Scary Hiking Stories That Will Make You Want To Stay Indoors

When Ivan Milat died in 2019, it wasn't his loss that was mourned, but the fact that it was now likely that he would never concretely be tied to the victims he was only suspected of murdering. According to The Guardian, in 1996 Milat was convicted of murdering seven hikers in Australia — all aged between 19 and 22 years old — but it's suspected that his true victim count was closer to 20.

The killings that he was convicted of started in 1989, with the disappearance of Deborah Everist and James Gibson. Other victims disappeared while backpacking across Australia, and the killings went on for four years before a connection was made. When Everist's and Gibson's bodies were finally found in the Belanglo state forest in 1993, the handful of suspects got smaller — partially with the help of Paul Onions, a backpacker who had hitched a ride with Milat and escaped an attack.

Milat's trial took 18 weeks, and he was given seven consecutive life sentences. Up until his death, possible victims' families still continued to hold out hope that he would confess to more murders. He didn't.

There's a terrifying footnote to the story, too. In 2010, his great-nephew, Matthew Milat, headed into the Belanglo state forest with a friend, then murdered him. He is reported as saying "You know me, you know my family. You know the last name Milat. I did what they do."

|Featured image by Ajayvius via Wikimedia Commons|Cropped and scaled|CC BY SA 3.0|

California might be a great place to enjoy some gorgeous scenery, but between 1979 and 1981, trails near San Francisco were posted with signs warning people not to hike alone. "Women should be especially cautious," they read.

That's because there was a serial killer preying on those he met on the trails. By the time David Carpenter was arrested, he had killed at least 10 people, according to Strange Outdoors, and it's entirely possible there were more victims.

Edda Kane was the first of Carpenter's known victims — he attacked her while she was hiking on Mount Tamalpais. Just a few months after her death in August 1979, a group of golfers ignored the screams they heard coming from a trail in Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Mary Francis Bennett had been out jogging near Land's End when she was stabbed 25 times. Her body was found by hikers who followed a trail of blood to the shallow grave where she'd been dumped.

The killings escalated, but it wasn't until July 3, 1981 that police arrested Carpenter, a man who SFGate says was the exact opposite of the profile that psychologists had created. Carpenter had already been on police radar: Kane's murder happened just three months after Carpenter was released to a halfway house after serving just two and a half years of a seven-year sentence for kidnapping, sexual assault, and robbery. He had previously served a nine-year sentence for attacking a woman with a hammer.

Aokigahara is a forest about 100 miles from Tokyo, and while it's a beautiful place that attracts hikers from all over the country and beyond, those who venture into the woods are likely to find something that speaks to the area's dark nickname: the suicide forest.

According to The Washington Post, the forest is filled with memorials in the form of personal effects and photographs. It's also not uncommon for hikers to stumble across a body. Hikers looking to explore Aokigahara can hire guides, a job that appears less peaceful than being a ranger or forest guide elsewhere. National Geographic reports that one guide, Toru Kurihara, found 36 bodies in a span of just 37 days.

It's such a popular destination for those looking to take their own life that the trails are filled with signs reminding people that "The life you were given from your parents is precious," and pleading with people to meditate on what they're planning on doing and encouraging them to talk to someone instead.

The last time authorities released statistics was in 2010, when 247 people attempted to take their own life in the forest and there were 54 confirmed deaths. According to National Geographic, the forest's connection to suicide goes back to ancient folklore, it is said that families would leave elderly relatives there to die in a practice called ubasute. Add in a few pop culture references of suicide, and the forest became infamous for it.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

The Brocken is the highest peak in Germany's Harz Mountains, and a ton of tales have been told about the witches, goblins, and ogres that live among its trees. There's one that's absolutely real, though, and it's the Brocken Spectre.

EarthSky says sightings of the spectre go back to at least 1780, when it was first described in detail by a theologian named Johann Silberschlag. It's been there for a lot longer, though. According to German stories, it's so terrifying that when one man — who was out hiking on a foggy early morning — saw the spectre looming down the path ahead of him, he leapt off the mountain to his death rather than face the eerie shade before him.

The Guardian explains that the spectre is an optical illusion created when the right combination of sun and fog results in a person's shadow being projected onto a cloud and ringed by a surreal, rainbow-colored aura. It's commonly seen in the Harz Mountains but has also been observed on the U.K.'s Burley Moor, and it's such a creepy thing to see that even when they know the science behind it, it still makes some people literally terrified of their own shadow. And it's no wonder: It's not so much a human shadow as it is an elongated, long-limbed form with a tiny head. Even if you know how something's created, it doesn't always make it less scary.

In the early days of 1959, the remains of nine hikers were discovered on the Soviet Union's ominously named Dead Mountain. They had cut their way out of their tent from the inside, leaving behind neatly folded clothes and provisions.

When they were found, the bodies were in different yet terrifying conditions. Most were half-dressed and had broken bones, some were missing eyes, and one woman was missing her tongue. The official cause of death was hypothermia, and the so-called Dyatlov Pass incident became the stuff of conspiracy theories and tall tales.

In 2019, the BBC reported that Russian authorities were reopening the case, and investigators looked at 75 theories that had sprung up around the incident. In 2021, researchers from the Snow and Avalanche Simulation Laboratory in Switzerland published results of a study, outlining what they determine to be the most plausible explanation (via LiveScience).

They explain that the tent was pitched in a hollow that the hikers had carved into the mountain, and it's posited that fresh snowfall and winds triggered a slab avalanche that sent the nine scrambling from their shelter and into the freezing cold. Is this what really happened? It's unlikely that anyone will ever get confirmation for sure, but lead researcher Johan Gaume took something else away from the incident. "...they took care of their injured friends — no one was left behind. I think this is a great story of courage and friendship in the face of a brutal force of nature."

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy says that violence rarely breaks out among the hikers covering the thousands of miles along the way, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

In May 2019, when James Jordan stabbed and killed Ronald Sanchez in Virginia, it made the war veteran the 10th person to be murdered along the trail in the 45 years the agency had been keeping track of that sort of thing.

According to The New York Times, hikers had already been spreading warnings to each other about Jordan, who had been harassing people along the way. He pulled a knife and an ax on hikers in Tennessee, and in Virginia, he told four hikers that he was going to burn them alive in their tents. He pulled a knife on them, too, but they escaped. A woman who was camping in the same area as Sanchez was stabbed by Jordan, but managed to escape and then — with the help of other hikers — walk 6 miles to get help.

Jordan was arrested and charged with Sanchez's murder but was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity. Both prosecutors and the defense agreed, saying Jordan "could not appreciate the nature and quality of his actions, and therefore he met the legal standard for insanity."

The Grand Canyon is one of the most breathtaking wonders of the American landscape, and according to Podium Runner, there are 54 trails hikers can opt to take when they visit. There's only one, though, where hikers have reported seeing and hearing the Wailing Woman.

So many people have seen her — from day hikers to park rangers — that it's kind of gotten to the point where even skeptics need to wonder if there's something going on here. She's always reported to be wearing a white dress decorated with blue flowers, and has a scarf covering her hair. 

The Wailing Woman is said to be the spirit of a young woman who moved to the Grand Canyon in the late 1920s. She, her husband, and their young son lived at the newly built Grand Canyon Lodge until tragedy tore their little family apart. Father and son were out hiking when a storm swept through, and both were killed in a fall from Transept Trail. Unable to come to terms with their tragic deaths, the woman took her own life, and her spirit continues to wander the trail where she once searched in vain for her beloved husband and son. They were just two of the more than 700 people who have died at the Grand Canyon since the middle of the 19th century.

The lodge where the woman died burned in 1932, and witnesses claimed to have seen her walking among the flames. One door in the rebuilt lodge slams shut every time it's left open.

In 1991, Erika and Helmut Simon were on holiday in the mountains on the border between Italy and Austria. When they headed out for a hike on September 19, they probably never expected to find a body, let alone the 5,300-year-old remains of a murder victim.

Otzi the Iceman was recovered four days after he was first spotted by the unsuspecting hikers, and his murder investigation was officially reopened by Italian authorities in 2017.

According to the BBC, it took a decade before researchers found the arrowhead that killed him: It was still in his back. When Munich Police Department's Detective Chief Inspector Alexander Horn took a look at the evidence, he concluded Otzi had been caught unaware when he was shot from a distance of at least 100 feet. Given that he was found alongside his weapons and had defensive wounds on his hands, it led Horn to speculate he'd fought with his killer earlier, then was ambushed.

Even more surprising were the findings published in 2019 (via National Geographic). A study of the mosses and pollens around Otzi and in his digestive tract showed he had done quite a bit of hiking himself in the days leading up to his death. Although he was discovered at a site 10,530 feet above sea level, he had ingested pollen from 8,200 feet about 33 hours prior. About 10 hours before he died, he was at around 4,000 feet, meaning his last hours were spent in a frantic climb.

There's a historic hiking trail where visitors have reported hearing something eerily specific: voices echoing over the gently sloping hills, singing a song with a distinctly Christmas carol-like lilt. And historians say that might not be a coincidence: Decades ago, it's where the Irish Brigade faced down advancing Confederate soldiers and sang their Gaelic battle cry... with a Christmas-like melody.

Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland has been called one of the most haunted hiking spots in the U.S., and given what's happened there, it's easy to see why. Civil War buffs will recognize the name as the location of the bloodiest day in U.S. history: September 17, 1862. How bloody? Estimates suggest that one man died every two seconds ... for 12 hours.

It's the location of a dirt road once used mainly by local farmers: The Sunken Road was renamed Bloody Lane after around 5,500 men — dead or wounded — fell there. Today, the men who fell in this completely pointless skirmish are still seen and heard by those who walk their route. The U.S. Department of Transportation has actually shared some of the stories told around the area, saying that it doesn't matter how many people are hiking the trail, it'll still remain eerily quiet ... as far as modern sounds go. Hikers report hearing and smelling the sound of battle, the scent of gunpowder filling the air along with the sounds of battle. Hikers have also claimed to believe they're sharing the trail with reenactors, until the men vanish.

Anyone brave enough to hike out to North Carolina's Roan Mountain when the wind is blowing might be treated to an otherworldly concert ... for better or worse. According to local author and historian Jennifer Bauer (via PBS), people have been hearing the so-called ghost choir since at least the 19th century, but here's the thing: Not everyone has heard the same thing.

Accounts compiled by Bauer in her book, "Roan Mountain: A Passage of Time," tell some seriously terrifying tales. Some people report hearing what sounds like a choir of angels, others have claimed it to be fairies, and other accounts say there's something else — the howling of demons and the sounds of souls being tortured, sounds that are drifting up from the bowels of hell itself. That's the story told by one man, who found himself forced to seek shelter in a cave during a storm. He emerged with hair turned white from fear, saying that he'd spent a terrifying night as a witness to visions of damnation, tormented by demons that ripped at his clothes, the same demons who had their shrieking voices carried on the winds.

More scientific observations were recorded by a geologist who visited the site in 1878. Henry E. Colton described it as "the humming of a thousand bees," which, to be honest, is also pretty terrifying. He suggested it had something to do with the electrical currents running through the area.