You can't sleep. Something outside went bump in the night. Or it scratched or mewled or limped across a floor of dried leaves. It awakened the yellow-eyed troll lurking under a nearby log, which now tugs at the ties of your tent. An unearthly light lingers in the denuded branches of the crooked maple. It is reflected in the faint, red, simian pupils of that sinewy vertical shadow that crosses the horizontals of your half-closed rain fly.

Illustration (c) Jules Remedios Faye.

You dare not move. Something might see you. Something that knows that you are there but assumes you are asleep might hear the adrenaline-driven beat of your heart, catch a flicker of white through the lid crack from which you peer, watch the nervous twitch of a finger. You don't move because if the bumper, the scratcher, the mewler and the limper should learn that you are awake, if the hidden hobgoblin, the phantom, or the werewolf should sense the shiver you fight to control, who knows what might happen? Disbelief and skepticism are dull blades when in the clutch of a vampire... the very same vampire who can smell the redness of your mortal blood.

Halloween night is indeed not for the faint of heart or untempered nerve. On that October/November night, in every valley hollow, behind every tree trunk, masked by the gentle gurgle of every brook, malevolence lingers. It tracks your progress from the tall grass of a moonlit meadow to the night murk of a forest trail. It crouches in wait until, with eyes closed, you curse that bothersome strand of a spider's web or bend to stroke the bruised toe that met the unseen tree root. It circles and circles and slowly closes in. It is terribly patient. It has waited all year for this one night when all things are allowed. It lingers, skulks. And, then, when the moment is right, it heaves into the mottled gloom and glowers, it pauses to give you that second of realization—when the snarl, the breaking twig, the horse's hooves, let you know that you are prey, that on Halloween night the predator always prevails.

Illustration (c) Jules Remedios Faye.

Nevertheless, and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, skeptics abound. Even as the North American Fall pumpkins plump and leaves flutter earthward, doubters plunge obliviously through accursed and damned valleys, stride pompously over signs of yawning danger. They choose to ignore rumors of creatures with histories stretching back hundreds of years, and exploits filling volumes of mildewy parchment. What if these rumors are right? After all, how many of us really actually know people who have genuinely come face-to-face with the supernatural, the inexplicable? But what if doubters are wrong? What if the hints of the macabre are just a way of distinguishing the weak from the weaker? What if cynicism drops defenses, lids the eyes, dulls the senses just enough for the insidious to beguile, for the treacherous to entrap? Then who will be laughing?

Our guess is it won't be the victim. And the living dead are unlikely victims.

	Tell us your scariest tales of terror on the trail.... The coals are glowing in the Campfire Forum They look like burning eyes, don't they?... Yikes! What was that noise?!

What follows is a playful look at some of the mysteries we love. From the yeti and his abominable warm-weather cousins to the breathless spell over a haunted field, this is GORP's acknowledgement that sometimes the inexplicable can't or shouldn't be explained. There is no reason to fear the unknown. But should anyone ever reject it?

After all, it is too late when you are screaming into the maw of a man-eating ghoul.

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Move on to Is Seeing Believing?

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The Woman Who Turned to Soap
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The Good-Time Ghosts