48| Sunday Scary with Off the Trails
This is a very special episode! Danielle and from off the trails joined together for this collaboration talking about spooky trials that you can wander all over the world.
this blog only contains the stories that kayla, here at tragedy with a view prepared. be sure to give the episode a listen to hear all the trails.
Angelina’s Aldridge Sawmill
Angelina national forest is a beautiful and alluring location in eastern Texas that draws people in from near and far to play among the pines, fish within the reservoirs, and sink into the delight this hot summer and mild winter environment brings.
But, there is one trail that will change all of that.
Angelina national forest was established in 1936 and is one of 4 national forests in Texas and spans 153,179 acres over 4 counties. The forest offers management of wildlife, timber, ecosystems, ground minerals and fire to help create the best wilderness outcomes they can offer.
The forest has on average 19 wildfires per year, 93% of which are caused by people and these fires burn about 318 acres of forest each year.
There are several lakes, reservoirs, and dams in and around the park, making the trail system really elegant and scenic with the waters highlighting the tree lines they flow through.
Walking through the forest today you can look up at trees towering towards the sky, but this is mostly due to efforts made during the Great Depression to reseed the ground and grow new trees.
This is because, between Bouton Lake and Boykin spring recreation area, lies a trail to a town that was abandoned in 1920. This trail had a spooky and unsettling feeling to it, and every now and then, something happens that haunts hikers as they make their way down the path.
You see, this 5.5 mile or 8.8 km out and back trail leads to the abandoned sawmill town of Aldridge.
Aldridge was a small town that developed in 1880s when Hal Aldridge started a lumber manufacturing plant in order to take advantage of what was considered the bonanza period where 615 sawmills were operating in east Texas in order to take advantage of the low regulations on deforestation and harvesting the yellow pines that grew to 150 feet or 46 m in height and were often 5 feet or 1.5 meters in diameter.
Aldridge, along with many other towns, created entire communities for the workers and their families, building and opening churches, doctors offices, post offices and stores.
In 1911 the entire mill burned to the ground due to a disgruntled worker, and in order to obtain insurance after this, the town was required to build large concrete rooms in order to house the mill’s steam engines, boilers and dry kilns.
In 1914 and 1915, two more fire occurred, the second again burned down the mill and after it was rebuilt in 1918, something really devastating occurred.
These sawmill machines were pretty much run as fast as possible and it was not uncommon for someone to be injured. Because of the roller system used to push these giant trees through, there wasn’t a way to cut the power off nor was there any protection from the saw, and between 1880 and 1910 the East Texas newspapers were filled with incidents where workers lost hands, arms, feet, legs, and sometimes their lives.
And that’s not even considering the dangers in falling trees, or logs that come loose and roll over people who don’t get out of the way.
In 1919, a young woman was delivering lunch to her boyfriend while he worked in the mill. This was not uncommon, as many mothers and wives would deliver food to their loved ones as working in the mill was an exhausting and dangerous job.
Her boyfriend was standing near the saw when she approached him, and it was here that maybe it was her hair, or her clothing that got caught in the rollers and drug her toward the saw.
her blood curdling screams can be heard through the millennia, as the blades from the saw sliced into her, and she was killed while her boyfriend stood by helplessly.
Those screams can still be heard on the wind as it winds through the pines, and her presence can be felt as she aimlessly wanders through the abandoned mill.
By the 1920s, the mill had been shut down and within 5 years the town was a literal ghost town. Today you can still see the remains of the concrete buildings, but that’s all that is left of the town that once stood here.
Here the trees have grown into the concrete and graffiti has soaked into the pores making it now impossible to clean.
Even with the ghost of the young woman who lets out these vicious screams, you never quite get the feeling of being alone while exploring this area. And this might be because she is not the only death to have occurred here.
Logging was, of course, a dangerous and deadly job. Workers have also lost their lives here and many were angry.
Shadows have been said to move oddly, almost as if a person is stalking among what is left of town.
And as the trees whisper in the night, voices echo off the concrete walls, angry at the disastrous conditions workers were forced to labor in.
Stepping onto this trail might start out feeling like a grand adventure where you can step back in time for a couple of hours and settle into nature and allow the sun and fresh air to help you relax.
But it is these Ruins in the woods, that will set you on edge, and if you’re not brave, your own screams just might be heard as you sprint back to the trailhead.
Sources:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/texas/about-forest/districts/?cid=fswdev3_008439
https://moonmausoleum.com/the-haunted-aldridge-sawmill-ghost-town-in-angelina-national-forest/?amp=1
https://kfox95.com/abandoned-sawmill-town-scariest-east-texas/
Germany’s Black forest
The Black Forest of Germany contains stories of lore that were used for the inspiration of fairytales. But as many know, fairytales haven’t always been the sweet stories and happy endings that Disney sells to anyone willing to listen.
They were meant to terrify children into compliancy and teach them the really difficult life lessons.
I just learned today that this forest is actually a national park, established in 2014. Located in the mountains of southwest Germany along the boarder with France, the Black Forest contains 2320 square miles or 6009 square km of dense evergreen forests, charming villages and just enough fog to let a chill creep into your bones. For those who like acreage better, this park has almost 25,000 acres to it.
The forest expands across lush green valleys and hard granite peaks that provide a balanced contrast to the darker things hidden here.
The foliage here is so thick that from a distance the forest looks black, which is how the area got its name. In fact, when ancient Romans approached this forest as they marched toward Germany, they found this forest to be so dark they would t be able to find their way and completely inaccessible.
There are several trails within the Black Forest that vary in length and of course where they take you. One, for example, is considered a long distance tour of 7 gorges and is 120 km or 75 miles, and there are 55 other trails that lead you through this area, taking you to the mountains, waterfalls, hiking villages and of course, into the dark shadows hovering just on the edge of your vision.
But from these shadows, stories have surfaced that sounds like children’s stories- but more sinister.
Both the stories of Hansel and Gretel and the goose girl have been inspired by these woods. For those who need a quick lesson on those origin stories:
Hansel and Gretel is the story of two children who are abandoned by their parents in the woods after their rations of food get cut and they can’t figure out how to feed the family. This was of course, during a point of famine where cannibalism was thought to be prevalent.
Hansel tried to lay a path of bread crumbs, but when the two children came upon a witches gingerbread cabin, she decided to keep them to fatten them up before she would eat them. Gretel, as wise as she is, outsmarts the witch, kills her, and the two are able to escape with the witches treasures.
The watered down version of the goose girl is the story of a princess who is sent away with a maid to marry a man in a far away land. In the process the maid takes advantage of the girls nievete and switches clothes and threatens to kill her if the princess doesn’t play the part of a maid. So the princess takes an oath and doesn’t say a thing but eventually the prince finds out of the true maids deceit and marries a the real princess. The gruesome part of the original tale comes in when the maid was discovered she was rolled through the city in a spiked barrel as punishment.
While these two fairytales have been inspired by the woods and the dark and mysterious sensations it offers, many more Halloween esk stories that have surfaced over the years.
Like the headless horsemen who were seen atop black horses coming out of the water of one of the ponds.
There is said to be a king within the forest who will kidnap woman and pull them to the depths of the lakes to his castle under the water where he allows them to live the rest of their lives as nymphs.
Then, there is in my opinion, the scariest creature, called the der grossmann, or the tall man. This creature is a humanoid figure like that of slender man that is freakishly tall, thin as slender trees and with solid white, bulging eyes and several arms. Parents used to threaten to send their children into the woods to be hunted by the tall man until they confessed their mistakes.
And the creepy feeling tingling along the back of your neck doesn’t end there. The woods are said to be haunted by a family who was violently murdered and dumped in the woods in 1922 and their murderer was never found. But, after the discovery of the bodies, people began reporting that they were seeing witch like apparitions walking between the trees.
Near the small town of Schonach, some hikers and villagers have seen a creature stalking thought the night waiting for the opportunity to lock gazes with anyone who looks its way, maintaining eye contact while it slowly disappears into the trees.
Maybe more or maybe less haunting is that of the white lady, legend has it that she ran to the forests to be alone after her heart was broken and since then she is only seen when stalking in the mist, wearing a white dress.
And then there is the location of witch trials, where women were burned to their firey grave, and will now curse anyone who walks over the remains of the dungeon.
And if that’s not enough, this forest also suffered horrific storm damage that it is still healing from. On December 26, 1999, storm Lothar (that I’ve also seen refers as hurricane lothar or cyclone lothar) leveled 50,000 acres of trees in two hours. The storm left a path of devastation across France Switzerland and Germany.
Sources: https://thelittlehouseofhorrors.com/the-black-forest/#:~:text=The%20Black%20Forest%20isn't,he%20lives%20among%20the%20nymphs.https://mysteriousadventurestours.com/5-chilling-tales-from-the-black-forest-of-germany/
Wellington avalance of 1910
When the great northern railroad finally pressed through the Cascade mountains in the state of washington and connected the rest of the americas with the west coast, men and woman felt a great sense of pride and fascination that they had finally conquered nature. They had conquered the mountains.
To accomplish this, a railroad community was established in Wellington, Washington in 1893 so that as the railroad company learned that switchbacks up the mountain were not the way to maintain the railroad, this community would be tunneling through the mountain.
Much like the sawmill, these communities housed the workers and their families and the labor was extremely hard and tempers often rose with the sweltering work that accompanied tunneling through a mountain.
The Cascade range is known to be one of the hardest ranges for the railroad company to cross, claiming an uncountable number of lives due to the ice and snow that covered steep cliffs, narrow passes and eventually explosive debris coming from deep within the base of the mountains.
Wellington would establish 2 tunnels, the 2.5 mile or 4 km cascade tunnel in 1900, and the 8 mile or 12.9 km Cascade Tunnel which replaced the need to go over Stevens pass.
On February 24 of 1910, two trains from the Great Northern Railroad were stuck. One was coming from Leavenworth and the other from Spokane and they were both heading toward the coast. One of these trains was carrying mostly passengers and the other carried workers and mail.
They had just made it through the Cascade Tunnel when the snow became too deep for the trains to be able to push through.
In an attempt to free these trains 4 rotary plows were launched. Rotary plows have rotating blades on them to collect and then shoot the snow out the side, similarly to a snow blower. However, on February 25, one hit a stump resulting in damage they couldn’t repair quickly, a second got stuck on February 27 and ran out of fuel trying to get free, and the other two were caught in small avalanches filled with rocks and debris which required the area to be cleared out by shovel, so not to damage the blades of the plow.
To make matters worse, the men who had been hired to shovel out trains when things like this happened were angry about not being paid appropriately for their work, and because of this, Mountain Division supervisor of the railway company fired anyone who didn’t like what they were being paid to shovel snow - which was pretty much everyone.
So, day after day, the trains were unable to move. The area had been receiving a ton of storms releasing snow, rain, thunder and lightning for several days, during the night on march 1, 1910, for an unknown cause, an avalanche broke loose and came barreling down Windy Mountain.
Due to a lack of understanding at the time what fires and deforestation leads to, the slopes had been cleared of trees due to a fire that a train engine had ignited, and the slopes were never replanted. And this resulted in a massive avalanche that was a half a mile wide, and had nothing in its way to slow it down.
Both trains were picked up by the avalanche and carried over the edge of a cliff and down to a ravine, 150 feet or 45 meters below.
But it didn’t stop there. Massive amounts of snow followed the trains and buried them in some places 40 to 70 feet deep or 12 to 21 meters.
Charles Andrews a railway employee saw the avalanche and how it picked up the trains like toys and carried them over the ledge.
In all 96 lives were lost, 61 being railway employees and 35 were passengers. Only 23 survived and all had critical injuries.
In order to recover all of the bodies while also maintain work on the railway, someone high up decided that digging out the dead was not a time worthy task, and to instead, wait for the snow to melt. This means that The final person was not recovered until the end of July, 21 weeks after the avalanche struck. The bodies of the victims were piled up and removed like logs of wood on toboggans. (Like why? That’s so disrespectful to your people).
Still, the track was repaired and back up and running within 3 weeks of the avalanche.
And this disrespect might be part of the reason why the town started to get a bad name. Wellington became such a negative association that the town was quietly renamed Tye in October of 1910, and then the depot was closed in 1929.
However…. Windy point released a second avalanche in 1916, killing 8 passengers on a train in eerily similar circumstances.
But Wellington was considered a ghost town long before the depot closed in 1929.
Today, to get to Wellington, or Tye, you can take a trail called the Iron Goat Trail which is about a 6 mile or 9.6 km loop style trail and it is known for stunning views of the cascades, as well as bringing you past the location of the avalanche, where bits and pieces of the train still lay near Tye river.
The town, long abandoned and many of the original tracks and tunnels collapsing leaves an eerie silence that some find unsettling. Many enter the area, and especially inside the tunnel and suddenly feel like they are being watched, or that someone if following close behind them.
Others have described feeling suddenly sad and depressed, and others have heard voices echoing from deep within a tunnel that has collapsed, and the end is in sight. There have also been reports of screaming along the tracks where the trains were stuck.
Even less common, though, some have seen ghostly figures walking, leaning forward, as if they have been burdened with a horrendous task, before they vanish completely. Others have encountered hikers on the trail who seemed to be dirty, like they’d been digging in the dirt, who also vanish in the moment you look away.
And even more unsettling is the fact that some have felt someone grab ahold of their arms or their packs, when no one was there to touch them. Yet, sometimes the ghosts seem playful and if a woman is hiking through with long hair that is down, one will grab ahold of the ends and lift the hair from her shoulders.
Other hikers who have recorded videos have reported hearing the word “avalanche” be said like the rustling of the leaves.
When paranormal journalist, Karen Frazier visited the area, she tried to capture a conversation with a spirit, and she explained she wanted to tell their story from their own words, and the response she got was that if a gravely voice saying “piss off”.
So of course, if I were a worker or even the loved one of a worker here, I too would be angry and that anger could anchor me in death, to this place.
The unsettling feelings leave as soon as you leave the location of Wellington and head on your way, but still the feelings and experiences cannot be chalked up to just the wind and leaves playing tricks on you.
For there is without a doubt, that some of those workers and passengers that were buried deep by this avalanche had lived- and it was the railroad company to who signed their death certificates by ignoring the need for rescue.
I would haunt others too.
