Hello Subscribers and Fans of True Horror! I am back after a very interesting and a bit off-putting overnight in a location I’d prefer to forget about!
I was invited on a quick jaunt and found myself in the company of some avid hikers and campers (Of which I am neither!). In the interest of my readers who love true accounts of the strange and bizarre, I am devoting all of September and October into Halloween, stories from people I have met in my travels here in my local area of the east coast of the US.
Once in a while I do get some very absorbing true stories from the midwest and beyond and this is one of those stories. It’s actually from one of the fellow hikers I met on this three day trip into Colorado. So here’s my friend’s account who prefers to be called “Dan” for the purposes of this story. Dan has been a solo hiker and avid fly-fisherman who makes his home in Colorado Springs. Dan has been joining hikers and campers since this encounter and this is how I met him.
This event you’re about to read from Dan is when he decided to tackle the backcountry of Wyoming. Namely Medicine Bow National Park, north of Colorado. Dan retold me his encounter while we were camping overnight at the Rocky Mountain National Forest. It was not a good story to tell at the time even though there were about a dozen of us on this trip, as I was always last in line with my hefty backpack to cross streams and walk the established trails. Dan stayed behind to make sure I didn’t trip or accidentally go off-trail. For that I am very thankful, especially after hearing THIS story from him.
Without further preamble, here’s Dan’s account:
I’m not shy about hiking into the backcountry as I’ve been doing it since I was about nine years young. My dad was a fisherman and so was my uncle, his brother. My dad decided that since he had two sons, me and my younger brother, Johnny, to take us to every forest and park near us in our home state of Colorado. Well, growing up, I got the full tour, my brother and I, in the company of my dad and our uncle who lived for hiking and fishing. They knew every river, lake and stream. We always ate what we caught afterwards, camping under the night sky and dining while the fish was roasting over the fire.
One of the places that my dad didn’t take us to is Medicine Bow National Park. I guess because it was further than he wanted for some reason, dad omitted that park. Well, I was getting more wanderlust and now that I’m an adult in my thirties, I was going to go into the further. Furthest reaches, that is, for me.
I picked an early morning in the early summer to drive to Medicine Bow with only a gps by my side. It was a work day and I had taken a vacation from work for a week, determined to drive halfway, stay overnight somewhere and then get out early to finally make the final few hours to the trailhead.
I headed out Monday morning before rush hour hit and made good time past Denver’s city limits. Closing into the smaller towns, I rested around three and decided to locate a motel of sorts to lay down my head, eat a leisurely dinner and take a sleep on a real pillow. I had with me my gear, including a four person tent with plenty of energy bars, gorp of water pills.
I locked the car and left the larger pack in the back seat of my truck, figuring it was safe there which it was. I came back from the diner around seven and decided to flick on the motel television in the room which to my surprise was a big-screen TV. Go figure. I must’ve fallen asleep during a movie I put on and woke up to some show like The Twilight Zone. It was, believe me, apropos.
I was a bit disoriented when I looked to my left and discovered a very strong streetlight shining right outside my window. Curious, I leaped out of bed, figuring it was the office with a flashlight or some guy standing out there with what appeared to be a very strong flashlight. I slowly walked up to the sole window facing the parking lot where my truck was parked and hoped no one was messing with my truck.
Then, as I made to move to part the curtains, the light began ascending. It was moving higher and higher like it was part of a plane.
(This is part of a two-part account. STAY TUNED for part two of the Medicine Bow Affair!)