I took the gold and had to return it.

I want to start this story by saying I'd be willing to be put under oath and testify this story, that's how certain I am of what i saw and heard. I don't recommend anyone do what I did, so I'll leave out the name of the exact location, but I'll let you know the general area. I moved to the appalachian mountains about two years ago. I'm originally a coastal boy but found myself here working in WNC, and it was love at first sight. Here was where I met my husband. It'll always be my home, but I learned to respect it greater last weekend.

It was a few weeks ago and it just struck me I never took my husband to my favorite place here. It's what they call a prong, a cascading land of small waterfalls. One after another, you climb one waterfall and are met by more, for miles this continues. My husband is a native to appalachia, from SW Virginia. So he wanted to explore how high it goes. I agree, so up the falls we go. It's rugged terrain, large boulders. A real full body workout climbing up there.

We get about halfway up and we stop at this pool to cool down. As I'm looking in the pool, I see something shimmering. Upon examination, we conclude it to be gold flakes sitting in the bottom of this pool. I had never seen so much natural gold in my life. So naturally I open up my empty water bottle and fill it up with the gold flakes, silt and rocks. We're hanging out by this pool, doing dunks in the water falls, having a grand old time but my eyes kept darting up to the rock above us. It's about 30 ft away and roughly 15 ft tall. It has a waterfall in the crack where it rests upon another rock, I keep thinking I'm seeing something dart back and forth up there. But everytime I look there's nothing. Then I look down at the falls below us, i say, "Did someone leave their bag down there?"

It's a brown rectangle, I'm thinking it's a bobcat. So I pull out my phone to zoom in on it and it's real blurry. But all of a sudden it gains focus and I see the cats face clearly. But it's not anatomically correct, its like its head was off to the side. My husband said it looked like a bookbag with a mask hanging on it. The face, it's angry, but immediately, my husband is turned around looking at the pool above us, grabs me, and says it's time to go. I do one final dunk and we leap into action, moving and grooving across these rocks. When we reach the next pool where I saw the "cat," nothing was there.

We go home freaked out, my husband refuses to tell me what he saw above that ridge. In true appalachian fashion, he doesn't believe in talking about it. He just insists I return the gold. I don't protest, not one bit. He recommended bringing a sentimental offering as well. So we decided to give it some of our seashells we got while living in Florida.

As we returned the next day to return the gold, immediately on entering the trail, I was greeted by crows cawing in the trees above. It's about a 20-30 minute walk to the falls, not a word is said between me and my husband the whole way. As we reach the halfway point I hear from what I assume is my internal dialogue, "RETURN THE GOLD, RETURN THE GOLD!" It repeats until I mentally set my intentions to peace and to return the gold. Then it subsided. We did not go where it originally was taken, we opted to stay at the entrance and place the gold back into the stream along with the shells. We didn't stay long but the crushing feeling of doom I carried while walking down there lifted away.

My husband and I would visit a few other waterfalls in the area, but nothing compared to the otherworldly beauty of the aforementioned area. So we agreed to return, this was last weekend. The day I saw it. We decided to go past where the tourists hang out and climb the falls once more. It's rather uneventful until we pass the point where I originally saw what looked like a cat but then disappeared. It's back, it's just a rock we think, then we pass it and on the front it had a cats face carved in it. But not by hand tools, it was too smooth, it had tears going down it's eyes. My husband and I looked at each other and said, "you see the cats face, right?" We both agree it's weird and wasn't there on our previous descent.

The place is full of strange rocks carved by the water and obviously, something otherworldly inhabited this place so we acknowledged it and kept moving. Not too unphased by it, it's appalachia, stuff happens, it is what it is. We ascend to the tier above it where the original event took place, then above that tier. So we're now where my husband claims the thing he saw was darting back and forth. We had been up here before, heck even had photos of it. But now it's completely different. Utterly untraversable. My husband tells me no way we're going further, he's the more experienced rock climber so I followed his advice. Also explaining that the land is now completely different from last time. I agree and we head back down into the pool below. So now we're in between the "cat rock" and the ridge above where the thing was last time.

My husband says let's just cool off in the water before we head back down, enjoy our day a bit. I'm getting the heebee jeebees from both the cat and the land being different but if my husband, a native to appalachia, isn't worried then I'm not. The sound of rushing water fills the air the whole time you're there, so I never got the classic, "forest got quiet" deal I read about on here. It was too loud there.

I was able to convince my husband we should both do a dunk in the waterfall and leave. "This place is different now, and the cat is here now". I tell him, we both laugh and he agrees. He goes first, he's hesitant because the water is freezing. All the while I keep scanning the surroundings because this is where it all started. We're hollering and doing our little splish splash, and I'm holding his hand in the waterfall, I feel it. Any hunter, hiker, or shoplifter in walmart can tell you the feeling, you know when you're being watched.

So I scan the bottom first, the cat rock is still there, hasn't moved. I scan the ridge above, once, twice, I don't know how many times, back and forth I'm scanning it with my eyes. Sure enough the last time I see it, my first though is, "you got to be kidding me". I grab my husband out from under the waterfall and say it's time to go. He asks me why as I'm putting on my glasses to get a better look. Sure enough, plain as the eye can see, it's straight out of the until dawn video game. It's looking directly at me, hunched over the rocks in a squat. Big eyes, I couldn't really make out it's face, I just remember seeing it's knees reach a few feet above it's head, pale white. Staring at me, not moving an inch. My husband still doesn't see it, he has about as poor eyesight as me without glasses so I put my glasses on him and point directly at it. I say, "you don't see that thing looking right at us". He laughs and says it's time to go. As we're darting across the rocks, neither of us in a panic, we just focused. But as we're descending its all different, we ended up an a stretch of the stream we had never seen before. Im saying "i dont remember this part", my husband agrees and says to keep moving. The boulders are very large and quite easy to remember so it was weird that it all seemed so different. I never knew my body could move the way it did. My husband, he's such a pro, this is a walk in the park for him. I kept thinking about how cliche it looked, it kinda amused me how on point it was.

The weird part was I didn't "feel" evil from it. I've met real people and immediately could tell they had bad intentions. Usually I'm right. My husband says the same thing, he said he wasn't scared by it all and felt no bad intentions. The rocks there are so treacherous that if that thing was what my husband said he saw daring across the first time, which he later confirmed was what he saw, then it could have had us dead to rights. But it chose not to.

We reach the final stretch, and my husband freezes on a rock. He doesn't move for like ten seconds, I push him hard on the shoulder and tell him to "quit all that now". He says "it's time to go". For the first time, he has fear in his eyes. I glance to where he was looking and see a big like 15ft wide bush of rhododendrian shaking violently. There's no wind in the air. He said, "that was big, it's time to go." As my eyes scan back from the left of where I'm standing, back to the right to focus on my next step I see a fly fisherman fooling with his bag standing on top of a layed down tree. For the life of me I don't know how he didn't see that one single big bush shaking and tear out. But finally we made it across that last part and are met by the tourists. It took maybe 10 minutes to get back there when it took over an hour to get there.

In true horror movie fashion, me and my husband are now literally doing parkour over these rocks I see a young couple, the guy says to his girlfriend, "I think I want to explore where those two guys just came from" I didn't even stop to warn them. My speed should've been warning enough. He never would've believed me anyways.