April 7th, 2018
It’s not often that a hunter gets to piggyback hunts in the same area. Sure, sometimes a bunch of hauntings happen in the same place, but usually we end up traveling a fair distance to undertake our jobs. I don’t mind bopping around the country to beat back the darkness, but it is nice to sometimes just stay put for a bit.
It doesn’t hurt that my current location is a spritzy ski resort with a number of comped amenities thanks to handling a yeti recently. Of course, having a number of people now believing in the supernatural also means I’ve been asked to look into a new set of disappearances.
The season’s nearly done, so the opening of hiking trails has happened a little earlier than expected. A couple of hikers went missing a couple days ago.
The local authorities (also on friendly terms with me) have been alerted, but they can’t do a lot with the weather as it is. I’ve asked Germaine the concierge to do some homework for me while I get out on the trail the hikers were last seen departing on. I’m packing a number of different things to keep me safe. Hopefully, if nothing else, it’ll slow whatever might’ve taken the hikers down and let me escape to come back properly equipped.
April 8th, 2018
Other than coming back a little chilled, my hike didn’t (obviously) end poorly for me. Unfortunately, I didn’t come across signs of a struggle or nefarious deeds. I did lose track of the hiker’s trail (it was pretty faint to begin with) halfway though my hike. I spent near on an hour of daylight searching for where it might’ve gone without any true luck.
I don’t claim to be an excellent tracker by any means, but I can usually follow a trail someone’s left and it isn’t often that such a trail just vanishes off into thin air.
Going to have to hunker down for another day or so as well. We have a storm sweeping back in and I’ll be lucky if I can follow my own trail back out.
Germaine brought me a number of “interesting” articles when I got back. I haven’t had an opportunity to fully peruse them yet, but I will shortly. As noted: the weather is turning nasty, but predicted to only stay nasty for a day or so. It’ll give me ample time to fully read and do some of my own research.
I will say this much: the top article is about a group of hikers who got caught out in a nasty storm and all but one was discovered dead come spring. Might be something there.
April 10th, 2018
Okay. Not another yeti. Patty sent me some additional reading material on them and this doesn’t really fit. I can attest to that on my own since there’s no direct attacks and it’s just a disappearance of a few hikers. Given the weather, it could be that they just got lost and that’s that. They’ll be found when spring truly comes around.
It doesn’t match with my following their tracks though. Did find something interesting in the articles from Germaine though: the article about the missing hikers caught in a nasty storm didn’t have all of the morbid details. I got to cross reference with the police records of the incident and the bodies that were recovered had been partially consumed.
Might be nothing, but might be everything. Cannibalism isn’t unique enough to tell me much. And on top of that, the coroner’s report said it all looked as though another human did all the consuming. It might be reasonably assumed that they ate each other and the last one stumbled out into the storm and died somewhere else.
More reading is ahead of me, but I should be able to get back out there tomorrow.
April 12th, 2018
Okay, so I was off by a day. But it did let me restock and gather more information. Patty is convinced that what I’m dealing with is a wendigo: a spirit of hunger and craving that’s wormed its way into a person transforming them into a monster. It usually happens during a bout of cannibalism and thrusts an insatiable hunger into the victim. Given that it is a spirit infecting a person, they can be tracked (if you can find the trail soon enough) by EMF.
They’re also fast, and strong and only leave tracks if they want making them incredibly capable hunters. They get faster and stronger the older they get, so given this one’s only a decade or so old (and likely a little malnourished thanks to the yeti that used to rule the area) I should be able to handle it on my own.
If that’s not the case, and I’m leaving my journal in the capable hands of Germaine, here’s what you’ll want to pack to tackle the wendigo in my absence:
Fire. And lots of it. Bring a flare or flame thrower, or dragonsbreath rounds for a shotgun. Bring things that can torch stuff.
I know I’m packing as much fiery goodness as I can reasonably carry. Germaine, if you’re reading this:
DO NOT FOLLOW IN MY FOOTSTEPS ALONE.
April 13th, 2018
Hiking in thigh deep snow sucks. Oh, and new information on wendigoes: they’ll store someone for later eating. Of the three hikers who went missing, I was able to find and save two of them. They sure weren’t in good shape, but could still walk and were happy enough to see me. The third, unfortunately, had already been consumed by the monster.
The EMF trick worked like a charm and led me straight to its lair, a burrowed-out cave just an hour’s hike from where I originally lost the trail.
A word of warning: don’t undertake this sort of fight alone. Heed the warning that I ignored. The wendigo is nearly a perfect hunter who got the drop on me and the only reason I came out with just a frostbite scar across my ribs is because of its incredible youth and weakened state.
Bring someone to watch your six.
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