Pinhoti Trail Day 25: Pine Glen Campground to Laurel Shelter (& a Ghostly Tale)

The trail leading out of Pine Glen Campground is super nice, and I am not just saying that because it is flat, lol.

The trail opened up to a beautiful meadow at the top of a small climb that led to a lake.

We skirted the lake for a while before doing our only actual “climb” for the day.

We got to the shelter early, which was nice. The Laurel shelter area was super nice. There was a picnic table, several large sitting logs around the campfire, and a fire ring.

It was going to be a peaceful night….or so we thought.

Ghosts Are Among Us?

This is the first time on any trail that we (Suspenders and I) have encountered anything “weird” or “ghostly” in nature that we could not explain. For the record, I 100% believe in ghosts and the afterlife. I have had encounters since I was a child, so, for me, it’s “normal,” and I can sense when they are around. Hang around with me long enough, and you will end up with your own encounter.

Setting the Scene

It’s about 3 p.m., and we have arrived at the shelter. We set up our beds in the shelter, and I changed out of my sweaty clothes so they could lay in the cold sun to hopefully dry.

I make the daily outro video and then sit at the picnic table to eat with Suspenders and Ripley.

It’s about 4:30 p.m., and we all head to our respective beds: Ripley to her hammock and Suspenders and me to the shelter.

I go about editing the daily video, and Suspenders starts listening to a podcast. Before long, it starts to get dark. Suspenders puts on his CPAP, and I export the daily video and turn on a podcast where I begin to fall asleep.

And so it begins…

At about 7 p.m., I woke up for a potty break and plugged my phone into my battery bank to charge it so I could continue listening to a podcast. Oddly enough, drifting off to the podcast was my best sleep yet.

I grab my 20,000 mAh battery bank from my electronics bag and plug my phone into it. My phone won’t charge, and the battery bank blinks one dot. “WTF?!” I say out loud. How is this dead? I had fully charged it overnight and rechecked it this morning before heading out. This, of course, gets Suspenders’ attention, who asks, “What’s wrong?” “My battery bank is completely dead,” I say. Here, use mine,” he says.

So I plug my phone into his battery bank, but I won’t be using it to listen to a podcast since this is our only power source now, and I need to shoot video tomorrow. I let the phone charge and drift off to sleep.

Before too long, I am awoken and can’t breathe. I am being choked. There’s no one there. Suspenders is fast asleep. I still feel like hands are around my neck, and I reach up to feel my buff around my neck. “Stupid buff,” I think to myself. I yank it off and throw it across the shelter. I’ve never had an issue with it around my neck, but I guess it must have gotten caught while tossing and turning. Back to sleep, I go. An hour later, I am awoken again; I can’t breathe; it feels like there are hands around my neck. I struggle to breathe, but after what feels like forever, I am able to take a deep breath and feel around my neck. Nothing. This process repeats for the next several hours until I awake for good at 5 am.

I Wasn’t The Only One

Suspenders awakens shortly after and asks how I slept. “Like crap,” I said. Then I proceed to tell him about my weird night. Of course, his first response was, “Why didn’t you wake me up?” To which I replied, “What for? So you could beat up an invisible entity?” He says, “Yeah, I feel like I didn’t sleep well either.”

We head to the trail and make our way into town. Once we (the three of us) get settled in, we talk about last night. Suspenders says, “So I checked my CPAP app, and I had over EIGHT events per hour last night. My usual is 0.2 – 1.4 per hour. I’ve never had anything over that in the 7 years I have had my CPAP.” Then, he tells us how he woke up at some point and noticed a green light blinking in the sky. It was stationary and never moved. He thought at first it might be the light on a tower, but there were no towers in that direction (he apparently looked for them that morning when he woke up because it was so odd).

Ripley also experienced something strange. Her hammock was set up a good distance from the shelter. She said she didn’t know if she dreamed this or if it actually happened, but it felt so real that she didn’t think she dreamed it. In the early morning hours, she felt one of the trees that her hammock was attached to shake violently. The entire tree was shaking, like something very large was up there moving around.

The Plot Thickens…

When we arrived at the Airbnb, they suggested I look and see if there had been any other stories posted about the shelter or if any violent crime or murder had happened around that area of the Pinhoti Trail.

I took out my phone and opened the FarOut app. While looking at the elevation map, I noticed something very strange. She was back.

Who? You might ask! Firefly.

Who’s Firefly? I have no idea whatsoever! She pops up on my FarOut at random but is not always there. The issue is that I do not follow a Firefly and never have. She also does not follow me, at least not on this plane of existence. If you tap her icon, there is no such user. But there she is, on every trail I am on.

I first noticed her on the Appalachian Trail back in 2020. I thought it was some kind of fluke. She showed up at Unicoi Gap (before I even started the trail), which just so happens to be where I got off many weeks later.

Back in September, before Ripley and I started the Pinhoti, guess who showed up at the Pinhoti at the POC? Yes, that’s right—Firefly. Again, I thought, man, that is so odd. Honestly, it was annoying to me that the app was buggy like that. Then, when we got on the trail and passed the POC, she showed up again, this time along the 14-mile stretch of ridgeline with no water.

But now, as I look at the icon for Laurel Shelter on the elevation map, there she is. She wasn’t there before, and she wasn’t there earlier today when I looked at it, but she was there now.

I exclaimed, “This is so weird,” to which Suspenders and Ripley asked, “What?”. I then proceeded to tell them the story of Firefly and turned my phone around to show them her icon sitting right at Laurel Shelter. They watched me try to click her icon to go to her profile and see that it didn’t exist. At least I have validation now that my mind is not playing tricks on me, lol.

I have decided that enough is enough. I removed the check-in notifications for her, and her icon disappeared.

Or did it?

Suspenders opens his app, and as he looks at the Pinhoti map, she magically appears ON HIS MAP. Ripley quickly opens hers, but there’s nothing. He closes his app and re-opens it; she is still there.

He closes the app, and we head to bed. The next morning, he opens it, and she is no longer there. I opened mine, and she isn’t on mine either.

That “glitch” must have fixed itself…or did it?

7 Weeks Later

I’m sitting on the couch and tentatively planning the first week on the Appalachian Trail. Guess who has joined us again, this time on the Appalachian Trail?

It shows she is at mm 21.6, so make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel to see if anything interesting happens at mm 21.6. And if you are wondering about my battery bank, I never had another issue with it randomly discharging. I realize many will think I must have forgotten to charge it up, but I can guarantee you that I did not. Not only had I not really used it much, but anytime we go into town, I plug in all electronics and test them the morning of, before we head out.

Pinhoti Trail Day 25 Video