steps

·47 min·3 clips

In 1945, five trail volunteers fell to their deaths from an overlook; the sole survivor spent decades building a hidden memorial of four stones before dying there alone in 1989.

1. 'Knifepoint Horror' presents a late-night community radio story read by Nick Wise on WLDW, a listener-supported station at Franklin and Marshall College. 2. Nick Wise is the sole voice — both host and narrator — performing all three stories in an unhurried, conversational radio register. 3. The episode's conceit is that Wise is telling 'three little anecdotes' that should not discourage listeners from hiking the Simpronia Trail, framing horror through deliberate understatement. 4. Story one begins with Wise at 22 on a 26-mile day hike when he passes a man with unnaturally blue eyes, tuxedo pants, and an old Target bag who smiles robotically and lets him pass. 5. Two catastrophic storms trap Wise at the Liz Merton shelter and force him to climb over fallen trees for miles; he describes nearly being blown off the trail by wind and fearing he would die. 6. On his return five-plus hours later, the blue-eyed man is standing in the exact same spot, in the same posture, soaked, surrounded by storm wreckage, with a large tree fallen twenty feet from him. 7. When Wise asks if he is alright, the man says 'Oh yeah, I just got thinking,' and resumes his slow walk with his sneakers making a 'splitch, splitch' sound in the mud. 8. Story two begins on a cold autumn Wednesday when Wise gets genuinely lost on the Simpronia for the first time, following a rut through thick leaf cover that leads him across four flat mossy stones. 9. At the North Notch campsite, Wise meets Micah, a self-sufficient 16-year-old who is the sole youth representative at his synagogue's board meetings and hikes alone with a satellite phone. 10. Micah identifies the stones as a hidden memorial built by Christopher Huermuth, who in 1945 was the sole survivor when four trail volunteers fell from an overlook and who became a murder suspect due to romantic jealousy. 11. Huermuth spent decades trying and failing to get the volunteers a formal trail memorial, eventually laying four unmarked slate stones in a remote location where he was found dead in 1989. 12. Micah insists that Wise cannot have left boot prints on the stones and at 1:30 a.m. sets out alone in the dark to wipe them clean. 13. Wise goes instead, notes that the walk to the stones takes only 18 minutes despite it seeming impossible given the distance, and finds no boot prints despite his boots being thoroughly muddy. 14. The return walk inexplicably takes 45 minutes for the same route; Micah's note the next morning reads 'I swear I heard them screaming because they were falling over the overlook. Someone yelled, Stop.' 15. Story three begins at 38, newly divorced, when Wise takes an unplanned short walk on the Simpronia's southwestern terminus and is invited onto the porch of retired insurance sellers Lee and Monty Rennage for cherry pie. 16. Lee and Monty are in their sixties, still clearly in love after four decades, and have barely left their property for 15 years, doing all business by phone and grocery shopping once a month. 17. Wise describes feeling his life changing and finding the Rennages' contented isolation aspirational as he processes his divorce. 18. A state trooper giving Wise a lift mentions that 12 years prior the Rennages were investigated for two young women who disappeared six months apart and were never found; forensic work 'hadn't exactly cleared them 100%.' 19. Horror and paranormal fiction fans who prefer slow-burn, folk-horror atmosphere over jump scares will find this episode particularly effective. 20. Listeners seeking explicit horror payoffs or supernatural confirmation will find the episode's deliberate ambiguity and understatement either compelling or frustrating depending on taste.

As heard by us

A folklore-rich haunted-doll tour that turns research into a slow, uneasy shiver.

The episode opens with haunted dolls and keeps widening its circle, moving from ancient Egyptian Ushaptis and Victorian mourning dolls to Robert the Doll, West African hoodoo puppets, Japanese Tsukumogami, the Night Parade in Kyoto, and Mexico City mannequins.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want haunted-doll lore that grows into a stranger theory of the world.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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