How to survive on The Path

Hi, r/nosleep. I’m here to tell you about The Path, and what you should do if you ever find yourself on it. Nobody’s really sure what The Path is, but I know it’s outside this world, and that very few people who find themselves on The Path make it back. I’ve been on The Path myself once, and after I made it back I decided to find other survivors, hear their stories, and compile a survival guide of sorts to help protect others.

Part 1: Finding The Path

The Path can be found in really any largish region of forested land in North America or Europe. There are a few criteria that will make it more likely for you to come across it. I suggest you avoid meeting these unless you know what you’re getting into.

First of all, you must be lost. It doesn’t matter how you got lost or how long you’ve been lost for, but you need to be lost to find The Path.

Second, you have to be in a group of four or less. The more people you’re with, the less likely it is that you’ll find The Path. NEVER go into the woods alone. I’ve seen plenty of survivors who were in groups and hardly any who went alone, and the number of people disappearing in the woods without a trace is too high to blame on natural causes. When I found The Path, I was with two friends, John Bowers and Derrick Boruta. Derrick and I made it out, but John… I prefer not to think about that too much.

Third, you can’t be looking for it. I think The Path has a consciousness, since it seems to be able to decide who it shows itself to. I’ve heard of people searching for years and never seeing a thing, but others go into the forest with their friends for a hike and find it after a couple hours. (I was one of these people)

Finally, you’re much more likely to find it at night. Nine times out of ten, when someone finds their way to The Path, it’s because they got lost after dark. Then again, maybe it’s more dangerous during the day and hardly anyone makes it back to share their stories.

So yeah. Don’t do those things, unless you want to find The Path. And you don’t. Trust me.

Part 2: Surviving on The Path

So let’s say that you completely ignored my prior advice, and now you’ve found a trail and the woods look darker than usual and you’re pretty sure that the deer you saw a minute ago had no eyes. Now what? First of all, stay calm. Next, start moving along The Path. To get out alive, you need to reach the end. The things that live around The Path will try to trick you into leaving its safety, but you can protect yourself from them.

Tip #1: Don’t go down any side trails. Remember, you’re safe as long as you don’t leave The Path. You might see branches leading off of it that look like they lead to safety, or water, or food, or an unlocked ferrari (No joke, one girl actually saw a path leading to a road with a car), but under no circumstances should you take a side trail. The rewards they seem to offer are illusions; they’re trying to get you to leave the relative safety of The Path.

Tip #2: Ignore the voices. Like the trail branches, voices will offer you what you want. They have a way of getting inside your head. They will know all of your secrets, and will take advantage of your vulnerabilities to get you to leave The Path. Believe me, they’re hard to resist. When I found myself on The Path, one of my friends fell victim to them. He ran into the forest, screaming about his dead father (he watched his addict mother kill him as a child. It really messed him up) Just remember: everything the voices offer you and every threat they make is a lie, and if you leave The Path, you will never return to your own world.

Tip #3: Beware of illusions. Things in The Path have one goal and only one goal: to get you to leave its safety so they can do presumably horrible things to you. Illusions are one of the reasons why you should never travel alone. Some people are better at seeing through them than others, and having a group increases the chance of avoiding them. Illusions are tricky, even though something should seem extremely off, they’ll mess with your mind so you think everything is normal. With illusions, you can’t rely on instinct, so you need to think rationally. Every time the path changes, think “does it seem like it’s supposed to take a sharp left?” or “Should this section ahead be sunlit at night?”. A little rational thought can save you from walking into a trap.

Tip #4: Don’t turn around. Plenty of the mind-altering beings will try to disorient you so you don’t leave, and everyone who goes the wrong way on The Path either gets corrected by their friends or doesn't return. Even if you feel breathing down your neck, or the path seems to end up ahead, you must never turn around or you’ll never get going the right way again.

Tip #5: If you get disoriented, watch your feet. Either there are beings that live around The Path that like to confuse and disorient you, or it’s an effect of The Path itself, but when you’re walking on The Path, your thoughts will be dulled and you’ll be easily distracted. These will render you more susceptible to the more sinister phenomena that take place in that realm. If you find that you look around but can’t recall anything about your surroundings, just look down at your feet so you don’t go off the path and keep walking.

Tip #6: This is probably the most important one: Don’t stop moving. The longer you stay in The Path, the more likely it is that you’ll fall victim to an illusion or stop being able to resist the voices. If you stop moving, it’s easy for the entities to confuse you about which way to go, and I heard from one guy that they may even interact with you directly (needless to say, he wasn’t the member of his group that was interacted with). Honestly, nobody’s completely sure what happens if you stop, but nobody who’s stopped for more than a minute or two has made it back. So yeah. Keep moving.

Tip #7: Last one: Beware of doppelgangers. During my time on The Path, we found we had a fourth member when only three of us had gone in. The fake tried to drag John into the trees. We managed to save him, but the voices took him later and another fake joined the group, this time imitating my dead friend. The best ways to protect yourself is to remember how many people are in your group and to look at their faces. One thing I’ve heard from everyone who’s encountered one of these is that their faces look wrong when closely examined. I remember that the not-John’s eyes looked glassy and unfocused, and the proportions of its face were slightly wrong. Even though it seemed like it should look human, I just felt like faces weren’t meant to look that way. Fortunately, it fled once it realized it had been identified, and we avoided another fight.

That’s basically all there is to surviving The Path. I don’t know how accurate this information is, or if it will work in your specific setting. After all, nobody’s gone into The Path with the intention of collecting scientific data, and I’m mostly relying on secondhand accounts from other survivors.

If any of you care about my story, some friends and I went into the forest on a short backpacking trip one spring break. We were going to go to a couple nice camping spots on some trails in the mountains, each no more than a day’s walk from our starting point. We had taken longer than expected to travel, and we decided to take a shortcut through the woods to get our first destination. We thought we would be fine, but, of course, we underestimated the distance to our destination and lost the map after a couple hours of hiking (not that it was really that much help anyway). We decided to try going back the way we came, but we just ended up getting hopelessly lost as night began to fall. Being a bunch of dumb university kids, we decided we would keep walking and hope we found the trail, rather than staying put and making a signal fire or something.

The three of us found a dirt path after a couple hours of wandering and started to follow it to find a good place to set up our tents. After 20 minutes, we started to realize something was wrong. The trees were impossibly dark, the forest was silent, the few animals we saw seemed off, and we all started to hear faint whispers in our heads. We agreed that we would keep walking. As creepy as the path was, it was better than wandering through the forest, and we could see where we were going. I’d brought a few beers, so Derrick and I each drank one to calm our nerves (John refused).

At some point in the next few hours, we all seemed to silently come to the conclusion that this was no normal creepy forest trail, and gave up on finding a place to set up camp. This theory was further backed up when we noticed the fake human and it tried to kidnap John.

The walk was harrowing, but between the fatigue, the repetition, and the fact that I prefer not to think about it, most of that night has blurred together in my mind. I remember seeing a path branch off with a nice clearing for tents, and countless other such temptations. I remember a place where a fallen tree blocked us and we nearly turned back.

I remember John beginning to scream as the voices finally got to him. I remember trying to hold him back as he broke free from my grip and ran into the forest. I remember that Derrick told me we had to continue, that there was nothing we could do. I remember how I ignored the not-John, even when I realized it was a fake. I remember escaping The Path without my best friend. I remember how his girlfriend looked when we told her. I remember the guilt I carried for years.

I’m sorry for not having a consistent mood across this whole post. I’m usually fine when I simply mention that John died on The Path, but recalling all the details of that day makes me think about it too much.

As for Derrick, we tried to stay in touch, but he seemed strangely unfazed by John’s death. At first I just assumed it was how he coped, by compartmentalizing his emotions and appearing outwardly strong, but as time went on I grew frustrated by his apparent lack of remorse and stopped talking to him.

As I look back on it now, I recall something that seemed off about him and his mannerisms. In fact, I get this nagging feeling that I’m recalling something incorrectly about the whole trip. Also, I can’t seem to picture Derrick’s face. I’ll ask some of our old mutual friends if they remember anything strange about him, and update later if I find anything out.

For now, thank you all for reading this guide, and I hope that if you ever find yourself walking along The Path, you know what to do to get out.

UPDATE: I asked everyone I knew in university who I could find on social media. None of them remembered Derrick. I remember that he was quiet and antisocial, so it’s within reason that he never went to parties or social gatherings or met any of my friends.

UPDATE 2: As I was looking Derrick up in the university’s website, I realized that I couldn’t remember how or when I met him. We didn’t go to the same high school, and I don’t recall him doing any of the same extracurriculars as me. I can’t remember ever seeing him in class, at least not before the backpacking trip.

I just remembered something else. This seems ridiculous, but I know I’m recalling this memory correctly. I hope I’m wrong, I don’t want it to be true.

I remember, the day of the trip, pulling into the parking lot by the trail head as the sun rose. I remember getting out of my old honda, unpacking the gear, setting off down the trail. But most importantly,

I remember that only two of us went into the forest that day.