Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - National Park Horror: True Stories of Terror

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Dangers inside of National Parks, both strangers and freak accidents. We'll hear about people who got the sense something was watching them, feral people potentially living in the parks, as well as horror stories of people falling into geysers and off of the Grand Canyon   Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore.  Music from Artlist Shownotes: www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/nationalpark 

Listener discretion is advised. Terri and Shayna started pitching a tent in the dark, enveloped by the sounds of crickets and the river that they had decided to set up camp next to. It was June 22nd, 1977, in Klein Falls, in Oregon State Park. Their hair was still salty with sweat from their long bike ride that day. The two undergraduates were seven days into a cross-country bike ride,

and they were eager to get some sleep. To Terry, the forest represented freedom, an unbound individualism where you could have some space to be unbothered by anyone. But that night felt different. Something felt off to Terry, and judging by Shaina's darting eyes, she felt it too. Thick in the air was the unmistakable sense that someone was watching them. But maybe they were just tired, Terry thought, as they curled up inside of their tent.

They had another large chunk of the ride to do tomorrow and needed to get a good night's sleep. Though the feeling of something lurking was getting worse, nothing strange presented itself in the woods, so they decided to go to sleep. But then, sometime in the night, Terry wakes up. She's heard something. A car is pulling up right next to their tent. The park wasn't that big, but there was enough space for someone to set up a tent further than a few feet away from them.

Why would this person need to park so close? But before she can think, she's hit with the sound of the engine revving and then bam! The park plunges straight into their tent, running over Terry's right side and pinning her. Before she can even muster the strength to try and get out from under the vehicle, she sees the outline of a man, carrying an axe, coming straight towards her. It's that feeling when the energy and the room shifts, when the air gets sucked out of a moment, and everything starts to feel wrong, it's the instinct between fight or flight.

When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's seeing, it's when your heart starts pounding. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore. This is a community full of people who like to follow their dark curiosities wherever it leads them, and I'm so happy you've decided to join us. If you'd like to dive further into the community, you can follow the show on Instagram and TikTok at Heart Starts Pounding or support the show on Patreon, where you'll have access to

bonus content. Like extra Disney death stories that didn't make the episode. We're calling it the Rogue Detecting Society, so you don't want to miss out. I'd also like to shout out the Creep Time podcast by Silas and Stu. Silas is known on TikTok as Creeptime, and I've loved his content for a while now. I have the chance to meet Silas when we were on a panel together at the Parapod Festival,

and he's just a really cool smart guy. Check them out if you have the chance. Creeptime, the podcast. It's all true crime told by Silas and Stu. There are a few things in this world, more beautiful than a national park. Not much takes my breath away, like actually snatches the breath right out of my chest, but I remember seeing Zion National Park for the first time. The East entrance of the park is a really long,

dark, and honestly terrifying tunnel, but when you emerge from the other side you are just hit with the magnitude of the park, these giant red rocks that just tower over you. I've never felt so small and insignificant in my life, but in a kind of beautiful way. I've always been intrigued by the darkness that lies underneath beautiful things, however. And at these parks, there's secrets bubbling below the geysers. There's horrors lurking just beyond the tree lines. Today, we're going to unzip the tent, if you will, and look at some of the horror that's hidden inside of the parks, both national and state around the country. I'm going to start with creepy encounters people have had with other people, but then I want to dig into some of the horrifying both national and state around the country. I'm going to start with creepy encounters

people have had with other people, but then I want to dig into some of the horrifying experiences people have had with the parks themselves. But first, I want to jump back into the story from the beginning. The story of Terry Insana, who were attacked that night in late June 1977, because the car running into their tent was just the beginning. A hatchet wielding madmen exited the car and attacked Shayna with the axe, striking her in the head multiple times.

Terry couldn't see what was happening very well because she was still pinned down by the car, but she remembered hearing her roommate scream, leave us alone! The stranger then turned to Terry, raised up the weapon, and as he came down on her with all of his strength, she stopped the acts from making contact. The two struggled for a moment before the assailant gave up, hopped in his car, and sped away. Terry watched as the tail lights hung out in the distance for a beat, unmoving

as if the assailant was deciding whether or not to turn back and finish the job. After a moment, he drove off. Terry hardly remembered what happened next, but she was able to recall a bizarre detail about the man. He was dressed pristinely in cowboy attire. Other than that, it was too dark to really see. Both women triumphantly survived the attack, but the cowboy stranger was never caught.

For all we know, he could still be out in the woods of Oregon, lurking just beyond the trails in his truck, waiting for the right moment to come back and finish the job. The attack on the two women was horrific, but I want to focus on a small detail of the story that I find terrifying. That feeling of being watched, that feeling on the back of your neck that makes the hair stand up. I felt that before, and I felt it while camping. Usually it's nothing, or at least it's nothing that shows its face.

It reminded me of another story I read years ago, one that I still think about often. It's from a park ranger who also got a strange feeling that he was being watched one night. The ranger had taken a group of middle schoolers up Mount Sterling and the great Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee. Great Smoky Mountain National Park boasts that it's the most visited National Park in America, and that really makes sense. The park contains the beautiful rolling hills of southern Appalachia, often lightly dusted

with fog, which gives them that signature smoky look. That night, the Ranger had the kids set up their tents on the mountain, and after an evening of campfire tales and games, they all went to bed. There was another co-counselor on the trip who was headed off to the tents with the kids. You coming?

He asked the Ranger, but the Ranger wanted to stay up for a while. He had set up a hammock and wanted to lounge a bit and read without the insanity of the 13 year old boys. Something about going to bed in that moment also didn't feel just right. He had the feeling that he needed to stay up a little while longer, just to be safe.

About 30 minutes later, he was ready to go to bed and switched off his headlamp. But before he closed his eyes, he looked around at the surrounding campsite. That feeling was still looming over him. The feeling that something or someone was near. Watching his campsite, he scans the area. It was a beautiful night. Full moon, clear skies full of stars, and dead silent.

The group was up a mountain, six miles from the nearest road. There was no sound of cars up here, no hums of civilization, not even rustling from the wind. It was a completely still night. And that's when he heard it. Suddenly, there was wrestling in the distance. Too big to be a squirrel. The Ranger lifted his head to see what it was. Even the full moon didn't offer enough light to really see all that far. Maybe an animal had smelled their sight and was coming to look for scraps, depending on how big the animal was would determine the course of action. But wait a minute. Listening to the sound of the heavy, even footsteps, it sounded human.

Slowly, the ranger sees the form of a man emerge from a trail. About five-six, no gear. It's pitch blackout, and this stranger had no headlamp, no flashlight, nothing. He was just a solo traveler out in the woods at midnight. The ranger thought to approach the man, but something told him not to. From where he sat in his hammock, he was almost certain the man couldn't see him. He decided to sit there, perfectly still, until the man turned around to leave. But the man didn't. Instead, for 30 minutes the stranger stood there, surveying the camp, remaining perfectly still like a tiger

crouching in the jungle, just staring at the tents. He only moved when he sat down by a tree, never once taking his eyes off of the camp. What is he doing, the Ranger thought to himself, afraid to even breathe in case an exhale revealed his location? himself, afraid to even breathe in case an exhale revealed his location. An hour went by with the men frozen in place, the intruder's eyes on the camp and the ranger's eyes on him. Then another hour, then another, soon it was 3.30 in the morning and the visitor was still just observing. That's when he stood up.

The Ranger braced himself for what was about to happen next. But the man just looked at the tents for a few moments longer and vanished back down the trail he came up on. The Ranger never told the kids what happened, but he couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching them the entire next day. Instead of staying another night on the mountain, they moved their camp down to another site, and the stranger was never seen again. Maybe the intruder in the woods was harmless, or maybe that group got lucky. My paranoid brain thinks that maybe he was casing the group only to come back the next night and do something.

That story is so creepy to me. The first time I read it, the back of my neck got all tingly, almost like I was feeling someone watching me. But the story becomes terrifying. When you learn that something dark might actually be living in that park. And it's been talked about in whispers for the last 150 years. See, since the 1870s, there's been rumors of feral people living in the great Smoky Mountains. Something it's a group of people, others think it's just one man dubbed quote the wild man.

After a group of gold miners spotted him in 1877. They described him as quote, giant, six foot five inches with a funnel-shaped head and two-inch long dark hair covering his body. When he spotted the miners, he pounded on his chest before turning and bounding off into the woods with the speed of a deer. The party tracked him down with guns to a cave deep in the mountains, where they found bones of many animals scattered about, indicating he had been living there a while. This might be why so many people believe there's a Sasquatch living in the Appalachian

mountains. Maybe what was spotted in the mountains all those years ago was encrypted. But other stories about the feral humans say that a group of people decided during the Great Depression to live off the land in the woods rather than die of starvation in their homes. This group stayed a small colony in the forest, rejecting the rules of society and becoming more wild with every passing generation. You can find plenty of eyewitness accounts online of these Pharaoh people, but probably

the most widely reported case, the one most people look to as proof of the Pharaoh people is the disappearance of Dennis Martin. Dennis Martin was just six years old when his family took a camping trip to the Great Smoky Mountains in June of 1969. It was a family tradition to camp for Father's Day weekend, and the family of four set up camp in a clearing known as Spence Field. I imagine the scene was incredibly similar to the Ranger in his group of middle schoolers. Spence Field is a slight trek up the mountain, sitting at almost 5,000 feet elevation, right on the edge of the North Carolina and Tennessee border. It's known for its beautiful

wildflower blooms in early summer, and it's actually bisected by the famous Appalachian Trail. So on June 14th, the Martins were there at the perfect time to take in all of its beauty. But that withered away when Dennis' older brother ran to his parents, claiming that he couldn't find him anywhere. Dennis and his brothers met two younger boys and were playing hide and go seek. That day, Dennis was wearing a bright red and green shirt, so the other boys decided that he would give them away

if they all hid together. So he was ordered to hide by himself, while the other two boys stuck together and Dennis' brother counted. That was the last time anyone saw Dennis again. His parents searching the trail turned up nothing, so they alerted the park rangers who sent out a message to start a search party. Within hours of Dennis' disappearance, it started downpouring, and the search party worried that any valuable evidence would be washed away in the storm. The only evidence that ever turned up was two footprints, one bear and one of an Oxford shoe,

which is what Dennis wore that day. The prints were leading to a stream nearby, but both prints were believed to be too big to be Dennis' according to the boy's parents. During the search however, five miles away from where Dennis went missing, a state highway engineer named Harold Key was camping with his family when he heard a child scream echo out of the woods. When he went to see what was happening, he found an unkempt man running towards him. The man left behind a hand-drawn map as he jumped into a white chevrolet and drove off.

The contents of the map were never revealed, and this lead wasn't pursued by police. Many locals in Appalachia are raised with legends about feral people in the mountains. Some legends say that they're cannibals. Some say they look more like beasts than humans, with milky white eyes and more hair than is typical for a person. We're not sure if this person running out of the woods actually matched that description,

but no trace of Dennis was ever found. Though in 1985, a forager called police to say that a few years after Dennis' disappearance, he found a child skeleton 10 miles from where Dennis was last seen. He had waited years to call in the tip because he was foraging illegally. When police went to go check, however, no remains were found. I don't want to say definitively what happened, because I don't know, and a lot of people feel the same way. But it does shed a new light on the park ranger's story and the man who was watching his camp.

Okay, so we've heard a few stories about people being the threat in the park, but I want to share with you some stories of the thing that I'm constantly afraid of in national parks. The parks themselves are also incredibly dangerous if you don't follow proper safety measures, and each year freak accidents within the park claim lives. A few of those stories after the break. I want to take you now to Yellowstone National Park. For those unfamiliar, Yellowstone is in the northwest corner of Wyoming, and it's most known for its amazing wildlife. Seriously, almost every video you see on the internet

of a bison blocking cars in the middle of the road is from Yellowstone. But the defining feature of Yellowstone is its geysers and hot springs. Bubbly cauldrons spurting from the earth and teal pools of the clearest water you've ever seen. It's magical. Take Sapphire pool for instance. It's a crystal clear pool of deep sapphire water, so blue it looks fake. It's naturally heated by volcanic activity churning deep beneath the earth, and it's surrounded by mountains and blue sky. On a frozen winter day, it's tempting to want to just dive in. But sapphire pool is warmed to the temperature of 159 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's almost 66 degrees Celsius. Do you know what would happen if you jumped in? Well, human skin is destroyed immediately at 162 degrees, so let's say you have a few seconds before that happens. After you dive in, you'd start experiencing the worst pain of your entire life as every cell in the outer layer of your skin dies, and the heat starts to damage the layers underneath. In some parts, so badly that there's no skin left in just a few minutes, this trauma to your body causes your skin to turn black, and your organs start failing.

And this is all because you were lucky enough to not fall into one of the acidic pools in Yellowstone. If that were to happen, every cell in your body would start dissolving before you even knew what was happening. If you're able to somehow swim out of the pool, you'd be left with third degree burns all over your body, so bad that survival would be a miracle. And all the while, you're still in the worst pain of your life. This is maybe what went through Park Rangers' heads last year when they found a shoe with a foot still in it,

floating around in a bispul, the deepest of the hot springs in Yellowstone. DNA evidence was able to identify the foot as belonging to 70-year-old Il Hun Ro, but still, no one is really sure how he ended up in the pool in the first place. It is believed that the rest of his remains dissolved. The recorded history of people getting into these hot springs, both accidentally and intentionally, spans over 100 recorded years. And before that, the Kiawa and Tuku Dika tribes would use the springs for medicinal purposes and ceremonies. They would walk straight up to the acidic pools to dip animal bones inside of them and

deflash them within minutes. I can only imagine the accidents that happened while doing that. In 1905, a 40-year-old woman named Fanny Weeks was traveling through Yellowstone in a stage coach with her travel companion, Miss Hartman. It was reported that Fanny was standing by the Giant Tess Geyser, cleaning her glasses, when she absentmindedly stepped backwards and fell directly into a surrounding spring. For reference, the Giant Tess Geyser has an average temperature of 196 degrees Fahrenheit and is boiling in the center. Fannie was pulled from the Geyser and rushed to a local hotel. Wound care back then

wasn't great. Pioneers would seal burns with something like animal fat, egg whites, or beeswax, and then they would apply strong tea or sometimes calf manure overnight to the burn. Fanny died three weeks after the event. But Fanny was in Yellowstone before there was infrastructure. Back then, you could just walk up to a hot spring. There was no guardrails, no viewing stations, nothing to protect people from the geysers. So you would think after the protections were put in place that the death rate plummeted. But the deaths didn't stop then. Don Cressy was a cook at the old faithful lodge located inside of the National Park.

It was just summer work, and Cressy had spent the last three summers there, starting when he was 17. He knew the park better than most other employees, and according to others, he definitely acted like it. Because of this, Cressy was not really a fan favorite amongst the other young employees. But on Sunday, June 29, 1975, it seemed to not matter, because he was invited to a hot potting party to be attended by 10-20 other employees and their friends. A hotpotting party was when after work a bunch of the employees would go soak in one of the tepid hot springs. But Cressy never made it to the party. And it seemed like no one missed his presence because that night everyone at the party

went back to their cabins without him. No one bothered to check where he went even though he said he would be there. It wasn't until the following Tuesday, when a small child found Cressy's body floating in a hot spring that was 179 degrees Fahrenheit. Not all of his remains were remaining, if you know what I mean, as the water had been cooking his body for two days at that point. Local legend says that he jumped into the wrong hot spring while trying to attend the party, but the evidence doesn't really point to that. Given the circumstances, the fact that Cressy knew the park and he knew which hot springs

to not get into, mixed with a contempt that some of the others in the group felt towards him, and how he was found fully clothed, not stripped down like he was intending on jumping into the pool. This all led to the FBI getting involved. They weren't convinced that this was an accident, and neither were some of his friends. Two of the girls working there that summer, that new Cressy, still believed 40 years later that someone may have pushed him in. They remembered that his car was found back at his cabin. He had driven to the hot spring with someone. Yet to this day, his death remains ruled accidental.

The hot spring that took Cressy's life was dubbed the Savage Killer after the event, and perhaps something that led investigators to feel as if this death were accidental was how this hot spring had already killed another employee eight years prior. On July 12, 1967, Brian Parsons was a college student in New York working at Yellowstone for the summer. That night was his birthday, so he and some friends wanted to go on a late night excursion to the Savage Killer hot spring, just north of Old Faithful Lodge, the area that Cressy and his friends worked in. The boys didn't bring really anything with them. No flashlights, no proper permit to be in the area, so maybe it was dark and he couldn't

see the almost boiling hot spring in front of him. Or it could be that he did and he dove in head first, unaware. But either way, Brian made his way into the savage killer. His friends could tell it was an emergency immediately and one tried to rescue him and actually got him out of the water and back into their car. His friends were panicking. They could tell by Brian's raw red skin that he was in bad shape but they were able to get him to a hospital. Brian stayed alive for 12 days, but eventually succumbed to his burns. The geysers in Yellowstone are a silent threat, and often it's too late to do anything

once you've accidentally fallen in. There are many other stories I could tell you of people who have been harmed in the hot springs, and I'll do more episodes on this in the future, but I want to talk about another park, even more famous for its silent threat. Another park where once you start falling, no one can save you. Let's go to the Grand Canyon, a 277 mile long chasm in the earth, cut by the Colorado River. It's one of the most awe-inspiring sites on the entire planet, but it's also one of the most terrifying. Many areas of this massive crevice are unprotected by guardrails, meaning that there is nothing in place to protect guests from free falling to their deaths. Take one area, aptly name the Abyss for its 3,000 foot free fall into the canyon. Standing on the south rim of the park, you can walk

straight up to the edge and look down at the over half mile fall to the bottom. Just one step, and you'll spend the next 13 seconds falling until you hit the ground at almost 300 miles per hour. And though it may seem obvious at the edge that death would be imminent, people still love to get dangerously close. Take fashion designer Deedy Johnson, for instance, who in 1946 fell over the edge while modeling her new design, petal pushers, which were essentially the first leggings for women. She was posing in front of a group of photographers

when she stepped without looking and tumbled over a small wall off the edge. A ranger who was standing nearby, who, moments before had been shouting at her to step away from the wall, ran to the edge and peered over, expecting the worst. From where she had fallen, she should have been a mangled heap at the bottom of a 300 foot drop. But when the ranger looked down, Dee Dee was looking back at him. She had slid down a small slope before the drop, and she was now sitting about 5 feet away from

the edge of the plunge. The only thing holding her in place was the friction of her body against the rock, but her weight was slowly scooting her forward. One wrong move, and she'd go over. The Ranger was able to throw a rope down to D.D. and secure it under her arms, pulling her up. However, the force of the rope was stronger than the fabric on the halter top she was wearing, and the Ranger pulled her up over the side, completely topless in front of the photographers. It was quite the sight, but it was way better than the alternative. was quite the sight, but it was way better than the alternative. Not everyone is so lucky. Actually, the chance of surviving a fall off the side of the Grand Canyon is as likely

as getting struck by lightning twice. It usually does not work out in people's favor. Years after Dee Dee's slip, on the same exact wall, 28-year-old Lana Virginia Smith faced a very different outcome. It was almost midnight on May 11, 1997, when Clifton Reader was inside the bright angel lodge looking out the window. It was a beautiful, clear night. But as his eyes scanned down from the starry night sky towards the canyon, he saw the shape of a woman, stumbling around the ledge. It was Lana Virginia Smith, and she was wasted, out on the lip of the canyon. Clifton didn't want to run outside and spook her. She looked like she

was close enough to the edge where one jerky movement would send her over. So he quickly called the National Park Service to report what he was seeing. He relayed everything to a dispatcher who told him they'd get a ranger on it. Just after he hangs up, he sees the wobbly outline of Lana plummet over the side. The emergency call made its way to park ranger Keith McCalliff, who booked it over to the lodge area, but by the time McCalliff got there, he saw Clifton standing over the edge looking down. She's over the edge, he shouted. McCalliff ran over and looked down to Cilana, 20 feet below, holding on with all she could

to the steep, smooth slope, just a feet from the 300-foot freefall. For reference, that would be like falling off the top of the statue of Liberty's torch. She was also still incredibly drunk. She tried to scoot yourself up the slope, but that caused her to slide forward another 5 feet closer to the edge. McCall have had to act fast. He radioed other Rangers to bring supplies. Maybe he could somehow fast and erope like they had done with Dee Dee years before and pull Lana up.

But before anyone could get there, Lana tried to hoist herself up again and slid even further towards the edge. Now her toes were dangling over the side. Soon, two rangers arrived, awoken by McCall of the radio call. One had a rope and the other had climbing equipment. The plan was to have one of the men rappel down and grab Lana, who was now half on her back, half on her side, trying to hold onto a small shrub growing out of a crevice in the rock. One of the men started slowly down the side, but he saw how urgently he needed to grab

the wailing woman. He threw her some of his rope and shouted for her to catch it, but when Lana released one of her hands, she slid even further. Her legs and torso now going over the edge and just her hands and head visible to the Rangers as she gripped the shrub with all of her strength. Loose rocks and dirt tumbled past her off the ledge and into the pitch black abyss below her. The rope was now close enough for her to grab, but her clouded judgment wouldn't let her

release a hand from the shrub to reach for it. Her wailing was uncontrollable as one of the rangers tried to repel as quickly as possible to grab her. Then, in the blink of an eye, the rangers watched in horror as her hand slipped from the shrub and the last of her disappeared from sight. Her scream was described as the Doppler effect, three seconds of a siren shrill before silence. Lana's body was discovered 230 feet below where she clung onto. There was never a chance she would survive the fall, but the confirmation still hurt the Rangers when they discovered her with their mag-light flashlights.

These stories are both decades old, and you may think that in time, people have become more aware of their surroundings, the dangers of the canyon, and casualties have gone down. I wish that were true, but there seems to be a new silent killer at these parks. The dreaded selfie. Each year brings a multitude of guests who plummet off the side of the canyon while trying to get the perfect shot, like Maria Salgado Lopez, who stepped off the side of the canyon while taking a photo in 2020. Or in 2019, when the body of a man in his

50s who had been taking photos was recovered from 1,000 feet below where his last photo was taken. The chances of any of these stories happening to you is still low, as long as we pay attention to our surroundings in the parks. A lot of these tragedies were preventable, though still terrifying to hear about. I still love to travel to these places, but I know I've probably cut it a little too close in search of a perfect shot, and I'm lucky nothing happened. I know I'm going to think of these stories often, and next time, as I'm setting up a tent or walking through the woods, when I get a chill down my spine and think it's just the wind, was it nothing?

Or is there something lurking? This has been Heart Starts Pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelin Moore, music by Art List. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grace and Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffy. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. And special shout out to our new patrons, Robert Sarah Haley Mary Jane, Skylar Elizabeth, Dana Alicia Lisa Casey, Maria Troy Erica, Kinsley, Carly Avery Elizabeth, Dana Alicia, Lisa Casey, Maria, Troy Erica,

Kinsley, Carly Avery, Edgar, Sydney, Jennifer, and Cherry, Cherry. Just kidding. That one's my mom, Cherry. Thanks mom. Until next time, stay curious.