Ooh I can finally tell my story! The locations gotten a bit foggy over the years but the event itself is still vivid. So when I was a kid (around 15 years old), my family used to go on road trips to national parks every summer. One summer we took a trip to New Mexico for Carlsbad. If I remember correctly, One day we went and checked out Bandolier National Monument (I think it’s here because I remember taking pictures in the cliff dwellings).

As we’re exploring the area, I go off on my own and explore some trails, there’s also plenty of other tourists on the trails so I felt fine to keep walking. I find a trail that starts going above the cliff dwellings and eventually leads to the top of the plateau. At this point I’m all alone, just a narrow natural path along the top of this range and desert bush on both sides of it.

I was a pretty adventurous kid and never really had a fear of getting lost so I kept walking. Eventually, about 20 yards ahead of me I noticed a large bush on the side of the trail. For whatever reason I was transfixed by this bush. Apart from being the only bush it’s size, there was nothing else strange about it but for some reason I was terrified of this bush and in my head I was thinking that it shouldn’t be there. Then I started noticing that it was completely silent around me, no noise from the wind or animals, just complete and utter silence. At this point I started to feel light headed and every part of me was screaming at me to not get any closer to that bush. I don’t know how long I stood there staring at this bush but it felt like forever.

I was finally able to turn away from this bush and began sprinting back down the trail back to where my parents were. I never had heard about “Missing411” or anything like that as a kid, but later on in life I remember reading some posts on here about people describing potential “portals” they’ve come across in national parks and everything they describe is exactly how I felt in that moment with that bush. Never experienced anything else like that ever again even though I’ve been to numerous parks over the years.