It started with a tree that looked like it was watching her.
Avery was walking a trail she’d hiked dozens of times when she noticed something she couldn’t explain: a human-like face embedded in the bark of a tree. The longer she stared, the more real it looked—too deliberate to be nature, too unsettling to ignore. She stepped closer to inspect it, not realizing that her curiosity had just made her visible to someone else.
A voice answered her—then the hooded figures appeared.
A sound broke the silence: “Why are you here?” Avery froze, thinking the tree itself spoke. But beyond the trunk stood three hooded people with their faces covered. They warned she “knew too much” and suddenly shouted for someone to grab her. In one moment, her hike turned into a chase.
She ran until the forest stopped feeling like a trail and started feeling like a trap.
Avery sprinted through underbrush until she could barely hear them, then tried to hide by climbing a large tree. But at the base, she saw another carved face—identical in style. That’s when she realized it wasn’t one strange tree. It was a pattern, and she was inside it.
They didn’t just search for her—they worshipped the trees.
From her hiding spot, Avery watched the hooded figures kneel at the tree and begin chanting like they were praying. One of them made a call, and soon more arrived—ten at least—moving with purpose as if responding to a signal. It wasn’t random hikers. It looked organized.
One figure took the center like a leader.
Among the group, one person stood out, walking between them as the others formed a ring. He placed both hands on the tree and spoke in a language Avery couldn’t recognize. The others remained silent, like the forest itself was holding its breath for whatever came next.
Even fire didn’t behave normally near their ritual.
Desperate to signal for help, Avery lit a makeshift torch—only to realize the flame attracted attention. When she fled, the tree where the torch had been set suddenly ignited, flames racing up the trunk… then dying instantly, leaving the tree untouched. The hooded figures reacted like it was a sign, erupting into jubilant chanting.
The forest held more than faces—it held a system.
When Avery circled back, she found a ring of stones etched with similar markings, arranged in a deliberate pattern. This wasn’t just vandalism or odd carvings—it was a network of symbols, sites, and behavior that suggested an organized ritual space designed to confuse outsiders and control movement.
A stranger warned her, then pointed her toward escape.
Hidden in the undergrowth, Avery met a reclusive local who admitted he’d been watching the group for a while. He spoke in fragments—warnings about sudden appearances, night rituals, and the carved faces being central to their beliefs. He gave her a safer route out, but even then, Avery couldn’t be sure who to trust.
Her 911 call triggered a police response she didn’t expect.
When Avery finally called 911, she expected skepticism. Instead, sirens flooded the woods as officers from multiple counties moved in with urgency. Flashlights cut through the darkness, and one by one, hooded figures were captured and taken away as if law enforcement already suspected something bigger was happening out there.
The explanation made the faces even worse.
At the station, Avery watched hooded figures being booked into overflowing cells. Later, detectives told her the carved faces were crafted by a cult leader and tied to a growing pattern of unsolved crimes. What she stumbled into wasn’t a one-night scare—it was part of something law enforcement had been trying to unravel for a long time.
