Never ignore Native wisdom

One summer day, a man named John Randolph was walking through a remote forest in Colorado when he began to smell something terrible. Intrigued, he followed the scent until it led him to this clearing and in the clearing Jon saw what looked like an old campsite, now John is. in the middle of nowhere, so the idea of ​​someone camping here in what looked like a long-term settlement was quite strange to John, so John walked towards the clearing to see what was going on and when he turned his head. corner. and he saw the ground in the middle of the camp, he saw something that at first he couldn't even process, it was so horrible that it seemed fake, but he finally realized that what he was looking at was real, at which point Jon turned around and he ran away.

I got out of there and started screaming for help but before we get into that story, if you are a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you come to the right place because that's all we do and up once a week, so if that's your thing, invite the Like button to go out to lunch with you, but once he arrives, spend the entire time chewing as hard as possible with your mouth wide open. Also subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads, well let's get into today's story on the freezing night of February 8, 1874.

A 65-year-old man named Israel Swan sat around this crackling fire with a large group of men within this valley in In western Colorado, the men around the fire, including Israel, were all gold seekers, which meant that they traveled across the western United States in looking for gold, but for the past few weeks this group of prospectors had been trapped in this valley due to all the terrible winter storms they had. Storms were coming that would each time dump up to 6 feet of snow, but on this particular popular night, Israel sat by the fire, you know, enjoying the flames and listening to people tell stories.

One of Israel's friends. One of the other gold diggers whose name was Alfred. Pecker stood up and basically told the entire group why they should come with him and leave the valley right now. Basically, Alfred told the group that they know the weather is starting to change a little, that it's not as bad anymore, they know it's starting to snow. melt and Alfred said I know a way out of here that will get us out of this valley in just 2 weeks and take us directly to Breen Ridge Colorado, which was an area known to prospectors for having tons of gold, so Alfred basically told them.

He's saying that you know this is a win-win, we can get out of here sooner and we can get rich after Alfred made this speech, he sat back down and everyone was quiet for a second and Israel kind of looked around and He observed if anyone would accept Alfred's proposal now that Israel knew that, unlike him, most of the other Prospectors didn't like Alfred, saying he was lazy and difficult, but Israel felt that wasn't really the reason why. that they did it. Not like his friend, he believed that the reason other people didn't like Alfred was because Alfred had epilepsy, which meant that he periodically had seizures, and because he had seizures, it sort of made him a burden on trips like this. , where you know the whole group really needs to do it.

They depend on everyone and everyone needs to pull their own weight and so they were a little worried about a guy who at any moment could become a little useless because he was having a seizure, but for Israel Alfred's epilepsy didn't really matter. He didn't feel like Alfred was too much of a responsibility, he felt like Alfred was actually very intelligent and quite bold, and so, standing up and making this speech, it felt like, in keeping with who he was, he was someone who wanted to get things done. . and you know Israel liked that about him, however, just because Israel liked Alfred didn't mean he was naturally going to go to Alfred and make his big plan, but at least he was thinking about it and as Israel weighed the pros and the cons of knowing if I should go with Alfred or not.

He looked across the fire and saw one of the men, a very big guy who was sitting there, looking very serious and just shaking his head slowly back and forth like you guys couldn't do it. I wouldn't be considering leaving early and then the big guy stood up and extended his hand right in front of Alfred basically telling him not to say another word and then this guy while still looking at Alfred said are you leaving right now. all your friends will die and then this big guy sat back down and then everyone around the fire sat very tensely for a few seconds in total silence.

The big guy who had just spoken was not a gold digger, he was actually very different. that the rest of the people sitting around this fire, his name was Ure and he was a Native American chief of the Tabaat band of the Ute tribe and Chief Ure had actually saved the lives of everyone sitting around this fire , Israel and Alfred included, because A few weeks before, this entire group of gold seekers had ended up lost in this valley, which was the valley where Chief Uray lived with his tribe and he had found them stumbling on the brink of death with all the snow falling, so Chief Uray and his people brought the Prospectors some food and water, helped them set up a camp near a river and then Chief Ur told them to stay in this camp for the winter and then in the spring, when the snow melts.

It will be safe for all of you to leave now. At first, the gold diggers were just grateful and totally excited that their boss had found them and given them this camp. I mean, this was great, so they had no problem agreeing to, you know, wait until spring to finally leave, but now, after several weeks of being kind of stuck in this camp, the whole group was starting to get restless, They were worried that if they didn't leave soon there would be no more gold for them and Israel. Specifically, there was even more pressure on him to go out searching for gold because he had told his family that this would be his last treasure hunting adventure and therefore he couldn't really return home empty-handed, he literally needed the I pray to continue. survive and take care of his family, so when Alfred stood up and broke the kind of tense silence and said to Chief Uray, you know, thank you for your concern, but I'm going to leave early and I just hope that others come with me, you know ?

At that moment, Israel saw the conviction in Alfred and Israel really felt like he needed to go now that he needed to get that gold, so Israel said, "You know what I'll go with you too" and then after Israel said he would go four. Other gold diggers also volunteered to leave early with Alfred. Chief Ur could tell that he wasn't going to change any of these guys' minds, and even though he felt it was a terrible idea, he changed his focus from trying to stop them to simply trying to give them all the information he could about the area he was trying to reach. that they were going, so he called all the volunteers who were going to leave early and then Chief Ur drew a map on the dirt on the ground and told Alfred. and Israel and the other four volunteers who have to follow the river out of here, it will take them to this mountain range called Cordillera de San Juan and they cannot try to cross those mountains, they will not make it, they have to continue. that river and go around the ridge and then once you make it on the other side there will be an outpost where you can stop, get supplies, rest and then continue the rest of the way to Breen Ridge and then after the boss Ur explained all this to him, he made sure to mark with an The rest of the gold seekers also showed up to search.

The night of the next morning, Israel Alfred and the four other volunteers who were going to undertake this trip got up early and began to pack their things and, as they did so, one of the other gold diggers who had not volunteered to go with them, he would stay in the valley until spring, he actually came forward and said he would help them carry their supplies as far as he could, you know, using his horse, but at some point he would have to stop leaving their things and then they would be alone and so the men were very grateful for this and shortly after breakfast they were all ready to leave and they started on the road while Israel and the rest of the Prospectors began to walk up and out of the valley.

They began to see the enormous Jagged Mountains of the San Juan mountain range in the distance, but they were careful to veer further north to stay along the river trail because they knew they were not supposed to go up and over the mountains and While Israel trudged through the snow in a line of men, holding a coffee pot, a metal coffee pot in which he kept embers inside which not only kept his hands warm, but also, if he ran out of matches, he could easily start a fire. Using the coals was an old trick he had learned and as he grabbed this gorgeous hot pot of coffee in the freezing weather, Israel heard someone walking behind him so he turned around and saw it was Alfred and he looked totally miserable. more miserable than Israel was and so, without even thinking about it, Israel simply handed his hot coffee pot to Alfred and Alfred took it and hugged it and was obviously very grateful now that none of these gold diggers had attacked Rich. , they were all basically poor, but Of all these gold diggers, Alfred really had the least of them all and as a result, Israel felt protective of Alfred and besides Alfred was half Israel's age.

Alfred was 30 years old, so Israel saw Alfred as lost. boy trying to find his way Alfred had also fought in Israel when the Civil War broke out in the United States Alfred had tried to join the Union Army on two different occasions because he wanted to fight against the slaveholding Confederate Army, but in both cases he threw out Alfred for his epilepsy, but that didn't stop Alfred from getting his battalion information and name tattooed on his arm. Unfortunately, since Alfred couldn't read or write, he misspelled his name when he gave it to the tattoo artist and so when he got the The tattoo didn't say Alfred as his first name, it said Alfred to LF e r d and from that moment on that was his name, no one knew it.

Alfred called, they called him Alfred, so this was a little embarrassing for him and after being rejected from the army. Alfred had been jumping from job to job without really putting down roots and

never

starting a family, so again, you know Israel felt like this was a guy who needed some help and so, after Alfred very happily accepted that coffee maker. from Israel, he in turn reached into his jacket and pulled out a flask with some alcohol in it and handed it to Israel almost as a thank you for giving me this hot pot of coffee and then the two friends walked side by side down a a while.

He knew how to pass the flask and the coffee pot back and forth and then, in the late afternoon of that day, when the snow was really starting to fall, the prospector who had volunteered to use his horse to help move some of his supplies, he had finally reached a point where he said, you know my horse can't go any further, the weather is too bad, so he dropped all his supplies and then turned around and walked back down the trail and most likely, When these men saw him disappear down the path, they all had the same thing.

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Two weeks would pass and Alfred Israel and the other four prospectors did not show up at that outpost that Chief Uray had pointed out, which was in the other. side of the San Juan Mountains that was going to be their first official stop before continuing the rest of the way to Breen Ridge and then another two weeks went by and they still didn't show up at the Outpost and they didn't show up. At any of the other camps in the surrounding areas, now Alfred's big plan for this group really depended on the weather holding up when they left, it was true that the weather was getting better, it was snowing less, but a couple of days after this group set out on the journey, those winter storms returned with a vengeance and dumped snow all over the valley and Along the way this group would have been in their attempt to leave, but the only people who knew that these men had embarked on this dangerous journey It was the men themselves and then also Chief Uray and the other gold seekers who had decided to stay in the valley until spring, but even if Chief Uray and those other Prospectors knew that Alfred Israel and the others were in trouble, you know that they would have no way to help them, reach them or even communicate with the outside world, they were completely trapped in the valley and there was basically nothing he could do and in short, it seemed that Alfred Israel and the other four men were totally lost somewhere wild, but no one knew it, but all that would change on April 16, 1874, about 2 months after Israel Alfred and the Others had begun what was supposed to be a two-week journey that morning.

A group of officials who manned the outpost that Israel, Alfred and the others were supposed to go to were having breakfast in one of the small wooden cabins of the outpost and as they are eating and talking to each other, suddenly, behind To them, the cabin door bursts open and these officials turn around and see standing at the door a totally disheveled guy with long hair sticking out in the air and a huge, thick beard and in one hand he has a rifle and in the other a metal coffee pot and his eyes were moving like crazy from side to side and he was clearly in shock and he was trying to talk but he just couldn't.

This man was Alfred and it was obvious to the officials that this man needed help, so without even asking him questions they took him inside, closed the door, gave him some food, gave him some water and immediately Alfred was devouring the food. as fast as he could until he started vomiting, at which point he apologized profusely and said, you know, I've been starving in the wild for weeks and you know it must have done something to my intestinal tract, you know it's probably damaged. , but frankly The officials didn't care about the fact that he vomited all over the floor, they were worried that this guy was going to die right then and there, so the officials helped Alfred clean himself up and put on warm clothes and then Alfred helped them.

He asked, you know? Do you have whiskey? I want to warm my body up and they said no problem, they gave him some whiskey so Alfred had a couple of drinks and after that it was pretty obvious that Alfred had relaxed a bit. and then at that moment one of the officials asked Alfred what happened to him. As soon as he was asked this question, Alfred closed his eyes and made a sort of grimace, as if even thinking about what had happened to him was too painful to think about, but then in a moment of silence, Alfred, with his eyes still closed, he told officials that he had been with five men and that they were trying to get out of the valley to get to Breen Ridge Colorado to look for gold, but while they were walking along this trail, a big storm came and made navigation through it very difficult. the trail they were on, so the group decided that they would actually go through the San Juan mountain range, which Chief Uray said: don't do that, don't go through the mountains, they decided to do that, but while they were going through these mountains treacherous, it was clear that Alfred just wasn't keeping up with the group and unfortunately, they made the decision to leave Alfred behind to die and he knew they were leaving him to die so he had to do it.

See how the five friends of his that you know disappeared in the snow but, surprisingly, Alfred did not die. Instead, he spent the next almost 2 months stumbling through the snowy forest with no idea where he was going, eating roots and flowers and seeking shelter any chance he got. but what really allowed him to survive in the wild was that when he was abandoned by the other five, he was in possession of that coffee pot that had embers inside and at night he could light fires and then also. At one point he was so hungry that he cooked his leather shoes in the fire and ate them because again this guy is starving and was really on the verge of death when he randomly stumbled upon this outpost and found this cabin after Alfred finished telling him.

With his story, the officials were totally shocked and silent and Alfred eventually asked them a question, he said: have any of my men passed by here? Did anyone else survive? and they said no, it's just you, we haven't seen anyone else now, the officials. he didn't send out a search party right away, mainly because it seemed pretty obvious that Alfred's men were probably already dead at that point. It's been 2 months since they started that trip. You know the chances of them surviving aren't good, but even if these other men weren't dead, the officers had no idea where to start their search.

They knew that if they really wanted to go find these guys they would need Alfred to lead the search because he is the only one who knows where they could be, except Alfred. He was not healthy enough to go out into the wild and lead a search, so for several weeks Alfred stayed at The Outpost resting and recovering and finally, when he was healthy enough, he would go out and lead a search party to find The missing. men, but unfortunately he couldn't find anything and it wasn't until that summer when all the snow finally melted that the mystery about what happened to those other men was finally solved.

On August 20, 1874, a traveling artist named John Randolph was walking. through a forest in western Colorado approximately in the area where those other Prospectors would have been walking in their attempt to leave the valley and as John Randolph was walking through that area he began to smell this horrible smell and so John followed the smell until he brought it. to this clearing and then in the clearing there was what looked like an old dilapidated camp and so being curious John walked towards the clearing to see who was in this camp but when he turned the corner and saw what was in the clearing The ground in the middle of this camp froze because on the ground in the middle of this camp there were five dead men, all lined up perfectly, they were the source of the terrible smell and immediately, although JN was shocked by what he was seeing, he could To say that these five men did not die from something natural, one was missing his head completely and the other four had obvious signs that something had been crushed very hard, probably repeatedly on their heads, but that was not all that John noticed.

What's immediately obvious is that the five bodies were in very different states of decomposition, two of the bodies were basically skeletons, but the other three were not, they were basically intact, their chests had been cut open, but they all seemed to have died recently, so In fact, one of the men looked like this. Lively it seemed as if he was simply sleeping despite the open wound on his chest and head that clearly indicated that he was dead now JN wanted to turn around and run away but he had that morbid curiosity that he wanted to know what was even looking at you.

He knew what happened to these guys and, against his better judgment, he walked a little closer to the bodies and when he got close enough he noticed something else that was totally out of place in the scene when he was looking at these men. He says that the wounds they had suffered, especially in the chest, seemed surgical, as if whoever had wounded them, whoever had cut them, had done so with incredible precision. Jon then looked up from these five bodies and noticed that a little further away was the remains of a burnt fire pit and then there was a trail leading into the woods behind the fire, so again you meet John.

He wants to run but he can't help but be very curious, so he walked past the bodies, went to the fire pit and followed that path back into the forest and found this ramshackle shelter hidden in the forest that was abandoned there was no one there, but it had all the signs that someone lived here for quite a long period of time and then suddenly it was like all these pieces came together and John realized what he had just found clearly, those five men. They had been murdered and the person who murdered them most likely lived in this camp and over the course of what seemed like weeks or months this person was slaughtering these men and then cooking parts of their bodies over that fire and eating them, this is like a cannibal camp and John, you know he's thinking if this guy is going to come back, you know, whoever lives here will be back soon, he didn't know that and in a panic he took out a sketchbook, drew the area and then turned and ran.

Leaving there to go find help would turn out that John, the illustrator, was absolutely right about what he thought was happening in that camp after Alfred was left to die, those other five men continued into the night in the mountains and then someone attacked. They started killing them and eating them and that person was Alfred, that's why Alfred had survived for so long. It wasn't just that he could make fires at night, but that he could make fires at night and eat his friends. Now no one has really been able to determine how Alfred killed these five men or even when he killed these five men.

All we know is that, according to the investigation, four of his victims seemed to have been asleep when they were murdered, but the fifth victim, who was actually Israel, the only guy who really liked Alfred, looked out for him and was like a father figure to him. He was the only one who showed signs of much of a struggle before being killed, while Alfred denied killing all five. Of the men he said that he basically single-handedly killed one of them and that it was self-defense and that someone else killed the other four. You know, he was a little confusing.

Despite these claims, the one thing Alford never denied was cannibalism in In fact, Alfred directly told authorities that he came to really like the taste of human flesh. In fact, when they searched the camp, John Randall found that they would find the remains of a dead deer that was right near the camp, but despite being there. Alfred never tried to cut it up and eat it, he just kept going back to his stash of human flesh and eating it, in the end Alfred was convicted of murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison, but in 1901, when he was 92 years old.

He was granted parole and immediately Alfred became a vegetarian and then died a few years later, from the 19th century to the 20th century. Bodman St Lawrence Hospital was one of the largest nursing homes in England, but in 2002 it closed permanently. Due to so many accusations of mistreatment of patients, now after it was closed, the property fell into disrepair, it was basically abandoned, and when it fully grew, it began to attract vandals and urban explorers, so the owners of the property finally just held out. They put up a fence around the hospital and hired security guards to patrol the property at night to keep vandals away, so these security guards started doing that and very quickly they started reporting that they were seeing and hearing things that they didn't. they could explain.

At this property they would hear things like footsteps on floors they knew were empty or they would hear doors slamming and at least one guard claimed to have seen a stretcher rolling down the hallway from a room but then when he checked the room there was no one there but Perhaps the most terrifying account came from a security guard who when he showed up for work that night was feeling a little sick and when he was walking around the property he found a place to lie down in one of the smaller hospitals. buildings and while he was lying there with his eyes closed he started to hear a tapping sound coming from outside, so he got up and walked to the window and looked out into the night, but he couldn't see anything thatcould cause this tapping sound and then he shrugged and turned around to lie down again, but when he turned around, standing in this room with him, was this thin woman who was wearing a white hospital gown and had a dirty black hair covering her face and then the security guard just stares at her in terror and before he could do anything, this woman just turns around, walks into a wall and disappears to hear the full terrifying story.

Check out the latest episode of our new podcast from Ballin Studios called Bedtime Stories, this episode. It's called Night Shift and if you want more episodes like this, Bedtime Stories releases new episodes every Wednesday and they're available on all podcast platforms, so that'll do. If you get anything out of today's story, make sure you check out our podcast called the Mr Ballin podcast where we have hundreds of stories very similar to this one, but a lot of them are only available again on the podcast, it's called the Mr Ballin podcast and it's available on Amazon music, wait, don't go anywhere if you are looking for More strange, dark and mysterious videos click here.