The Clearing

**MrBallen** (0:00)
One summer day, a man named John Randolph was hiking through a remote forest in Colorado when he began to smell something just absolutely terrible. Intrigued, he followed the smell until it brought him to this clearing. And in the clearing was this large, old-looking campsite. Now, John is out in the middle of nowhere, and so the idea that anybody would stay out here for any extended amount of time was just so weird. What are you doing out here? And so still curious, John goes into the clearing and he walks in and sort of goes to the side of the campsite and he looks inside of it and he sees something on the ground. And he just can't believe what he sees. Like, it's so horrible. At first, he just thinks it's fake, but it's not. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark & Mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload four times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So if that's of interest to you, please invite the follow button to go out to lunch with you. But once you get there, spend the entire time chewing as loudly as possible with your mouth wide open. Okay, let's get into today's story.
On the freezing cold night of February 8th, 1874, a 65-year-old man named Israel Swann sat around this roaring fire with a big group of men inside of this valley in western Colorado. The men around the fire, including Israel, were all gold prospectors, which meant they traveled the western United States looking for gold. But over the past several weeks, this group of prospectors had been trapped in this valley because of all the terrible winter storms. They had these storms coming in that each time would dump up to six feet of snow. But on this particular night, as Israel sat by the fire enjoying the flames and hearing people tell stories, one of Israel's friends, one of the other gold prospectors whose name was Alfred Packer, he stood up and basically pitched the whole group as to why they should come with him and leave the valley right now. Basically, Alfred told the group that the weather is starting to turn a bit, it's not as bad anymore, the snow is starting to melt. And Alfred said, I know a pathway out of here that will take us out of this valley in just two weeks and it will bring us right to Breckenridge, Colorado, which was an area that was known by prospectors for having lots and lots of gold. And so Alfred is basically telling them, you know, this is a win-win, we can get out of here sooner and we can get rich. After Alfred made this pitch, he sat back down and everybody just stayed quiet for a second. And Israel, he kind of looked around and watched to see if anybody would take Alfred up on his proposition. Now, Israel knew, unlike him, most of the other prospectors didn't like Alfred. They said he was lazy and difficult, but Israel felt like that was really not the reason they did not like his friend. He believed the reason other people did not like Alfred was because Alfred had epilepsy, which meant he periodically had seizures. And because he had seizures, it kind of made him a liability for journeys like this, where, you know, the whole group really needs to rely on everybody and everybody needs to pull their own weight. And so they were kind of worried about a guy who at any moment could just become kind of useless because he was having a seizure. But for Israel, Alfred's epilepsy really didn't matter. He didn't feel like Alfred was some huge liability. He felt like Alfred was actually very smart and quite bold. And so for him to stand up and make this pitch just kind of felt like in keeping with who he was. He was somebody that wanted to get things done. And, you know, Israel liked that about him. However, just because Israel liked Alfred, that didn't mean he was just going to naturally go with Alfred and do his big plan, but he was at least thinking about it. And as Israel was weighing out the pros and cons of, you know, whether or not he should go with Alfred, he happened to look across the fire and he saw one of the men, this really big guy, was sitting there looking really serious and just shaking his head slowly back and forth, like, no, you guys can't be considering leaving early. And then the big guy stood up and he held out his hand right in front of Alfred basically telling him, like, don't say another word. And then this guy, while still looking at Alfred, he said, if you leave right now, all of your friends will die. And then this big guy sat back down again and then everybody around the fire just sat there really tense for a few seconds in total silence.