Appalachian Horror: The Burrow in Monongahela

1. The Man Who Needed Silence

The Appalachian Trail has a way of swallowing noise. Cars, phones, office chatter, all of it fades behind the tree line until the only things left are wind, birds, and your own heartbeat.

In September 2006, that was exactly what Michael Harrison wanted.

At thirty‑nine, Michael was tired in a way that sleep didn’t touch. Years of working in IT support for a mid‑sized firm in Pittsburgh had left him with frayed nerves, a clenched jaw, and a simmering resentment toward every email marked “URGENT.” His marriage had dissolved quietly the previous winter, like ice under blacktop—no drama, just distance. His ex‑wife moved out. The house felt too big and too silent. The city felt too close and too loud.

So he did what he’d always said he would do “someday”: he requested two weeks off and drove south, into West Virginia, toward the vast, forested sprawl of the Monongahela National Forest.

He didn’t choose that forest at random. The Monongahela was one of those names hikers spoke with a certain reverence—a place of deep ravines, old growth stands of hardwood, and trails that slithered along knife-edge ridges. Parts of the Appalachian Trail brushed its boundaries, and other, lesser-known paths threaded through its heart like veins.

More importantly, the park had campsites far from everything. Places where you could wake up and not hear a single man‑made sound for days.

On September 9th, Michael pulled his aging Subaru Outback into a gravel lot at the edge of one such trail. A wooden sign announced “Red Hollow Loop – Backcountry Access”. The morning was cool, mist clinging to the treetops, the air smelling of wet leaves and the faint tang of pine.

 

 

He killed the engine.

Silence rolled in.

For a moment, he just sat there, hands still on the steering wheel, listening to the unfamiliar quiet. No honking. No sirens. No neighbor’s TV leaking through the walls. Just birds somewhere deep in the forest and the occasional drip of condensed fog falling from leaves.

He exhaled slowly.

—Okay —he murmured to no one—. Let’s do this.

He stepped out of the car. The gravel crunched under his boots. He popped the hatch and pulled out his pack—a sturdy, well‑used thing he’d bought back in college when he thought he’d be the kind of person who went backpacking every summer. Life had quickly trained him otherwise.

Sleeping bag, small tent, stove, food for seven days, water filter, maps, first aid kit. He’d double‑checked everything the night before, his nervousness making him methodical. The pack hugged his shoulders and hips when he shouldered it, heavy but reassuring. On his head, he settled his faded Pittsburgh Pirates cap, the brim curved perfectly from years of wear.

He locked the car, slid the keys deep into a zippered pocket, and tightened the chest strap.

Then he stepped onto the trail and let the forest close around him.

2. Red Hollow

The trail wound gradually upward at first, weaving between tall tulip poplars and oaks. Sunlight filtered through in dappled patches, lighting up ferns and moss-covered rocks. It was the kind of morning that made you believe in fresh starts.

As he walked, Michael could feel the chatter in his head slowly quiet.

He thought about the last argument with his ex, how it hadn’t really been an argument at all. More like two people reading statements in a court of law. No yelling, no slammed doors, just finality.

He thought about the dozens of times he’d promised himself to “get away” and never did.

And, somewhere between those thoughts, he started to notice other things: the way the trail narrowed as it met a ridge, the distant, hollow tapping of a woodpecker, the sudden hush when the wind died in the trees.

Around midday, he reached a rocky outcrop that gave him a view of the valley below. Green, in late summer fullness, stretching toward hazy blue ridges. He sat, ate a granola bar, drank water, and felt more at peace than he had in months.

He also felt alone.

He hadn’t seen another person since he left the parking lot.

Part of him liked that. Part of him wished, distantly, for some hiker’s wave, some casual remark about the weather.

He shook the thought off. That’s why he’d chosen this trail—Red Hollow was marked as “lightly used” in the guidebook. Solitude was the point.

By late afternoon, the trail dipped down into a narrow ravine where a stream murmured over stones. Here, the air was cooler, damp, carrying the rich smell of earth and decaying leaves.

According to the map, a designated backcountry campsite sat just off the trail near this stream—a flat area where campers had occasionally set up over the years, with a fire ring and enough space for a few tents.

He found it easily: a slight clearing tucked into a bend in the ravine, sheltered by laurel thickets and a leaning hemlock. It felt tucked away, like a secret.

—Home sweet home —he said softly.

He dropped his pack, rolled his sore shoulders, and pitched his tent. The motions came back to him quickly—unfold, stake, slide the poles, clip. Within twenty minutes, he had shelter.

He collected some fallen branches, set up his stove, and boiled water for a dehydrated meal. As the sun slid lower, the ravine filled with shadow. The stream’s murmur grew louder in the relative silence.

Michael ate, watching the trees slowly lose their color to dusk. When he was done, he cleaned up meticulously, hanging his food from a high branch a good distance away—black bears were known in these parts, and he didn’t want curious visitors.

When night finally settled fully, it was like someone gently turned down the dimmer on the world.

He crawled into his tent, zipped the flap, and lay back on his sleeping bag, listening.

In the city, darkness was never complete and silence never total. Here, the night was thick. Sound behaved differently. Crickets chirped. An owl called once, twice. Something small scurried through the underbrush nearby.

He checked his watch; it glowed green in the dark.

9:23 p.m.

He closed his eyes and let the forest sounds wash over him.

He fell asleep thinking that this might be the first good decision he’d made in a long time.

3. The Night Things Shifted

The dream, when it came, was one he’d had before: he was back in his cubicle, only the ceiling tiles were replaced by tree branches and the fluorescent lights were stars. His computer screen showed nothing but an error message: “CONNECTION LOST.” He kept clicking and clicking.

A dripping sound began somewhere nearby. At first he thought it was a leaky pipe. Then the dripping turned into a sniffing sound, heavy and wet, and he realized he wasn’t in the office at all.

He woke with a jerk.

The tent was dark. For a second, he had no idea where he was. Then the smell hit him: damp nylon, cold air, the faint tang of his own sweat.

And something else.

A whiff of rot.

He lay still, heart pounding, trying to decide if it was real or a leftover scrap of the dream.

The sound that followed answered that.

Not ten feet from his head, outside the thin tent wall, something exhaled.

It was a sound far too deep to be human—a long, slow whoosh of air pushed from a massive chest, followed by a faint, guttural rumble on the exhale. It vibrated faintly in the tent poles.

The smell intensified, seeping in: a sweet, foul, organic stink like roadkill left too long in the sun, layered over damp soil.

Every muscle in Michael’s body locked. Instinct screamed don’t move.

He’d camped enough in bear country to know that animals came through camps at night sometimes. Deer. Raccoons. Once, years ago, a black bear had snuffled along his old campsite, turned over his cooler, then wandered off when nothing interesting came of it.

He told himself it was a bear now.

Just a bear.

A very big bear.

The exhalation came again, this time closer to the tent door, followed by a faint scratching sound—like claws or nails tracing the ground.

Michael’s mouth went dry.

He realized, with a small spike of embarrassment, that his heart was beating so hard he was sure whatever was outside could hear it.

He risked the tiniest movement, lifting his wrist to his face to check his watch.

2:41 a.m.

He lay there, counting breaths, hoping whatever it was would lose interest and move on.

Then he heard a new sound.

Something touched the tent wall.

A gentle, testing poke that bowed the nylon inward near his feet.

It withdrew.

Another touch, higher this time, dragging along the fabric, slow and curious.

The silhouette it made was wrong for a bear. Too high off the ground. Too deliberate. The contact point wasn’t a paw. It was narrower. More like fingers.

His scalp crawled.

The smell thickened until he could taste it, cloying in the back of his throat. Putrefaction. Wet fur. Old blood.

He squeezed his eyes shut, irrationally hoping that if he couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see him.

He didn’t scream. He didn’t speak.

And then, as suddenly as it had started, the touching stopped.

Silence.

No exhalations. No sniffing.

After what felt like an eternity but was probably less than a minute, he heard footsteps.

Not the four‑beat shuffling of a bear.

Two steps at a time. Heavy. Deliberate.

Something walked away from his tent on two legs, each footfall thudding through the soil and leaf litter before fading into the ravine’s darkness.

The smell lingered a while longer, then thinned.

Michael stayed awake until dawn, every small noise magnified. When the first pale light filtered through the tent, he finally sat up, stiff and cold, and unzipped the flap with shaking hands.

He half expected to see claw marks shredded through the fabric, his camp torn apart.

Everything was exactly where he’d left it.

Except for one thing.

His cap, which he’d hung neatly from a branch just inside the tent entrance, was gone.

He blinked, frowning, and stepped out into the damp morning.

His pack was untouched. The food bag still hung from its tree, swaying gently. Stove, pot, boots, everything in its place.

But the small branch he’d looped his Pirates cap over was empty.

He checked around the tent, thinking it might have blown off.

Nothing.

He glanced down at the ground and felt his stomach lurch.

Just outside the tent, in a patch of moist soil near the stream, was a footprint.

It was shallow, partially smudged, but there was no mistaking the general shape: a bare, humanlike foot, larger than any human’s had a right to be. Five toes. Broad forefoot. Heel deep in the mud.

He knelt, hand hovering over it.

It was at least fourteen inches long, maybe more. A narrow edge at the front suggested a calloused big toe.

He withdrew his hand as if the print might burn him.

—Jesus… —he whispered.

The rational part of his mind scrambled for explanations: a hoax, a trick of the mud, his own track distorted.

But his own boots had left crisp treads elsewhere in the soft earth, the lug patterns clear. This print had no tread. No sign of any shoe.

He looked around, pulse pounding.

The forest stared back, indifferent.

It took him less than an hour to decide he’d had enough solitude.

By 9 a.m., his tent was packed and his backpack strapped on. He gave the clearing one last uneasy glance and started up the trail, heading back toward the car.

He never made it.

4. Disappearance

What exactly happened between the campsite and the trailhead, no one knows.

No one was there to see if Michael heard another sound. If he stopped to rest. If he felt watched. If he walked faster, heart pounding, and glanced over his shoulder one too many times.

What is known is this:

When Michael failed to return to Pittsburgh on the agreed date, his sister grew concerned. He was supposed to be back on September 16th. By the 18th, his cell phone still went straight to voicemail.

On the 19th, she called the Monongahela National Forest offices, voice shaking, and reported him overdue.

Two days later, rangers found his Subaru sitting alone in the gravel lot at Red Hollow trailhead. No sign of vandalism. A thin layer of dust on the hood. Inside, a half‑empty coffee cup had grown a skin of mold.

A search and rescue operation was launched quickly—he was exactly the kind of hiker they could sometimes get to in time. Experienced enough to be prepared. Not so foolish as to wander off‑trail for fun.

Teams combed Red Hollow. They found the campsite easily: disturbed ground, the faint circle where a tent had stood, some ashes in a small fire ring.

They also found something else.

About thirty yards downslope from the campsite, near a bend in the ravine where the ground turned soft and dark with seepage, a deputy almost stepped into a hole.

At first he thought it was a washed‑out section of the bank, a collapsed den of some sort. But the shape was wrong. Too round. Too deliberate.

The burrow was about four feet across at its mouth, a yawning black gap in the earth reinforced by roots and rocks. The soil around it was churned up, clawed or dug, piled in mounded heaps flanking the entrance.

And it stank.

Even from several feet away, the smell rolled out in waves: a rotten, meaty stench undercut by the sour tang of animal musk and damp soil. One ranger gagged behind his gloved hand.

At the very lip of this hole, partially pressed into the mud as if someone had stepped on it, lay a familiar object.

A faded Pittsburgh Pirates cap.

The inside band was stained with old sweat. The brim was bent the way long‑time wearers bend them.

Michael Harrison’s name was sharpied under the brim.

There was no blood visible on it. No obvious sign of tearing, though one side was smeared with mud.

Nearby, in the mud rimming the burrow entrance, were prints.

Not many. The ground there was uneven and root‑tangled. But in two places, the mud had retained clear impressions.

They were footprints.

Bare. Huge. Five toes with a spread that suggested something comfortable moving without shoes. The longest print was nearly eighteen inches long. The depth of the heel suggested enormous weight.

The searchers took photos. Then they took plaster casts.

They did not go into the burrow.

One ranger, a man with twenty years experience, tried to lower himself down a few feet with a headlamp. The beam illuminated tunnel walls slick with moisture and something else—dark streaks, clinging in irregular patches.

The smell intensified, coiling up like a living thing.

When several fat, white maggots wriggled into view on the lip of the tunnel, the ranger jerked back, eyes watering.

—Nope —he croaked—. Not without hazmat and backup.

In the end, they flagged the site, photographed everything, and radioed the sheriff’s department.

By the time Detective Laura Morgan arrived—a tall woman in her early forties with her hair scraped into a functional ponytail and a permanent air of tired competence—the sun was dragging low behind the trees and the forest was steeping in long shadows.

The cap lay on an evidence sheet. The casts of the prints were already starting to set.

—You sure that’s his? —she asked the lead ranger.

He pointed to the sharpied name.

—Pretty sure.

Morgan crouched near the burrow entrance. Her nose wrinkled.

—Son of a… what died in there?

—Whole herd of somethings —the ranger muttered.

Morgan studied the tunnel for a long moment. The walls looked torn rather than cleanly dug, as if immense hands—or claws—had ripped and scooped. The tunnel sloped downward at a steep angle, vanishing into darkness.

—Any sign he went in? —she asked.

—No prints of his around the mouth —the ranger said—. Just those.

He indicated the huge bare impressions.

—What the hell made those? —Morgan murmured.

The ranger just shook his head.

That night, back at the temporary command post, she called someone she only thought she’d ever call for bones, not for holes in the ground.

A forensic anthropologist named Dr. Andrew Cole.

5. The Specialist

By the time Dr. Andrew Cole arrived two days later, the forest had decided to change season. The air held a new edge of cold, and leaves had started to fire at the edges with hints of orange and red.

Cole was in his mid‑forties, average height, with the slightly stooped posture of someone used to hunching over tables and microscopes. He carried himself with the calm detachment of a man who spent his days with the dead and couldn’t afford to let any one case crawl too far under his skin.

He met Morgan at the edge of the taped‑off section near the burrow.

—Morning, Detective —he said, offering a hand.

—Doctor —she replied—. Thanks for coming on short notice.

—You said you had possible remains in a confined space —he said—. Confined spaces and bones are my idea of a good time.

She snorted softly.

—You might want to hold off on the jokes until you smell the place.

He did.

He didn’t joke after that.

—Jesus —he muttered behind his respirator, eyes watering—. You weren’t kidding.

Both of them wore coveralls and respirators, the way they would at a particularly noxious crime scene. They’d rigged a rope system at the mouth of the burrow, with a tripod anchor, so that Cole could lower himself in a controlled way.

A small, battery-powered fan hummed at the entrance, trying and failing to push some fresh air into the reeking tunnel.

—We’re only going down as far as the safety line allows —Morgan reminded him—. If it looks unstable, or you feel dizzy, you get your ass back up here.

—Yes, Mom —he said dryly, though his knuckles were tight on the rope.

He switched on his headlamp.

The beam cut into the darkness, illuminating slick earth walls. They glistened with moisture and something else—darker patches that absorbed rather than reflected light.

He crouched at the lip, then slid his legs in, boots finding purchase on the rough earthen slope.

The smell rose up, enveloping him. Even with the respirator, it felt like stepping into the mouth of something that had been feeding for too long.

He descended slowly, hand over hand, the rope creaking softly.

After eight feet, the tunnel angled more sharply. The walls grew narrower, then opened slightly into a small, roughly rounded chamber.

—There’s a… kind of pocket here —he called up, his voice muffled.

—You see anything? —Morgan’s voice floated down.

—Let me look.

He turned his head slowly. The beam crawled across the chamber.

For a moment, all he saw was packed earth and root tips.

Then the light caught on something white.

He moved toward it cautiously, boots sinking slightly into the soft floor.

It was a bone.

No question. Even partially coated in dark grime, its pale curve was unmistakable. As he got closer, he saw it was a fragment of a human tibia, the lower part of the shinbone. The ends were jagged, not cleanly cut.

His heart rate ticked up.

Beyond it, half-submerged in the earth, lay other shapes. Rounded, irregular. At first he thought they might be river stones. Then his training corrected him.

Skull fragments. Vertebrae. Rib segments.

There were bones everywhere, embedded in the floor and walls like someone had mixed them into the earth itself.

Some were old, crumbly, stained dark. Others were more recent, their surfaces still relatively smooth.

He knelt, ignoring the protesting muscles in his thighs, and leaned in closer to a cluster of long bone fragments.

The ends were not gnawed like you’d expect with a carnivore. There were no ragged tooth marks, no punctures, no canine pits.

Instead, the breaks were clean in some sections and crushed in others, with parallel scrape marks leading to the fracture point.

He’d seen that pattern before. Not often, but enough that it rang a bell he didn’t like.

He swallowed.

—Detective? —he called.

—Yeah? —her voice echoed faintly.

—You might want to start thinking of this less as an “accidental disappearance” and more as a… specialized disposal site.

—What does that mean, Cole?

He brushed dirt away from another bone fragment and felt his stomach knot.

—It means someone—or something—has been bringing bodies down here for a while.

He picked up a segment of femur. The shaft had been cracked open, the marrow channel exposed. The edges were crushed inward, bearing the same parallel striations.

Like something had gripped and levered the bone until it snapped, then scooped out the marrow.

It wasn’t random destruction.

It was feeding.

At this point, we’ve set up:

Michael’s last night and the ominous, bipedal visitor.
His disappearance and the chilling discovery of the burrow and cap.
The forensic descent into the lair, where bones show systematic processing—suggesting a powerful, intelligent predator.