The Hangman's Tomb

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night a candle burned in its window. The shadow of a man hanging from the rafters slowly swayed on the far wall. It was he who had built that evil place. He who took an ax to forsaken trees. He who dug them up and tore them out by the room. He who laid a foundation on such a haunted space. He would occasionally slip out of his noose and light a candle in the window - The hangman.

Only a handful of unfortunate souls have ever laid eyes upon it. He preferred it that way. The hangman erected it away from the Village in the valley. The Village was raided shortly after his death. There were no survivors. For a long while, the mountains remained undisturbed by man's presence, and the cabin remained untouched by nature. Then came the loggers. Hacking and slashing their way through the hills and unwittingly uprooting the cursed forest. One afternoon, three children went missing from the Settlement. They got lost in the woods after a sudden cloud of dense fog rolled through. The sun began to fall under the horizon. The children started running in fear. Eventually, they saw a cabin with a candle burning in the distance and hurried towards it. Nothing was ever found of them, and they were eventually forgotten.

That occurred just about a century ago. Since then, a dam was built in between a small mountain pass. Flooding the barren valley. The gigantic lake stretched across the southern half of the mountain range. After the flood, the mountains themselves were declared protected lands. The forest began to heal. Its animals slowly returned as the signs of Humanity dwindled from the area. All that was left were several hiking trails wandering over and around the mountains.

Two backpackers had been walking one such trail for several days. They arrived at camp just as the sun began to set. Exhausted from hiking all day, they did their nightly chores in silence. He started a fire and filtered water while she set up their tent. The couple ate dinner and laughed by the fire, but a sudden storm appeared that extinguished the fire and chased them into the tent. There, they finished the meal and laughed some more. After eating, they decided it was time for bed, and seeing it was pouring rain outside; they chose not to get out of their tent to hang their food bags. Ellie fell asleep first while Nathan stayed up and listened to the rain.

Suddenly they were awakened by claws tearing through their tent wall. Ellie screamed, and he froze in shock. A bear had ripped through their tent, breaking its frame and causing it to collapse. Before Nathan could apprehend the situation, the rain was pouring onto their gear. The young woman stood up and chased the skittish bear away. Nathan scrambled for his headlamp. By the time he emerged from the tent and turned on his headlamp, she had made it quite a ways from the tent. He yelled for her, and she heard him in the distance and followed his light back to their ruined campsite.

They hugged each other and panicked together for a few minutes. All their gear was soaking wet, one of their food bags was missing, and their tent was useless. They decided to pack up their soaked gear and start to hike through the storm. They argued over which direction to head, and she shouldn't have let him win the argument. Nathan led them along what he thought was a trail but was just a washout. They followed this false trail. When it eventually faded away, they argued about what to do next.

Suddenly, she noticed a light glowing in the distance. It was far away, and it was still heavily raining. They quit arguing and headed toward the light. As they drew near, they realized it was an old abandoned cabin. They couldn't account for why there was a candle lit and placed in the window. It was easy to see that the house was empty. She proceeded without caution. Praising God that there was some shelter to sleep in for the night. He knew from the second he saw the cabin he wasn't going to sleep in it, but she decided for herself to sleep in the abandoned place in the middle of the woods with a candle burning in its window.

The young woman barged into the cabin and fearlessly threw her backpack down before collapsing onto it. She calmly asked her lover to blow out the candle. He marveled at her bravery. He could not get past the fact of the lit candle in the abandoned cabin. But he blew it out anyways, then he laid his pack beside hers and sat up against it. He placed his pocketknife on the floor next to him. After turning off his headlamp, there was nothing his sight could grasp besides the darkness of night within this shelter. Occasionally, lightning would strike in the distance. The sound of rain tapping against the roof rocked the young man to sleep.

His rest was relatively short-lived, being awoken by a crack of lightning. Its boom was defeating, and it caused the cabin to rumble. He was incapable of comprehending what he saw. The candle in the window was lit. He sat there, frozen in fear, staring at it. Though he wouldn't be able to explain why he reacted this way, Nathan jumped up and ran over to the candle—blowing it out. When he turned around, another lightning bolt shot down from the sky. He saw the shadow of a man hanging from the rafters against the far wall.

He turned on his headlamp. A body was hanging from the ceiling between him and his partner. The sheer horror of the moment overwhelmed him, and Nathan lost all sense of control. He slowly shined his light towards the hangman's face, but the sight of it caused him to drop his headlamp. It was he whose face the hangman wore, and it was he who was hanging from the rafters.

Ellie awoke the following day to the sound of birds chirping. Then she saw Nathan hanging from the rafters. She screamed and cried out. Then Ellie knelt beside him. Suddenly she heard something. Somebody was standing in the doorway. His figure resembled her partner's. She whispered his name. The man approached her quickly. It was not her beloved. He was holding her lover's knife in his right hand. He stabbed her in the stomach several times. She fell to the floor and bled out while watching the stranger exit the cabin.

Teams searching for the two hikers found the cabin several weeks later. After some investigation, the incident was ruled a murder-suicide, though the investigators could never understand the motive. According to everyone they interviewed, the couple seemed very much in love.