Therese Marie

I am not kidding: I slept in a shelter with a banshee.

You might be thinking, “haha, alright Lil. Sure. Uhuh.” BUT I AM SO FOR SERIOUS RIGHT NOW.

Ok so it all started when we got into camp at 9pm.

Not a good time. It was cold and misty and dark. It had been a really long day and I just wanted it to be over. Rolling into a campsite in the dark is hard because everyone is already set up and you go around with your headlamp feeling like a loud, disrespectful bear.

For this reason, I didn’t want to eat dinner. I could barely stomach a cliff bar after the day I just had. Nature seemed to agree with me, because promptly after I got my tent set up the heavens opened and it poured.

At first I thought it’d all be fine.

I did find a good place to put my tent. There was a shelter a stones throw away and then a second one .3 down the path. I didn’t want to sleep in the shelter because bugs will eat you alive if you don’t have a bug net.

So as it continued to pour, I thought, “I’m ok with this, it’s fine.” I wrote in my journal because that always makes me feel better.

And then I go to get up.

And my floor is literally, straight up, the consistency of a waterbed.

That’s right: I was suddenly sleeping in a puddle.

“NO WAY! What!” it happened so fast! Thank god my tent stood up against the water, but I knew that wouldn’t last. I started laughing. This is just too absurd.

So I had to move, and said, “Screw it, I’m going in the shelter.”

I shoved everything in my bag thinking I’ll ditch my tent and sleep in the shelter if there’s room. Except when I get there? It’s empty! What a blessing! These things usually fill up so fast. Surely I am too lucky.

Since it’s 11:30pm and no one is in there by now, I think that maybe I could just drop my entire tent inside the shelter. That way I’ll still be protected from the bugs! Desperate times call for desperate measures. Plus, after I stuck my one-person tent under the safety of the overhang, there was still room if someone needed it.

I get all cozy and then…

The first noise. This massive scratching coming from beneath me. That’s when I realized why no one was in this shelter, why it looked in poor condition, why there was another, newer shelter built 0.3 miles away…

Porcupines.

They had completely taken over the shelter, scraping it apart bit by bit with their spindly backs. So I had to act like the angry upstairs neighbor banging on the floor every 2 hours, “Hey! I’m tryin’ ta sleep, here!”

They would stop for a spell every time I banged.

But then I heard something else.

Moaning.

It sounds like an old woman who was lost and wandering and whining/moaning in complaint. But I’m really naive and I’ve heard a lot of weird unexplained shit in the middle of the night. So I just figured it was the porcupines making weird noises.

I mean, have you ever heard a porcupine? What noise do they make? Whatever.

Joke’s on me.

I made it through the night no problem. I’m alive! So that’s good.

But I kept waking up to the sound of the scraping, then the moaning. The moaning woke up me up several times. It was right outside my tent. Part of me knew I could’ve opened the door to see what it was. I also knew the thin layer of sheet was not actually keeping me safe from anything. But I continued to lay back down.

In the light of the morning, I unzipped my tent and read the signs that peppered the area around the shelter. They read, “HIGH BEAR AREA. FOLLOW SAFETY PRECAUSIONS.” Someone had penciled in “& BANSHEE” on the sign.

Then I scanned through the shelter journal. Each shelter usually has a small journal where you can sign in and write any comments about your night. It’s a nice way to keep track of where people are, and a little memento for hikers and shelter maintenance people.

This journal was full of accounts on the banshee.

Turns out everyone who stayed here heard that woman moaning in the middle of the night.

So that’s how I ended up spending a night with a banshee. South Wilcox shelter in Massachusetts has a banshee. Beware. Beware. 

Fly on!

Lil.