Backwoods, Pennsylvania

Sometimes it’s better to avoid the road less traveled

It was 5:27 on Monday night, October 17th, and I had just got off the phone with a publisher who was notifying me that they would no longer be working with me because of budget cuts. I had poured an entire year of my life into that story and finally had my chance to show those around me that I have not been wasting my time for the past 12 months but before I knew it, it had been taken away from me. Come 9:10, I closed the office and I headed to… somewhere. I was going on a drive until I determined what my next step was.

40 minutes into driving, I entered Black Moshannon State Park and the entire forest was illuminated by the moon. Instead of taking the paved way, I hooked a right onto a dirt road that was unlike the rest of the forest. The moon did not exist on this road, it’s light was nonexistent and it was like a whole new world. My headlights only shined a few feet in front of the car instead of 20 feet as they usually do, it was like they were being covered by something. As the road progressed, the quality of street signs and plants rapidly decayed. There was a speed limit sign that was overgrown by vines and bushes and a winding-road sign that leaned away from the road.

Around 25 minutes onto this dirt road, it came to a clearing where there were four very run-down houses and the foundation of a house. Even though this area was free from tree cover, it was still pitch-black. I could barely see my hand. I got out of the car using my phone flashlight to guide me and walked to the beginning of the town. I got this nervous feeling in my stomach and I turned around. I did not have the guts or the mental capacity to explore the town that night, it was too much to take in at once so I retreated back to my car and turned around.

As I was on my way back to the main road, I had zoned out thinking about everything from my fantasy football team, how the Cubs would fair against Clayton Kershaw, and this upcoming election. I was brought back to the current moment by blinding lights from behind me. A white pickup truck was tailgating me with Ohio plates, blinding spotlights on top of the truck cab, and obnoxious high-beams. At first, I had pulled over thinking that they would pass but it occurred to me very quickly that they were not passing through like I was. They hit their horn and it was deafening. As I tried to escape the blinding lights and the deafening tune of their horn, I started to piece together what I was dealing with. The dirt road I entered on was not a through-road, the road ended at the town. In order to get behind a car traveling out, you would have to come from the town. Someone was not happy with my presence, or if they were, they had a strange way of showing it. I maintained a moderate speed of 55 (which was way too fast for this dirt road) in hopes of showing the truck that I had a sense of urgency when it came to leaving but the social cue was not picked up on.

I breathed a sigh of relief after reaching the main road in Black Moshannon thinking that this was over but I was painfully naive. The truck attempted to fish-tail and ram my car but each time, I picked up speed to avoid it. This is when the drag-racing car chase started.

If you have not been to Black Moshannon, it is important to note that there are stretches of straight road but as you exit the park towards Unionville, it becomes winding road hell as you descend down the Allegheny Plateau which is 1,900 feet above sea-level. The speed limit varies for each turn from 15 to 35 miles per hour. Ideally, this is the type of road you want to avoid driving at night at speeds of 70+ but the small car I drive could somehow manage these turns. The white truck had to slow down around these turns and I would gain some ground but my lead would be nonexistent within seconds.

Realizing that I was in some type of danger, I went to the group-chat and sent out an SOS message:

Listen team. If you don’t hear from me in 30 minutes, I need y’all to call the police — Black Moshsnnon state forest. Being followed by White pickup truck with 3 sets of lights, Ohio plates on the front.

I’m going towards Unionville. I just passed Mile marker 230 in the forest.

Entirely possible that we have the same destination but I feel otherwise. I’m gonna lose service. Plz wait on the trigger.

At which point, I started sharing my location with two friends so they could monitor where I was and if I, god forbid, stopped moving. The truck followed me all the way into the town of Bellefonte. Upon reaching a red light, the first of the chase, I took a deep breath and turned left on red into oncoming traffic. I proceeded to State College in hopes of not seeing the truck again… and I didn’t… at least for the rest of the night. I parked in our office parking lot and sat staring out the front windshield, feeling completely exhausted but my body still shaking from the massive amounts of adrenaline running through my system. I sat there knowing that something is not right with that but there is a story there.

That night I did a lot of research to try to figure out what I had encountered. If there are drug cartels in Ohio, they could also be in the backwoods of Central Pennsylvania? The Klan is known for being territorial and they are on a resurgence unfortunately. It could be a thousand different things but one thing is abundantly clear, whatever is going on out-there isn’t exactly public information.

The next day, I managed to sneak in some research here and there throughout the work day. Reading about the history of Black Moshannon and the history of organized crime in Central Pennsylvania but the two never really seem to have any connection and logistically that makes sense. Black Moshannon does not connect to Interstate 80 and typically immediate access is needed when it comes to trafficking illegal goods. Immediate access to the US interstate is why Davenport and Chicago are major drug centers for drug cartels and places like Ithaca are not.

The only true way to find out what is going on in Black Moshannon is to go back and find out for myself. Just like the night before, I left early in the night and embarked on a dark back road trip to this town that had made it abundantly clear the night before that they were not very hospitable to unannounced visitors. Equip with a flashlight, I ventured to this town to get answers but I only left with more questions.

The road was just as much a light vacuum as it was the night before but it was a little bit colder. As I entered the clearing, I made sure to turn my car in such a way that would allow me to go straight down the dirt road back to civilization instead of having to back up. I approached some of the houses and realized just how much of a ghost town it was. There were zero signs of life of any kind, the trees grew away from the town to form this clearing where the town was. There were zero plants in this town, not even a single blade of grass.. It was all dirt and gravel. I approached the first house and it’s porch creaked loud enough to wake up someone if someone had lived in the town. I peered into the dusty spiderweb infested windows and on the ground of this seemingly empty house was a copy of the 99 Luftballoons album from the 1980s German pop band, Nena. The wind whistled through a crack in the glass window, the entire area was eerily quite. I heard a cracking creak from one of the other houses in the town and I froze. What did I just hear? I’m not exactly hard to scare, so I talked myself down assuming that it was just an animal and that I was just scaring easily.

I descended down the first house’s steps and moved to the next house. This house was a bit more broken than the first one was. The steps were very pulpy and wet, the second step broke when I stepped on it. The porch swing blew in the wind putting me on even more of an edge. This house was a bit smaller than the previous one and it lacked a door. The porch, waterlogged, just like the steps made me nervous that I could fall through. Moving swiftly, I jumped off the porch avoiding the steps because they were an accident waiting to happen.

The third house was interesting because it was the same size as the first one and it’s windows were seemingly blacked out. My flashlight did not reflect off the windows as I shined it at them while walking towards it. To avoid stepping through another set of porch steps, I looked down to step onto the first step. I heard a creak at the top of the porch and an uncomfortable premonition of fear pervaded my sense. I slowly looked up to see a man completely illuminated by my flashlight. My stomach turned to ice, my heart nearly stopped beating, and the air in my lungs disappeared.

“Heeeeellooooooooooooo young man”

His high pitched voice pierced my ears, it felt and sounded inhuman. Wearing nothing but jeans and an apron, the man stood there staring down at me while his body lightly shook. He stood there, smirking, and looking at me with a grim and shuttering fascination. This man’s eyes were bloodshot bright blue eyes that seemed to never blink, they were devoid of any and all emotion. I tried to run but my body held still, terror had me like vice-grip on the neck of a beer bottle in an alcoholic’s hands. The torture of my indecision and fear threatened to crush me if I did not move and get back to my car. My brain was screaming for me to move but my body would not physically move no matter how hard I tried. He moved towards me and I was freed from the chains of horror. Darting back to my car, I sped away down the dark dirt road. Headlights appeared behind my car within minutes from departing from the town but this time, there were two sets of highlights… two trucks now. As I reached the end, I was greeted by a road block.

The roadblock, a wooden gate, had never been there before, someone or something had closed the gate. I was going fast enough that hitting the wooden gate would certainly cause some damage to my car and myself. I considered hitting the emergency break to pull a turn around in hopes of finding another way out. In my 15 seconds of panic, I thought that I had finally played my deck of cards wrong and that the game was over. I took a deep breath and drove through tall brush to the right side of the gate across. Getting onto the main road again, I headed towards Unionville again. Assuming that this would be a repeat of the night before, except this time I was out-numbered. I tried to get a head start on them and I did but they never pursued me as hard as they did the night before. They followed from a relatively safe distance until I reached Bellefonte and they went away.

The next night I went back, and I was greeted by a truck watching the entrance to the forest with blinding headlights. I paused, at first, out of confusion but I accelerated forward and took a left on to hayroad (road name I believe) and turned off my lights and watched the truck from across Black Moshannon. I waited for the truck to pass on the main road. My curiosity is like an addiction, when I latch my mind onto something, I feel obligated to resolve it no matter how much danger I put myself into. After taking a few minutes to evaluate all the decisions I have made up to this point and listening to the words of concern from those around me… I realized that I did not want this fight, not tonight.

I turned around and went home.

There is a story in Black Moshannon… but I think that is where it’s going to stay. For now.