This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/abiroadwrites on 2024-11-11 00:02:56+00:00.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Landon? You hate camping.”

My girlfriend sat cross-legged on our bed, watching me cram things into the hiking backpack my foster dad had given me for my birthday, the year he passed away. The plan had been for us to spend one weekend every summer hiking through the mountains together. I wanted to get more fit, and we both wanted to spend more time with each other. So in March of that year he gave me this great backpack for my 22nd birthday, and then he went and died in June, three weeks before our first trip.

To be honest I had been so mad at him for going and dying on me that I had thrown the backpack in my closet and forgotten about it until now. I had never been crazy about camping, I’d only wanted to spend time with Hank.

I looked back at her and said, “Yeah, I’m sure. And it’s not really camping, more like-”

She smirked, “A rescue mission?”

I chuckled, but there was a deep pit in the bottom of my stomach as I said, “Yeah, more like a rescue mission I guess.”

My best friend Patrick had gone on a solo backpacking trip a few weeks prior. He started in Grand Teton, and was supposed to be back by now. He’d been using his emergency SatNav device to send me the occasional message, and as time had progressed his messages were only getting weirder, harder to understand. I got my last ping for his location a few days ago, then he fell off the map. So I and a few other people were heading out to look for him. We were all going to start within a few miles of his last location, and hike through the area to see if we could find him or any trace of him.

The next morning before the sun even had a chance to rise I piled into my friend Max’s jeep, Tyler and Cody were already there, and he drove us out to the middle of nowhere. The four of us were quiet as we sipped gross instant coffee out of a thermos and listened to the early morning talk show hosts on the radio as they discussed some video that was trending.

When we got to the parking spot below the first hiking trail we all got out, collected our things and made sure the SatNav devices Cody had ordered online were all working. They were, and he explained that in order to message each other we would have to keep our phones on, charged, and connected to the device via bluetooth. We had all brought small, solar powered battery packs, so we didn’t expect to run into trouble there. He also told us, very begrudgingly, that he had bought the monthly subscription so we could send as many messages as we needed to.

We all thanked Cody, then split off in four separate directions and started hiking.

My girlfriend, Harissa, had been pretty upset when I told her we were going to split up to look for Patrick, but we all felt like it would be the best way to cover as much ground as possible. The parks service had told us they would send people out to look for Patrick, only after his family filed a missing persons report. Patrick’s mom was too busy trying to score meth to make that happen, so we decided to take matters into our own hands.

The first morning was beautiful, and I told myself that I was stopping every hour to admire the scenery, not to catch my breath. By mid afternoon I felt like I had found my stride, and I was starting to enjoy myself. I felt a little weird, like I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I kept telling myself that I was doing the right thing in coming out here.

Cody, Tyler, Max, and I kept in touch as best we could without wearing down our batteries, letting each other know how far we had made it and that none of us had found any signs of Patrick yet.

I made the mistake of pushing myself to keep walking even as the shadows grew longer, and I wound up having to set up camp in the dark. I was frustrated and kept making small mistakes trying to put my little one person tent up. I gave up and decided to look for firewood instead, promising myself I would plan my day better tomorrow so I would have time to set up my tent.

I built my fire, cooked my dinner, then made the comfiest sleeping spot I could and curled up on my sleeping bag.I lay there, staring up at the stars through the tree branches, until exhaustion overtook me.

I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep, until I woke up in the middle of the night needing to pee. I rolled over, getting ready to push my stiff body up so I could find somewhere to relieve myself, when I saw a dark shape hovering around the edge of my campsite.

It looked like a halloween decoration at first, as weird as that sounds. There was a vaguely human shape, but it was hunched and slightly more animalistic. I laid on my side, staring at it, until it melted back into the treeline and became just another shadow.

I got up then, making sure to go in the opposite direction, and tried to convince myself that it was just a shadow, maybe some kind of animal. Some totally normal animal to find in the woods.

With that I managed to convince myself to go back to sleep, and I woke again to the first rays of sunlight poking me in the eye.

The first thing I did was check my messages on my SatNav device. Cody had sent us a message in the middle of the night about how creepy the woods were alone, and Max replied a few minutes before I woke up, saying he had felt like he was being watched all night.

I remembered the strange shape I’d seen in the trees, and felt a shiver work its way down my spine. It was probably just shared anxiety between the four of us, worrying about our missing friend. But it was still hard to shake the feeling that something was watching us, following us, and we didn’t know what.

I felt that cold drip of fear on my spine again, and did my best to shake it off. The sun was warm and bright, and despite my sore muscles I was looking forward to the day’s hike.

I packed my things, ate a protein bar, then sent a message to the group letting them know I was heading out and which direction I was going in. I got three messages back from the group with the directions they were going, and a reminder from Cody not to kill our batteries. Zach sent a message back that said, “Shoot, should I stop using the SatNav to torrent videos then?”

Cody didn’t send a reply back, but I knew he was rolling his eyes and laughing.

I started walking, and despite my fatigue and nerves I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful it was. The pale yellow sunlight filtered through the trees, casting a patchwork of green and yellow onto the rocks and path in front of me. It was actually kind of mesmerizing, and I found myself beginning to understand why Hank and Patrick liked it out here so much.

Thinking about my foster dad reminded me I had already lost one person, and it gave me renewed energy to find my best friend. Patrick had been there for me in the years since losing my foster dad, and I knew I couldn’t have made it this far without him.

An idea occurred to me and I stopped walking, then pulled out my phone and my SatNav. I pulled up the messages I had been getting from Patrick, and sent a message to his SatNav number. I knew it was unlikely I would get anything back, but I really felt like I could sense his presence in the forest.

I slid my technology back into my pack and kept walking, picking up my pace as I did. We had a lot of ground to cover, and I knew four people weren’t enough for a search party, but we had to try.

I hiked for hours, sometimes going off trail so I could explore an area I thought Patrick would have liked, other times stopping and just calling out his name. Around mid afternoon I stopped to make a real lunch, rather than just tearing into another protein bar, and allowed myself a peek at my SatNav. Nothing. I tried to swallow my disappointment along with my flavorless freeze dried food.

I ate and got back on the trail, but doubt had started to creep in. We were probably never going to find Patrick, and I knew that. Grand Teton was huge, wild, and kind of dangerous. If we hadn’t heard from him in a few weeks, we were probably never going to hear from again.

I found a place to make camp (early enough this time, so I could put my tent up) and began to settle in, trying not to plan my best friend’s funeral in my head as I did.

I made my fire and settled in, wishing I had Netflix to take my mind off things. I woke up again in the middle of the night to the same shadow hovering over my campsite. This time it was holding something that cast a light on its face. The light was dim, like it was holding an old gameboy, just barely lit up in the darkness, so I couldn’t make out the features very well, but I could tell it had an almost human shape.

I say almost human because every detail I could make out was just a little wrong. The eyes glinted like an animal, seeming to open and close independently of each other. The mouth seemed to stretch back too far, and the body was hunched and straight in all the wrong places.

But for some reason, I didn’t feel at all threatened by it. Whatever I was looking at didn’t seem to mean me any harm. It stared at me for what seemed like a long time, then it was gone. Once again, I drifted off into a fitful sleep.

That night my dreams were stranger than usual. I found myself walking through the woods, trying to find pieces of myself. Every time I would find one piece, an arm, a hand, I would realize I was missing something else. It was like trying to hold water in a sieve, I couldn’t seem to keep myself in one piece.

W…

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1goevpc/my_best_friend_went_missing_in_grand_teton_but_i/