Welcome to The Washington State hiking podcast. I'm your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming,
and I'm your co host, Craig Romano, Craig and I are happy to have you here. We provide practical and timely, seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers and trail runners of all skill and ability levels that is helpful, accurate, fun and inclusive. Welcome to Tales from the Crypt. Just kidding. This is still the Washington State hiking podcast, and I'm your host, Jennie twin flaming and Craig Romano and I are here to share some spooky hikes for October, right? Craig,
uh, call me Igor, today. Oh, Igor. Igor Romano,
okay, it's
got an it's got a nice it
does sound a bit creepy, yeah. Okay, so I will be honest with you, I am not a person who super gets the like, spooky haunted thing, like, it's just not me. I love fall. Halloween is fun because it's a holiday in the fall, but, like, all the like, spooky stuff is just not really me.
Just, you know, it's interesting because I'm Yes, and no on that. It's funny. You mentioned, I just came back from Maryland, and it was in the woods of Maryland on a hike that scared an entire nation, The Blair Witch Project. I mean, that was such a classic movie, anything this was all made up. It wasn't a real but people thought it was the real deal, and dealing on just that horror being out in the woods and
creepy things going on. But, you know, I don't get freaked out over vampires and things like that, but there is some, definitely some interesting energy out there. Have, I'll give you that. Have I been creeped out?
Yes, yeah, I have to Yes. Maybe not by traditional things like vampires, right?
I'm not worried about, yeah, you know, mummies and but I am definitely worried about some, some bad spirits out there. And, okay, and I think the places that I'm looking at that I consider haunted. I think I'm gonna get some agreement on there that there's some definitely bad energy out there, okay, places that when I've been alone, it's like, Ooh, you know, this is a little creepy. This is like a polar witch project being okay,
so if you want to go on a hike to scare yourself, this is the episode for you, but you gotta do it. We'll see you next week. We've
got to do it late in the day, so that sunsets come. You got to do it alone. Yeah, yeah. And you gotta, you gotta have one of your partners that that's always running like she's gonna be caught. You know, it's part of the movie, so she's gonna, yes, you've
always got to have someone, or run someone who runs slower, yeah.
And she trips a lot, and she screams a lot. Okay, isn't that the formula A lot of these movies
so and like, going into, like, the basement, which doesn't apply to hiking, why would you go there? Is like, why are you, why are you going there? Yeah, or, like, you watch a movie, even if it's not intended to be a scary movie, and you're like, they're building suspense by showing a person going alone into something. And you're like, what do you what are you doing? Yeah,
don't do that. And I think a lot of people like to be scared. What do you think?
I think that's true. I'm not one of those people, so I can't really relate to that. But I Yes, I think that there are people who like being scared. So you know, this is for you. If you're that person, that's one of the things that you learn, working in education, like I did for a long time, is that you have to be able to reach out to people who have different learning styles than you. And so, yeah, for people who like to be scared hiking, we want to serve them to you.
I mean, that's how I learned. I was, you know, my teacher scared the hell out of me that I wasn't going to do anything with my life, you know? So
I Yeah, see, that's never worked on me. Well, I went to a Catholic school. Guilt works wonderful.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. So you're, you're trained to be influenced by that. Okay, so, um, all right, Craig, so what are some of these haunted or spooky hikes for you that we have here in Washington. Well,
you know, number one that comes to mind is Monte Cristo. And Monte Cristo is a certified Ghost Town, yes, and you've got to realize there's very little that's left. There probably a half dozen structures. But the history, there were a couple 1000 people living there. But it wasn't just like a couple 1000 people. It wasn't a place where the streets were paved with chocolate and everything. It was a grungy mine town with mostly young males.
The females that were there were paid to provide services, right? There were murders there, you know? They. Mining towns are rough. And you look at places now with the highest crime rates and murder rates and a lot of that, you know that those mining, those resource towns so, so bad things happen in Monte Cristo, yeah. And, you know, I actually, I have felt some interesting energy up there. You get into glacier basin above, and boy, you there, there's some
there. There are things like Charlie Daniels would say, there's some things in this world you just cannot explain. You know, the legend of wooly swamp, one of my favorite songs about scary. But, yeah, it's a wooly swamp up there. There's things that go bump at night. Yeah, so I wouldn't feel comfortable camping up there by myself, so I guess I am.
And you wouldn't say that about very many places, yeah, not
too many, but I definitely have places, and I'll talk about some more in particular that that are even more creepy, but Monte Cristo and I've had lots of hiking acquaintances that feel that same way, that there's bad energy up there, and just even nature's been rough up there, taking out roads and landslides and all kinds of stuff. And then, you know, it's a super fun site, too. So it was probably, you know, some, some actual, some scary stuff up there to
drink the water. Who knows what's going to happen to you up there. So, yeah, if you've never been to Monte Cristo, it's a wonderful place to scare the crud out of yourself, okay? And
then it also has those, like kind of second growth forest fur
that's all dank and dark and yeah, especially this time of year, yeah, seeing things. Yeah. It is a scary place.
I feel like this Halloween, maybe we have already have plenty of real world things to be afraid of. We're still committed to this episode. Okay, so what other spots, Craig come to mind?
Place pretty close to where I live, and I'm not talking about my neighborhood, time, Northern State Recreation Area over in Cedro Woolley, northern state, if you're not familiar with it, was one of several hospitals that were that were mental health hospitals. This is so and what's interesting about Northern State, too. It was actually one for its time. Was actually pretty progressive. The patients worked on a farm. They grew their own, their own food. They
worked. But, you know, this is also a place that, you know, shock therapies, lobotomies, really dark things, some dark things that we thought was the way to go back then there is a mass grave site at Northern State. And you should definitely, I have a problem with people who exploit as far as it's there. I'm not going to tell you where it's at. It's not a place where you want to sit around and dare each other unmarked graves. It's really it's a tragedy. It's really sad.
But when you walk through the old barns that are there and they're falling apart, try to imagine, you know, the people that were there at the time. And there's definitely walk around the campus. Part of it is open. The historic campus was designed by the Olmsted Brothers. There's, um, there's, there are stories there, there, there is a lot of suffering there, there's, there's energy there. I've know, I've gone for night runs there in the past, on Halloween, there's one pump house. It is.
It's a pump house that, really, if you were going to film a 1970s horror film, there you go. There you go, Texas, Texas Chainsaw the cedar Willie Chainsaw Massacre, right there. It is just a creepy looking building. So the Northern State wreck is definitely an area that that's creepy, you know, and then getting back to Monte Cristo, I guess I shouldn't have that basically anything on the Mountain Highway, yeah, creeps me out. Yeah, there's a lot of
old mines. And there's a lot of old mines, mine towns for us, there's, yeah, it's creepy. There is. It's one of the wettest areas in the Cascades. It's always gray and swirly and dark forests. And you
know, Craig, my husband, Jay, he is from Montana, and he when he first moved to the Pacific Northwest, you know, I lived in Montana, and then Alaska, and then here, and he, when he first moved here, he was like, every forest here is so creepy, you know, like, where he's from, there's no undergrowth, you know, the trees are more sparse and further apart, and more light
gets in. So he finds these really dark, canopied forests with all the ferns and moss to be, like, really creepy, just like, and you can have that on basically any trail, like, even in western Washington, definitely in
the wetter areas, I find that too. It's interesting because, you know, I grew up in the east and st. I find, I find the deciduous trees far more deciduous forests, far more soothing, although when they drop their leaves and you see some of those gnarled birches and everything it looks like right out of the Wizard of Oz, they're gonna grab you on a foggy day, but, but there's
definitely forests out here. And I know I do a lot of soul hiking where I'm not getting the warm fuzzy I'm kind of like, yeah, you know, it's kind of creepy out here, yeah. And I know a lot of the native people, they definitely, you know, you start talking a lot of the indigenous people about some of the spirits that inhabit, I know there's the whole thing with the stick Indians, and you can look this up and everything that you definitely have to respect some
of these areas. There's definitely energy out there, and you're gonna feel it in other places, but whether we're feeling it or perceiving it. But there's something about some of those, those mossy, you know, covered trees that are just, you know, dark bark, you know, on the COVID, the swirling fog, and you're out there, but, yeah, it's, it's not warm fuzzy.
And you know, it's funny, because for me, I am from here, and it is a little bit of a warm fuzzy for me, like I don't cultural, yeah, you know that? Yeah. And so that's kind of interesting. I will say that, like in Central and Eastern Washington, where it's much, much drier, there's not as much undergrowth, you know, he's a little more comfortable
with those. Yeah, it's more inviting, too. It's funny, funny you mentioned on the west side, yeah, it can be a little creepy, though. You know, with that said, it's Eastern Washington, where there's far more ghost town sites and everything, a lot. And so when you again, you tend to think you go back history, a lot of these
places. I mean, there were lawless and the thing is, too There were, you know, massacres of native people, yeah, there, you know, Justice was meted out, you know, by, you know, vigilantism, yeah, again, a bunch of young guys working in a mine with alcohol involved, everything troubles gonna
happen, yeah? And when you do the research a lot of these areas, again, McLaughlin Canyon, out in the Okanagan Valley, there was an ambush there with between Native people and and miners settlers, you know, there's a lot of that out there, yeah. And yeah, you hike some of these places, you're gonna feel it. I mean, these stories are real. So again, we're talking about, you know, The Blair Witch Project was, was totally fabricated, and yet that scared
the crud out of people. But these are real stories, yeah. And, you
know, that's kind of an interesting thing too, about this spooky season. Is, like, you know, it's fine to, like, joke about things being creepy and scary, like I was, but then it's also, I think that might be one of the things for me that makes it a little bit of a struggle, is, like, in situations where, like, settlers murdered indigenous people, like that is just dark and disturbing, or similarly, like you were talking about with
Northern state. But you know, it's important that we are mindful of and knowledgeable about that history also. So yeah, I feel like even something like speaking season or Halloween, can get kind of complicated, and it's kind of an interesting topic, and
how we exploit, yeah, again, and I've been really again, you know, I'm pretty open for a lot of things, and I like a good scary story, but I some of the stuff I've seen written about Northern State, how it's exploited. You're talking about mental health issues and everything. Yeah, you'd be really careful with some of that. It's how, how we treated the same thing with, with the the indigenous schools, there's, there's some, there's
some bad blood. And I truly believe that there are spirits that are there, there and
horrible. I mean, our government has done horrible, some
horrible things. Yeah, our history is just, unfortunately, that's part of the part of our history, yeah. And so you can, you can, you can pick up on some of this stuff. But I think going these areas open minds. It being creeped out. I mean, I am Cree. I'm more creeped out again on some of these historical things, going to massacre sites and everything, yeah. And when you really think about this stuff, I was just in Maryland. I was I was back in plantation where Harriet Tubman was born, where
Frederick Douglass was born. And you start reading some of these stories again, of what really went on in the plantations, as opposed to what was no pun intended, whitewashed. Yeah. I mean, the rapes, the beatings, it's unbelievable, and there's a lot of bad blood. It's creepy, yeah, so that kind of stuff again, because, because I am a historian, and that stuff creeps out far more than for. Concerns monster and Creature from
the Black Right? Like the actual horrors of actual society, yeah, so,
and I think those are places that you know we should, we should go to, definitely, for reflection, but not, but not to exploit these places, yeah. And that's, I see a lot of exploitation on this thing. So again, it can be all fun, but, but we should be mindful on some of this stuff too.
Definitely. Are there any other places in Washington that you want to call out? Craig, yeah, well, I
share some of mine. Yeah. Wellington, which is on the iron Goat Trail. So Wellington, if you're not, you know aware of it was a train stop that in 1910 it was the site of the largest avalanche, natural avalanche disaster in the state. 83 people perished. Perish there. That's spooky spot when you walk there and again try to look at the site. Look at the the slopes above you, how they're sparsely forced it. They were, they were deforested. All
that sweat. Snow in March of 1910 came down and took out a couple of trains, but probably the spookiest place for me, and I've heard some interesting stories when I backpacked the Washington coast a couple years ago. There's two places that I will not camp at, and they have good campsites, and that's the Chilean memorial in the Norwegian Memorial, because the last thing I want to do is wake up in the middle of night and meet Lars or Alfredo, yes, with their lantern. Yeah, walking
those beaches. That does sound creepy. There has been a lot of stories of people seeing people from those there's two shipwrecks, a Chilean boat and a Norwegian boat shipwrecked out there. And there's stories about wives who've still come out walking those beaches, looking for their their husbands. There's some really creepy stuff out there. I won't camp at those places. Yeah, no way, no way. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Well, thanks for sharing those Craig. I think for me, you know, I think I like I was saying some of this, like, spooky haunted stuff is not really my jam. But with that in mind, there is a few things that I was thinking about when we were talking about
this episode. One of them is the rattlesnake leak and rattlesnake ledge Trail, which is in the North Bend area, and at rattlesnake Lake, at those like old old growth trees that were cut down, but the stumps are still there, especially if it's foggy and raining like that's kind of, I don't know That's kind of a like speaky thing to me, I also think that both fort Casey and Fort Flagler are kind
of interesting. Fort Casey, so fort Casey State Park is on Whidbey Island, and Fort Flagler is kind of near Port Townsend. It's over on the other side of the water. And both of those are former sites, military sites that now are owned by Washington
state parks. And they're, I'm always happy for an excuse to talk about them, because they're really, you know, when I was a kid and a teenager, I loved running around and like exploring all those, like funky little, you know, holes and like little tunnels and things like that. So and often, Fort Casey does programs around Halloween that are, like, picking up on the like, sort of spooky wrecked military site. So I think those are really cool, interesting
places to visit. A couple other ghost towns I was thinking about that, you know, similar to Monte Cristo. Don't have a ton of stuff left, but one of the things I think is cool about any kind of ruins is the way in which you know humans, maybe different humans, at different times, may have used a site for different reasons, but like how quickly nature kind of takes over, especially in a wet Climate like Western Washington
and so seen kind of places. I mean, I'm thinking of places in Alaska like this too, where, like during the Gold Rush, there was a town of 30,000 people. And now you have to look very closely to see the evidence of that. So I was thinking of the melmont Ghost Town, which is kind of near Wilkinson, which is, um, on the way to the carbon River, part of met Rainier, um, that is a very flat trail that's almost never busy so and it has some kind of cool I mean, I don't know that. I want to say.
Same fall color, exactly, but it does have, like, some big leaf maple trees, so it's pretty this time of year. And then also the Franklin Ghost Town, which is like in sort of southeast King County, the Green River. Yep, that's another one that is a pretty mellow. It's not flat like Belmont is, but it goes. It's not super far. It's not super busy to kind of an old where an old mining area
was that whole region was litter with coal mines, a lot of mining. It's amazing. A lot of people don't realize, if we went back 150 years ago, one of the biggest industries in King County was coal mining. Yeah, it's just crazy. People don't realize. I mean, there's a reason. There's a reason why Newcastle was named after Newcastle, England coal mining area, yeah. So again, those mining towns, they were rough. They were not, they were not places I want to live in,
yeah. So there's, there's, there's spirits walking around there, definitely. And then floating around there,
I should say, though, yeah. The last thing that I wanted to talk about this is really, I'm sure that you'll probably laugh at me, and probably lots of our listeners will to you. But I want to talk about glacial erratics for a moment. So for those of you who aren't familiar with glacial erratics, they are large boulders that are usually the size of, kind of on the small end, like the size of a pickup truck, kind of up to the size of a garage, and they're typically very rounded, and they just are.
There'll just be this random enormous boulder next to a trail or in the forest. So those are left over from our ice age history, which i i always like an excuse to talk about that, because, you know, 15,000 16,000 years ago, pretty much all of Washington was under ice. And as the ice retreated at the end of the last ice age, it kind of left the land that's here today. And and Coast Salish people and other Native people have been here since then. And, um, but we were under ice before there were
any people here. It was
the beginning of climate change. Yes, yes.
And, um, anyway, so these glacial erratic boulders were left over as that ice retreated. And the reason, the way that relates to this episode, is that every time I see one, I just feel like they're so creepy, just like this giant, round boulder that's kind of hiding in the mist, and you come around a corner and it's like, whoa, and it's
usually surrounded by ferns. And anyway, so I and you can see those on almost all trails in for sure, on the west side of the Cascades in the foothills, I'm trying to think of a trail that doesn't have them. Um, I think most do. A couple weeks ago, I was doing a hike in the North Cascades, and it was a foggy morning, and I was there were several boulders, glacial erratics, and I was like, ah,
these are so weird, yeah. But it's just, I mean, it's also just kind of a cool reminder of, like, where our land came from, and how dramatically it's changed. Relatively recently, like the landscape sort of looking like it does now across Washington State, 15,000 years ago. If you compare that to like the Grand Canyon, you know, that's not very long.
It's not long, yeah, but it's funny. You mentioned the rocks. There's been many, times where I'm out on a solo runner, solo hike in depending you know how my mood is and you're on it's foggy. And how many times have been creeped out by a dark stump or, oh my god, it's a big bear waiting for me, and everything like that.
So your stump bear,
we didn't talk there so creepy that I've encountered so many stump bears? Yeah. I mean, you know, your mind can play all kinds of tricks on you, yes. And again, that's important too. Just, you know, making sure you had adequate sleep and you're hydrated. Because I tell you, when you're out there for long, I know some of these Ultras I do towards the end, you know, and you're, you're out there, your mind starts seeing all kinds of
things, definitely, yeah. So yeah, there's, there's some spooky things out there, yeah,
for sure. Well, thanks for chatting about this today, Craig. I think this is kind of a fun topic for this time of year.
And go pick up a copy or, I mean, download stream The Blair Witch Project for this time of year, and you may not want to go hiking in the woods again. So,
oh, man, I don't need those images in my head. All right, everybody, we'll see you next week. Thank you for joining us for this episode of The Washington State hiking podcast. Hey,
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