And as always, expectedly unedited...
PROLOGUE
The gas line snaked around the corner. I wasn't sure if I was 'odd or even' that day, but I sure as Hell knew I was about to be outta gas. The weather was hot, and I cranked the window down and craned my neck to see how far the line stretched out in front of me. As I reached down to loosen the floor vent for more air I could hear Rikki Don't Lose That Number blasting from KOME several cars ahead and the rumble of a very hungry Delta 88 next in line. I glanced at the ashtray to make sure it was shut and that my favorite roach clip wouldn't fall out. I didn't need any trouble at the gas station.
It was 1974 after all.
We'd wanted to make it over the hill to Santa Cruz by 4ish, but with all these lines, I wondered if we'd ever get there. We'd planned on meeting a bunch of friends for a bonfire and a party on the beach. It was about then that the radio announcer from the car blasting Rikki cut in to say that Ford was gonna pardon him. Would this line of bullshit ever quit? Turning, I half-ass glanced in her direction. She sat across and next to me and there on the bench seat of the Coronet fiddling with a stray string on her cut-off shorts. In a distracted and "irritated by the gas lines" attempt to break up the heat and monotony, I half mumbled to her, "So Trish, what was it you wanted to tell me again? Something about some place in Oregon?
She shuffled against the faux cloth and Naugahyde of the Coronet's seat. The cotton of her cutoffs stuck against its grainy fabric. I could smell fresh sweat for a moment and embarrassed by this I turned away. For a second she seemed to shudder, drawing within herself as if trying to understand what she was about to say, or as if trying to gather the courage to speak at all. The look on her face blanched against her reddish hair, and the sunlight fought with the car's visors and seemed to disappear into the snaking line of cars behind us. It disappeared too behind the shaded glances of her nervous eyes and a worried look.
"I'm not even sure where to begin," she said. "You're gonna think I'm nuts."
"We already know you're nuts, Trish," I said, trying to make light of her sudden angst while keeping my eyes on the line snaking slowly forward.
"I don't know how I got there," she said. "I was just there by some huge blazing fireplace in this really old hotel. Tom called the place Wolf Creek. You remember my brother Tom? I think Tom knew some dude from there and that was why we'd stopped. But when I looked around for them, the guy and Tom, they were both gone. I know we were all pretty stoned. We'd been camping not far from there on our way to Seattle."
She smiled a bit but seemed to shudder more as if she could still see the flames in her mind. I put the Coronet in gear and we inched the car one step further up in line.
"I guess I just sat there for a while looking at the fire. I don't know who he was or how he found me," she said. "He was long-haired and very good-looking. You know, like almost too good-looking? He sat down next to me at the fire. I think he bought me a drink. I don't remember getting one myself. It seems like we talked about, you know, the randomness of our being there, at least at first anyway, you know, that both of us should be there at Wolf Creek Tavern. Then we both just started laughing and it was like I couldn't quit laughing. He made me feel free but really it was more like I wasn't "there" at all - know what I mean?
I tell you, Jeff, there was something about his eyes that wasn't right. It was like they were the wrong color. It was like they weren't any color at all. How does that make sense? I guess I got too drunk or something. It sort of felt like we'd done a bunch of shrooms. I don't know... He told me he would give me a ride to where my brother Tom and I were camping. I wasn't sure, but ended up agreeing to let him take me there. I remember getting into his truck but then it was like something changed. His eyes changed again. I know you think I'm crazy. When we were about halfway down the front drive and moving away from the Inn I just sorta freaked out. I jumped outta the truck and started running. I had no idea where I was going. I was just running away and down some dark road. And my head was just pounding! I knew I had met the devil.
I swear to you, Jeff. I know I met The Devil at the Wolf Creek Inn."
Yes, it was a long time ago now...
I.
"Hey you guys, could you please just get back in the van," I half yelled. "Please put those wrappers in the trash and do not stuff them under the seat. We don't have time to stop for a snack or pee again before we get to your grandfather's house."
"Would you please put your headphones back on and turn the music down?? I can still hear "Step by Step" droning on. Your mom and I wanna listen to our new book on tape. It's our vacation too even if we're just going to Grandpa's. I can't even hear the guy trying to tell us the news on the radio."
In the foreground, the minivan's radio auto-tuned as if someone was trying to broadcast distress signals from a distant planet. I turned up the volume to hear some Radiohead announcer replaying an old newscast on talk radio. I could hear the words, "Tear that wall down, Mr. Gorbachev...." It was, after all, 1994.
"It's always you that has to stop and pee anyway, Dad." I heard one of the twins giggle as all three kids trudged back into the van.
"Well, there's no place to stop except Wolf Creek," I'd said. "And we sure as Hell aren't stopping there."
"Why can't we stop there, Dad?" I heard someone in the back of the mini-van ask.
"We just don't go there, honey." I'd replied. "A girl I once knew told me she'd met the devil there." Enthralled, the kids kept asking for more.
"Really, Dad? The Devil is at Wolf Creek?"
So what else could I do?
Well, of course, we stopped to pee at Wolf Creek.
II.
My family has come to know Wolf Creek. It has become part of my family's internal lore. And we actually did stop there that day too - or at least on some day not unlike the one described in the chapter above. The Wolf Creek Inn and Tavern was closed, but we had stopped at the "mercantile" across the street from the Inn. There, we entered an old store filled with very outdated (if not obscure antique) goods inventoried alongside stale cookies and chips and Coca-Cola from some less-than-clean soda fountain. You could tell that the "store" had existed here (that is across the street from the Inn) in some form or another for well over one hundred years. It was either connected to the Inn or had been witness to those spectral events across the street for decades.
And there, at the store across the street from The Wolf Creek Inn, we certainly did stop to pee.
The storekeepers themselves were as curious to us as the legend that had been told to me twenty years earlier. They were a vacant-looking bunch and their all-too-unfriendly looks seemed to say they weren't truly "there" at all, or that their psyches were only tethered to our plane of existence for the moment. The "physicality" of the storekeepers was equally as odd. They invited curious images of having been curated from The Island of Dr. Moreau. I know that sounds judgemental, (and it no doubt is) but if you'd visited there that day with us in '94 you would have hurried to your car (or mini-van) and left as quickly as we did.
The faces of the storekeepers only added to the possibility of truth in the myth, or at least as it had been told to me so many years before.
The years have certainly sped past. My son and his family now stop by Wolf Creek fairly often, and, based on the "old myth" handed down to me in '74 they've all posed for pictures on the steps of the Inn - as if daring or commanding whatever dark force the place might contain to reveal itself. (It's always good to make fun of Dad if nothing else...)
My daughters, the twins, though they live far away now have not forgotten the mysterious Wolf Creek Inn either, and as recently as two to three years ago called me with utter delight to say that Ghost Adventures had done a special episode there in an attempt to root out the truth - all of this occurring decades after Trish had relayed her story to me in a Bay Area gas line.
Well, of course, they did a TV show there.
Everyone with any brains knows that The Devil is at Wolf Creek.
III.
We sped up the interstate my sister and me. We were pressed to visit our near-centenarian father, and well, there wasn't going to be a lot of time for anything more than this. As we crossed over into Oregon from California my cell phone rang. It was now 2024 - fifty years since I had first heard the tale of Wolf Creek.
"Hi, Dad, what are you up to?" It was the voice of one of my twin daughters.
"I am just heading up to Oregon to visit Grandpa for Father's Day, honey," I replied. "I'm with Aunt Wendi."
"Oh! Well, that sounds great!!! Are you going to take Aunt Wendi to Wolf Creek, Dad?" She asked.
"I don't know honey," I answered. We don't have a lot of time. We'll see...
Change of plans: Return trip home - stopping at Wolf Creek.
IV.
I guess, in the end, we did plan to go there. Sis and I didn't talk about Wolf Creek all that much, only mentioning to Dad that we were thinking about checking it out. We had stayed at a Motel 6 near Dad's and about sixty or so miles north of Wolf Creek. It was one of those, yeah, we'll probably "drive through there sort of things" - maybe. I mean we wanted to do so if time permitted, but it wasn't earth-shatteringly necessary that we did. It'd been a long time since I'd personally stopped at Wolf Creek or stood outside the Inn.
While I was always curious about the place, after fifty years of telling and retelling "the tale" I admit I was starting to feel a little silly about it all. It was, after all, just an old historic Inn on a lonely Oregonian road of the Interstate. Truth was too, that Trish herself had been dead for a long time. The passage of time had made the old story feel a little bit silly anymore.
That morning at Motel 6 we boarded the elevator full of fun and laughter. Our visit to our curmudgeon- sort father had gone well and we were goofy with success. We were headed home after a successful "drama-free" family visit. We waited there for the third floor for the Motel 6 elevator. We were ready to check out and head out and back to California. There really wasn't much more discussion about stopping at Wolf Creek. We might make it there. We might not.
The elevator doors swooshed open and we stepped inside. There was a gentleman in one corner of the elevator. His eyes were cast down. He was late middle-aged, and for the most part, there wasn't anything noteworthy about the man. I don't mean to be dismissive, but he wasn't the kind of person who sticks in your memory as totally one thing or another. His manner of dress was normal, a gray shirt and denim pants. His head was bent down, revealing thinning and somewhat stringy black hair. He was of perhaps a less-than-average height and carried the average "ponch" for a man his age.
He was odd but also unremarkable.
Jokingly, Sis and I began to raise the level of our conversation to include this "stranger in the elevator." He looked up and smiled at us as if happy to be noticed - as if happy to be included. His dark brown eyes seemed to pulsate and to bulge a bit. (They were, in truth, a little large for his face.) He was well-shaven enough, but his mouth was somehow both too wide and too small for his features. He grinned back at us in our humor I recall thinking that he was definitely a "loner" or maybe a nerd and that he probably didn't always fit in well around other people. He appeared to be (at least in that moment) unaccompanied. He was certainly pleasant enough. Locking us in the gaze of his all-too-large yes, he laughed and said to us as the elevator doors opened, "You two have a great rest of your vacation."
Or that's what we think he said.
The thing is, we never said anything about being on vacation.
For some reason, neither one of us is completely sure what he said. Whatever it was, it had been appropriate to the conversation. Yet it was also innocuous and curious. His statement and the way he said it lingered briefly in the elevator's air and left an aftertaste that you couldn't quite identify or put a name to. Soon enough though, the elevator doors sprung open and we were on our way.
We are not sure even now- but we have no idea what direction he went after this - or if he got out of the elevator at all.
It didn't matter. He was nice - but kinda weird and we were simply on our way.
V.
"I gotta pee," my sister said. I noticed the road markers and pulled over to let my sister do her business at the rest stop. As we pulled away from there, we both noticed that the "Wolf Creek" was the next exit sign. I remembered how we'd laughed that she could have waited until just one more exit...
Realizing that we were "here" now anyway, we pulled off the road again and pulled into Wolf Creek driving past the Inn and into the parking lot of the mercantile across the street. I'd not been here for better than twenty-five years, and while the ownership of the store had changed I could tell that many of the unique things on their shelves had not. We quickly finished up our business here and, getting back in the car, headed across the street.
The Wolf Creek Inn and Tavern appeared to be closed, or so we thought, and wondered if we weren't just very or too early in getting there. We drove past slowly along its frontage drive and pulled in to park the car. We figured that even if it was closed we could get out and take a good look at the place.
I pulled the car into what was one of three front parking spots. As I did so, another car, a small SUV pulled into one of the other three spots nearby. Glancing over, we saw seatbelts unbuckle in a hurry behind the SUV's tinted windows and heard the chimes of a car door opening. Then we watched as a curious nerd-like little man in a gray shirt and denim pants with thinning black hair and large brown/black eyes who was of less than average height exited the car in a terrible hurry.
At first, or for a few brief seconds, neither Wendi nor I said a word. Neither one of us believed what our eyes and minds were telling us. Neither one of us believed what we were trying to process.
It was the same man from the elevator in the Motel 6.
Say what???
VI.
We just sat in the car and watched as the little man scurried almost half-bent away from his car and away from us. He walked quickly, choosing a side pathway to the left of the Inn. He hurried along, heading up the path to the steps of a side door that appeared to lead into the main part of the Inn. The door was locked employing a keypad, and we watched as the little man punched in a code whereupon the door opened and he disappeared.
"Did you just see that???" I looked at my sister in disbelief. "That was..."
"The guy from the Motel 6!!!" She said. "What the f---????"
"I wasn't gonna say anything," I replied. I just wanted to know if you were seeing what I was seeing before I said anything."
"How is that freaking possible? Did the dude follow us???" We both nearly said at once.
We sat there and watched for a moment. I guess we hoped the little man might come out of that door and we'd be able to ask him. Maybe he works here at the Wolf Creek Inn and he was late for work? Maybe he is in their opening up the museum part?
Try as we might, absolutely nothing made sense.
VI.
After a bit, our waiting there didn't make any sense at all either. I jumped out of the car, and in my own sort of flurry retraced the little man's steps up the side pathway to the locked door. I knocked on it a few times but there was no answer. Nothing but silence came from the other side of the door.
Turning back to my sister I said, "Well, maybe if he works here he can let us in? You know, like we could get a private tour and meet whatever ghosts there are personally. He's gotta remember us from this morning in the elevator at the Motel 6.
But no one came out of that locked door. No one responded to my knocks on the old wood.
"Well, let's just go look around the place anyway," my sister said. "Maybe he'll open the place up and come out after a bit."
So we walked around the place peering in the thick glass windows. There wasn't a soul in sight anywhere. Some signs pointed out the hours of the Inn's restaurant, but apparently, we'd come on the wrong day or at the wrong time. The Inn itself was slightly lit from the inside, but there was no hotel staff or groundsmen of any kind. Aside from us and the peculiar little man who had disappeared behind that side door, there was no one there at all.
Or at least so we thought. As we walked around back to glance through the windows, I heard my sister shudder a bit. "What was that?" She said. "I just felt someone tap me on the head..."
"Well, it was one of the ghosts obviously," I laughed back at her. She grimaced, finding no humor in my answer.
We walked about a bit longer or at least until it was obvious that no one was coming and obvious that the little man wasn't coming out of the Wolf Creek Inn either. We took some pictures, each of us trying to capture an image of ourselves and the spirit of this "regularly scheduled" haunted place.
It was about then that I looked up and noticed that my sister wasn't with me.
VII.
I guess I had been so enamored with my efforts to get the ultimate selfie in front of the Inn that I didn't notice when Wendi had left my line of sight. I didn't notice that she'd seen a figure (or figures) emerge from the side Inn and leaving me had gone over to investigate.
I can't speak to exactly what she saw, but later she recounted that she saw the little man from Motel 6 accompanied by a gray-haired woman leave out of the side door and hurriedly make their way to the car. Seeing him again, she'd resolved to catch up with him and to ask him just what the Hell was going on.
Just who the hell was he? Wasn't it interesting that we and he (or they) just happened to be there at the Wolf Creek Inn all at the same time?
But it wasn't the same man.
VII.
The man my sister encountered was a look-alike from the one at Motel 6. All of this though was unbeknownst to me as I finally caught sight of Wendi and went bounding after her like Dorkus Giganticus to where she stood with this "new man" and the gray-haired woman attempting to exit the Inn's parking lot.
"Hey, we saw you at the Motel 6!!" I half yelled at the man and woman in an attempt to be friendly (and patronizing) all at once.
"Not the same...," Wendi said in a quick hushed undertone trying to rescue me from my embarrassment.
But wasn't it? Wasn't this the same man? Why was he telling my sister that he wasn't? Same shirt...or was it? Same posture and thinning black hair. Same height and posture. Same weird eyes...or were they...???
My mind spun.
Was this the same guy????
He explained that they were guests of the Inn. They'd rented one of the hotel rooms.
The staffless hotel rooms.
As all this awkward uncomfortableness played out the woman the man with stood to the side of an open car door. She appeared to be perhaps in her late fifties or slightly older. She was slight in her build and had long thick curly gray hair that she gripped a lock of all the while curling it like a teenager might have in one hand. It was a nervous twirling like the act of pulling at her hair calmed her some and anchored her to her present reality. It felt like she was holding back. She never really spoke. I think she said a few words when asked if they'd "encountered any ghosts," but more than this she looked like a hungry wolf herself, or a vampire whose master had not given her permission to feed...
I remember how they both laughed when asked about "ghosts."
(Well, I guess if you're a demon you laugh if someone thinks you're naught but a simple ghost...)
They were in a hurry - like they'd been caught. They deflected all this back on Wendi and me. They subtly let it be known that it was obvious to them or to anyone who might ask that we had simply mistaken him for someone else. Could they help it if we were nuts?
They left in a hurry.
We left in a hurry too.
There was no reason to stay any longer at Wolf Creek.
VIII.
Say what you will about our experience there at The Wolf Creek Inn. I will only tell you that we are still left confused, doubting our own version of events and doubting our ability to distinguish one indistinguishable man from another. It would not be so unusual for one of us (Wendi or myself) to have made a case of mistaken identity error on our own, but when both of us have had the same hallucination at the same time it defies the most usual interpretations. Yes, two people can see the same hallucinations. Yes, two people can mistake the same guy for someone else.
That this should happen at The Wolf Creek Inn is though, in a word, disturbing.
Who did we see? Was the man from the Motel 6 or was he someone else? Logic says he was someone else...
Who tapped Wendi on the head? Was it a leaf or branch that reached out from one of the old trees? Possibly - but she wasn't near any.
Did whatever spectral force that lives inside The Wolf Creek Inn make us see what we wanted to see? And if so, how did it do it at the same time? How does a dual hallucination otherwise happen? Is there evidence elsewhere that ghosts can distort your perception or reality?? Was it a hallucination caused by paranormal activity?
Why were the ghosts absolutely fucking with us?
Oh, believe me, those ghosts were fucking with us Big Time.
IX.
We've since learned that The Wolf Creek Inn operates like an Airbnb. I guess there never is any staff, and that visitors (like the strange man and the gray-haired hair-twisting woman) can stay there by reserving a room and entering through that key padded door. I have to say though that even so, they were the only guests there that day at the Inn. Hell, aside from Wendi and me they were the only humans there at all.
That is if those people were human at all.
In light of the legend as it was told to me by Trish fifty years ago, in light of the place being considered one of Oregon's most haunted places (cue the TV show) I'm not convinced that something didn't happen to us there. I think the paranormal reached inside our psyche and made us both see that man from Motel 6 go into the Inn.
Or the other guy lied.
He and that damn hair-twisting vampire lady got away. They knew we had 'em.
Until Next Time at The Wolf Creek Inn.
PEACE.
