.png "Amanda Restover"){kind=small}
scary stories to read in the dark Disappearance of My Hiking Group in the Alaskan Wilderness
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| Terrifying Truth Behind the Disappearance of My Hiking Group |
Did you know that the Tlingit people of Alaska tell stories about something called the Kushtaka, a shapeshifter that tricks lost travelers by mimicking the screams of a baby or a crying woman to lure them in? I didn’t know that three years ago. If I had, I never would have stepped foot off the plane in Anchorage. I never would’ve let my friends talk me into "disconnecting" out in the wild. Now? Now I spend every night staring at the ceiling, just waiting for a sound I pray I never hear again. This isn't some campfire story for fun. This is the true story of the disappearance of my hiking group, and writing this down is the only way I can explain why I’m the only one who came back.
The Triangle
We were just normal people looking to get away for a bit. There was me, my brother Mike, and our two best friends, Sarah and David. We’d read a bit about the Alaska Triangle that huge area between Juneau, Anchorage, and Barrow where people just vanish but we treated it like a joke. Just a stat to laugh about while we packed our expensive gear. We planned a four-day trek near the Wrangell-St. Elias park. The first day? Perfect. The air tasted like pine and ice. We felt invincible. We took pictures, messed around, set up camp by this clear stream. It felt like paradise, honestly. But looking back… the wilderness wasn’t welcoming us. It was waiting.The Silence
The shift happened the afternoon of the second day. It wasn't sudden. It was this slow, creeping wrongness. We were hiking through these thick spruce trees when the silence hit. If you’ve never been deep in the woods, you don't realize how loud it usually is. Birds, wind, squirrels. But suddenly… nothing. The wind died. The birds vanished. It was like someone hit mute on the whole world. "Does anyone else feel that?" Sarah whispered. Her voice was too loud in the quiet. David checked his GPS. "Weird," he mumbled, tapping the screen. "Signal is bouncing everywhere. Says we moved ten miles in three seconds." We laughed it off, but it was nervous laughter. You know that feeling when you're being watched? It was heavy. A physical weight on my shoulders, this pressure at the base of my neck building and building and building. I kept spinning around, expecting a bear. But there was nothing. Just trees.The Witching Hour: Why Waking at 3 AM Is a Warning click to uncover the dark reason behind this haunting hour.
Voices in the Fog
By late afternoon, this heavy fog rolled in. It didn't drift; it rushed us. Visibility dropped to nothing. We decided to camp early, huddle up. That’s when it started. At first, it sounded like wind in a hollow log. Then, it got distinct. A voice. "Help me." Faint. Coming from the trees to our left. We froze. "Did you hear that?" Mike asked, gripping his pole. "Sounds like a little girl," Sarah said, eyes wide. "Someone’s out there." We shouted back. "Hello! Keep yelling!" The voice came again. "Help me. Help me. Help me." It was… wrong. The rhythm was identical every time. Like a recording on a loop. The pitch didn't change. "I’m checking it out," Mike stood up. "No," I grabbed him. "Mike, that doesn't sound right. It doesn't sound human." He shook me off. "It’s a kid, man." He walked into the fog. "Hello?" he shouted.From the mist, the voice answered. But it wasn't a girl anymore. It was Mike’s voice. "Hello?" it mimicked back. Perfectly. Mike stopped dead. Then, without a scream, without anything, he was just… yanked. Violently pulled into the grey like a rope was tied around his waist. Gone.
The Hunt
Panic is cold. It freezes your blood. We screamed for hours. "Mike! Mike!" The forest screamed back.From everywhere in the dark: "Mike! Mike! Mike!" Whatever was out there was mocking us. Dozens of voices Mike’s voice, the girl, and then Sarah’s voice, even though she was right next to me, crying.
The dread was building and building and building. We huddled in the tent with hatchets, knowing they were useless. The shadows outside danced against the nylon. Tall, stretched-out shadows moving with this jerky, weird rhythm. We didn't sleep. We listened to unexplained sounds of the Alaskan wilderness. Heavy footsteps circling the tent. Two legs. Crunch. Crunch. But the stride was too long for a human.
Sarah and David
At first light, we ran. Left the tent, food, everything. Just ran back the way we came. But the trail was gone. The trees looked twisted, leaning in to block us. David was behind me. We were moving fast over wet rocks. I heard a slip, a thud, turned to help him up. David was gone. No cliff. No bushes. He was five feet behind me, then nothing. "David!" Sarah screamed. And then, from way up in the trees thirty, maybe forty feet up we heard David laugh. A hysterical, wet gurgle. I looked up, and for a split second, I saw something pale moving between the branches like a spider. dragging something. Sarah broke. She just stopped. Dropped to her knees in the moss, sobbing. "They’re not going to let us leave. We are already dead." I tried to pull her up, but the fog swirled again, smelling like copper and rot. I felt a cold hand brush my neck ice cold. I swung my hatchet, and when I looked back, Sarah was gone. No sound of a struggle. Just the moss slowly rising back up where she had been.The Run
I don't remember the next six hours. I just ran. I didn't look back. I blocked out my friends calling my name from the woods. "It’s safe here," Mike’s voice from a cave. "We found the way out," Sarah’s voice from behind a rock. I kept running. The pressure in my skull was building and building and building until I thought I’d stroke out. A truck driver found me on a logging road miles away. I was dehydrated, hypothermic, rambling about voices.The Aftermath
Search and Rescue looked for two weeks. Dogs, drones, choppers. They found nothing. Not a tent. Not a boot. Nothing. The report says "lost due to misadventure." Probably fell, or animals got them. But animals don't mimic your voice. The weather doesn't pull a grown man sideways into the fog without a sound. I know what happened. We walked into a place that doesn't belong to us. We trespassed on the hunting grounds of something the locals have feared for centuries. The terrifying truth behind the disappearance of my hiking group isn't that they got lost. It’s that they were found. I live in the city now. Lights on, always. But sometimes, late at night, when the street is quiet… I hear it in the vents."Help me."
And I know, one day, I’ll have to go back.Strange Facts
- The Location: Happened in the Alaska Triangle. More people go missing there than anywhere else.
- The Phenomenon: Mimicking voices is a classic trait of cryptids like the Wendigo and Kushtaka.
- The Evidence: No gear found. Nothing. Suggests the kind of anomaly you see in paranormal activity cases.
.png "Amanda Restover")