fog to flames: haunted hiking on the lime kiln trail

Lime Kiln Trail, Granite Falls, Washington

All photos in this post were taken by yours truly on the Lime Kiln Trail

I can see the torso cooking in a wood-fired oven. I’m standing in a warm, bright kitchen. Chefs mill about, preparing the meal. It’s my job to stand watch over the body in the oven. Deep down, I know that it’s me.

I stare, watching myself being cooked alive. I can see my flesh burnt away, my spine and ribs separating, an empty space where my heart should be. I watch and feel nothing.

I know you’re here, I think, sensing a presence. Show yourself. Someone darts in front of me, annoyed. I can hear my breaths coming in gasps like seagulls screaming. Or the wind howling. It jolts me awake.

“I tremble… They’re gonna eat me alive… If I stumble… They’re gonna eat me alive…

Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer?”

- Help I’m Alive, song by Metric

The closer I get to the trailhead, the foggier it gets. Chimney smoke billows and disappears into the mist. Vines engulf a rusty white van, mottled green and decomposing into the bog. Mammoth trees tower over ancient homes, wooden bark peeking through bright green fuzz. Draping, wooly shrouds adorn their outstretched limbs.

I’m giddy as I step out of the car. The trail is silent - everyone I pass is leaving. A mad logger has swarmed the joint, leaving destruction and timbers in their wake. A lone trunk, pock marked with mossy burls remains steadfast amidst its fallen brethren.

Trees hang precariously, suspended in time, lying in wait for an unsuspecting hiker.

I round a corner, and rows of white bark and olive tufts greet me cheerfully. The energy is mysterious and playful.

I bow under a dripping limb and the world goes dim. Some kind of portal. The murky path is darker than the emerald thicket surrounding. Furry jade timbers twist and turn into grotesque shapes. Slimy monsters come to life.

I hear water up ahead, and look down on a gorge, flowing brilliant green, swampy as the trail. The path becomes narrow, steep, and slick, water raging ominously below.

Blockages abound along the trail, giving subtle “stay out” vibes. I’m hindered by a massive dinosaur bone, or possibly an elephant graveyard. I continue, unrelenting, crawling over, dipping under each new obstruction. Tall green giants follow along eerily. The steady patter of the rain, the determined plodding and squelching of my boots cheers me on.

I know I’m getting close as the trees start brushing up against the foggy sky. White blotches creep over the granite walls, lichen infestation or remnants of quarry. I have been walking for miles and should be there by now. Did I take a wrong turn?

The sky opens up and the rain crashes down with a vengeance. Countless warnings to turn around. I’m all alone. It’s nearly sunset. I should go back, before it gets dark. But any minute now.. I’ve come so far..

I almost pass the rocky chamber, hidden behind the pines. Another sodden log blocks the trail, while rusty saw blades scatter haphazardly.

This trail was used for transporting cooked lime, until it was abandoned in the 1930s. They say the forest is haunted by the souls of the fire tenders. Stories and histories all buried in the ancient stone walls of the kiln. It draws you in.

The trail is more water logged on the way back. Apparitions lurk in the puddles, darting across reflections of snaggle-tooth trees.

Shadows drip down the wooden logs, shiny with rain, making me jump as the night closes in. I still have miles to go. All I can hear is the steady patter. No birds or skittering squirrels. A noticeable absence of wildlife throughout this entire journey. I fill the quiet by talking to myself, sinking slowly into madness.

I cross a balance beam bridge with only one handrail, a steep gully waiting to catch me below. I flippantly joke out loud that at least I’ll die happy. And then I hear it. The distinct sound of a boot splashing in a puddle behind me. The brush of a jacket. The sensation of someone sidling up next to me and whispering in my right ear.

There’s no one there.

I whirl around, gasping. Scramble away, slipping and running as fast as I can while throwing frantic glances over my shoulder. I have full-body chills even though I am sweating with exertion. That presence at my right ear never leaves my side.

The dark portal is pitch black now, menacing. I have to use the flashlight on my phone. Shadows dart in and out of the forest of white trees, no longer friendly. Bone white skeletons shaking in the breeze.

I start recording, soliciting EVPs. If I’m going to be terrified, I might as well get some evidence. I still keep feeling a presence behind me. I should be frightened, but I start to get waves of nostalgia, gratitude and relief. Maybe I’m being hunted. Or just haunted. But it feels more like I’m being escorted. We just keep talking.

The wind starts to howl through the trees. Can you hear it? It gets stronger and stronger, and whistles through my ears. It tugs at the soaking spruces and bends them to its will. It pulls against me, too, and shrieks at the resistance. It screams against the rocky walls, angrily tossing pines.

Near the end, branches and bramble snag and jut out over the trail, monster claws snatching. Shaken, I close my eyes. Surrender. Take a deep breath, inhale the forest. Stretch my arms wide. Feel the wind on my face. I am not afraid of it. I am part of it.

---

Washington Trails Association suggested I read Nathaniel Hawthorn’s Ethan Brand before visited the Lime Kiln Trail. Lucky for me, there is a free audio version on YouTube, so I listened to it as I drove an hour to the trailhead.

Below are my favorite / relevant quotes from Ethan Brand, by Nathaniel Hawthorn.

*Spoiler alert - the quotes below give away the ending.

"The solitary mountain was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out of place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice...the madman's laugh,--the wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot, --are sounds that we sometimes tremble to hear, and would always willingly forget."

"...he broke into the awful laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of his inward being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at an end; they stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should be reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it to mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears."

"...the open space on the hill-side was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe...that the silent forest was holding its breath until some fearful thing should happen."

"The blue flames played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which alone could have suited its expression; it was that of a fiend on the verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment."

"That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son, dim shapes of horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight."

"'Thank Heaven, the night is gone, at last; and rather than pass such another, I would watch my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such might favor, in taking my place!'" 

"The marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on the surface, in the midst of the circle, --snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into lime, --lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down to long expose. Within the ribs --strange to say-- was the shape of a human heart."  

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Hauntingly yours,

dreary dendrophile