Between Boone and Blowing Rock 1980, North Carolina

Ok, word of warning, this is not Bigfoot related.

I’ve done a good deal of hiking in my life and I’ve been fortunate to hike many places and yes, I’ve had a lot of experiences from searching for the lost, and not finding them; to searching for the lost and finding them. The crazy naked man in the woods who thought he and I could be “special buddies” for a while and tried stalking me until I put a load of #6 shot in his butt. Stumbled upon pot growers and Moonshiners, fortunately I made my way away from them without being seen or getting into a booby trap they might have had set. Yeah, they really do set traps for people. Crazy, drunken deer hunters, crazy, drunken Ginseng hunters and this old naked lady who was high as a kite and playing her guitar beside a stream; ok, she wasn’t completely naked, she was wearing a sunhat. I have to say that I’ve always found it strange when I get off in the wood into an area you’d swear no white man has ever stood before, damned if you don’t find people or signs of civilization.
I was hiking from a place south of Blowing Rock, NC. I had a friend tell me all about it, it’s a tough hike, one I wouldn’t go on now, you need to be a dynamite condition and you need to plan on camping one night. And you need to be able to navigate well or you’ll get turned around something terrible. Now what with the advent of GPS it’s not so bad, but still not a hike for rookies or novices, or the faint of heart.
He is telling me all about this place and I am beside myself, “Well damnit man, when are we going?” And he lets me all the way down, getting this stupid look on his face like he’s told me some dark government secret that is sure to get us both killed by the CIA. Needless to say I was feeling like one of his ex girl friends told me once, “Honestly, that boy will not even think about sex sometimes and when I remind him we haven’t had some alone time then he’s on and off and I’m sitting there thinking, “Well, this wasn’t worth getting messy over.” So I get on to him about getting me all excited and leaving me all high and dry. “Ok, ok, look, I’ll come over to your house tonight and bring my maps and show you where I’m talking about, but I don’t want to go back. Which was odd because he loved getting out in the woods as bad as I do, if not more, so I told him that would be fine just come on over about eight o’clock or so. 
He showed up and we started having a beer and he was showing me his topomap and I have to tell you that when I first looked at it I was a little afraid. The trick he said is to not try and climb every ravine and mountain but to hug the side of the mountains. About half way up, there were a lot of old logging roads and game trails to make use of, so it wasn’t like trying to hike on a steep incline, you could walk semi-flat footed. That made me feel a great deal better, there’s nothing worse than hiking on a steep incline and burning your calves. He told me where I could park and who I could make arraignments with for transport. The guy he told me about I could make arraignments with him over the phone and he could take me to my drop off point and let me hike back to my vehicle or do it the other way around and let him take me back to my car at the starting point. Personally, I like the idea of having my car where somebody has any eye on it and if I get delayed he can let someone know I’m late other than my wife.
He takes me up top and I get out and I’m getting my gear on and handing him my contact information and he says to me. “You know it ain’t none of my business but friend you ain’t from around here. Whatever you do, if you come across any stairs, don’t touch them.” I looked at him a little strange. “Stairs? Like in your house, stairs?” He nodded. “Yeah, look. There’s a lot of things in these mountains people just can’t explain, just over a few miles from here is Brown Mountain. I know you’ve heard of the Brown Mountain lights haven’t you?” I nodded and said I had. “I’m not trying to scare you or make you feel uncomfortable but people report seeing staircases out in these mountains and most just walk on away from them, nothing happens to them.” Then I said, “But?” He nodded some more, “That’s right but, some climb on them, sit on them and take pictures of themselves…….” He paused for moment like he was in deep thought. “…..and many of them are never seen again. Search parties have found their gear and a camera they had and then they found pictures of them on these stairs with nothing else around them. Like a house was once there and then the house burned down and was never rebuilt and all you have are these big old stairs in the middle of nowhere.” I understood he was just trying to be helpful but sometimes helpfulness gets a little creepy. I told him I appreciated and would mind what he told me, but to be honest in my time I’d never seen a lone staircase in the middle of nowhere before. He just nodded and said, “You take care Buddy. I’ll see you tomorrow where we dropped your truck.” He got in his truck as I was all geared up and getting ready to head out.
It was just before daylight as I set out and after walking about thirty or so minutes I was glad to see my vision improving. One thing I hate is stumbling around in the dark, which is why I like the old goose neck military light. It goes right on my shoulder strap and stays in place with a simple rubber band and keeps my one hand free as the other is on my trusty walking staff. But the Sun is coming up and I turn off my light and all is well as I move as carefully as I can but this area is rough for the first mile or so then the mountain sort of relaxes and sure enough as I look at my topo maps I can see where the old logging roads were and make my way toward them. While you don’t need repealing ropes and climbing gear on this hike, you’re not far from needing them, and I always carry a hundred foot climbing rope with me when I’m in a more mountainous area, because you just never know. 
Honestly this is a great place to hike. The woods are nice and open, no over growth of undergrowth, visibility is super. I noticed that I could easily see about two hundred of so yards easily, but further down where the ravine started to close in the Rhododendron was getting thick but I didn’t need to cross over to the other side for a few more miles. Honestly, rock formations, beautiful trees, a couple of small waterfalls and streams. It was paradise for a hiker and woodsman like me. Looked at my watch and saw it was nearly nine o’clock, which meant I’d been going for near three and a half hours, “Wow, time flies, huh?” I found myself a great place to take a break and have a cup of coffee or two. I’d splurged just a bit and brought some Kahlua with me. Yes, I make my own, no it isn’t that hard to make, yes, I love it in my coffee. Yes, I have a recipe. So I pour out some Kahlua in my cup and pour in my coffee that is still nice and hot in my thermos and I take a nice sip and man oh man, Heaven is indeed a place on Earth. 
Many hikers are minimalist and will not even carry tooth brushes as it adds weight they can do without, now I can’t speak for everyone but a tooth brush just doesn’t add a great deal of weight to my pack. A thermos of hot, readymade coffee, some Kahlua, a non dairy creamer that travel well, some salt, pepper, cooking spices, toilet paper, baby wipes, foot powder and some candy can make the difference between having a grueling hike and a pleasant hike. I weighed my extras and they came to about seven pounds. I know people who would refuse to go on a hike with half that extra weight. Then they want to bum off you. I tell them, “No” straight up. I bring stuff for me if they want it they need to learn to carry it. I had one fellow get pissed because I wouldn’t give him any of my water after I told him he needed to take more than one canteen. Then he made a joke about how he didn’t have to carry it, since I was carrying it. I told him then if I was carrying it, it was for me and no one else. So we got out on trail and he started whining and crying about not having any water and I had plenty. Then he decided to get all in my face about it and I clocked him. Yes, it made for a difficult hike back to the truck and a very long quiet drive home, but someone had to teach him not to be a mooch.
I’m sitting with my feet hanging over a big rock, about forty feet above an idealistic place. Leafy bottom with a small stream babbling through it, the leafy canopy, making all things in light and shadow and just breath taking it’s late May and Memorial Day weekend. Not too hot, but the nights do get a bit on the chilly side still up here in the mountains. Shoot, I’ve seen mid summer nights get chilly up in the mountains of North Carolina, but now I’m a sweating pretty good and I swear it’s like a dream. I have recently read studies that suggest that people who get out in nature give their mind a chance to reset and relax. I never needed anyone to tell me that, from the time I was a child and we’ve all go out a little ways in the woods and play I just knew this was a great way to just feel better. 
Shoot, I recall once when I was working a lot of overtime as we were busy bringing a new manufacturing facility on line and it was a tough time. Put a strain on the family and me and it was a tough time and I finally got a clear weekend and first thing the wife said was, “Go take a hike, you’ll be in better spirits.”, and she was right. I managed to get away for just a few hours and I swear my mind and body were just renewed. It was like I’d take a tonic or something and then I got home to the family and that was great too.*
I finished my coffee and started making my way further down and over to the next mountain, I checked my watch and saw it would be getting dark soon so I found a great place to camp and made myself a place to sleep, I put up my tarp just in case of rain, or dew. It was a perfect place too. I had almost a sheer rock wall to my back. The stream ran along to base of it and I was on a slightly raised up section. I was in luck and there was a fallen tree that looked as though maybe it’d fallen in the last year or two and it made perfect fire wood. One thing I have learned about camping out, you gather wood until you think you have enough then you triple that number and you might have enough to get though the night and you don’t want to be stumbling around in the dark looking for wood.
I’d made a nice little camp made a nice survival shelter only instead of using leaves for the cover I’d put my plastic tarp over it then threw some leaves over it. I had found a nice flat rock and set it up so it would reflect the heat toward the little shelter and I laid my smaller tarp on the ground, then my ground pad and sleeping bag. One thing is for sure, once the Sun goes down and you’ve eaten, you start to get sleepy. I checked my map and best I could tell I’d made right around six, maybe six and a half miles from my drop point and I had maybe about the same distance to got to get to where my truck was parked. I was heating up some water to make good old ramen soup. I brought some crackers and a staple of Southern cuisine, Vienna sausages, two cans.
I got into the habit of keeping a journal for times when I was out over night to one, remember the hike by in later years and two, just in case the worst happened there would be a record of what might have transpired, of course that assumes that me or my stuff was ever found. Every now and then I have sort of contemplated something happening to me out like this on my own, but you know what? I’d rather die doing something I love than dying peacefully in my sleep. I use to have a small placard made up that I kept in my office on the wall; it had my own rules for project management on it. And, I have had it remade a time or two to add one of two things over the years. Rule number one, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.” Pretty self explanatory, if it was messed up before you got there then odds are it’s going to be messed up after you’re done. Rule number two, “Go out and look up its’ ass.” meaning don’t accept someone’s word or the information on a print, check and verify. Rule number three, “The beaten path is for beaten people.” If all you had to do was do what others did, then a chimp could do your job. 
I looked at my watch and saw it was about nine o’clock and the temp was dropping off pretty quickly now, then suddenly I realized I was so caught up in my own adventure that I’d completely forgotten to gift the little people. I was really quite cross with myself, as I consider my gifting them a serious thing, so I put away my journal, found my gifting parcels and took out two and took them out a comfortable distance and tossed one to the right and one to the left over the stream and said, “A gift for you, sorry it took me so long to share. I mean it just slipped my mind. Please accept these gifts.” I walked back over toward my little camp and I swear I hear a muffled little “Thank you”. I turned back and said, “You’re welcome” simply didn’t ponder it too long after you’ve been gifting for a bit you begin to hear them, and I’m not sure if it’s with my ears or my mind? Great Grandmamma said it was in my mind, so that’s what I lean toward, but it’s impossible for me to say really. I took a pee and then stoked my fire good and slipped off my boots and outer clothes which I hung all around the fire to dry out hiking means you sweat like crazy. After a hike like the one today sleep came right away, and a more restful sleep I have never had in my life.
Next morning I got my fire going again and soon I had my breakfast of warmed Beanie Weenies prepared and was just quaffing them down like I hadn’t eaten in a couple days. I’d pour my coffee into a metal cup and began warming it up so when I was done I had a nice hot cup of Joe and Kahlua. It always amazes me how even simple food tastes so great in the woods. Soon I had my stuff packed and back on and was on my way again. 
My clothes had dried during the night and I felt completely recharged. I loved that as I walked away from my little camp site the only thing that would have ever told anyone I’d been there was the now dead fire spot and in time that will be covered over by leaves from the dead fall of Autumn and everything moves along.
So now I’m about three miles from my truck and have plenty of time, the trail has not been without its’ challenges but like I said earlier it’s not too bad for someone young and in shape like I was back in the day. I’d just gotten to the bottom of my last ravine and I’m no psychic but I have had a experience or two in my time and I felt the energy change at the bottom of this ravine. It was like going from a nice cool, low humidity room to a hot, stagnant, humid sweat box. That was the change in the energy, just sudden and harsh. I wasn’t sure what was up but I felt like I should maybe take out a gifting parcel and leave it, my only concern was what I might be gifting. I dropped the parcel and called out , “A gift for you.” I walked a little further down and then took out my map and was checking it to see where my point to start climbing up was going to be and it was coming up in about a half mile. I was putting away my map and compass when I looked to my right and saw something that made me stop cold for a moment. It was a damned old staircase sitting at the bottom of this ravine with a stream running along the back side of it. I mean it wasn’t just some old set of wooden stairs and landing like you see in front of a trailer, it was a real stone staircase. I curse myself for not having had a camera with me but at this point in time it was the very early eighties and disposable cameras hadn’t come into being yet, let along cell phones or the stuff we all take for granted now.
Now yeah, I just couldn’t get over there being a set of stairs out in the middle of nowhere and no sign of there having ever been a home that would have made a set of stairs like this seem to blend in, let alone fit. I walked up toward them, mind you, I’m no psychic but I have had an experience of two in my life and I know what it feels like to be in the presents of supernatural things. I didn’t get that feeling at all from this but at the same time I am feeling a just a bit creeped out by it.
This thing is like something you’d see in front of a Federal building or something. It’s made from what appears to be fitted native stone on the sides but the treads and handrails appear to be old cut granite and the thing must weight ten or twelve tons. It goes up about ten or twelve feet, it’s maybe fifteen feet wide. Like I said, it doesn’t appear to have any sort of relationship aspect to it that would suggest a rather impressive home or building once stood here.
While I’m not superstitious, I’m not one to blow off good advice either; I didn’t touch it or make contact with it in any way. In fact, I was careful not to get within some ten feet or so of it……not that I’m superstitious you understand. I made a very careful reckoning to where it was and marked its’ position on the map. Double checking that the terrain matched up good to where it was, but hell it was right on this creek that was clearly called out on the map so I knew I had it nailed. Now I was wishing I had a cheap camera to take a picture of it as I put away all my stuff and picked up my staff. 
Just then a big old black crow came in from nowhere and landed right on top of the stairs, talk about my sphincter drawing up into a knot. I have a number of Cherokee friends who will tell you in a minute that a crow is big medicine or magic whenever it shows up. Could be good, could be evil but the truth is it’s big whichever way the magic runs. Then the damned old thing started calling at me like it was angry, head down staring right at me screaming at me Cawww Cawwww! Almost a sinister feel to it, And now I started to feel like something was changing, the feel was different and I just felt like I needed to get my happy ass on down the trail.
I turn sideways to the stairs and saw the crow was turning with me still crowing like crazy. Now, I did have my trusty sidearm and I could have taken that crow down with a single shot rather easily, it wasn’t a difficult shot for me, but then I recalled once something an old black woman told me once. She told me that sometimes when you think you in the presence of something evil the best thing to do is not to make it mad at you. So I started walking further and further away until now I was about a football field away from it and about to drop down behind the lay of the land and out of sight. I could still hear that crow raising hell as I went out of sight of it and the stairs.*
I walked a steady pace thinking to myself what a creepy experience that had been and was making my way on down when all of a sudden, guess who decided I hadn’t been screamed at enough? Yep, that damned old crow came swooping over my head and landed on a low branch right in my path. And I don’t mind telling you if someone had of said, “Boo!” right then I’d have jumped out of my skin. Ok, now this was getting deep, I pulled my trusty .45…..forgetting for the moment that all it had in the chamber was rat shot, so I changed magazines for ACP and fired the rat shot in the chamber which knocked that som’bitch down on the ground and walked up and dispatched it with three rounds in very short order.
“Crow now bitch.” I said under my breath. Yeah, three rounds at point blank range from a .45 ACP might be considered overkill for a crow, but the way I figured it a little too much was better than not quite enough. I did something I don’t normally do and I reloaded my full clip into my sidearm, just in case that set of stairs wanted to come chasing after me as well.
I head off toward the end of the ravine to begin my ascent up and all of a sudden I hear something flapping over me and then a loud, “Cawww! Cawww!” I don’t mind telling you that upon hearing that I very near lost complete control of my large bowel and bladder, and I’m pretty sure I might have squealed like a girl. I snapped around toward the sound of the Cawww! And there on a branch was a crow, looking right at me, not twenty to twenty-five feet away and the damn thing stopped making the Cawww sound and now it was hissing at me like it was mad as fire and mad at me. I reached down and took out my pistol and brought it up to bear and the crow flew, I watched it fly up and into another tree, but still looking right at me. I was pretty sure that Crows tended to mate for life and this was the mate to the one I killed, at least that was my story and I was sticking with it.
Then it started to hiss at me again and I was pretty sure my “Weird-Crap-O-Meter” was pretty close to being pegged out at this point. So, I took aim and fired and the crow dropped to the ground. I walked over to it and this time I took out my large survival knife and chopped the body into several pieces, being sure to remove the head and feet. I wiped off the blade and went to seat the knife back in its’ sheath when all of a sudden I heard a voice say, “You need to leave quickly.” Then I said out loud, “Why?” All I heard was, “Go, now.”
So I decided it was time to go and I almost ran to the back of the ravine and began climbing up, I hadn’t gone twenty feet up the side of the mountain when I could feel the energy around go back to normal. I didn’t stop I just kept climbing for another fifty or sixty vertical feet. Then I paused as I needed to catch my breath, but mainly to give me some comfort I drew my pistol. Didn’t have any silver bullets or magical runes on the slugs but if something was coming after me it was gonna have some holes in it before it got me. I sat there breathing hard, but nothing followed after me. I waited a good twenty or so minutes, then got up and made my way out.
As I was making my way back I paused, making sure nothing was following me I said out loud, “Thank you for your help.” I reached in my gifting pouch and took out a mini-bottle of rye whiskey. “This is for you. Thank you for your help, beholden to you.” I sat the mini-bottle down flat on a stump. I continued on and in a few hours I’d made it back to where my truck was parked. 
Ok, so I managed to get back to my truck and the guy who drove me up to the head where I started was there and honestly the fellow looked seriously relieved to see me. “Hey, did you have a good hike?” He asked. “I sure did buddy, but tell me something what’s the deal with these staircases?” Oh my God, the poor guys’ face went completely white. “Did you see one?” He looked like he might faint. “Friend you alright?” Honestly, I was worried and thought the poor guy might faint on me. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” I let down the tailgate of my truck and got him to sit down. He asked, “Where did you see it?” I took my map out and showed him. 
So then he tells me this story about these staircases that have been being reported ever since white men have been coming in to this area which would be all the way back to the early to mid 1600’s. The Cherokee had no record of them until they began being asked by white men who built the staircases, well there aren’t too many two story teepees so they had to explain what a staircase was to them and naturally they’d not seen any. However, people who have disappeared have been associated with them. They have been described differently by different people but all of them say they are large and substantial and the word is that if you get on them or touch them or try to climb them you’re risking some sort of supernatural thing. I’ve heard them called stairways to Heaven……yes, like the old song by Zeppelin and I’ve heard them call stairways to another dimension, and stairways to Satan.
So then I told him about seeing the staircase and not touching it or getting close to it at all and then all was well until this big ass crow swooped in from out of nowhere, landed on it and began crowing at me like it was angry. His eyes got huge, “A crow? Really? Oh my God! How did you get away?” Now that question spoke volumes to me it certainly implied he had more knowledge than he was letting on about. So I said, “What is the big, hairy, deal with these damned old staircases? That staircase is nowhere near anything that looked like a house was once there. It’s in a ravine, no road, no access it’s too damn big for a cabin from the frontier days. So spill, what’s the damn deal?”*
Apparently, over the last twenty-five to thirty years a number of people have gone missing in the area. Well, this isn’t too hard to believe because I just did about twelve or so miles and it took me a day and almost two-thirds because it’s a tough hike. I’d rate it at between moderate and challenging, not a hike for a lot of people. And take my word for it when you factor in things like marijuana growers, moonshiners and just plain crazy people who might be out in the woods, well it’s easy to see. Now more specifically, according to him two different occasions people have disappeared and later they found some personal items. One of which was a backpack with ID, food, and stuff you’d expect to find in a properly stocked back pack and a camera. So the police get the film developed to see if they can get anything from it and apparently they found pictures of them on staircases out in the woods and they were on them and such. When you combine that with the old stories from back long ago about staircases suddenly you got yourself a whole new mystery, worthy of becoming a local legend. 
Now, I haven’t ever come across anything like that in all my hiking and Bigfoot hunting again, although, I have found other sets of stairs, the difference is with the ones I have found, it was fairly obvious that they’d been put there on purpose by humans and no bloody crows came swooping in to scare the bejeebers out of me. Oh, and when I told him about the crow and killing it I thought he was gonna faint as well. Apparently, the lore involving crows is deeply rooted in not only the Native Americans still living in the area but in the Europeans as well.
After I got back to work told a buddy at work about it he got all upset, turns out he was raised up in the area around Blowing Rock and told me I was damn smart not to touch those stairs or get on them. It’s a local legend, he grew up there and these stories are told for the truth. When you think back to the time when you were a kid the stories that scared you then still send a shiver up your spine now. It’s been programmed into your software and you simply can’t help it. 
Apparently, there are places in those mountains that harbor evil or darkness or whatever name you wish to give it, but I can tell you the second I stepped into the bottom of that ravine the energy of the area changed like hitting a light switch. I have no idea what it was all about or why it is like it is there.
I recall telling a dear friend of mine who’s a witch about it. Yes, a real witch, a great lady and wonderful friend, no she’s not into Satan, yes, she can conjure. Ok, enough about that. This was many years ago and while I was fairly certain I can go back to the place. I seriously doubt she and I would manage the journey, like I said, I was in my early twenties and what wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle then, but it was taxing and she’s a couple years older than me. She was curious and a gifted witch and I’d be willing to bet she could have gotten a handle on whatever it was, but I guess it isn’t to be in this life.
My point in telling this is that very often when you open to many possibilities many different things come into play, much like our regular lives. You might drop off your clothes at the Chinese laundry, you might have lunch at the Jewish Delicatessen, and you might belong to the Lutheran Church. Your work companions may represent a five or six different ethnicities, your car was made in Mexico, by Somalis. And you might order Indian food for dinner.
What I’m trying to say is there are many worlds and they all come together here in the world in which we live. Some things are dark and evil, some are light and happy, and some are something a little different there is no one answer to what you will find. There have been many times when I wished maybe I didn’t know what I know. This particular hike was quite an awakening for me and I have been happy to share it with you.

Ken Parnell