Haunted By the Mountain Man (Whispered Echoes Season 2: A Wounded Mountain Man #12)

Chapter 1

Raven

"Testing, testing," I said to my main camera, checking the battery levels on all six recording devices strapped to my tactical vest. "This is Raven from Dark Places, Deep Secrets, and we're about to explore what locals call the most famous abandoned location in Vermont."

The camera's red light blinked steadily. No live stream up here. No cell service for miles, but my audience didn't need to know that. I'd edit it later to look like real-time exploration, complete with "viewer comments" and dramatic reactions to their "suggestions." The magic of post-production.

I parked my van hidden behind a cluster of pine trees a mile from the lodge, not wanting to announce my presence to whoever owned the private property I was currently trespassing on.

That was the reality of urbex—technically illegal, ethically gray, but irresistible to those of us drawn to forgotten places.

The October air bit at my black cargo pants and vintage Bauhaus t-shirt, but I'd been in colder places.

Detroit in January. Chernobyl in February. This was nothing.

The lodge emerged from the forest like something from a horror movie, exactly what my subscribers craved. Three stories of broken windows and peeling paint, chairlifts hanging at wrong angles like broken bones, the main entrance gaping open where doors had been torn off by weather or scavengers.

The smell hit me first. Not just the expected decay of abandoned buildings—mildew and rot and animal droppings. This was something else. Something underneath. The acrid ghost of smoke, as if the building itself remembered burning.

"Wildfire Ridge operated from 1978 to 1995," I narrated for the camera.

"Closed after a suspicious fire in the east wing that killed two unidentified people when the lodge was supposedly empty.

The owner went bankrupt, and it's been rotting here ever since.

Locals report strange lights, voices, and one particularly persistent story about a caretaker who never left. "

Ghost stories were usually bullshit, but they made great content.

I approached the main entrance, glass crunching under my steel-toed boots. My night vision camera picked up details in the shadows—overturned furniture, molding carpet, a reception desk with the register still open to March 15, 1995.

My thermal camera suddenly beeped—a temperature anomaly. I swept it across the lobby, and the screen lit up with a cold spot near the old check-in desk. Fifteen degrees colder than the surrounding air, with no apparent source.

"Getting unusual thermal readings already," I said to the camera, excitement creeping into my voice despite my cynicism. "Significant cold spot with no broken windows or drafts nearby to explain it."

I set up my first stationary camera aimed at the cold spot, then moved deeper into the building. The main hallway branched in three directions—west wing, east wing, and straight ahead to what the floor plans indicated was the main restaurant and bar area.

My EMF detector started chirping as I walked. Electromagnetic field spikes, the kind that ghost hunters claimed indicated paranormal activity but usually just meant old wiring or electronics. Except this building hadn't had power in thirty years.

Then I saw something that made me pause.

Fresh footprints in the dust.

Large boots, size twelve or thirteen, with a distinctive tread pattern. Someone had been here recently and often—there was a worn path in the debris. This was either very good for content or very bad for my safety.

I followed the footprints deeper into the lodge, past the empty gift shop and toward the bar area. My audio recorder was running constantly, capturing ambient sound—the creak of settling wood, wind through broken windows, the skitter of small animals in the walls.

But then it picked up something else.

A voice. Distant, male, humming.

I froze, checking the playback. There it was—a man's voice, old and weathered, humming "Jingle Bells" in October. The sound quality was strange, as if it was coming from very far away.

"Did you guys hear that?" I whispered to my camera, playing it up for the audience. But my hands were shaking slightly as I adjusted the gain on my audio equipment. "Male voice, humming Christmas music. In an abandoned building. In October."

I crept forward, following the sound. The trail led to what had been the main restaurant, and that's where my night vision camera captured it.

A shadow. Not just absence of light, but a figure—tall, thin, moving by the far. It was there one moment, gone the next.

I rewound the footage, played it back. There. Clear as day on the thermal imaging was a heat signature in the shape of a person.

"Holy shit," I breathed, and for once it wasn't a performance. "I just captured what appears to be a full-body apparition on thermal. Could this be what the rumors suggested? The caretaker who never left?"

This was the kind of footage that would send my subscriber count through the roof.

But something about it felt wrong. Too real.

Too solid for a ghost. I moved toward where I'd seen the figure, my flashlight cutting the gloom.

The restaurant was a graveyard of overturned tables and chairs.

The bar was lined with empty bottles covered in decades of dust. But there, on one of the tables was a recently used camping stove. The metal was still warm to the touch.

As I looked around I found canned goods stacked neatly on a shelf that had been cleared of dust. Medical supplies—bandages, antibiotics, even an IV setup were in a corner of the room and a folded blanket that smelled like laundry detergent, not mildew was on a chair that looked new.

"Guys," I whispered to the camera, playing up the drama, "someone's been living here. And from the looks of it—"

"Who the hell are you?"

The voice came from directly behind me, deep and sharp with authority. I spun around, my hand instinctively going to the pepper spray on my belt.

The man standing in the doorway was massive—at least 6'5", with black hair and eyes that caught the light strangely, almost metallic in the shadows. He wore camouflage pants and a jacket, but it was his expression that made my breath catch. He looked at me like I was a threat to be eliminated.

"I asked you a question." He stepped into the room, and I automatically stepped back.

"I'm Raven," I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. "I'm filming a documentary about abandoned places."

"This is private property."

"The lodge is abandoned."

"The lodge is on my land." His attention shifted to my cameras, and his expression darkened further. "Turn those off. Now."

"Look, I know I'm trespassing. That's what urbex is. But I'm not here to steal anything or cause damage."

He moved faster than someone that big should be able to, closing the distance between us in two strides. He didn't touch me, but suddenly I was backed against the wall with nowhere to go, his massive frame blocking any escape route.

"Turn. Them. Off."

This close, I saw the exhaustion carved into otherwise striking features.

I reached up slowly and switched off the main camera, then the others. "Happy?"

"No. You're trespassing on my property, filming without permission, and probably planning to plaster this all over the internet." His voice dropped lower. "Give me one reason I shouldn't call the police right now."

That's when I heard it—shuffling footsteps from the floor above, and that humming again. "Jingle Bells," clearer now, echoing through the empty building.

The man's entire demeanor changed. The dangerous predator became protective, almost panicked. He grabbed my arm, his grip firm but not painful.

"You need to leave. Now."

An elderly man stood in the doorway, dressed in a maintenance uniform that looked like it belonged in a museum. His weathered face was confused but not threatening.

"Hello?" he said. "I'm sorry, but the lodge is closed for the season. We don't reopen until Thanksgiving weekend."

His uniform said "Walt." The name tag was yellowed with age, the stitching frayed. He spoke with complete certainty, as if the lodge was still in business.

Then his face brightened

"Shane! You didn't tell me we had new staff starting today." He held out his hand to me. "Miss, I'm Walt Harrison, head of maintenance. Welcome to Wildfire Ridge. I hope you're ready for the Christmas rush. We're expecting record snowfall this year."

My eyes darted between Walt's genuine smile and Shane's barely controlled fury.

I tentatively shook his hand. "I—" I started, but Shane cut me off.

"This is Raven," he said, his voice completely different now, gentle, careful. "She's just touring the facilities. Getting familiar with the layout."

"Excellent, excellent." Walt beamed at me. "You'll love it here. I've been keeping this place running for ages, and every season is special. Shane, you should show her how the east wing renovations are coming along."

The east wing. Where the fire had happened.

"Maybe later," Shane said. "Why don't you go check the heating system? I heard some unusual sounds earlier."

"Of course, of course." Walt headed off with purpose, humming to himself.

The moment he was out of earshot, Shane rounded on me.

"You have thirty seconds to tell me why I shouldn't throw you off this mountain right now."

"Not until you tell me what's going on here," I blurted out, my reporter instincts overriding self-preservation. "Who is Walt? Why is he living in an abandoned lodge, thinking it's thirty years ago? And who the hell are you?"