Last fall, two of my friends (I will not disclose the real names, but I will call Andrea, and Matthew to protect their identity) decided to do something that ended up changing all our lives completely. We three decided to take a trip to a small town named Port Washington, it's in Ohio and it has been known to be affiliated with organizations like the KKK and a lot of sacrilegious things happened there.
There have been claims of people seeing other people doing witchcraft, active KKK members, and even animal sacrifices where the animals are known to have their heads put at the top of the Winding Staircase and their bodies at the bottom. Police have been called there more times than not, but when they get there it seems like those claims all of a sudden dissipate, like the police don't even want to be involved in the history of that road.
So when the day came that we decided to take a trip to the Winding Staircase little did we know that this experience would be most likely the worst experience that we have ever had to endure for quite some time now.
It was about 4:00 p.m. When we got there and of course night was slowly catching up, the thing about the winding staircase is nobody knows the true history behind it; why it was built, why people keep having these very tormenting experiences, but still it is open to the public.
When we got to the bottom of the hill we realized that there was only one way up and one way down that if there was a car coming down while we were going up we were screwed! Along the edges of the road was complete rocky drop offs, that we knew if we fell we would immediately be falling to our deaths, and nobody would be coming to save us for quite some time.
Yet we still went on, as we wound up the road it started to feel like the walls in the car were starting to condense, close in, like we were suffocating. It felt like we were not supposed to be there. About the middle of the drive up we started to notice little things here and there, headaches, nausea. I felt the need to sob, I felt vulnerable. My friend Matthew was starting to get overly agitated and paranoid, like somebody was coming after him and he wanted to get out of there now. Andrea just kept driving but her face was stoic, expressionless, like the past conversation that we had leading up to this point didn't even matter, like she forgotten the whole thing, it went from "so as I was saying" to complete silence. But this silence wasn't the silence I'd be worried about just yet, she just kept her eyes in front of her.
Once we got to the top of the hill we decided to stop and get out. The only way we're able to actually reach the very top of the hill was to take the abandoned walkway that was closed off from the public. We knew if we got caught, we would be in some deep deep trouble. As we began walking up we started feeling like other people were walking with us, it felt like we weren't alone. Eventually the sun left us and we were deep within the woods, and the darkness that came with it, following a path that could potentially lead to devastation, or something really extravagant.
We wanted to know if the stories that I heard, that we all heard growing up were true. As we tracked deeper and deeper into the woods it was like the birds were silent. It was nothing except the cracking of leaves and sticks, and our breathing as we were quite frankly possibly scaring ourselves. I was worried about this silence. I knew from my very few survival skills that if it was completely silent where you're standing, then to get out of there. But at the same time I couldn't help but to think, why aren't the birds chirping? It was dead silence.
Andrea was starting to freak herself out more and more as we finally reached the top of the hill that took almost an entire hour. And then she saw it, her eyes went wide as they raked the surrounding area until we saw what she was staring at. Hanging up in the dense trees that surrounded us were what looked to be white hoods nailed into the trees surrounding a circle, we didn't know what was in the circle until we turned our flashlight on it, and what we saw completely scared the shiat out of us. It looked to be a almost perfectly circular pit, I guess a fire pit of sorts but it looked to be years upon years of just ashes, soot, wood, and God knows what else piled into what look to be a 6 inch by 3 ft pit. And those white hoods that were surrounded those trees were none other than the KKK hoods. The air felt mean, evil, and stagnant as we decided at that point that we were not going to stay and we are going to hightail our asses out of there.
It took us an hour to get up this hill and of course it took us an hour to get down the hill but this time a little bit quicker because Matthew was about 5 ft in front of me running down, Andrea was about 10 feet in front of us. More and more we felt like the eyes were etched upon our souls looking into our deepest darkest thoughts and secrets that we knew we couldn't even hide anymore, felt like anything and everything that we knew about ourselves was gone, little did I know that Matthew had the urge to literally run right off of the cliffs that surrounded this winding staircase, and did I know that Andrea was just going to strand us there? No. She got to the car before us and before we could even say wait, she drove out of there.
It was just me and Matthew left, scared, frightened and literally about to pee my pants, we decided to walk the rest of the way down the staircase to conserve energy. Every twist and turn left us more and more in fear. By this time, I felt my legs were about to give out for how much we have been running and it felt like we have been running forever. And it still felt like there was no way out, time felt slower, kind of like when you run in your dreams you can't run. It feels like you're running through slow motion, adrenaline pumping we kept kicking ourselves to get ourselves down this hill walking faster and faster out of here. Complete silence surrounded us once again and the only thing we could hear this time was our footsteps and our labored breathing. Getting that feeling that whatever it was, was catching up, we try to run faster than what we think is running behind us, but the thing is nothing was running behind us. So what were we running from?
I've seen some pretty scary stuff in my lifetime and I knew that the KKK had nothing against a ghost because they're real. This wasn't. Or if it was, we couldn't see, but feel it. But I understood Matthew's standpoint because Matthew was black and Matthew did not want to be caught up in this to begin with. Andrea had a pretty messed up history about her grandparents being a part of this land and she also did not want to be a part of that. So that just leads to me, I wanted to be a ghost hunter that goes around putting myself in situations that leads to this one, but putting my friends in danger just to see if my childhood stories are true? I felt disgusting, and being caught up in these thoughts I did not realize that Matthew had stopped and as I was running I almost ran into him completely in the dark.
He told me to look down the pathway and we could see the outskirt edge of the end of the road but there was something blocking it. At first we thought it was Andrea's car, that Andrea was going to be coming after us after all, and this was all just going to be a funny thing by the next morning. But all hope failed as we realized that this object about 20 ft in front of us was not a car, but a black hazy figure that was low to the ground, like it was Army crawling towards us, and of course Matthew did not know what to do, and he decided to start running back up the hill as I was frozen in place.
I witnessed this black hazy figure grow bigger and bigger in front of me, kind of like when you're staring off in the road in the middle of summer and you see the heat waves coming off of the pavement? That was all around that figure like it was pulsating, and all I felt was dread, like everything leading up to this point was meaningless, I felt nothing, like it was sucking every bit of happiness out of my soul, out of my eyes, out of my skin.
It was at this point we saw headlights pulling up from the end of the road and as I saw the black figure more and more it looked to be like some type of deer, but it wasn't a deer, I grew up in the country, we went hunting, and I knew what deer looked like. My next thought was a bear but then I realized it was way too thin to be a bear, way too low to the ground.
As Matthew came barreling down the hill again, yelling "I see lights! I see lights!", he also saw the black figure as it dashed across the side of the road down to the edge of the cliff next to the road. Matthew thought that it was a person running towards the edge of the cliff as Andrea was coming out of the car.
Andrea was freaking out because she saw the figure too, joined Matthew and I at the edge of this cliff as we peered down. Our phones were not bright enough with the flashlight to be able to see the bottom of the cliff, but it left a hazy mist in its path, and you could see the haze as it went down off of this cliff; light gray, smokey and the dread still lingered in the air. We knew that if it was a person messing around with us we would have had to call 911 because they would have been dead, but the more we look down the more we realize that nothing was there at all. Just rocks and whatever else is piled down on that cliff.
Freaked out we went home and the next day I tried to talk with both of them about it. It was like they didn't want to even remember what we went through, that what we thought was supposed to be a fun little trip to see if the Clan is still there turned out to be a nightmare. To this day even though this was 3 months ago, I still have nightmares about it, a deep, long winding road completely silent and jet black as I walk up it, growls harrowing through my thoughts as I wake up drenched in sweat every time.
I wouldn't say that road tore our friendship apart, but it's eerie because not even 2 days after that we went our separate ways. We were friends for a long time since 9th grade and it took a road to break us up. I don't expect people to believe me with what we saw and what we went through. It seems too exaggerated for it to be true, but if you look up Port Washington, or even Tuscarawas County in general, you will see that we are a desolate County, filled with tears, pain and bloodshed that goes way back.
I found out after digging into Port Washington and the Winding Staircase, that other people have the exact same claims that we had; seeing hazy animals that would just dive off of cliffs or dive onto cars only for there to be nothing but footprints left behind. And even people who go up to just party, have been rushed out by what we would think is the police, but it's actually whatever force is left up there. Whatever pain and suffering that winding road has seen. It definitely has an effect on anybody that decides to explore there. So I am warning you, do not go to the Winding Staircase, there are active members still etched into the trees. And the anguish that went along with our dark part of history.
Loading comments....
