The Dark Mountain

A true (but possibly hallucinated) event.

I was just 16 when we embarked on our journey to Black Mountain. I had saved up for weeks, as had my friend, so we could afford the 5- day trip from cairns (on foot). It began on a Sunday, at the end of the first weekend of the holidays. We caught a stinking tourist bus up from central, and were at port Douglas by 3pm. From there, the rest of the day was spent hiking to the upper Daintree ?" we ended up sleeping in a bush outside a tourist center. The whole area of cairns is wreathed in misty tropical mountains, sometimes getting up to 1200 meters (roughly 4,000 feet) in height, each one host to countless rivers and streams, birds and frogs. All except black mountain.

Exactly why it is so barren, I still have no idea. The place is wreathed in most awful vibe, ringing of negativity and evil, I just cannot explain it. It contrasted sharply with the beauty and exotic nature of the mountains just south of it. We arrived at the mountain at 11am on a Wednesday, and immediately I felt something odd. A metallic ringing appeared in my ears every few minutes, as if I had sat next to an exploding bomb and been knocked over. We set up camp roughly a kilometer away from the base of the mountain, and cooked and ate some steak for lunch. The mountain is surrounded in some spots, by abandoned shacks of what must have been aboriginal trackers or perhaps gold prospectors. We entered some but found them empty, and by that stage I was beginning to get scared. The area has a ringing darkness, as if the entrance to hell was somewhere in there.

But what terrified me were the caves, the things I had been fighting my friend not to go into. But into them we went. The passages were narrow and black, filled with a foul stench and the distant rumbling of millions of bats. We wandered what could have been a kilometer into them, and they only went deeper and deeper. Now and then they led off into chambers with vast drops that our several torches could not illuminate. These immense drops must have led so deep into the earth that you could drop the empire state into them, but what I found was occupying them was far darker. Suddenly, after an hour of taking photos and "mythbusting" a low ringing appeared, and then footsteps. I went to a psychologist after that. Sometimes, when I hear footsteps, I have a panic attack. But sure enough, these bizarre, wet footsteps seemed to be coming from the deepest parts of the mountain. The chambers were getting darker and darker, so replaced our torches, but they went out. We got our others out, and they got darker and darker too ?" it was then I saw the light. A dim, almost reddish glow was coming from the bottom of the pit. I swear to any who ask me and passed a lie detector test, that there was red light coming from the chamber. The footsteps came closer and closer, until we just lost ourselves and ran. I dropped my camera, my father's war watch that I always took with me, and my food pack. But sure enough, even with replaced batteries, our torches went out. We started to panic, and as we desperately clambered through the dark passageways, the footsteps stopped. We stopped too, and I tied a rope around myself and my friend so we wouldn't get lost. Then the footsteps came back ?" only this time they were running. I suddenly started running too, grabbing my friend and running as fast as I possibly could to get out of there. I was horrified; the place was so dark and voices that rung out like deep, ancient wells were coming from the passages, muttering curses in some horrific, ancient, long forgotten language. They were so deep and so dark, the voices I heard. My friend wasn't responding when I said; do you hear them? Do you? We saw a dim light reflecting of one of the rocks. I absolutely nearly died then, for I thought we had come all the way back, and that wet running was getting closer, like just 120 meters away through the rock. I then realized that the light was coming from somewhere above, so I pushed and pushed, and before long we were in an entrance passage again. That running, I hear it my dreams sometimes. I would later be told, after the lie detector test, that the experiences I had could well have been hallucinations from natural gases and incredibly low oxygen that had built up in the cave, and the theme of them was because of the ideas that had sprung into my head before I entered. But I swear, I absolutely swear I was in a right state of mind.