Scary Stories: My Father’s Cabin In The Woods Burned Down. We Found Something Strange In The Ruins.

So my father used to own a cabin. In fact he used to own a lot of different properties. Which I suppose is just a roundabout way of saying that we grew up with money. Where things get a bit complicated is how he actually made that money.

The line that he constantly fed us was that he was an accountant running his own firm in an office in the city. Long hours, lots of business trips. We never saw him much. And whenever we did, he always seemed tired, his eyes perpetually bloodshot, as if he were always trying to force them to stay open.

He was sent off to prison right after I’d finished my first year of college.

The sentence? Fifteen years, for washing hundreds of millions of dollars for numerous cartels. Two weeks after he’d been booked, my mother committed suicide. As it turns out, she’d been helping him out through the entire thing and was facing some time herself. I guess she didn’t want to deal with all that and took the drastic way out.

A few months later, the government had seized pretty much all his property.

All of it, except for that cabin in the woods.

It took a long time for me to feel normal again. But eventually I managed it. Went back to school and graduated with a good enough GPA which allowed me to snag some shitty office job a few months later. But it was enough to pay the bills.

Fast forward about another year and I’ve basically scrubbed that entire sequence of events out of my brain. It took a little bit of therapy, a lot of psychedelics, but I finally did it, to the point where I was comfortable enough to go back to that cabin, the one place where I’d see my father for more than a few weeks at a time during our summer trips.

I decided to take along three of my friends from Uni – Jack, Pedro, Randy.

We drove down there at the beginning of May. The road leading to the cabin hadn’t been maintained at all and as a result, it had become borderline undrivable. I decided to save my vehicle the stress and parked in a nearby lot, leaving us about a one-and-a-half-mile trek through the woods, which really wasn’t so bad.

Our time in the cabin was pretty much spent getting drunk and stoned, and by the third night we had completely run out of food.

We decided to take the thirty minute walk over to the nearest rest stop, where I knew that there was a 24/7 diner. So we go there, eat our meals, and on the way back we notice a burning smell in the woods, as if there was a bonfire raging about nearby.

Of course that was a bit strange given that it was around 2AM. But we didn’t think too much of it at the time and we kept walking.

It was only when the smell continued to grow stronger as we got closer to the cabin that we understood something was very wrong. Soon it had become suffocating, and we could see the night sky tinged with orange in the near distance.

I felt my heart drop into my stomach and immediately I was sprinting, my worst fear realized as I reached the clearing where the cabin was located.

Completely up in flames, plumes of dark smoke blending in with the night.

It was a mix of different emotions that hit me all at once, the combination of them creating a sense of dread so deep I hadn’t thought it possible.

After reeling myself in, I called 9-1-1, with the operator telling me that the fire department would be on their way but wouldn’t be able to reach us for at least thirty minutes. The four of us walked away from the cabin in silence, getting far enough so that the smoke was no longer scratching at our throats.

Around ten minutes later, we noticed that the orange tinge in the sky had suddenly disappeared. And I mean suddenly. Like, gone in a single blink. I thought I might’ve been hallucinating, but it was clear from their expressions that my friends were seeing something similar.

Cautiously, we started making our way back towards the cabin, noticing that the smoke was no longer heavy in the air, having cleared up considerably. Once we reached the clearing, it had disappeared altogether.

I looked ahead, my brain working overtime to comprehend the sight before me. The cabin was no longer on fire. Burnt to a crisp, sure. But the raging, overwhelming flames that had been consuming it just minutes prior had somehow completely fizzled out.

The four of us looked between each other, as if to confirm we were all still seeing the same thing.

Using the flashlight on my phone to survey the damage, I found pretty much what I’d expected. Complete destruction. Absolutely zero hope of recovering anything.

I started taking some deep breaths, trying to calm myself down when I heard Pedro yelling out from the other side.

“Guys… where the fuck did this thing come from?”

We all walked over to him. Nestled in the debris was the corpse of… something. A monstrosity.

It was about the size of a bear, with the sections of its body that weren’t burnt showing pale, clammy skin with deep cuts etched throughout it, in what looked to be some kind of crude pattern. Its head had been smashed in, leaving nothing but an abnormally wide bottom jaw which was still baring long, black teeth. It had an uncountable number of long, thick arms that it was using to hold something that resembled a human infant, one that appeared to be completely unscathed, devoid of any burn marks. The longer I stared at it, the more that I was convinced I could see it breathing.

It was a bizarre enough sight to put us into a near-trance. What eventually snapped us out of it was the chanting.

It was barely noticeable at first, slowly escalating in pitch until it was clear that there were several human voices shouting in unison. Their tones were animalistic, their words strung together with just the bare beginnings of a rhythm. It sounded like they were speaking English, though I could hardly make out anything they were saying.

The strangest part though, was how quickly it was getting closer to us. Definitely not a walking pace. It was more like a sprint.

The four of us shared a quick glance between each other and immediately there was an understanding.

We ran like bats out of hell, tripping over branches, our own feet.

But eventually we reached my car, all of us scrambling to pile into it. As I was fumbling for my keys, the chanting had become deafening, to a point that hardly made sense. It sounded as if there were speakers lined up in a circle around us, all blasting that horrible noise.

And the second that I had put the keys into the ignition, things went silent. I found myself holding my breath as I looked up, my eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness until what I was seeing was unmistakable. Several figures standing completely still at the edge of the woods. All human-shaped but far too large to be people.

All the air being held in my lungs flooded out with one big exhale and I slammed the vehicle into drive and took a sharp turn before speeding the hell out of there, refusing to look in the rearview until we had made it into the highway.

I drove until I had reached the rest stop, which was now hosting an absurd number of police cars. I parked, got out, and approached one of the cops, asking if they were here because of the fire.

The cop shook his head. “Fire? No. Has there been a fire?”

I explained the situation with the cabin to him, deciding to leave out the creature and the chanting for the time being.

The cop nodded slowly, his expression remaining largely the same throughout.

“Alright,” he said. “We’ll look into it. And then give you an update in the morning. For tonight, just get a hotel or something.”

We exchanged numbers and I thanked him. As I began to walk away, he called out to me.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

I turned back around.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

“Do you happen to be (my dad’s name)’s son?”

For a while I just stared at him. Eventually I nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “I thought I recognized you.”

“I don’t understand,” I told him. “I’ve never seen you before.”

The cop took a deep breath before taking a quick look around. “Come here,” he said. “Come close.”

Tentatively, I did so.

“I can’t tell you everything. I don’t even know everything. But I think you should have the right to know the truth about your father. All of the stuff that’s happened here tonight, all of the shit that you’ve seen… it has something to do with him.  

He took another look around before continuing. “Cartels, right? Was that the story they told you? It’s not so creative. But I guess it doesn’t have to be creative to be believable. Cause the shit that he was actually mixed up in… you would not believe unless you’ve seen it for yourself.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

“Look, I have your number. I’ll be in touch tomorrow morning. This is something I’m curious about as well. Maybe you can give me some answers, point me in the right directions. But not here. So get out of here before people start noticing you. And stay safe.”

I didn’t feel like staying in a hotel that night, so I drove back into the city, dropping everybody off before arriving back at my own apartment.

Of course I couldn’t sleep that night, my eyes wired open into the morning as I waited for the officer to call. He still hadn’t by the time that noon rolled around and so I tried calling him instead.

No answer.

Eventually I did receive a call from the police, telling me that my father’s cabin had burned down and that it was due to a forest fire.

I told them that wasn’t possible because there had been no forest fire and that I suspected foul play and wanted it to be investigated.

“It’s already been investigated,” are the exact words that the officer told me. “Don’t worry about it. Just get in touch with insurance. Go over your options.”

And before I could say anything else, he had hung up on me.

It was a mixture of anger and curiosity that compelled me to drive back down there. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t for the road leading towards the rest stop to be blocked altogether. There were two cop cars guarding the barrier, with a single officer signalling any vehicles approaching to turn around.

I pulled over to the side of the road and after some careful deliberation, I decided to get out and approach him and ask what was going on. Just to see what he might say.

When I finished the question, he stared at me for a long time. Uncomfortably long.

“Emergency construction,” is what he eventually told me.

After that encounter, I pretty much dropped trying to figure things out.

Some weird things have started happening to me since. Every night, I swear I can hear a baby crying in the apartment across from mine. The apartment that I thought had been occupied by a pair of college kids who definitely do not have children.

That cop that was supposed to call me finally did, a few nights ago. When I answered, I was met with dead silence on the other end. Nearly thirty seconds of it until the line clicked dead.

There’s an abandoned house sitting across the street from my apartment building, one that’s supposedly been there for years because the development of the store meant to take its place keeps getting delayed.

Somebody has started staring at me through its second-floor window. Whenever I catch them doing it, they’re quick to close the blinds, so I can never catch any details. But I know that the moment I turn away from it, their eyes are back on me.

I can’t confirm that any of these things are related. Whether it has anything to do with my father.

I just know that I don’t want to deal with it and that I want it to end.