Urban Legend of Photos of Hikers on the Appalachian Trail

Lost Among the Leaves: Secret Photos of Hikers on the Appalachian Trail

This story, which I have named “Lost in the Leaves”, is a very detailed and place specific version of the unexplained photographs legends. While unexplained photograph legends often involve humorous pictures taken as a practical joke, there is also a darker streak of these legends. These are legends where mysterious photographs reveal just how near a person was to death through photographs developed after the fact. The fear in these is of what could have happened. In this version however, the photographs serve to warn the endangered as well. This urban legend thus allows other interpretations for why the photographs were taken, and shown to the endangered party. I collected this urban legend from a Freshman here at the University. It was told to him as a scary story when he was hiking along the Appalachian trail, about five years ago.

Have you ever been on the Appalachian Trail?

OK.

The man who proposed it had a utopian vision of a long, tenuous string of outposts stretching from Maine to Georgia, such that adventurous young men and women, possibly disenfranchised by society and the economy, could trek from one end of the country to the other sharing each night with similarly disposed adventurers.

Each outpost was to consist of dozens of beds, a kitchen, a chess set sitting on the porch.

The idea was every traveler should feel at liberty to pursue the trail at whatever speed they desired, with the assurance that wherever their feet took them they would find welcome.

Reality falls a little short of this vision -- most of the shelters are actually three-sided cabins with four bunks-- Mouse infested-- But still, finding a structure of obviously human origin in the wilderness is a comforting thing. Sometimes, on the trail, you'll come across an artifact of a previous traveler -- say -- a rope swing -- that is obviously constructed with such care that it seems to carry something of the soul of the person who put it there.

I remember once coming to the top of a mountain and finding a meadow that was bare grass except for one tree in the middle -- and from that tree hung a rope swing that looked to have been there for decades.

The Appalachian Trail convinces those who follow it of the existence of ghosts.

Benevolent ghosts.