The Occult Footprints Log

Some things in the valley do not stay buried. The hills keep their fog and their secrets close. Over time, a pattern has crept into my notebooks. The strange impressions left behind, year after year, on the ground of Roanoke and its neighboring shadows. Barefoot, clawed, or otherwise, they arrive in the quiet hours, vanish just as quick, and never seem quite human.

Below is the log as I have kept it, three years of careful entries. I share them here not as proof, only as record.


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Year One — Beginnings

January
Snow over Yellow Sulphur Springs. One set of bare prints trailing to the sycamore, ending abruptly.

February
Sulfur sting in the caverns, dust scuffed by dragging toes.

March
Rain-soft mud near Hanging Rock, prints leaping like no human stride.

April
Loops of tracks near Mill Mountain overlook, rain erasing them before I could trace further.

May
Blackened circles in grass, edged with small strange prints.

June
Three tracks waiting side by side in cavern dust, then gone.

July
Five sets of impressions on the slope, scoured smooth before I returned.

August
Narrow heel to toe prints pacing Patterson Avenue block by block.

September
Circling prints round a tree trunk, as if watching endlessly.

October
Barefoot impressions in alley leading to warm brick wall.

November
Deep riverbank marks ending beneath the current.

December
Two prints in snow at Mill Mountain’s edge, then only white silence.

Visual cue: imagine snow faintly embossed with strange, precise footsteps under the glow of the neon star above the valley.


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Year Two — Echoes

January
Thick fog. Footprints appeared overnight across my porch, wet outlines steaming in the cold. None led away.

February
Cavern lantern cracked. The group left early. I stayed and found the wall damp with handprints pressed high overhead.

March
Near the duck pond, muddy prints too wide for a man. Ducks avoided the water that day.

April
Bonfire rumor again. Smoke seen drifting from Yellow Sulphur, though no fire crews came. Prints this time were in pairs, one large, one small, circling.

May
I dreamed of drumming, woke to see dust stirred on the windowsill inside my locked room. Five small prints in a row.

June
Heat lightning in the caverns. Rock smelled of ozone. Prints were not on the floor but high up the wall, like something had climbed sideways.

July
River low. Children playing found impressions of knees, hands, and something tail-like pressed in mud.

August
Neighbor swore she saw pale figures watching from Patterson turret. That night I saw them too, but the prints on the sidewalk below were claw tipped.

September
Circles burned again into grass near the old springhouse. No ash this time, only frost, though the night was warm.

October
Theatre alley same wall as last year. This time the prints were smaller, leading out of the brick.

November
Cold rain. I followed tracks across the cemetery until they stopped before a stone angel, toes pressed against its base.

December
Snowfall heavy. No prints all day, but in the morning writing appeared traced in them. Three words I did not know. Letters sank deep, like weight pressed them.

Imagery cue: envision dim candlelight flickering across footprints and half-erased symbols in mud and dust.


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Year Three — Patterns

January
New year. I kept watch at Yellow Sulphur. Snow fell clean, unbroken. Just before dawn a line of prints appeared all at once, stretching across the entire field in a single instant.

February
Inside the caverns faint humming echoed. Dust held no prints, but condensation drew shapes on the stone, toe marks outlined in water beads.

March
Thunderstorm rolled through. After, in the mud, I found impressions moving both forward and backward, as if one figure retraced its steps exactly.

April
Star on the mountain went out for maintenance. For those three nights prints multiplied near its base, hundreds, weaving like a crowd.

May
The old resort showed signs of trespass. Candles melted on the floor, wax pooled thick. Around them overlapping barefoot tracks that never left the building.

June
Heat shimmered. Cavern tour interrupted by sudden blackout. When lights returned dust bore a child-sized footprint leading toward the exit. The group swore no children were present.

July
River swelled with summer storms. Debris floated down. Among branches and trash a shoe, waterlogged, no pair. The mudbank bore a single matching track.

August
Turret house on Patterson Avenue condemned, boards nailed tight. Still, people whisper of a face at the top window. That week I found prints on the sidewalk below, facing outward as if watching the street.

September
At the edge of town a circle of mushrooms appeared. Inside the ring every blade of grass lay flattened by tiny prints spiraling inward.

October
Halloween crowd outside the theatre. Amid their scuffs I noticed a single barefoot trail, crisp, sharp, as if pressed hours later. It led to my own shadow.

November
Frost clung to gravestones. On one, words formed in crystalline footprints: wait.

December
Silent snow, the valley hushed. I expected the usual pair at the overlook, but this year four sets together, lined neatly at the cliff’s edge, gazing out.

Visual cue: picture a cliffside blanketed in snow, four silent watchers outlined in footprints, under the steady glow of Mill Mountain’s star.


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Closing

Three years, and the valley has not run out of strangeness. The footprints come and go, unclaimed, unchased, unbroken in their pattern. Some say it is tricks of weather, or the wandering of trespassers, or the fancies of a restless imagination.

But in quiet moments, when I find myself following them, I wonder if it is the other way around. Are they are the ones following me?