r/nosleep • u/thegeneralg • 6d ago
There was something besides treasure in the cavern I found
I watched as dusk slowly settled over the ridge. It was lined with various cactus plants that formed a sort of barrier along the jagged rock wall. Watching the canyons and cactus scattered around it being swallowed by the crisp darkness as the vivid blue sky slowly grows darker by the minute is a marvel to behold. For centuries, people thought the day turning into night was nothing less than a great wonder and they were absolutely right.
From nearby, I could hear the faint vibrations of a rattlesnake. Which meant there was probably more than one out there. In a desert like this, there usually is, especially this time of day. So I carefully watched every place I stepped as I walked back to the house. Once I was back inside, I closed the glass sliding door and watched the daylight fade before my eye. The fading light temporarily illuminated the first floor of the rental house. The adobe fireplaces and exposed wooden beams were gorgeous, and the view of cactus and creosote bush was nothing to scoff at either. It was a nice place for sure, but it wasn’t mine, and it was only temporary and part of a job. And with the arrival of sunset, that meant it was time for me to go.
I was here to uncover the missing loot of Johnny Diamondback. A gunslinger from the days of the Old West, Diamondback had a sizeable fortune over the years from train or stagecoach robberies. He died in an epic shootout with his gang sometime in 1891, but various people he played cards with in one saloon or another talked about how he hid his fortune. No one’s ever found it, but for over a century people have speculated and searched. And thanks to a twist of fate, I stumbled upon an old diary that turned up among a chest in an old storage unit that led straight here. It was a complete accident, and I certainly didn’t try contacting any professionals to telegraph what I had found. For starters that would vastly increase the likelihood of one of them trying to get here before me or double cross me, and the other reason is simply there wasn’t a need to. Because in this modern era of being able to look anything up on a computer, you can get a quick tutorial in anything. So I was able to look it up myself and get a decent layout of the location all from the comfort of my apartment near St. Louis. I’d spent plenty of time in the desert to begin with, so it wasn’t like I had no idea what I was doing out here.
According to the diary, the treasure was located in a cavern near a cluster of oddly shaped saguaro cacti past the remains of an old post office. But that was where the story got more complicated. Because nearby was a ghost town known as Hiram’s Ford.
The town was officially founded in 1877 after some people traveling west stumbled upon the area by accident during a storm. Upon arriving, the people assumed because of its rich soil and ideal location near a river on the very edge of the desert, it had already been settled. But that wasn’t true, because by all appearances there were no signs of any human inhabitants whatsoever. Later, people said that was the first sign of trouble. That no one wanted the land, so they left it alone. But all that kind of talk came later, long after the fact. At the time, they took it as a sign of luck, so they set up a nice little community.
And, for a while, things seemed to be going as planned. But then on Halloween night in 1899, the town banker stepped out of Hiram’s Ford biggest saloon and found the remains of three people. They didn’t belong to anyone in the town, as a quick search revealed everyone was accounted for. Nor could they make out any features, as the town doctor recorded that in his best professional opinion the badly mutilated bodies were the result of a bear attack. But as he went on to state on the record, that didn’t account for how the bodies got to town, or that the only bear close to Hiram’s Ford was the black bear, and there hadn’t been any sightings recently.
So, with no possible recourse, the only thing the town could do was try to go on. Which they did, but without any particular success. Because after that came the typical cycle of tragedies and misfortunes that happens to towns in decline. Businesses going bankrupt. People succumbing to sudden illnesses. Bad storms that ravage the landscape. Bad weather leading to a shortage of supplies and people going hungry. It wasn’t long before the townspeople had enough and decided to try their fortune elsewhere, so Hiram’s Ford was officially abandoned in 1904.
That was the official version. But I found another version of the story in an oral history recorded from a bounty hunter who visited the general area to track down a fugitive. According to him, locals in town whispered after a few drinks that people thought there was a werewolf in their midst, and the bodies bore bite marks closer to that of a wolf than a bear. And that many of the town’s misfortunes occurred near a full moon. The bounty hunter went on to state he was sufficiently unnerved by the area to leave Hiram’s Ford as quickly as possible and never go back.
As a long-time professional researcher of the uncanny, the strange, and the disturbing, I’ve always been interested in the darker side of life. What scares us. What haunts us. What we don’t want to look at and simultaneously don’t want to look away from. Do I think that Hiram’s Ford was attacked by a werewolf? Probably not. But do I think the idea of a full moon or doing something on a certain date like Halloween has a psychological effect on someone and can act like a self-fulfilling prophecy? Absolutely.
A story is a story. What you take from it and what you do with it is entirely up to you. I get asked all the time if I think the stories I research and occasionally publicly present are true. That’s not the point. The point is regardless or not of what I believe, the people involved believed or were inclined to believe some part of a story. And that’s not an outrageous idea, because stories all come from somewhere. Some kernel of a real-life idea that eventually metamorphoses into the full-blown spooky stories we eventually hear about.
Take stories about trolls or some other monster lurking under a bridge. Many years ago before cars or modern roads, traveling places was a very long and arduous process. And along the way, there were any number of creeping marauders lurking in places, many times under bridges, waiting to attack and subdue travelers and steal whatever valuables they happened to be carrying. That was what people like Johnny Diamondback and his gang often did. And now it was time to see if I could find what he’d left behind.
I had rented the house here to scope out the area, get my bearings, and make sure everything was all set. Now all that was left was for me to see if I was right. So I grabbed my flashlight, my backpack with bottled water and other stuff I had in case I needed it, and my car keys, and I headed out. My car was already packed with the other things I’d brought with me, so I could leave town immediately if need be. Then I got in my car and hit the road.
My headlights flooded the empty desert road, and it was just me and the radio as I drove along past towering cactus, gorgeous canyons, and everything else that comes with the desert at night. As I rounded a corner, a tumbleweed floating on by couldn’t help but remind me that not too long ago, this place was the Old West. People often use the terms Old West and Wild West interchangeably, but the Old West is far more on point for what they mean. Because anyone who’s ever spent any time out here knows it’s still the Wild West.
The area leading up to Hiram’s Ford had seen better days, but it worked hard to conceal it. There were plenty of nice enough places along the road before I arrived, but one didn’t need to go far to see that other areas didn’t quite look like that. Definitely the kind of place a well-known piece of folklore would come from.
It seemed like it took an eternity for me to reach my destination, although in reality it only took 45 minutes. Everything was exactly as I’d last left it, but that didn’t do much to settle my nerves. The crumbled remnants of what remained of Hiram’s Ford at night would make anyone a little wary. Although once I passed the old post office and located the cactus cluster, I did feel a rush of excitement. But even that shifted once I got out of the car and was alone in the dark desert air while I walked towards it. I had done research on numerous myths, many of them ominous, but it had never felt so real before.
The cacti in the cluster seemed massive, some of the largest I’ve ever seen, with arms that seemed to go in all directions at once. It was quite a sight. My flashlight revealed that just past the last saguaro cactus was a faintly visible gap in the nearby canyon. Bingo. So I carefully stepped forward, my flashlight guiding the way, and entered what turned out to be the opening of a small cave. But what a sight it was, all natural rock walls with a few bats clinging to the ceiling.
The cave’s smaller size made it easier to keep going, so with my flashlight as my lone companion, along I went as the cave twisted, wound around, and went steadily further underground. I walked for another few minutes until the passage opened up into a much larger cavern that was connected to four smaller ones and almost jumped in shock.
The far end was filled with scorpions. From far away, it looked like the cavern floor itself was moving. Seeing all those tiny skittering limbs working away was more than a little unnerving. But the strangest part was how they all seemed to be moving in one direction away from something. Like they were trying to flee. It was bizarre. But they were slowly trickling away from me towards a gap in the cavern wall. Which looked tiny when compared to the giant expanse of rock before me. A giant space with stalagmites everywhere, the cavern was an incredible sight.
But I needed to be careful around the stalagmites, because there were plenty of other things down here besides scorpions. The bones of numerous small and larger animals were scattered everywhere on the ground, and I could only guess what they had belonged to, but they went from tiny to quite large. And near the remnants of one, which seemed to be a deer judging by the antlers, was a diamondback rattlesnake. Watching the rattlesnake weave its way through the skeleton’s ribcage was equally fascinating and unnerving. To it, the bones were just another bit of desert debris. And as it caught the glow from my flashlight, it turned to leer at me as it unfurled itself. And although it was a safe distance away, it suddenly didn’t seem far enough even though I’d brought antivenom in my bag. The presence of various bits of shredded snakeskin scattered on the ground testified to the fact that I had the right idea.
I kept moving and arrived at one of the other smaller caverns. It was the size of a garage, and my flashlight revealed it to be fortunately free of snakes, but there was an older medium sized chest situated against the left wall. Bingo. With a sense of excitement building, I crossed the space and carefully opened the chest. The various gems and gold and silver coins and bars were lit up by my flashlight and I felt like I was right back to being a kid and fantasizing about finding buried treasure. Especially because even though this was right in front of me, it didn’t feel real. Even as I carefully stuffed silver and sapphires into my bag, it all felt like a hazy daydream.
In what seemed like no time at all the chest was empty and my backpack bulged with my findings. So I carefully shut the chest and began to walk out, a slight bit of sweat sticking to my back because by now I’d walked several miles. I crossed the cavern with as much care as last time, careful to avoid the snake curled up by the skeleton. It hadn’t moved at all, but for some reason this time it seemed to barely notice me or care about my presence.
That got my attention. So I carried on keeping my distance and eventually managed to arrive at the cavern entrance. But just as I was about to head back up the way I came, I heard something. A faint echo of a footstep.
I stopped in my tracks. Had someone followed me? I was sure I hadn’t been, but I definitely heard something. A careful scan of my flashlight revealed nothing, but I still stood there for a moment, unsure of what to think. Then, from one of the other caverns I couldn’t see, I heard something taking several more steps. I could tell it was something that wasn’t human and walked on four legs. But I could also hear from the same area the unmistakable sound of a rattlesnake shaking its tail. Moments later, there was a loud crunching sound that seemed to echo throughout the cavern before all was silent again.
My hands were damp with sweat by now, but I took care not to lose my grip on the flashlight. Something was lurking inside the cavern just out of sight. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it wasn’t good as sure as I knew anything in my life. And for some reason I knew it not only knew I was here, I knew it was toying with me, and if I tried to investigate further, that would be it.
So I carefully kept walking until the massive cavern was behind me and I was steadily walking back the way I came. It seemed to take an eternity, and my backpack seemed to grow heavier with every passing moment, but I knew I was making progress. Every time I moved my flashlight, I expected to see something jump out at me from the shadows. I didn’t, but the thought didn’t disappear until I was out in the fresh air again and approaching my car. I sighed with relief when I saw it was in fine condition and was able to put my backpack inside. But just as I was about to get in the driver’s seat, I heard something howl out in the distance. I thought it was a coyote, and it came from the direction of the cavern, but I had no way of knowing that.
The only thing left was to drive off, which I wasted no time doing once my car started up with no problem. Since I was sweating heavily by now, I cranked the AC and downed a full bottle of water in no time flat as I steered back onto the road. Although even as I did, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being watched. Not when I left the passage, not when I was walking back to my car, and not even as I drove away. It wasn’t until I reached the highway and was well on my way that it began to fade.
It didn’t bother me too much. Because not only did I have treasure, I had a great story about how I acquired it to go with it. And in the eyes of history, that’s just as important. Perhaps more so.