there are stranger signs in the mountains than you’d expect.

old no trespassing signs.

church signs.

faded advertisements for places that closed before you were born.

but this one bothered me.

because it wasn’t warning me away.

it was warning me about myself.

BEWARE OF GLEEST

nothing else.

no explanation.

no logo.

just those three words burned into a piece of weathered wood and bolted to a post beside an old logging road.

i asked around.

nobody knew who put it there.

except an old woman at the feed store.

she frowned when i mentioned it.

said her grandfather talked about those signs.

said they used to be everywhere.

before people started disappearing.

not forever.

just for a little while.

an hour.

a day.

sometimes a week.

they’d come back confused.

sunburned.

hungry.

certain they’d only been gone a few minutes.

and every one of them said the same thing.

they’d heard whistling.

coming from somewhere ahead.

always ahead.

never behind.

she told me if i ever heard it, i should stop walking.

don’t follow.

don’t answer.

don’t whistle back.

then she looked at me strangely.

“you did hear it, didn’t you?”

i asked how she knew.

she pointed to my backpack.

hanging from one of the straps was a little strip of wood.

rough cut.

weathered.

with three familiar words scratched into it.

BEWARE OF GLEEST

i don’t remember picking it up.

but somehow

it came home with me.

#thegleest #appalachianweird #cryptidcore #folkhorror #oldgodsofappalachia #mountainmysteries #strangeplaces #hauntedwoods #bewareofgleest