closer, like a castle in the woods, though shorter than we had seen in the movies, and we were only on the edge of it, I could not help but imagine what it looked like back when it was built. Footsteps quick ones behind me and on my left, running off and around the trees this way, I heard it say, don't you turn toward it to hear me. I heard the man say. My heart started racing. I had heard the voice loud and clear this time. Was it some elaborate prank? Was it really the witch from the ruins, the one from the story. I walked even faster as we passed the walls. The sky was turning dark blue by this time, and I could see just how large the stones were, the empty holes on the walls that used to be windows, pitch black air on the inside. The footsteps approached from behind us quickly this way, it said, I could feel my heart on my throat this time. The thing was real. There was no way anyone else will be out here this early. They had no reason to. No one else except for this man had known that I was planning to come to the trail of this time. This way, I heard from my right side. It became suspicious right then I turned behind me and yelled for him to hide his necklace with a cross. But was he doing wearing it? Why would he make the thing angry on purpose like that? And if this was a prank, if what was he taking it this far? Do you believe in it now? Don't you? He said? But I was not going to do this, not anymore. Many times I had been wondering why I did what I did, sending all of my money away to Sarah, who spent it on god knows what. All this time, early mornings and late evenings at the factories and restaurants, just to do everything all over again the next day. I had no chance to look anywhere else. I just did what I was supposed to do, and now this condemned to keep my eyesight straight ahead, avoiding the very thing that was calling me this time. Don't listen to it, I heard from behind me. Who are you? I yeled back, Who are you to tell me anything about what I'm supposed to do this way? I heard from up ahead. Silhouettes were beginning to show along the path as the sky became just a little bit lighter. What if this thing was real? What if we were walking into some type of trap? What if I angered it by not turning to see it. You don't have to see it to know that it's there, I heard the man say. The whole thing was silly, a grown man afraid of the story. That nobody knew if it was real or not. But it wouldn't matter. The story was real to me, at least during those last two minutes of the walk. The only way to disprove it would be to turn toward it to see who was calling me, And then I heard the footsteps behind me, much lighter than my hiking companion, approaching very quickly turned around, he said, and that really made my blood boil. This way. The light was a bit brighter now that the edge of the trees was near. I could count the number of them. My nails were digging into the palm of my right hand and anger. When I heard that command, who are you? I yelled, still facing forward. The name's Nick, And why did that sound so familiar? I stopped as I reached the tree line and turned around. Was a bit brighter now there was no one there, I yelled for him, looking into the tunnel the trees had made. My heart was still racing when I took those two deep breaths, wondering about what had just happened. But I turned away from the trees and faced forward, doing what I was supposed to do, which is past. Was written by me Edwin Kovarubyaz. You can find me over on Instagram at Edwin Cove that's e d W N coo V, or you can email me directly. I'll leave my info in the description of this episode. Up next check out horror Story, where I tell you about true creepy events and mysteries. You'll find it by typing horror story in the search bar of Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or over on horror story dot com. Thank you very much for listening and for your comments. To you soon.