AOTP Campfire Tales Ep.2

Accounts of the Paranormal's Campfire Tales 

The Silent Light Above the Trees

A man living in isolation encounters mysterious lights that seem to watch him, leading to terrifying dreams and an unexplained disappearance.

Paranormal and mystery short stories told around the campfire, straight from our Accounts of the Paranormal YouTube channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9zKn4LcW3VJROe1-l9EAcQ

If you have an account to share and would like to be a guest on the show, email me at show@accountsoftheparanormal.com and tell me what you saw!

Accounts of the Paranormal -

Creator/Producer/Host: Gino Barreto

WEBSITE: https://accountsoftheparanormal.com/ 

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Accounts of the Paranormal (theme song) 

Written by: Gino Barreto / Produced by: Kobe Ofei

All music produced by: 

Kobe Ofei https://www.fiverr.com/kobeofei 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Accounts of the Paranormals Campfire Tales. I'm Julia, your host and guide into chilling tales of the paranormal. Join us around the campfire for tonight's story. Ethan Calder lived alone in a weathered cabin deep in the woods, miles from the nearest town. He liked the isolation, said it helped him think, said the quiet was honest. But the silence out there wasn't empty, it had weight to it. At night it pressed in on the walls, seeped through the cracks, settled into his bones. Sometimes he'd catch himself holding his breath, just to make sure the world really was that still. The first time the lights appeared, he thought it was a helicopter, some late night search maybe. But helicopters don't hover without sound, and they don't glow like that, soft, pulsing white with a faint blue halo, like something alive. It hung over the tree line, perfectly still, not drifting, not swaying, watching. Ethan watched from his porch, unease prickling up his spine. After a few minutes it shot upward, straight into the sky, and vanished without a trace. He didn't sleep much that night, and the lights returned a week later, this time closer, and low enough that the trees beneath them seemed to bend and tremble, though there was still no sound. Ethan grabbed his phone, but the screen flickered and died the moment he tried to record. The air felt wrong, thick, almost charged, like before a lightning strike that never came. Then it vanished again. After that, the visits became frequent, sometimes twice a week, sometimes gone for nearly a month before returning without warning, always silent, always watching, and sometimes, though he could never prove it, they seemed to react to him, tilting, dimming, shifting position whenever he stepped outside. Then the dreams began. At first they were just fragments, cold metal walls, the smell of something sterile and sharp, a pressure behind his eyes. He'd wake up sweating, heart racing, unable to remember exactly what he'd seen. But the dreams grew clearer, where he saw figures, tall, thin silhouettes with elongated limbs, no faces, just smooth, pale surfaces where faces should be, where they surrounded him, whispering in a language he couldn't hear, but somehow understood. Not words, intent, observation, curiosity. Ethan initially tried telling others of what he was experiencing, but then stopped, as the one time he did, the guy at the gas station just laughed and asked what he'd been drinking. So he kept it to himself, started writing things down instead, dates, times, sketches of the lights. Patterns began to form, but none that made sense, until the night he experienced something that he was certain was too real to be a nightmare. He woke on a table. Bright light burned above him, too intense to look at directly, and his body was frozen in fear, unable to move. Panic surged as shapes moved at the edge of his vision, those same thin figures, closer now, when one leaned over him, but where its face should have been, there was just a faint reflection, his own face staring back, eyes wide, helpless, but the reflection lagged behind his movements by just a fraction of a second, like it wasn't really him. Something pressed against his chest, cold, precise. He felt a pulling sensation, not on his body, but deeper, like something reaching inside him, sorting through memories that weren't theirs to take. Then everything went black. Ethan woke up on his cabin floor at sunrise, gasping. On the wall above his bed there were faint marks he didn't remember making, thin, etched lines forming a pattern he couldn't understand. He packed a bag that day, didn't tell anyone, just got in his car and headed down the highway shortly after dusk, and for a while nothing happened. The road stretched out endlessly ahead of him, empty and dark. He almost convinced himself he'd imagined everything. Then his headlights dimmed. The radio dissolved into static, and up ahead, suspended over the asphalt, that same pale light began to bloom. That's where they found his car the next morning. Parked neatly on the shoulder, engines still running, driver's door open, his wallet, phone, keys all sitting on the seat. No signs of a struggle, no footprints, no blood, nothing. Just one detail the officers couldn't explain. Inside his wallet was a small folded piece of paper that read If you found this, they got me, and I won't be back. Thanks for watching. In addition to Campfire Tales, you can catch Accounts of the Paranormal Podcast episodes right here on our channel, or just about anywhere you get podcasts, or accounts of the paranormal dot com, where you can access full episodes and links to all our socials. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our blog so you never miss show info or other announcements. I'll see you next time.