The Wiggler

[00:00:00] Foreign I'm Ben, and welcome to the show where you and I gather around this campfire to hear some of our fellow campers scariest experiences. Whether you're a new or returning one, I'm glad you're here. [00:00:18] Tonight we will hear a story submitted by a camper named Linda, who I think experienced some sort of cryptid that I cannot find any other encounters nor records of. [00:00:31] Now, without further ado, do you want to hear a ghost story? [00:00:39] I've lived in Vermont most of my life, and I thought I knew these mountains. The long trail, camel's hump, the ridges where the maples thin into spruce and hemlock. [00:00:51] I've hiked them all since I was a kid. I thought I'd seen them all, thought I'd seen it all. [00:01:00] But some things don't show themselves until they have to. [00:01:04] It was last October, after a week of relentless rain, the kind that doesn't just fall but sinks into everything, turning dirt to muck and filling the brooks until they spit brown water over the banks. [00:01:21] I wanted to hike. [00:01:24] Not just that, I wanted the quiet. [00:01:27] My life had felt noisy even when it wasn't, so I drove out, parked in a muddy trailhead, and shouldered my pack. [00:01:38] The air was heavy and still. [00:01:40] No wind, just the smell of wet leaves rotting sweetly into the soil. [00:01:47] The trail squished under my boots, each step sucking like the mountain wanted me to stay put. [00:01:54] At first, the silence felt like a gift. [00:01:58] No highway noise, no voices, just me in the woods. But about an hour in, I realized it wasn't the ordinary natural silence. [00:02:10] It was complete, except for one rustling fern just off the trail. [00:02:19] My chest tightened, my mind immediately leaping to a snake. [00:02:25] We don't have many here, but I've stumbled across the odd garter before sunning itself on a rock. [00:02:33] Still, this sounds. [00:02:35] It sounded wetter, slower. [00:02:39] The fern trembled as I froze, my boots now firmly stuck in the mud. [00:02:46] Something slid out from under the fern, long, thin, moving low to the ground. [00:02:53] My stomach dropped, but as this creature turned, I saw its little pointed face, tiny round ears. [00:03:01] It was simply a chipmunk grabbing a leaf bigger than its body. [00:03:06] I let out a strangled laugh, relieved but sharp. [00:03:12] I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath until it all came out at once. [00:03:18] I told myself to carry on, that chipmunks were cute, but this was the type of scare that clung to you. [00:03:27] Something told me deep down, something I already knew, that this wouldn't be the only excitement I saw that day. [00:03:36] But I continued to walk on, half a mile, maybe Less. [00:03:42] That's when I heard the sound again. [00:03:44] Only this time the rustle was a little different. [00:03:48] I stopped again and stared. [00:03:51] At first I thought I was just repeating the same mistake, that it was just another chipmunk, or that this time. [00:04:01] But the longer I stared, the more wrong this sound got. [00:04:07] Whatever it was slid out from underneath the fern. [00:04:11] It looked like water pouring into a shape, a body with no bones, bending and folding in ways that that shouldn't be possible. [00:04:21] Coiling, uncoiling, collapsing in on itself. [00:04:26] His skin shifted with every twist. [00:04:29] Mud brown one second, moss green the next, slick gray like wet stone after that, always blending in with the ground. [00:04:40] Only it shimmered. [00:04:42] Not like it was scales catching the light, like the air itself was bending around it. [00:04:49] Just as heat rises off the blacktop in July, it stopped right across from me. [00:04:56] Half its body coiled on the wet leaves, the other half raised, swaying. [00:05:01] The other half raised, swaying slightly, not threatening, just watching. [00:05:08] I remembered my grandmother telling me stories. [00:05:12] Stories all my parents. [00:05:14] Stories my parents called nonsense, though they never told my grandmother to stop. [00:05:19] Wigglers, she called them, not snakes. [00:05:24] If you see one, you get to higher ground. You do not linger. Wigglers come before the mountain shifts. [00:05:33] As if hearing her words for the first time through this memory, I looked back at the wiggler. [00:05:41] The wiggler gave one or two more waves, then slid down the back of a rock and left. [00:05:48] Relief fluttered through me. I thought maybe it left. [00:05:52] But then the ground groaned. [00:05:55] At first it was subtle, a vibration in my boots, a hum in my chest. [00:06:01] Then it got louder and louder. [00:06:04] Pebbles began skittering across the trail. [00:06:07] I heard a birch tree in the distance tremble. [00:06:11] Then, just ahead, some of the hillside gave way. [00:06:16] The roar was deafening. [00:06:18] Mud, water, stone, whole trees ripping loose. [00:06:23] Through it all, I could see the wiggler moving, not caught in the chaos, not even resisting. [00:06:31] It twisted and writhed as. As though the wiggler was following the slide's lead itself. [00:06:38] Not causing it, barely even announcing it, just following it. [00:06:45] I stood there paralyzed, clutching the closest tree until my knuckles hurt, watching the land tear itself apart less than 20 yards from where I stood. [00:06:57] If I'd stepped off the trail when I first saw it, or kept going, I would have been buried under all that mud and timber. [00:07:06] The rumble finally stopped. The hillside the trail above was ruined, the wiggler gone. [00:07:14] I don't know how long I stood there, but finally I stumbled backward, the way I came. [00:07:21] The hike back felt endless. [00:07:23] I kept expecting to see the wiggler again. [00:07:27] More trees, more landslides. [00:07:31] I've asked around about this, and the only thing I've ever heard is that one hiker did say that they'd seen weird snake things once during a storm. [00:07:43] I don't know if this is a real Cryptid or not, but I do know when the mountains and hills want to move, you see one. [00:07:54] Or at least I did. [00:07:56] I don't know if they're guardians, messengers, or both, but I know if you're ever hiking and it's rained a lot recently and you see something that looks like a snake but isn't, you should just run away. [00:08:11] And whatever you do, don't follow where it goes. [00:08:15] Thank you Linda for allowing me to share your story. [00:08:19] You know, this one really stumped me. [00:08:22] I cannot find any information on this. [00:08:27] I don't know what to tell you. This was Swall asked the campers if any of you are avid hikers and you've been in a similar situation as our submitter. Did you see a wiggler with that? I have no show announcement, but if you'd like a shout out at the end of an episode, head over to patreon.com do you want to hear Ghost Story? [00:08:50] As always, I'm just glad to have you all as campers on this journey. So please keep sharing the show with anyone you think might like these stories or someone you're just trying to scare. [00:09:00] If you're enjoying the show, please leave a review. I would love to hear from you. [00:09:05] Until next time.