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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/SpriteIsntThatBad on 2024-12-25 16:46:35+00:00.
Yellowstone National Park, I would argue, is the most well known Park in the world. From its beautiful forests, diversity of wildlife, and of course, the geysers that spray boiling water, such as the Morning Glory pool. Like a giant rainbow gemstone after being cut open, the mutli-coloured pool was red, green yellow and had many attractive shades of blue.
Something you would pay a heavy some to see.
And then there is the Volcano. A gargantuan, underground supervolcano that is active and world-ending if it were to erupt. But you actually don’t need to worry yourself about such a thing, we are safe from that. By the time it does explode, humanity will probably be living on other planets and we may watch the devastation from afar. Hopefully.
But nonetheless, the park is a beautiful part of our world and I’m sure it is a ‘place to be’ to be on the bucket list of most of the American population.
Thousands of people all year around come down to visit with their family, friends or by themselves. People from different states, countries and continents, all excited faces coming in and leaving visibly satisfied.
I was happy watching them come and leave. But now I worry for their safety.
Let’s bring this back to the beginning. To protect my own identity and the identity of others in this story, I’m gonna call myself….Michael for now and the two others involved in this Sarah and Bob. A bit standard, but alas.
We both worked at the park for a few years now, with me and Bob as rangers and with Sarah, who actually worked at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. I got around fine with Bob and Sarah is my sister in-law. She actually introduced me to this job opening not long after she married my sister. I was very grateful for that and now I hope she’ll have my back when I tell the family about what happened.
It all started about a week and a half ago, with some campers leaving the woods and giving Bob and I odd reports. They said that the overall trip was pleasant, but they were disturbed by some noises they heard. They described it as a “deep rumbling noise” that they felt just as much as they heard. Bob and I had no clue what that meant and chalked it up to their imagination, but soon we heard it as well. A distant and faint, but still very much existing noise.
A low rumbling that felt powerful. And some campers after that reported seeing trees in the distant shaking and moving like they were being pushed. I theorized for a bit that it was a stampeding bison herd, but the frequency of the rumblings didn’t match that of a group of running animals, and I heard what a stampede sounded like and it didn’t match.
I had a strong feeling of what it was. Or more specifically, the source was on the tip of my tongue. It’s like when you take a test at school and there’s a question that you knew the answer to, but you just couldn’t right it down.
As it went on, Bob jokingly said “Maybe it’s the Volcano.” and I laughed with him. But that part of my brain latched onto that and I began to worry that it was the Volcano. Tremors and rumblings that would have been picked up by various equipment like rector scales occasionally happen, but not to the extent we would all hear it and shake trees. Not to my own memory at least and I was worried the Volcano was acting up.
I tried to rationalize it as the Rumblings being something else. If it was a volcano, more trees would shake and not small sections of them, as the campers described, and if the Volcano was acting up, Sarah would have called to inform us. Or anyone else from the observatory in case it was something we would be concerned about or just to calm our nerves on a seismic behavior we had no knowledge of. But that part of my brain wouldn’t relax and I feared the worst.
So I took it upon myself to call Sarah and ask. I sighed in relief and felt my heart beat normally as Sarah told me there hadn’t been any seismic activity or tremors. In fact, things have actually been relatively calm. Though I was glad to know we weren’t under threat of an eruption, that did mean their source of the noise remained a mystery.
After another day of our usual work routine of patrolling the park without going deep into the wilderness, only to be interrupted by a low and deep rumble that came from a good distance away, I decided that I was going to get to the bottom of this. Last thing the park needed was something bothering the visitors.
After consulting with Bob on the matter, I packed some essentials and decided to use a bike that was made for cycling through forest terrain and made my way deeper in the wilderness. After taking solace that the volcano wasn’t behind this, I wasn’t nervous as I went into the wooded areas of the park, and I certainly wasn’t afraid of the animals. Deer and coyotes avoid humans, bison are only dangerous when provoked and wolves also know that humans are not meant to be interacted with. We had a bit of a mutual understanding with them.
I thought about what the noise could have been. Maybe machinery cutting down trees illegally or dumb kids partying too hard away from everyone else. After a while, I passed through the empty camping area and stopped to catch my breath. As I did, something loud made me jump.
Rumbling again, but not the same. It was far away and lasted longer and continued still and soon I could see a wave of brown coming through from the trees. It was maybe 100 or so meters away and I felt my body begin to prepare to flee as the stampeding bison thundered across a small clearing. All grouped tightly together to protect the young, they stomped and ran down past before turning sharply to their left and went into another section of the forest.
I sighed knowing they weren’t heading towards any tourist centres and I waited for the wolf pack to come into view. But they didn’t come. There weren’t any wolves anywhere, or anything else that would have caused the bison herd to run. And I knew that they were just migrating or moving from one place to another, that was clearly a panicked behavior. They were being chased, but there was not a wolf in sight. Nor was there a bear that decided to make its appearance in the park.
It made me think of the other theories behind the other strange recent events. I thought it really was people steering trouble and scaring the wildlife. I pulled out my walkie talkie at that moment and spoke into it.
“Hey, Bob? I just saw a herd of bison stampede near one of the camping sites, clearly panicked behaviour. Over.”
A moment passed and Bob’s voice came through “Roger that. Were there any wolves or anything chasing them? Over.”
“Nothing from what I saw. I think there is someone or a group of people disturbing the wildlife. I’m going to check it out. Over.”
There was another pause “Alright, but be careful. If it seems too dangerous, come back and we can regroup and decide what to do there. Some visitors could get hurt if this keeps up, last we need is someone being run over by a one ton cattle. Over”
“Roger that.” I replied before putting my walkie talkie away and cycled on, following the direction the bison came, making sure I was going slow and steady.
As I travelled deeper, it felt like I was suddenly moving through molasses. Like something was slowing me down and telling me to turn back and get away from where I was. My gut turned uneasily and my mouth felt dry with a sour tinge.
Something didn’t feel right and I was beginning to regret this decision. Thoughts of turning back to get Michael so I wouldn’t go alone, thoughts of calling the police based on gut feeling, and thoughts of never again coming back to this park raced through my mind.
As I thought this, I broke through the tree line and froze, my hand gripping the handle breaks so tightly and fast that I almost flipped over the bike
Right in front of me, was a dead bison. A large dead bison, completely ripped apart. I’ve seen kills from wolves before, but this wasn’t anything like what a normal animal could do. The lower half of the bison was gone, indulging bits of the front, like it was feasted upon by dozens of animals. But the ground was still wet with blood. Flies buzzed about the corpse, bits of what little organs it had left stretched out of the torso, the bull’s face in a state of shock.
I felt sick rising in my throat and I gagged in-between my ragged breaths as I stared in horror. A cold sweat washed down my face and I pulled at my collar that felt tight around my neck, trying to wrap my head around this and I began to question what could have possibly done this?
Just then, I turned my gaze up to see a thick tail of blood that started a few meters away from the bison and led into a thicker foliage of trees, like something bleeding walked away from the scene. Or what I soon came to learn, carried.
I followed the trail and my eyes fell upon something past the light brown or base trees. I squinted to get a better look, before my eyes shot open when I saw something gigantic move through the forest. I couldn’t see what it was, other than it was dark brown and black, and despite being bigger than anything I’d ever seen, it was moving too silently, only making noise whenever its massive frame pushed against the dense collection of foliage.
Every instinct I had screamed at me to turn heel, or wheel in this case, and get the hell out of there, and I obeyed them like a drone.
I bolted through the park as fast as I could, the tr…
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