0:09 This is a copy of something I've written
0:11 and posted all over the internet. The
0:14 websites, subreddits, and Discord
0:17 servers relating to the hobby have long
0:18 been found and shut
0:22 down. There aren't many of us anymore,
0:24 let alone those both young, sane, and
0:26 techsavvy enough to navigate the
0:30 internet. But I know for a fact that all
0:32 of my old friends that may or may not
0:35 still gaze still frequent these sites.
0:38 For obvious reasons, I'd rather not go
0:45 them. This is also a general warning for
0:48 anyone in the state of Utah. Do not go
0:51 gazing near Park City. Two things in
0:53 case anyone gets curious enough to look
0:57 it up and not take my warning seriously.
1:00 The first thing is gazing is watching
1:03 people in their homes, never
1:05 interacting, never doing anything to
1:07 affect a person or their
1:10 property. It's illegal, of course, but
1:12 most of the people that gaze do so from
1:14 outside of the
1:16 property. They use this as a legal and
1:20 moral excuse to justify their curiosity.
1:22 Though most of the hobbyists claim that
1:23 as long as you're on public
1:26 property, you aren't breaking any sort
1:28 of law just by watching someone's
1:32 house. The second thing is Park City is
1:35 a place near Salt Lake City in Utah.
1:37 High up in the mountains, it's a place
1:40 prided as the home of the Sundance Film
1:43 Festival, which isn't the case anymore,
1:45 but for a long time it was quite the
1:46 claim to
1:48 fame. and the Winter Olympics back in
1:50 the early
1:52 2000s. The place has a lot of money
1:55 invested in it, which leads to a lot of
1:58 big isolated houses among the mountains
2:00 where owners don't bother drawing the
2:04 shades. Or just as bad, ignoring that
2:06 you can see their silhouettes as long as
2:08 the lights are on, unless you have some
2:10 very thick curtains in front of your windows.
2:13 windows.
2:15 Gazing only has three rules that are
2:17 actually quite outspoken. You only have
2:19 a few hours to watch and wait for
2:21 something exciting. You cannot leave any
2:24 sort of evidence of your presence. You
2:25 can never go back to the place you've already
2:26 already
2:30 been. Gazing is a short-lived hobby. And
2:31 it's well understood that anyone who
2:33 breaks these rules or goes homeless
2:36 trying to find new places to watch winds
2:37 up jumping down the rabbit hole and
2:41 getting caught. I never did. Not until
2:44 last night. My idea was
2:46 genius. Usually, I went up into the
2:48 lower hills and outcrops around Salt
2:49 Lake City
2:52 itself, but it was a hard
2:55 trip. Anytime you gaze, it usually means
2:57 an overnight trip to a specific
2:59 neighborhood. That meant that you either
3:01 needed a car with nothing discernable
3:05 about it or rely on public
3:08 transportation, which I often did.
3:10 But a trip to Park
3:12 City, hell, I could drive up there
3:15 myself and make a nice station out of
3:18 it, spending a week in a nice hotel with
3:20 three of the seven days dedicated to a
3:23 long trip, gazing down the mountains
3:26 around town. The best part was that I
3:28 had a way to make it almost too easy of
3:31 an effort. The alpine
3:34 slides, basically big, long concrete
3:36 slides that wind down the mountain.
3:38 Renting the wheeled cart needed to use
3:41 the slides was relatively expensive, but
3:43 I didn't need
3:46 that. Just the ticket up the
3:48 chairlift. After a day of enjoying a
3:50 nice hotel and some pretty fun local
3:53 bars, followed by a day of using the
3:56 pool, hot tub, and an arcade down the
3:59 road. I parked my car at the end of a
4:01 certain neighborhood and took a bus back
4:04 to the alpine slides.
4:06 I planned it so that I took the last
4:08 ride up to the highest
4:10 slide. What I thought would be the most
4:12 dangerous gamble of the night was
4:14 jumping off of the chairlift and dashing
4:16 into the forest, lugging my pack stuffed
4:18 with slap dash camping
4:20 essentials. My insides were in tight
4:23 knots, but I managed to make the jump
4:25 while the chairlift was near the ground.
4:28 I got up and ran, not bothering to check
4:32 if anyone had seen me.
4:34 I dove, sliding into the bushes near the
4:36 trees, and stayed
4:39 still. I hadn't seen any cameras on the
4:42 chairlifts, but I made a bet that if
4:43 there were any, they weren't being
4:45 watched particularly
4:48 closely. I waited in the bushes for an
4:51 entire hour, occasionally crawling east
4:53 towards the neighborhood that I had
4:56 spotted on Google Maps. It was a long,
4:57 winding neighborhood marked with big
5:00 houses. And this is how you know the
5:02 people that owned them were
5:05 loaded. Massive
5:07 driveways. Best of all, the mountains
5:09 seemed to slope in just a way that I
5:11 could comfortably and constantly walk
5:13 downhill in the thick forest surrounding the
5:14 the
5:17 houses, comfortably listening to music
5:18 while I
5:20 gazed. The sound of an engine came up
5:24 the hill. I looked back, making sure not
5:27 to move my body too quickly.
5:29 A group of security guards rode on ATVs
5:31 up the hill towards the slide I'd just
5:34 bailed from. I'd gotten high enough to
5:36 see where the chairlift I'd abandoned
5:39 ended up. A large concrete platform with
5:41 the slide stretching down towards the
5:42 opposite side of the
5:46 mountain. A few employees, I think of
5:48 the hotel the slides were owned by,
5:52 stood waiting for the security guards.
5:54 Still moving slowly, I pulled out my
5:57 binoculars and watched them. My entire
5:59 body clenched when the group turned
6:01 toward the forest I was hiding in.
6:03 Eventually, one of the employees shook
6:05 their heads and said something that made
6:06 the rest
6:08 laugh. The security guards went back
6:10 down the mountain and the hotel
6:12 employees got to reap a pretty good
6:13 benefit of their
6:16 job, getting to slide down after every
6:19 shift to clock out and go home.
6:21 Shivering slightly, I put my binoculars
6:24 back into my pocket and risked standing
6:26 up. I'd crawled far enough into the
6:30 trees to not be noticed. Or at least I
6:33 hoped. This part of the journey, hiking
6:36 a few miles towards the neighborhood,
6:39 was the riskiest part. Getting caught by
6:42 the hotel would be bad, but getting
6:43 caught near a public road that I could
6:46 claim I was in the middle of jogging got
6:48 me out of felony territory and towards a petty
6:49 petty
6:52 misdemeanor. But god damn, it was a beautiful
6:53 beautiful
6:56 walk. Squirrels and birds seemed to be
6:59 everywhere, and the scent of the alpine,
7:02 a unique blend of fur trees, pines, and
7:04 sage brush, was
7:06 intoxicating. Even if I didn't see
7:09 anything exciting when I gazed, this
7:11 renegade hike through the mountains was
7:13 more than enough of a thrill to make the
7:15 trip worth
7:18 it. A few hours later, I rounded a
7:22 certain hill, and I was finally at my
7:24 destination. It was pretty much a huge
7:26 pit that had large houses with even
7:28 larger yards winding down through
7:30 forests that were almost overtaken by civilization.
7:32 civilization.
7:35 Meticulously sculpted pavement snake
7:37 down towards the west side of what I'll
7:40 call the pit. Every quarter of a mile, a
7:43 three, occasionally fourstory house
7:46 split off from the roads. It would have
7:48 been a nightmare to navigate if there
7:50 wasn't a consistent pattern on the leftmost
7:51 leftmost
7:54 neighborhoods. A clear path of forest
7:56 that would cover me while also being
7:58 directly across from many of the houses
8:01 that wound down the pit.
8:04 At the very end, and I double checked
8:06 this just to be safe, was a gate that
8:08 let back out into a public park near
8:10 Park City
8:12 proper. My car was parked at the edge of said
8:13 said
8:16 park. My binoculars came back out from
8:20 my pocket. The sun was still setting,
8:22 and there was a stretch of hill that I
8:24 needed to walk down to start on my path
8:27 down the pit. In the meantime, I thought
8:29 I'd get some preliminary gazing out of
8:31 the way.
8:33 There was only one house that had lights
8:35 on that I could see from the top of the
8:37 pit. I say
8:40 house, but it was really a
8:42 mansion hosting a party that filled the
8:46 entire yard with a large pool, hot tub,
8:49 a basketball court, and even two batting
8:51 cages that took up a football fieldsiz
8:53 section of land.
8:57 People of all shapes, sizes, and colors
9:01 mingled, ate food, and enjoyed the
9:03 amenities. Nothing crazy or wild enough
9:05 to warrant writing down at the time
9:08 happened, but it was fun watching people
9:11 have fun. After the sun really started
9:15 to set, the parters began moving inside.
9:18 I watched them go in, trying to see what
9:21 was going on in the mansion, but I was
9:23 much too far away and elevated to get a
9:26 good look. I wondered if they were going
9:28 to break out the crack, Molly, and
9:30 condoms after they went
9:33 inside. I caught sight of a little girl
9:36 in my binoculars following her parents
9:38 inside. Now I hoped to God the three
9:41 things weren't a part of the party.
9:44 I chuckled a bit, although I really did
9:46 hope the people up here weren't that
9:50 [ __ ] drank some water, and took one
9:51 last look at the
9:53 mansion. The little girl was standing
9:56 just outside the wide mansion doors,
9:59 looking towards me, not at me, but way
10:01 too damn close for
10:03 comfort. There's an excellent science
10:05 and learning based channel on YouTube
10:07 that I keep up with.
10:09 One of their episodes had been about
10:11 horror and
10:13 paranoia. I bring it up because I
10:14 remembered when I was looking through
10:17 those binoculars that there was a
10:19 popular theory that you knew when you
10:22 were being looked at due to specific
10:25 rays of light that can emit from
10:28 someone's eyes when they look at
10:31 you. It was the only way I could explain
10:32 my certainty that the girl was looking
10:34 right at me.
10:38 She wasn't. Or at least I really don't
10:40 think she
10:42 was. Even after everything that
10:43 happened, I'm not
10:46 sure. But I do know that an alarm went
10:47 off in my
10:50 head, that something was looking at
10:53 me, even if it wasn't the little girl
10:55 looking towards the hills where I was hiding.
11:01 The girl turned away, took a sip from
11:03 the pouch of juice she was carrying, and
11:05 walked into the mansion that now flooded
11:08 with life and light. She closed the door
11:12 behind her, and that watched feeling
11:16 finally went away. I felt cold and for
11:17 the first time since picking up the hobby,
11:19 hobby,
11:22 doubt. It didn't take much to shrug off
11:25 that doubt, but I wrote what I'd seen
11:28 down. the other guys and plenty of gals,
11:30 believe it or not, in the hobby would
11:32 get a kick out of the creep
11:35 factor. By then, the sun had finally
11:37 finished setting and true darkness was
11:40 in the pit. All of the houses were lit
11:43 up, and from where I was, it looked like
11:46 a huge diarama of rich, tiny plastic
11:49 neighborhoods and forests.
11:51 I took in the sights one more time
11:53 before I took my night vision goggles
11:56 out of my backpack and started climbing
11:58 toward the snaking path of forests that
12:00 led to the opening in the pit that led
12:02 out to my
12:05 car. It took half an hour of walking to
12:07 reach the first house, or rather its
12:09 backyard. People were much less likely
12:11 to give their backyard surroundings any
12:14 mind, even with drapes over the window,
12:16 like I've said. And that was even in a
12:18 really populated
12:21 area. Walking through a thick forest
12:23 with night vision goggles and a backpack
12:25 full of food and wilderness survival
12:28 equipment wasn't hard. What was hard was
12:30 making sure I moved
12:33 quietly. There are a few tricks to that,
12:36 but I'm not sharing them.
12:38 despite how I've typed up until this
12:41 point. I'm also going to tell you with
12:43 my whole heart to not go
12:45 gazing at
12:48 all. Besides the obvious moral reasons,
12:50 what Reddit posts and blogs won't tell
12:52 you is how often someone gets shot
12:55 without even trespassing. Never mind
12:57 being put on a registry depending on
12:59 who's living in the house when you
13:01 eventually get caught. But I won't lie
13:05 to you. I didn't have that mindset until
13:09 after I reached my car, bloody, bruised,
13:11 and exhausted. The following
13:14 morning, when I approached the big, wide
13:16 backyard of the first home on my trail,
13:19 I was excited to see what I could
13:21 glimpse. The night vision goggles came
13:25 off. I sat comfortably against the
13:27 hill, and I
13:29 gazed. There was nothing overtly
13:31 suspicious or noteworthy about this
13:34 backyard. So, I relaxed just enough to
13:36 gaze at what looked like the wildest
13:37 party I'd ever
13:40 seen. The backyard wasn't that large,
13:42 but it was full of games, food, and
13:45 drinks everywhere there was room. Pool
13:48 tables, pingpong tables, and an
13:50 inflatable sports area, bouncy
13:53 house. People were drinking, chatting,
13:55 and having an absolute blast.
13:59 The house was a huge angular glass box
14:01 marked with marble and granite with a
14:04 gigantic wooden patio where even more
14:06 people were sipping drinks and having
14:09 fun talking to each other. I don't go to
14:12 a lot of parties, but this would have
14:13 been the
14:15 exception. The only thing that really
14:18 seemed odd was the second story of the
14:21 house. Smoke and colored lights filled
14:24 the air, and unclothed, sweaty people
14:26 were flowing and undulating like the
14:28 heavy wisps of smoke and incense that surrounded
14:30 surrounded
14:32 them. The entire site gave me an
14:35 excited, longing feeling. People were
14:37 walking in and out of the house,
14:39 greeting people they hadn't seen before
14:42 constantly, and with drinks or food. I
14:45 felt a genuine urge to sneak in and
14:47 mingle, take advantage of the situation,
14:49 and have some fun.
14:51 It was probably going to be my last
14:54 gazing trip anyway, and there were a few
14:56 people on the edge of the lawn nearest
14:58 to me that were wearing the kind of
15:01 clothes I had on. I probably could have
15:04 done it. Slowly, I slid my night vision
15:07 goggles back on and turned away from the
15:10 party. I had a few urges as I made my
15:13 way around trees, leaves, and bushes to go
15:13 go
15:16 back. Lord knew that I wanted a reason
15:20 to cut loose. Honestly, I still couldn't
15:22 give you the exact reason why I ignored
15:25 the party other than that I was just too
15:27 scared to be even a little more risky
15:30 than I already had
15:32 been. A quarter of a mile down the
15:35 forest, I saw a small and cheapel
15:37 looking apartment building made with red brick.
15:39 brick.
15:42 Four wide and obscured windows were
15:44 evenly spaced out along its
15:47 backside, though I couldn't see a door
15:49 coming out from the small concrete patio
15:51 or from the sides of the
15:55 building. I settled down, sat against
15:58 the hill, and
16:01 gazed. After a few minutes of twiddling
16:03 my thumbs and listening to music, a
16:06 light came on from the top left window.
16:08 A shape moved through the room,
16:11 approached the window, then pulled it
16:14 open. It was a blonde woman in jeans and
16:17 a t-shirt. After she'd slid the window
16:19 open, she frowned and leaned out towards
16:22 the backyard. "Hey,
16:24 you!" she whispered so loudly that she
16:26 might as well have
16:28 yelled. I stopped
16:31 breathing. "Hey, come on. I know you're
16:33 out there."
16:36 My breathing came back, but only enough
16:37 to keep me
16:39 conscious. My heartbeat was a heavy
16:42 pulse that I felt throughout my entire
16:44 body. Panic was only held back by the
16:46 fact that she wasn't looking directly at
16:48 me. Rather, she was looking all around the
16:49 the
16:53 forest. She didn't know where I was, but
16:55 she knew I was
16:59 there. "Come on, please," she whispered
17:02 yelled, motioning towards the house. We
17:04 don't get hikers up here very often. At
17:06 least tell me which trail you're heading
17:09 towards. I didn't say anything. Didn't even
17:10 even
17:13 blink. Had she tracked me on the
17:16 mountain? Maybe I'd set off some sort of
17:19 alarm even though I'd been keeping an eye
17:20 eye
17:22 out. I'm going to call the cops if you
17:26 don't show yourself. I almost broke.
17:28 I wasn't born with a silver
17:32 tongue, but I figured that if I had to,
17:34 I could have passed off as a
17:37 hiker. Looking back, I probably would
17:39 have, but even more than the alertness I
17:42 felt at being spotted. There was an odd
17:44 twist to my gut that I felt when I
17:46 looked at the woman continuing to
17:49 whisper, and at one point even started a
17:52 one-sided conversation trying to get me to
17:53 to
17:56 reply. At the time, only one thing felt
17:59 really off to me. Her
18:02 room. Her room, or the room she was
18:05 standing in, at least, was completely
18:07 empty. The walls were cracked and
18:10 yellow, both from the old paint and the
18:12 dim used bulb that hung naked from a
18:15 simple plug in the ceiling. A string
18:17 hung down from
18:20 it. There was no light switch near the
18:23 door. Yet the light had come on before I
18:25 saw any movement in the
18:29 room. Very, very slowly, I started to
18:32 move my way down the forest. The light
18:34 in the room wasn't nearly strong enough
18:36 to reach where I was, but I played it as
18:39 safe as I could. She continued to
18:41 whisper until I was almost out of earshot.
18:43 earshot.
18:45 This is one of the few things from that
18:47 night that I don't vividly remember, but
18:49 I would swear that after a certain
18:52 distance, she stopped talking
18:56 entirely. Just when she went quiet, the
18:57 light went
19:00 off. Keeping my hands and legs from
19:02 shaking was almost
19:04 impossible. The only way I kept it
19:07 together was a simple fact.
19:09 If I was being tracked or had been
19:11 spotted, I needed to keep an eye out for
19:14 anything that would give that or me
19:17 away. It felt like hours before I saw
19:20 the next backyard, but it must have only
19:23 taken me 15 or 20 minutes. Light
19:26 suddenly shined in my eyes so brightly
19:28 that I yanked my night vision goggles
19:31 off and stared at the ground. All I
19:35 could see was a pulsing white and red.
19:38 phrase. I heard a man shout from where
19:40 I'd seen the house, "Put your hands
19:43 where I can see them." The red and white
19:45 flashing in my vision became tinted with
19:49 blue as my sight came back. Flood lights
19:51 and police cruiser lights spinning on
19:54 top of cars marked Park City Sheriff's
19:56 Department. I don't know what would have
19:58 happened if I'd surrendered.
20:01 My gut tells me that I'm only breathing
20:04 as I type this because I happened to be
20:06 behind a larger tree when the lights had
20:09 come on. And two things I heard out of
20:11 the cacophony of shouts I heard were,
20:16 "Get up from the ground and we will open
20:19 fire." I've never been arrested and the
20:21 only experience I have with cops was
20:23 watching the titular show when I was
20:26 younger and clips on the internet. But
20:29 even in my panicked state of mind, I
20:30 knew that cops didn't immediately
20:33 threaten to shoot a trespasser just for
20:36 trespassing and get up from the ground.
20:39 I was standing straight up behind a
20:43 tree. I ignored all of my instincts and
20:46 waited. The cops continued to shout,
20:48 warning me that they were going to open
20:50 fire if I didn't come out with my hands
20:53 up. The longer I waited, the more scared
20:55 I became.
20:56 Not because the voices were getting
20:59 louder or closer, rather that they
21:02 stayed the same. Being
21:04 conservative, I must have stood behind
21:06 that tree for at least half an
21:10 hour. Yet, no shots rang out. Noises of
21:12 foliage being pushed aside as the cops
21:14 approached me or fanned out to look for me.
21:16 me.
21:17 But the shouting
21:19 continued, the flood lights and police
21:22 lights blaring together and making an
21:25 odd mixing of swirling colors into the
21:28 trees. What got me moving after another
21:31 15 minutes was boredom, if I'm being
21:33 honest. Not real
21:36 boredom. I don't think my heart rate or
21:38 breathing got any slower while I was
21:39 expecting to get
21:42 shot. But I did realize that whatever
21:45 was happening wasn't going to stop. So,
21:47 I tried sneaking forward low to the
21:50 ground in the shadow of the tree I'd
21:51 been hiding
21:54 behind. I'd barely made it 5t when one
21:56 of the flood lights swung directly
22:00 towards me. There he is.
22:03 Fire. I
22:06 ran. Slow and cumbersomelike because of
22:09 my backpack, but still as fast as I
22:12 could. Sharp, loud cracks came from the
22:15 direction of the yard. The police kept
22:18 yelling, telling me to duck, freeze, to
22:22 get the [ __ ] down, and come back. I kept
22:24 running. The light was doing one thing
22:27 in my favor, letting me see what was
22:28 ahead of
22:31 me. I had no cohesive thoughts at the
22:34 time, just the need to go downhill as
22:35 hard and fast as I
22:38 could. Any moment, a cop could get a
22:39 lucky hit
22:43 in. Only later I realized why I wasn't
22:46 shot. I couldn't have been shot, at
22:48 least not by any self-respecting cop
22:51 that had ever held a gun before. With a
22:53 target as large and slow as I was, it
22:57 would have been harder to miss me than
23:00 not. Like I said, I didn't think about
23:02 it at the time.
23:04 I didn't have any
23:07 thoughts, just a headful of adrenaline
23:08 that was doing its best to ignore the
23:11 pain in my arms and legs from the
23:13 running and praying that I would get to
23:16 see the next sunrise. They didn't chase
23:19 me. I kept running long past the reach
23:22 of any of the lights until I ran face
23:25 first into a birch tree. My vision was a
23:28 blur as I fell to the ground, rolling
23:30 down the hill until I came to a sudden
23:32 stop against another tree that caught me
23:33 right in the
23:36 abdomen. What air I had left in my lungs
23:40 was knocked out. After a very painful,
23:43 forced rest on the ground, my breath
23:46 came back to me. It hurt, and so did my
23:48 nose that wasn't broken, but ran with
23:51 blood. But I managed to claw my way to a
23:53 standing position next to the tree that
23:56 had both saved me and given me a huge
23:57 bruise on my
24:01 midsection. If it hadn't, the odds were
24:02 more than likely that I would have
24:04 broken something farther down the
24:07 hill. The only thing that had broken was
24:09 one of my night vision goggles's
24:13 lenses. Still, I was grateful that I had
24:16 that much. It and the compass that
24:18 pointed directly toward the pit's exit
24:20 was all I needed to run in a straight
24:22 line as fast as I could to get the hell
24:23 out of
24:26 there. My days of gazing were over, to
24:29 say the
24:32 least. One step down the hill. It
24:35 started to rain. Despite the urgency I
24:37 felt in every atom of my body, I looked
24:41 up towards the sky, confused. There
24:43 hadn't been any clouds before, and there
24:46 weren't any now. The stars shone bright,
24:48 even if a bit muted from the nearby
24:51 city's light pollution. I couldn't
24:53 actually see where the rain was coming
24:57 from, but I swear it was there. A
24:59 smaller and much creepier detail that I
25:01 thought about a ways down the hill was
25:04 that the rain was falling everywhere,
25:06 including under canopies of
25:09 leaves. that rain naturally ran down to
25:15 dry. I ignored
25:17 it. Actually, the smell of ozone and
25:21 forest rain calmed me down a little. It
25:23 wasn't much compared to the growing
25:25 strain on my body and my clothes getting
25:27 soaked and really uncomfortable, but it
25:29 was something. There was one more house
25:32 on my straight shot to the pit's exit.
25:34 Even with my straight run through the
25:37 forest, I would have ignored it if the
25:39 light from the backyard didn't sear into my
25:40 my
25:42 eye. Since I was so close to the exit
25:45 back into Park City, my night vision
25:47 goggles went back into my
25:51 pocket. Unfortunately, the hill rose and
25:52 split in a way where the much quicker
25:55 route wound towards the house's backyard
25:58 that I saw as I got closer was lit with
26:00 a low fire light.
26:03 There were people there, at least a
26:06 dozen. Each was tied up on X-shaped St. Andrews
26:08 Andrews
26:10 crosses. Connecting them all were confetti
26:11 confetti
26:14 streamers. The torches blazing even in
26:17 the rain, spread across the yard, and
26:19 only lit up the bodies on the crosses,
26:23 enough for me to get the barest look.
26:25 Halfway around the hill that I knew
26:27 would let me out onto a street right
26:30 next to the pit's exit, I realized that
26:32 it wasn't streamers that connected all
26:35 of the
26:37 crosses. Streamers weren't pink and
26:40 fleshy with a tubular shape. I could
26:42 also finally see that the streamers were
26:45 coming from and tied between each of the bodies.
26:47 bodies.
26:50 Before I could scream or more likely
26:53 puke my guts out, I heard a sharp
26:56 whisper near me from the right side of the
26:56 the
26:59 yard. The cross closest to the end of
27:03 the yard had a living person on it. A
27:06 girl with one streamer already out and
27:08 tied to another cross behind
27:11 her. Two kids, teenagers, were trying to
27:13 pull an iron stake out of one of the
27:15 girls' feet. Hey,
27:17 Hey,
27:20 you. One of them whispered directly at me.
27:21 me.
27:25 Please come help us. We're so
27:30 close. Please, the other whispered, eyes
27:33 darting between me and her friend as she
27:35 sobbed. Please
27:38 help. The edge of the yard was only a
27:41 few steps away. The house, a large
27:42 temple-l lookinging one that was made of
27:45 massive logs and full of windows, was completely
27:47 completely
27:51 dark. I took a few steps forward, not
27:52 really sure if I was going to help or
27:56 not, and tripped. Falling face forward,
27:58 I reached towards the ground with all my
28:01 might and dug my fingers into the hard
28:04 dirt. One of my nails ripped
28:07 off, but I slowed to a crawl mere inches
28:10 from the edge of the yard. I had to bite
28:12 down on the cuff of my jacket to keep from
28:13 from
28:16 screaming. When I looked up, the kids
28:18 were both staring at me
28:21 with with a hunger and anticipation that
28:23 was so powerful that they were smiling
28:25 and holding their breaths as they
28:27 watched my hand so near the border
28:29 between the yard and forest with an
28:31 eagerness I haven't seen before or
28:34 since. The girl tied up to the cross
28:36 looked the same way, only she was
28:38 smiling ear to
28:41 ear. Her eyes almost glowed in the fire
28:44 light as she looked at me. I scrambled
28:46 backwards up the hill and ran again.
28:48 This time not even bothering with the
28:49 night vision
28:54 goggles. I ran and I ran. Then I ran
28:57 some more. Rain and tree branches
28:59 scraped at my hands and face as I
29:02 stumbled through the forest. Eventually,
29:05 I spilled out onto a black paved street.
29:07 Ahead of me, with only one
29:10 phosphorescent light to see it by, was a
29:13 concrete guard post next to an iron gate
29:15 that passed through the lowest edge of the
29:16 the
29:18 pit. I'd made
29:21 it. Next to the gate, on a grassy hill
29:23 that sloped down from a mansion I could
29:25 barely see, even with the night vision
29:30 goggles, was my car. Same color, license
29:33 plate, everything.
29:35 There was no doubt that this was my car.
29:38 I took a few shaky steps toward it, then
29:40 stopped in the middle of the
29:42 street. I pulled my keys out of my
29:45 pocket and hit the lock button. Far to
29:48 my right, past the iron gate, there was
29:51 a distant honk as my car signaled that
29:52 it had been
29:54 locked. Nice
29:59 try. I wheezed softly, not even hearing
30:02 myself, looking back toward the pit.
30:04 which now towered in front of me. I
30:07 couldn't see anything of what I'd passed
30:09 before, except for a house on the
30:11 opposite side of where I'd climbed down
30:14 from. Lights were flashing from the
30:17 inside. Red lights that looked like
30:20 flames. My binoculars didn't come out of
30:24 the backpack. I was much too tired and
30:25 scared, if I'm being
30:29 honest, to even do that.
30:31 But I would swear that the girl I'd seen
30:32 at the party through those same
30:35 binoculars at the top of the pit, the
30:37 one that was the last to enter the only
30:39 normal house I'd seen throughout the
30:40 night, was
30:44 there watching
30:48 me. I climbed over the iron gate, found
30:51 my real car, and got the hell out of
30:53 there. I haven't been up to Park City
30:56 since, nor do I intend to set foot near
30:59 the place. All I did was double check
31:01 the Google images of the pit, only to
31:03 see that none of the houses I'd seen
31:04 match the houses that were on the satellite
31:06 satellite
31:11 images. Beyond that, my gazing days are
31:13 done. My story is far from the only
31:15 strange one that you get from talking to
31:18 homeless people or vagabons on what
31:20 they've seen come out of
31:22 voyerism. But nobody would believe my
31:25 story, so I'm posting it here.
31:27 Don't go gazing near Park City. Or
