# "I Work for the County Removing Old Hiking Trail Signs. I Should Have Listened to the Locals."

An episode of [CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492008134), 25 Jul 2025, 23 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/67104360/i_work_for_the_county_removing_old_hiking_trail_signs_i_should_have_listened_to_the_locals.mp3

CREEPYPASTA STORY►by Frequent-Cat: / i_work_for_the_county_removing_old_hiking_... Creepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO- SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd... iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast... SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS- ►"Good Places to Start"- • "I wasn't careful enough on the deep web" ... ►"Personal Favourites"- • "I sold my soul for a used dishwasher, and... ►"Written by me"- • "I've been Blind my Whole Life" Creepypasta ►"Long Stories"- • Long Stories FOLLOW ME ON- ►Twitter: / creeps_mcpasta ►Instagram: / creepsmcpasta ►Twitch: / creepsmcpasta ►Facebook: / creepsmcpasta CREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪ ►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪ ►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪ ►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪ This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: It's not glamorous work, but it pays well and offers
[0:05] Speaker 1: opportunities for over time. After the divorce and the foreclosure,
[0:10] Speaker 1: after most of my friends stopped calling, County Maintenance was
[0:14] Speaker 1: steady enough, quiet, predictable, and away from the noise for
[0:19] Speaker 1: my life I was trying to avoid. I was assigned
[0:23] Speaker 1: a new job to do. Take the truck, follow the checklist,
[0:27] Speaker 1: tear down the old signs, like the trails as cleared,
[0:31] Speaker 1: move on. I was sitting in the diner the morning
[0:35] Speaker 1: before the job started, staring into a mug of burnt coffee,
[0:39] Speaker 1: pretending not to hear the old men at the corner
[0:41] Speaker 1: table watching me. One of them finally spoke up, some
[0:47] Speaker 1: trails don't want to be forgotten. The others gave a
[0:52] Speaker 1: chuckle at that. Half serious, half sarcastic, small town men
[0:58] Speaker 1: with too many years behind them, too familiar with bad stories,
[1:02] Speaker 1: too many bad stories told over whiskey and boredom. I
[1:07] Speaker 1: gave them the polite nod you learn to use when
[1:09] Speaker 1: you're too tired to argue. They're just signs, I said,
[1:14] Speaker 1: just trees. They didn't argue, They just kept watching me
[1:20] Speaker 1: finish my coffee. Truth was this route landed on my
[1:25] Speaker 1: lap because nobody else wanted it, not the younger guys,
[1:30] Speaker 1: not the retirees pulling half shifts to pad their pensions.
[1:34] Speaker 1: Even my supervisor didn't look me in the eye when
[1:37] Speaker 1: he gave me the paperwork. A lot of bad breakouts there,
[1:41] Speaker 1: he said, be careful, you step. I figured it was
[1:47] Speaker 1: the usual small town superstition. Faded trail markers, knell to
[1:51] Speaker 1: rotting trees weren't going to bite me. The bureaucracy doesn't
[1:55] Speaker 1: scare me. Not usually. The first few trails went by
[2:02] Speaker 1: without much to say for themselves, nothing unusual beyond how
[2:06] Speaker 1: quiet everything felt. No birds, no squirrels, not even the
[2:11] Speaker 1: hummer flies of a deadfall, just me and the trees,
[2:16] Speaker 1: the kind of silence you feel in your teeth. The
[2:20] Speaker 1: work itself stayed simple. Hike in, find the markers, pull
[2:25] Speaker 1: them down, lock the removal, move on. Every sign had
[2:30] Speaker 1: a name on it, stamped in wood and weather worn
[2:33] Speaker 1: to hell. Some of them I recognized from old missing
[2:37] Speaker 1: persons fliers, faces that used to hang by the register
[2:41] Speaker 1: and gas stations when I was a kid, memorials to
[2:44] Speaker 1: those lost and never found. Others dated further back than that,
[2:49] Speaker 1: Names passed down through town gossip, usually mentioned in the
[2:53] Speaker 1: same breath as bad luck or sad endings. It struck
[2:58] Speaker 1: me more than once, how strange it was the name
[3:01] Speaker 1: trails after people who'd gone missing on them. Stranger still,
[3:06] Speaker 1: how nobody ever bothered to mention that part when handing
[3:10] Speaker 1: me the job sheet. After a few days, things started
[3:15] Speaker 1: not lining up. I'd clear a path in the morning,
[3:19] Speaker 1: all the markers out, only to find some of them
[3:22] Speaker 1: back up by the afternoon. Same trees, samet bolts, sunk
[3:26] Speaker 1: into bark that should have been bare. Then there were
[3:30] Speaker 1: the footprints too narrow for my boots, moving across the
[3:35] Speaker 1: paths in places where no one should have been walking.
[3:39] Speaker 1: They never led anywhere, just stopped dead in the middle
[3:42] Speaker 1: of thick brush, or vanished outright on solid ground. The
[3:48] Speaker 1: radio gave me more static the deeper I went, Voices
[3:51] Speaker 1: sometimes faint and broken beneath the white noise. I couldn't
[3:57] Speaker 1: make out much at first, but after a while it
[4:00] Speaker 1: got clearer. Stop, turn back, leave it alone, always urgent,
[4:08] Speaker 1: always on the edge of words. I told myself it
[4:12] Speaker 1: had to be locals playing games, teens tapping into my
[4:16] Speaker 1: radio frequency. Maybe those old boys at the diner still
[4:20] Speaker 1: had enough spite in them to plant a CB somewhere
[4:23] Speaker 1: and mess with me. I thought about packing up early,
[4:27] Speaker 1: taking the right up, losing the overtime, but rent was due,
[4:32] Speaker 1: bills were stacked, and I couldn't stomach screwing up another job.
[4:38] Speaker 1: So I stayed, set up camp right in the thick
[4:41] Speaker 1: of it to finish quicker one more night. Then I'd
[4:45] Speaker 1: tear down the last of it and never look back.
[4:50] Speaker 1: Even as I hammered in the last stake and zip
[4:52] Speaker 1: my tent shut beneath those dead trees, I couldn't shake
[4:57] Speaker 1: the feeling I should have left already. That night, the
[5:03] Speaker 1: woods didn't pretend to sleep. I heard movement outside the
[5:08] Speaker 1: tent long before I unzipped it. Not footsteps exactly, not
[5:13] Speaker 1: anything that steady. Branches snapped, leaves shifted, and something mimicked
[5:20] Speaker 1: the short clipped beaps of my radio. Not words, just noise,
[5:26] Speaker 1: chopped and mechanical, trying to get the rhythm right without
[5:30] Speaker 1: understanding the purpose behind it. I sat in the dark, listening,
[5:36] Speaker 1: waiting for it to stop. When it didn't, I stepped
[5:41] Speaker 1: out with my flashlight and swept the trees beyond the camp.
[5:46] Speaker 1: For a second, I thought I saw a figure. It
[5:50] Speaker 1: was tall, bigger than anyone living ought to be, standing
[5:54] Speaker 1: too still between the trunks. My light didn't catch it properly.
[6:00] Speaker 1: I blinked. It was gone. I told myself it had
[6:05] Speaker 1: been a tree, a shadow, or a grazing animal I
[6:08] Speaker 1: had spooked away. When I tried the radio again, the
[6:13] Speaker 1: static gave way to words, not sentences, nothing conversational, just names,
[6:21] Speaker 1: names of trails I hadn't reached yet, names pulled straight
[6:25] Speaker 1: from my paperwork. Some I didn't even recognize. I didn't
[6:32] Speaker 1: sleep after that. By morning, every marker I had pulled
[6:38] Speaker 1: the day before had been reinstalled, not where I had
[6:41] Speaker 1: found them originally, but deeper into the woods, trees I
[6:46] Speaker 1: hadn't walked past yet. Some even looked freshly mounted bolts
[6:50] Speaker 1: driven into the park that wet, clean sap beneath them.
[6:55] Speaker 1: I packed up camp and made for the truck, ready
[6:58] Speaker 1: to leave this evolving night mare behind, only to find
[7:03] Speaker 1: it wasn't where I left it. The tire tracks stretched
[7:06] Speaker 1: off into the brush and vanished without a sign of
[7:10] Speaker 1: turning around. I stood there for a long while, fighting
[7:15] Speaker 1: the urge to just walk back to town and leave
[7:18] Speaker 1: it all behind. But the job was half way done.
[7:23] Speaker 1: Rent wasn't going to pay itself, and I couldn't stomach
[7:26] Speaker 1: another mistake on my record. I just needed to finish
[7:30] Speaker 1: off the last of my assigned route, so I kept going.
[7:35] Speaker 1: I was going to finish clearing these trails. Nothing in
[7:41] Speaker 1: those woods connected the way it should. Paths I knew
[7:44] Speaker 1: for a fact ran east to west began curving in
[7:48] Speaker 1: on themselves, leading me back to places I hadn't passed. Twice.
[7:52] Speaker 1: I checked my compass until the needle spun in slow,
[7:56] Speaker 1: lazy circles. No matter which way I turned the GPS,
[8:00] Speaker 1: my phone glitched between aero screens and coordinates that made
[8:04] Speaker 1: no sense. I started leaving fresh markers behind me, bright
[8:09] Speaker 1: tape scratches in the bark, small cairns of stone. Every
[8:15] Speaker 1: time I circled back, they were gone. The discarded pile
[8:20] Speaker 1: of signs I created the disposal later that morning vanished too.
[8:24] Speaker 1: I kept walking until the trees opened into a clearing
[8:28] Speaker 1: I didn't remember from any map, and its center stood
[8:32] Speaker 1: a structure, not natural, not accidental, a totem of old
[8:38] Speaker 1: signs rusted and rotted, deliberately bolted together in twisting layers.
[8:45] Speaker 1: Beneath the plaques hung scraps of fabric, torn backpacks and
[8:49] Speaker 1: empty shoes, bones which between them yellowed thin with age.
[8:55] Speaker 1: I recognized a few of the names on those signs
[8:57] Speaker 1: from the markers. I pulled names from my paperwork, names
[9:01] Speaker 1: from missing persons cases decades old. The trees around the
[9:06] Speaker 1: clearing weren't untouched either, deep grooves cut into the bark,
[9:11] Speaker 1: long slashes that pulled at the wood in crude shapes.
[9:15] Speaker 1: At first they looked random, for the longer eyes stared,
[9:19] Speaker 1: the more they resembled the clean square fonts used on
[9:23] Speaker 1: county trail markers. Letters, half formed, sentences, left unfinished. This
[9:31] Speaker 1: wasn't some prank. This wasn't locals trying to scare me off,
[9:36] Speaker 1: or some bitter old men with a Cbee radio in
[9:38] Speaker 1: the woods. The trails weren't just abandoned. They weren't meant
[9:43] Speaker 1: to be touched. The woods were watching, or worse, waiting.
[9:53] Speaker 1: I tried to backtrack. I tried to follow the map,
[9:56] Speaker 1: my own markers, even the sun. None of it lined
[10:00] Speaker 1: up anymore. In the end, I went back to the clearing,
[10:05] Speaker 1: back to the totem. I thought if I burned it,
[10:09] Speaker 1: maybe it would break whatever was holding me here. Maybe
[10:13] Speaker 1: fire would undo it. Strip it down to something human again.
[10:18] Speaker 1: The flames caught easily enough, but they burned blue green
[10:22] Speaker 1: at the edges, curling smoke up in heavy spirals that
[10:26] Speaker 1: didn't rise, but hung low and thick over the ground.
[10:31] Speaker 1: That was when the woods reacted. The wind roared through
[10:35] Speaker 1: the trees and sharp burst, pulling at the branches until
[10:39] Speaker 1: they bowed and twisted. The ground trembled beneath my feet.
[10:44] Speaker 1: I heard something creak in the dark beyond the clearing timber, straining, metal,
[10:49] Speaker 1: grinding against itself. The totem didn't burn, not really. The
[10:55] Speaker 1: signs blackened, peeled, fell apart, only to pull themselves together again,
[11:02] Speaker 1: bent metal, reformed, plaques, twisting into new shapes, names, rearranging
[11:07] Speaker 1: themselves into words. I couldn't read. The whole thing shifted taller, now,
[11:13] Speaker 1: branches splitting off its core like limbs. Something stepped free
[11:20] Speaker 1: of it. I couldn't tell whether the structure ended and
[11:24] Speaker 1: the thing began. Wood for bones, rusted, signs for skin, nailed,
[11:29] Speaker 1: plaques overlapping like scales, limbs too long, torso hollowed out
[11:36] Speaker 1: a shape made of all the pieces I thought I
[11:38] Speaker 1: had removed. Signs hung from its body, clattering against each
[11:43] Speaker 1: other with every slow, deliberate movement, words I recognized, names,
[11:48] Speaker 1: I had touched, dates I had logged. It didn't speak,
[11:54] Speaker 1: it didn't need to. The weight of its gaze pressed
[11:57] Speaker 1: into me, pulling something loose behind my eyes. Branches scraping
[12:02] Speaker 1: against one another until they sounded almost like laughter, Dry
[12:07] Speaker 1: and joyless. I turned to run, but there was nowhere
[12:12] Speaker 1: left to go. Paths folded in on themselves. Roots broke
[12:17] Speaker 1: through the dirt in coils thick enough to trip me
[12:20] Speaker 1: no matter which way I turned. Daylight snapped the dusk
[12:23] Speaker 1: without warning, Shadows stretching long and thin until they swallowed
[12:28] Speaker 1: the edges of the clearing. The thing watched me until
[12:32] Speaker 1: I couldn't hold on to the moment any longer. The
[12:36] Speaker 1: ground tilted, the air split sideways, My thoughts scattered into static.
[12:43] Speaker 1: I blacked out, standing right where it wanted me. I
[12:50] Speaker 1: woke up lying in the dirt, but it wasn't the
[12:54] Speaker 1: same dirt I'd blacked out on the ground beneath me
[12:58] Speaker 1: was clean, the trail well made, fresh gravel crunched under
[13:02] Speaker 1: my hands. When I pushed myself upright, the trees weren't
[13:07] Speaker 1: dead and twisting anymore. They stood tall and green leaves
[13:11] Speaker 1: shifting gently in a breeze that actually smelled right. I
[13:16] Speaker 1: could hear birds again, wind in the branches. For a moment,
[13:22] Speaker 1: I let myself believe I'd made it out. Maybe i'd
[13:25] Speaker 1: wandered too far, passed out, and someone had dragged me
[13:29] Speaker 1: back to a safe route. But my truck was gone.
[13:33] Speaker 1: No sign of my tent, my tools, the clearing or
[13:37] Speaker 1: twisted thing i'd seen, pullets off together from bones and metal.
[13:42] Speaker 1: I turned in a slow circle, trying to find any
[13:46] Speaker 1: marker to orient myself. Nothing. Only a trail running ahead
[13:52] Speaker 1: in behind, so neat and addly it might have been
[13:55] Speaker 1: laid down yesterday. I followed it backward, hoping it might
[14:01] Speaker 1: lead to a road. Instead, it brought me to a sign, new,
[14:08] Speaker 1: freshly bolted, standing proud at the trailhead. The words didn't
[14:14] Speaker 1: make sense until I read them twice. It was a
[14:20] Speaker 1: new trail, one I hadn't seen when I took inventory
[14:24] Speaker 1: of the listed trails for the area named after me.
[14:30] Speaker 1: The established date was the day I had blacked out.
[14:34] Speaker 1: There was no way someone could have made a whole
[14:36] Speaker 1: trail in that shorter time. It would have taken a
[14:40] Speaker 1: whole team weeks. Yet, here it was freshly laid and
[14:46] Speaker 1: ready for use. I stood there, staring until my throat
[14:52] Speaker 1: closed up. The font matched every sign I'd removed over
[14:56] Speaker 1: the past week, same materials, same even the angle of
[15:01] Speaker 1: the placement was the same as the ones I'd pulled
[15:04] Speaker 1: down with my own hands. I remembered clear as daylight,
[15:09] Speaker 1: how every one of those old trails bore the name
[15:12] Speaker 1: of a missing person. Names I thought would just bureaucratic
[15:16] Speaker 1: leftovers from decades past, memorials to those lost to nature,
[15:21] Speaker 1: forgotten names. I had thought I was helping a raise,
[15:26] Speaker 1: but I wasn't clearing them. I was making room. This
[15:32] Speaker 1: was how new trails got built, not laid by county workers,
[15:37] Speaker 1: not signed off with permits or blueprints. People didn't vanish here,
[15:44] Speaker 1: they got repurposed. I kept walking because I didn't know
[15:51] Speaker 1: what else to do. The trails stretched ahead, perfect and
[15:55] Speaker 1: clean beneath my feet. No rot no traps, no no
[16:00] Speaker 1: wrong turns, just a neat little path inviting people in.
[16:06] Speaker 1: Up ahead, I saw them hikers, three of them, maybe four,
[16:13] Speaker 1: bright jackets, backpacks, chatting as they made their way down
[16:17] Speaker 1: the trail like nothing was wrong, laughing, relaxed, without a
[16:21] Speaker 1: clue what waited further in. I shouted for them to stop.
[16:27] Speaker 1: I waved my arms, stepped into their path, anything to
[16:30] Speaker 1: get their attention. They didn't react, they didn't even glance up.
[16:37] Speaker 1: I screamed at them, begged them to turn around, told
[16:41] Speaker 1: them they had no idea what they were walking toward,
[16:44] Speaker 1: that this trail wasn't meant to exist, that it would
[16:47] Speaker 1: swallow them like it swallowed me. They walked through me,
[16:53] Speaker 1: not around, not past through. Cold sliced through my ribs
[16:59] Speaker 1: and chairs, a chill deeper than winter, leaving nothing behind
[17:03] Speaker 1: but air. They didn't hesitate, didn't seem to notice at all.
[17:10] Speaker 1: I chased after them, still shouting, still trying to get
[17:13] Speaker 1: between them and the woods ahead. No matter what I did,
[17:18] Speaker 1: they didn't hear my words, didn't touch them. My hands
[17:22] Speaker 1: couldn't stop them. I stepped off the trail, hoping maybe
[17:27] Speaker 1: that would break whatever held me here. The world twisted,
[17:32] Speaker 1: trees folded inward, colors drained to ash and bone. I
[17:37] Speaker 1: blinked and found myself back on the path where I
[17:40] Speaker 1: had started. I tried again, same result. Every time, the
[17:47] Speaker 1: trail wouldn't let me leave. I could only watch as
[17:52] Speaker 1: the hikers moved ahead, until they left the confines of
[17:56] Speaker 1: where my limits were, unaware that deeper in, something was
[18:00] Speaker 1: possibly waiting to fold them into the earth the same
[18:04] Speaker 1: way it folded me. I wanted to follow them, make
[18:09] Speaker 1: sure they were safe, but I couldn't even touch them.
[18:14] Speaker 1: All I could do was watch, helpless, voiceless, bound to
[18:19] Speaker 1: this path. Time stopped making sense after a while. I
[18:25] Speaker 1: didn't eat, I didn't sleep, I didn't even get tired.
[18:29] Speaker 1: My body didn't ache, my feet never blistered. But I
[18:34] Speaker 1: couldn't leave the trail. I tried every direction, every hour
[18:39] Speaker 1: of what I could only guess was passing time. Off
[18:43] Speaker 1: the trail, the world broke apart and threw me back
[18:47] Speaker 1: on to the gravel. I couldn't rest. I just walked
[18:53] Speaker 1: back and forth from the trailhead bearing my name, to
[18:57] Speaker 1: the furthest point before the woods bent the world in half. Again,
[19:01] Speaker 1: back and forth forever. People came, not often, but enough,
[19:09] Speaker 1: hikers and pears, or groups wandering in without a clue,
[19:13] Speaker 1: following my name printed on that clean, fresh sign. I
[19:17] Speaker 1: followed them at a distance, watched them finish the path,
[19:21] Speaker 1: heard them laugh about the beautiful scenery, the quiet woods.
[19:26] Speaker 1: They always made it through at least the ones I saw.
[19:31] Speaker 1: They always left. I couldn't follow beyond the trailhead. I
[19:37] Speaker 1: wanted to think I was watching over them. Some part
[19:40] Speaker 1: of me still wanted to protect someone from this place.
[19:44] Speaker 1: I told myself, maybe that mattered, Maybe I still mattered.
[19:50] Speaker 1: Then came the ranger, a county man, clipboard in hand,
[19:56] Speaker 1: maintenance vest, same patch and his sleeve I used to wear,
[20:00] Speaker 1: same paperwork. I'd filled out, the checklist, the inventory, same job.
[20:08] Speaker 1: He stood beneath my sign for a long time, scowling
[20:11] Speaker 1: at it. Eventually he pulled out a crowbar and started
[20:16] Speaker 1: prying it loose. I wanted to scream at him to stop,
[20:21] Speaker 1: to leave it, to get back in his truck and
[20:24] Speaker 1: drive until he couldn't see trees anymore. I followed him
[20:28] Speaker 1: as he walked down the trail, dragging the sign under
[20:31] Speaker 1: one arm. I screamed as loud as I could, then
[20:36] Speaker 1: pushed harder to try to get through to him. Nothing
[20:40] Speaker 1: happened until his radio crackled at his hip. My voice
[20:46] Speaker 1: came through. It walked and broken, barely words at all,
[20:51] Speaker 1: a handful of syllables, a warning he couldn't hear, or
[20:55] Speaker 1: maybe he could, and simply dismissed it. As the locals
[21:00] Speaker 1: driving him away, ahead of him between the trees. I
[21:06] Speaker 1: saw it, the thing from the clearing, the shapes stitched
[21:11] Speaker 1: together from rusted signs, and bones from wood and stolen names.
[21:17] Speaker 1: They moved ahead of him, slow but certain, always just
[21:22] Speaker 1: out of sight. It wasn't chasing him, it didn't have to.
[21:28] Speaker 1: It was leading him somewhere. He didn't see it. He
[21:33] Speaker 1: wouldn't have believed it if he did. He followed his paperwork,
[21:38] Speaker 1: his duty, not knowing what was waiting for him. Now
[21:42] Speaker 1: that he had disturbed the trail. They stepped off the
[21:46] Speaker 1: trail together, into the woods, beyond where I could go.
[21:52] Speaker 1: I stood there, watching the space where they vanished, listening
[21:56] Speaker 1: to the empty woods breathe. The sign would come back.
[22:01] Speaker 1: I knew, new name, new date, new path carved deeper,
[22:07] Speaker 1: another piece added to the forest's collection, another mile for
[22:11] Speaker 1: hikers to follow. Another man swallowed up, and I couldn't
[22:18] Speaker 1: do a damned thing to stop it.

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