In The Sierras
This story is, unfortunately, true.
I grew up in the Sierra Nevadas. I wasn’t big on camping, but spent a good chunk of my childhood weekends hiking with family and friends.
The summer that I was 16–about 10 years ago, now—my cousin, C, had come back from her first year of college, and her boyfriend, J, was visiting. J wanted to go on a hike with lake views, and C and I knew just the one. It was one of our favorites.
The three of us set off on this hike. The trail isn’t the easiest to find, but it’s really popular with locals because of the view and general lack of tourists. We saw a couple of other hikers, some with dogs. It is an in and out trail that takes about 2-3 hours to the top, 2-3 hours back down. There are some smaller trails that branch off.
We make it to the top in good time and enjoy our lunches overlooking the lake.
After about an hour, we hear a scream in the distance. Specifically, a mountain lion scream. If you’ve never heard a mountain lion scream, it’s really unnerving. It sounds a bit like a very loud, terrified woman screaming. This is not good, because when a mountain lion screams, it’s part of a mating ritual. That means there are multiple mountain lions, and close. The bears in the Sierras are softies, but the mountain lions WILL attack you. They’ll attack your pets. They’ve even been known to attack bikers.
J was really freaked out. C and I were wary but it wasn’t the first time we had heard mountain lions, and we had both seen them before. There was also an incident where, as kids, we laid out some expensive steak in my backyard in the hopes of luring a mountain lion to take pictures of it (it did not work and my mother was unhappy about the steaks).
C and I tell J that we need to pack it up and get back down the mountain. About 40 minutes into the hike back, J realized that he forgot his phone at the lookout in his rush to leave. Of course.
We decided that C and J would hike back up to retrieve his phone and I would stay there, on the trail, to warn any other potential hikers that there are lions in the area. This is obviously not ideal for any of us, but seemed like the best choice at the time.
I found a nice rock to sit on by the trail and was going through the pictures we took. C and J had been gone for around 50 minutes when I heard the scream again. And it’s hard to tell, but I think it’s closer than before. I start to freak out, because being alone is not good if the lion is nearby.
About 20 minutes after that, I hear the scream again, and there is now 0 doubt that it’s closer. Logically I know that lions don’t scream when hunting-they are quiet. If a lion was hunting me, I wouldn’t know it. That knowledge did not make me less scared.
A couple minutes after that, I hear it again, extremely close by. I’m looking around and trying to find the best place for me to stand—back covered— in case of the worst. Suddenly, I see something out of the corner of my eye. Standing still 20 feet down the trail, a couple feet off of it, is a man. He’s completely naked. He’s filthy. He’s skinny. And he’s just standing there, looking at me.
If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s easy to get lost in the woods around there. And it doesn’t take long, being alone, lacking food and water, in the wilderness, to make people a little disorientated. A little crazy. My immediate response is that this man is probably a lost hiker, and judging by how dirty he was, he’d been lost a long time. He needs help.
I started walking towards him, asking if he’s okay.
I suddenly get this feeling of wrongness. I don’t know how else to describe it, but the hair stood up on my neck, I stopped in my tracks, maybe 15 feet away now, and had the overwhelming urge to run. It seemed wrong—he looked wrong in a way I can’t quite articulate. Instead of wanting to help I’m now scared. I ask again if he’s okay?
He looks at me, then opens his mouth wide and screams. Not a normal scream. He screamed, so loudly. Worse, it sounded just like the mountain lion. It occurred to me that we were probably hearing him the whole time.
It was the single most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed. I started screaming too. Why was he just standing there screaming? Do I run? Do I get out the bear mace?
Suddenly, he closed his mouth, turned around, and ran into the woods very quickly. He disappeared into the trees, but the feeling of wrongness was still with me.
I considered bolting down the trail but decided to wait for C and J, who luckily arrived within 10 or 15 minutes.
I told them what happened, and we decided to call it into the rangers when we got service.
I’ve always been left with the unsettling question. Did I see a mentally ill lost hiker, who really needed my help? Or did I see something… else, something not human, mimicking the call of a mountain lion and stalking us down the mountain?