I picked up this book, Haunted Hikes written by Andrea Lankford on Saturday and have really been enjoying it all weekend! It features hikes in the United States that are known to be haunted. She tells the ghost story surrounding the park and hike and then provides a trail map for each one. Fun! And it’s scaring the hell out of me, too. I made the mistake of reading it a bit before going to sleep Saturday night.

I have my own little hiking ghost story.

Raf and I used to live at Family Student Housing while I was going to school at UCSC. Across the street from the university there was this beautiful hiking area. I believe the land was owned by the University. It wasn’t an official park or anything, but people go in there and hike around in the forest. It was a beautiful place and I miss hiking there. I can’t even find the words to describe it.

Anyway, one day we were hiking and we hit a trailhead that went off to the left, on top of a ridge. We usually just went straight, but Raf said, “Lets try out this trail today.” And I said, “Okay.” So away we went. As we hiked along on this ridge I started to feel strange. The farther we went I really started to feel very afraid. It got to the point where I actually had to stop and tell Raf that we needed to turn around because I was getting really scared. We did and practically ran to the place where we were more familiar. I don’t know what it was about that hike, but something was really freaking me out, big time.

When we got home Raf admited that when he took that hike alone the day before he had the same strange feeling! And he couldn’t explain it. So he decided to take me on the hike that day and not tell me his experience to see what my reaction would be.

What the hell happened there?!? It had some BAD vibes.

One thing to note is that UC Santa Cruz had a serial killer. (and at the time there were several horrible killers.. Scary). It freaks me out to think what could have happened there. After reading more about it for this blog entry (click at our own risk), it really is very fucking disturbing.