PREVIOUS EPISODE
19- Intrusion
NEXT EPISODE
[Listen]
​
[Radio Static]
THE REPORTER:
Good afternoon, Witherburn. How was your week? Mine sure was interesting. That class hike was something, all right.
I really hope that y'all had a more normal week than I did, though it feels as if normal weeks are becoming a rare occurrence these days. I overheard someone saying, wow, the reporter must love the fact that there's never a boring moment in this town. Well, hear me when I say that I do not love that fact.
I would much rather this town have normal drama, like the church ladies judging your Easter dresses, not a teenage boy threatening to kill someone. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. You can learn all about the class hike and more today on Witherburn Afterschool News.
Let's start off with Monster of the Week. No one sponsored it, but I've been wanting to do this monster ever since I started the segment, and I figured the week of the class hike would be the perfect time to do it. It's a bit of an unconventional monster, but hear me out.
This week's monster is the Appalachian Woods, our home turf. You might be thinking, reporter, you can't just say the Appalachian Woods are a monster of their own and call it a day. And to that I say, it's my show and I can do whatever I want, including an avant-garde monster of the week.
So let's get some facts out of the way. The Appalachian Mountains are some of the oldest mountains in the world. They first started forming 1.2 billion years ago.
They're so old, in fact, that they formed before North America and Europe split. The Scottish Highlands? Yeah, that started as the same mountain range as the Appalachian Mountains. Which is very interesting when you realize that a lot of the folklore of the Appalachian Mountains is similar to the folklore of the Scottish Highlands.
I'm sure y'all have noticed how many of our local stories seem to be similar to some of the more famous creatures of the Emerald Isles. The Brown Mountain Lights and the Willow of the Wisps are ones that come to mind. Hags are very prominent in both places as well.
That's not scary, I hear you cry. You can't just tell us boring mountain facts and say that that's the monster of the week. Well, I'm not done, listeners.
Geez, y'all are impatient. No, I bring this up because it makes it all the more eerie when you learn how the Appalachian Woods eats people. I say eat because of how many people just disappear into these mountains, gone without a trace.
Some say it's because the cliffs here are deceptively dangerous and easy for new hikers to get hurt on. Others claim that those that go missing do it on purpose, trying to start a new life in the woods. But there are rumors that it's something in this forest that is taking these people.
Something that hides in the treeline. Kids go missing only to be found in places that are impossible for them to get to, claiming that a monster took them there. I think that's the fear, listeners.
It's the fact that, despite being so old, so much is unknown about the place that we call home. It's a bit awe-inspiring in a Lovecraftian horror type of way. I mean, who here hasn't been told to avoid whistling at night, or else you might bring unwanted attention to yourself? Who hasn't been told that if you hear a voice calling your name from the treeline, you ignore it? Look, I'm not superstitious, yet I still follow those rules.
It's things like this that make these woods a monster of its own. In the end, though, it's probably the mythos of it all. The legends feed into themselves and create this grand idea of haunted woods that will swallow you whole if given the chance.
Almost everything has a logical explanation, so chances are the legends of Appalachia are just a remnant of a more superstitious time. Though it's interesting living in a place that is known for its horrors and scary stories and seeing it as home. I don't know, there's a healthy respect that the people here have for the forest that I don't think is found in many other places.
But I'm just rambling now. Speaking of the woods, I know everyone wants to talk about class hike. See, the class hike is a yearly tradition.
The sophomore class hikes the section of the Appalachian Trail that's right by our little town. It gives us a reason to be proud of our town and teaches the next generation to value the beautiful and unique nature that surrounds them. Or at least, that's what it's supposed to do.
Instead, the class is more focused on Hunter screaming and putting his hands on Amelia and company. So what happened? Well, it was a pretty normal class hike. A little chilly, but normal.
The guide was pointing out all the native flora and fauna. We even saw a bobcat off in the distance, which was honestly pretty cool. And then there's a salamander and... Sorry, I'm rambling again.
Cool animals are not what you came here for. Anyway, it was towards the tail end of the hike when there was a slight altercation coming from the back. One of Amelia's friends, I don't really know who, started to bicker a bit with Hunter.
The teacher tried to calm them down, but the bickering continued. Finally, Hunter let out a blood-curdling scream. He then grabbed Amelia, still screaming incoherently.
Her friends tried to pull her back, but he apparently had a death grip on her. This all happened in the span of about five seconds. Now everyone is screaming at this point, and the teachers are running over to tell Hunter to let go of her.
Hunter decides to scream, and I quote,
“I could kill her. I could kill her right now, and none of you could do anything about it. I would be praised for it, I'm a god compared to you.“
As he was saying this, he started walking towards the treeline. Seemingly, he was going to run into the woods.
I'll be honest, the listeners watching this happen is one thing, but reading the details out loud, it uh... leaves a pit in your stomach. One of her friends tried to reach out for her again, but he snapped at her. Literally snapped at her with his teeth.
The teacher tried to reason with him, but he just started screaming incoherent nonsense again. Finally, the tour guide tackled him. Like football tackled.
Hunter started kicking and screaming and clawing at the guide, but he finally let Amelia go. Now, pause on the story. I just want to give a shout out to the tour guide.
He is the real hero of the story, so I tip my cap to him. Anyway, he managed to hold Hunter down until the park rangers came. After that, the rest of the students were shuffled out of there, so... I don't really know what happened after that.
Except I do know that he somehow avoided jail time. He literally said in front of a crowd that he was going to kill someone. And you want to know what makes me sick? He said that no one could do anything about it, and he was right.
According to Mr. Farrow, they struck a deal that Hunter would be removed from all of Amelia's classes and be given in-school suspension for the next two weeks. Mr. Farrow said he was allowed to be at these meetings, but they didn't take any of his suggestions seriously.
Mrs. Clark gave some spiel about how Hunter's going through a lot right now. This was just a silly little breakdown, because normal people have breakdowns where they threaten to kill people. She hopes Mr. Farrow can find it in his heart to forgive Hunter.
The thing is, we learned last week that this is a repeated pattern of behavior from Hunter, especially towards Amelia. He has trapped her in bathrooms, tried to slip things into her drink, and now he is threatening to kill her in front of a bunch of people. He needs to be stopped.
It makes me sick to think he is doing this and getting away with it. Amelia has said to some friends that she might not return to school this year knowing that Hunter is going to be there. This incident really shook her up.
I don't blame her. It just grinds my gears that we could be losing one of Witherburn High School's most accomplished students because our principal can't stand up to the Clarks. Sorry, listeners, if I sound frustrated, it's because I am.
Let's move on to the next story. Mrs. Newberry's lemonade recipe got leaked along with her oatmeal raisin cookies. We all know Mrs. Newberry is a pillar of the community.
She's always on her porch willing to chat, and she doesn't care who you are either. You could be a church friend or one of the neighborhood kids. She's always excited to gab.
Another thing she is known for is her lemonade and her award-winning cookies. If you get to talking for a bit, she will always give you some lemonade and cookies. I swear, it's almost like this woman materializes them out of thin air.
But, listeners, if you haven't had a chance to try her lemonade or her cookies, you're missing out. I swear, it's like heaven on your taste buds. I would suggest you go over to Newberry's just to try their desserts, but I would also suggest you go over there to talk to Mrs. Newberry.
She has some wild stories, y'all. She was in her 20s during the hippie movement, and I think you can piece together how crazy that could have been. But this recipe has been a family secret for a while now, and Mrs. Newberry has been asked many times to reveal the recipe.
She's never told anyone the recipe, though, and always says the secret ingredient was love. But someone put her on the church bulletin board for everyone to see. I saw it and was just like, wow, is nothing sacred anymore? I mean, you're leaking an old woman's family recipes in the house of God.
That's just... that's just sad. Mrs. Newberry, bless her heart, says she has no ill will towards the person who did it, but she would like to know how they got the recipe. She said, the only person I have told the recipe to is my daughter, and she lives up in Maine now.
She wanted to make it known to the perpetrator, heading on the traitor part, that she would love to have a chat about this. She would be more than happy to talk it out.
Here's the thing, listeners, I think it was Miss Patty. I swear, I saw her smiling when people found the recipe, and come on, it makes sense. She has always got something to say about Mrs. Newberry.
Also, Mrs. Newberry beat out her lemonade cookies at last year's church-sponsored bake-off, so I think Mrs. Patty leaked the recipe as a form of revenge. Maybe she thought she would win next year's bake-off if the cookie recipe got leaked. Though I doubt it, because you know what Mrs. Patty doesn't put into her recipes? Love.
That mean woman probably puts pure spite into her cookies. I swear that's the only way they could taste that bitter. Mrs. Patty could learn a thing or two from Mrs. Newberry besides baking.
I mean, Mrs. Newberry has become a beloved member of the community while Mrs. Patty is the living embodiment of the old “get these kids off my lawn stereotype". Maybe, and this is just me spitballing here, she would have a better outlook on life if she opened her door to people. Maybe she wouldn't feel the need to leak Mrs. Newberry's recipes, but that's just my opinion.
I don't even know if it was Mrs. Patty. I will say right now, though, that I will not be as nice as Newberry to the person who leaked the recipes. Some people just have no morals.
On to some funny stories. There was a UFO scared near the cornfields. Mr. Pickler, because of course it was Mr. Pickler, swears he saw an alien spacecraft.
He said it was probably here to give us messages in the corn, like they do in Nebraska. I'm not even gonna touch on how crop circles are fake because that's not the point of this segment. Though to Mr. Pickler's credit, there were some others that said they saw the spacecraft as well.
Pictures and videos of the incident started to appear on Facebook. This sent the Witherburn Facebook group into quite a tizzy and multiple people came out of the woodwork saying they saw the same thing. People are now wondering, is Witherburn the next Roswell? The answer is no, but we decided to look into it.
Well, I sent a little birdie to investigate. First asking Mr. Pickler, he said he saw it flying around over the cornfield at sunset. It made this whirring noise as it flew overhead and was darting around sporadically.
Mr. Pickler said he had seen UFOs before. One tried to probe him, so he knew what to do. He got on the ground and began to hide.
He didn't leave his hiding spot until the whirring stopped. Now, I know you all want to know more about Mr. Pickler almost being abducted. Sadly, he refused to speak about it.
I know, I'm as disappointed as you. So besides his initial sighting, Mr. Pickler was a dead end. So we asked around to the others who claimed to have seen it.
They mostly have stories of looking out their windows and seeing a strange hovercraft. Some people said they heard the whirring noise that Mr. Pickler described, while others said it was too far away to truly know for sure. A few said that the hovercraft looked strangely small, though that might have been because they were seeing it at a distance.
We did notice something that connected these sightings, though. No one was under the age of 50. Any video evidence we could find on Facebook was blurry at best.
It was dead end after dead end, listeners, until we found a video on TikTok. In the caption, it said, tried to get some drone footage over the cornfields and instead caught a man screaming and hiding in the corn. We watched the video and, as you probably guessed, it was Mr. Pickler acting a fool as a child's drone flew overhead.
It explains the buzzing sound people were describing, as well as the small size. The comments were… not nice to Mr. Pickler, either. Many people are saying that this is Florida-man energy, and I really can't disagree.
Sorry, Mr. Pickler. But yeah, mystery solved! Call it an IFO, cause it's an identified flying object. No? Okay.
[Radio Static]
Let's move on to the next segment. Someone tried to ride a horse in a fog monster bar now-
[Radio static cutting out The Reporter’s words]
I don't know if they were drunk, I think so, considering-
​
EVA:
Hello? Hello, Oh my god it worked. I fucked up, they found me I think- I think this is it. But I'm not going down without a fight.
Im- Im the Witherburn Vandal. I am not, and I will not run away. They’re going to tell you that I ran away from my Dad, from the law, from whatever they decide to blame it on, but I didn’t. They’re liars. Everyone is lying. Those people… they’re dead, theyre dead. I saw… I don't know all the details but it was all pre-planned. They're doing something.
I don't know what, but it's… it's… it's bad. It's like they're trying to start the apocalypse, or something. I… they wouldn't tell me much more, cause they wanted me to prove myself.
​
SHERIFF SINANGER:
Where not gonna hurt you I promise, come on Eva.
SHERIFF SINANGER:
Eva they're gonna hurt me if you don't come out.
EVA:
God, I'm gonna die. My dad's gonna kill me.
SHERIFF SINANGER:
Eva, it's okay, you can come out!
EVA:
I think they found me.
This is it. Oh, God. Oh, God, I'm… I'm so sorry. About everything.
SHERIFF SINANGER:
Eva! There! There she is!
​
EVA:
Dad, please! Let me go! Let me go! Dad, tell them to let me go! Please! Dad!
[Radio Static]
​
THE REPORTER:
They eventually got the horse out the door. Anyway, that's the story of how a horse got into the bar.
Only in Witherburn, am I right? What happened? Jesus, did someone just die? Oh my God, did someone just hack into my show? Hold on, Birdie just said that the Clark's house was hit by the Witherburn Vandal. There's bright red spray paint on the side of the house that says, MONSTERS ARE HERE, here in all capital letters. Apparently the Vandal has been caught and it's… Oh my God, it's Eva.
I was right! She and Hunter must have gotten into an argument and this whole thing got turned back on him. You know what, I'm still not gonna forgive Eva for those sick pranks though. Seriously, why on earth would someone do that? Anyway, someone hacked into my station.
What'd they say, the reporter's a fraud or something like that? I guess I'll have to secure this a bit better though, radio signals aren't always easy. I hate to leave y'all here after these recent developments, but I apparently have a signal to secure. Plus, I am all out of stories for y'all.
Stay safe Witherburn, I will make sure to have more information about Eva. But to hear that story, you will have to tune in next week. I'm the reporter, signing off.