The Badlands Banshee

I was out looking for Fairburn Agates in the Buffalo Gap Grasslands, just East of the Badlands National Park in SD, when purely by the chance of my position and the shadows of the day, I spied a distant badlands formation that looked a lot like a very large coyote, or dog, sitting on top of a butte. I took a photo of it and marked the geo position on my cell phone. I wanted to find out if that butte was named after a Coyote or not. I though it should be, if it wasn’t.

     Later that day I showed my photo of the butte to one of the local Badlands Park Rangers. He told me of a butte described like that, which was a marker in some of the old ghost stories surrounding the infamous “Badlands Banshee”, a local ghost story which I had never heard of. He said the old stories called it the “Watch Dog Butte”, but the exact location of the butte from the legends, remains illusive. No one knows for sure where it is. This a true ghost story from almost 150 years ago!  

     There were accounts of a ghostly woman, glowing and shimmering in the moonlight, who looked like she was expecting something from you. When the travelers asked her what she wanted, she would darkly shriek and come upon them in a rush.

     Sometimes she was associated with a skeleton who would play haunting music on a violin. Some said he was searching for a soul, maybe your soul, I don’t know. The stories also described phosphorus glowing rocks, which were pointers to a path where, if you strayed, you’d be stripped of life and dignity.

     I like old stories and legends, so I set out purely for the fun of the investigation, as a non-believer of course; and I really thought I was ready. Boy Scout ready! Ha! Luckily I lived and learned. The real problem was that I really didn’t believe any of it!

     I had a general map location and a good idea of how to get there even though the actual buttes didn’t show up on the google satellite map. Like they say of the badlands, “It’s Hell with the fires put out!”, and obviously those kinds of details just don’t show up on a Google map.

     Don’t get me wrong, like I say, I was Boy Scout ready. The old stories of people getting lost and dying in the ancient labyrinth because of stupidity or evil, was not going to happen to me. I had physical maps, a compass and a drone to fly up high, so getting lost was not going to be a problem. I had also trekked in two days worth of water just to be extra prepared!

     I brought along a strong black-light flashlight and a knapsack full of small fluorescent flag markers, of which I planted one every 50 feet or so along the trail. I was making a fluorescent breadcrumb path as an extra precaution against getting lost. The black-lights would be able to find those and anything else that glowed, including the phosphorus rocks from the banshee legend.

     When I finally made it to the butte, which I had now named “Coyote Watch Butte”, I found there were indeed, phosphorus rocks and small calcite crystals! They were scattered about the base of the butte and they glowed under the black-light, exactly as the old stories would suggest!

     There was also a trail leading deeper into the hellish formations, which I followed for almost half an hour, until I found a nice level area for my camp between some of the peaks.

     While waiting for nightfall, I used my drone to map the pathways around me. It’s camera link showed unusual things hidden in the crevasses. I admit, it would be easy to see things in these fantastic shadows and I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but the shadows were jumping with or without my conclusions. Maybe I’ll look into it later, there could be a whole new hidden world, just waiting to be discovered in the dark geological creases of these fossilized seafloor beds.

     Evening came and I had my camp ready. My lightweight tent was up and my supplies laid out. I found a big flat rock to put my notebook on and my drone was charged and ready. The tripod with camera was set up and my flashlights were at hand. Then I simply waited and listened.

     I admit, it was spooky! It got very dark that night. Heavy clouds didn’t even let starlight through. Deep inside the badlands, it was black. Black as hell. I was unprepared for the sheer darkness of this place.

   My flashlights amplified the neon shine my nylon tent emitted. My god, if it weren’t for the clouds I think the astronauts could have seen that neon yellow from space! Same for my trail markers.

     My super strong LED flashlight could brightly, and blindly, light up the whole side of a formation. In the bright light, the buttes swayed back and forth. At the time, I thought I was experiencing vertigo caused by the utter darkness and then sudden bright light. It made me somewhat dizzy. I saw shadows run across the ground and hill sides, similar to what my drone had reveled earlier. I tried to take a video with my cell phone, but the back and forth swaying made it impossible for the camera to capture anything clearly.

     Then I heard a scream, or screech, or whatever it might be called. The sound burst right through me!

     Have you ever heard a mountain lion scream? It’s pretty terrifying even if you know what it is, and I know because I’ve heard them. Like screeching chalk on a blackboard, there are some kinds of sounds and vibrations that harmonize exactly against people’s bones; they make you shiver, sometimes from head to toe. Big mountain lion screams can do that. This screech did all of that and more!

     It felt like a large, fast airplane flying only 100 feet above me. I felt it more than I heard it. It lasted long enough to be disorienting and cause confusion, yet quick enough that it felt like I was skewered through my chest with a sharp, jagged spear!

     Then everything went still and silent, like the calm after a bad storm. One really ugly, nasty screech which caused an immediate sense of dread and fear! I hate to use the word as it’s overused now days, but I could describe it as “evil”. It was petrifying! I was feeling numb!

     Then it happened again, and it was even more startling! My chest made a huge involuntary gasp! It’s screech was faster and more intense, sharper, and it was obviously coming in my direction! My backbone, hips and legs all reacted badly to this force! I was dead in my tracks!  I don’t know if it was 5 seconds or a whole minute until I came to and was able to make decisions of what to do next. I sent the drone straight up, to look down on me. Maybe it would record my death. I was shaking so badly that I dropped the controller. I still had my camera ready and black-light on.

     Then she came into view! I saw her for only part of a microsecond. I clicked the remote shutter button and the camera flashed brightly; all the camera caught was some chaotic glowing specks and sparks that dissapperated into the air around a small whirlwind. I saw in the split microsecond before the flash, a thin woman’s outline flowing in green and blue fluorescent colors. Flowing, yet there was no wind.

     There were a few more glowing sparks, like fireflies, marking a trail that led into the buttes. This was all very frightening of course, but I had to find out! I had my LED flashlight to scare her away again; how bad can this so-called Badlands Banshee really be, right? 

     I strongly reminded myself that ‘Fear is a Choice, if you don’t let it become a reaction!’  I grabbed my flashlights, camera, and the fluorescent trail markers. I sprinted into the dark, following the trail the glowing phosphorous rocks had marked out.

After a few minutes, I was led into an opening between the formations where I slid on some loose gravel, right into the very bottom of a cone shaped depression or pit! It was maybe only 25 feet deep, but it was steep with loose, gravely sides.

     Suddenly sliding down a steep hole into sheer blackness is overwhelmingly terrifying, but then the stench hit me… and it was overpowering! I had reached the bottom and it was mucky with what at first felt like warm, wet mud and sand. With my black-light, the mud glowed orange and clung to me like globs of glue. Then I saw little white specks were wiggling around in it.

     Quickly turning on my LED flashlight, I found that I had landed in the middle of some poor creature who had slid in and died! My feet and ankles were deep into it’s horrid sticky goo, and it was crawling with wiggling maggots! And now I was crawling with wiggling maggots and worse, I was almost passing out from the stench, which would have plunged me face first into it all! I gagged and puked on the maggots until I only had the dry heaves left.

    A breeze eventually came up helping to clear the stench, or maybe I was just getting used to it, I don’t know. I was unable to get out of that pit for several hours! That’s how long it took for the sun to come up enough to show a certain twisted pathway up the steep sides.

     I think the dead goat, whom I was festering in, had repeatedly tried to get out, creating an odd path of foot landings by clearing the loose gravel with it’s hooves. It had probably exhausted itself to death trying to escape. 

After several ugly and messy attempts of jumping back and forth on the little foot marks, I got out, but just barely. My escape was propelled by horrified determination more than by strength and ability.

     I immediately stripped out of my shoes, pants, underwear and socks. With more dry heaves, I was finally able to wipe away most of the wet goo and maggots. I had foolishly left my water at the camp site. Some Boy Scout, huh!

     What a gross, gagging, yuck, experience! I had been bitten and consumed upon like a dead rotting goat! I tried to go barefoot but had to settle for open, wet-gucky shoes with no socks until I got back to camp.

     The trek back to my camp was not as I remembered; the trail was very different in the daylight. Luckily the trail markers I had dropped along the way took me back to the right place. I can see why people would get lost and die in the badlands even without falling into deadly traps and pits. 

     I washed myself as best as I could, saving a little water to get back to my vehicle. My shoes were unusable, but I only had one pair with me so I neutralized them up by grinding dirt into the wet parts and I cut the legs off of my jeans so I didn’t have to walk back half naked.

     I didn’t know what I saw, I couldn’t even prove anything was there, but it sure felt like something was there!  And now I wasn’t even sure it was a woman. Maybe I was just assuming it was because it was tall, slender, curvy, and scary. Ha! And it might have been flowing in those back and forth motions I had seen earlier, not shimmering in the wind, but in water. I was starting to imagine a monster from the badland’s ancient sea, out stunning her prey for supper!

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It took me two weeks of getting over that experience to even consider going back again. I was still feeling the wet rot and wiggling maggots on my feet and ankles, but I had been pushed on by a recent tragedy of two teenage boys who gotten lost in the badlands. There was a big state-wide effort with many people involved trying to find and save the boys. Ten days later, the authorities finally found their bodies in the bottom of one of those badlands natural pits. Shockingly, the coroner reported that the teens didn’t succumb to the harsh dry badlands environment, they had drowned!

     There had been no rain and there was no standing water, this is the badlands after all, ‘Hell with the fires put out!’; it made no sense. The sheriff determined that the kids had to have been picked up inside the badlands where they were last seen, taken somewhere, where they died by drowning, and then their bodies brought back to the badlands. They said the only reasonable explanation was foul play.  

     I know what I suspected. I suspected something related to the screecher I encountered. I suspected something related to the back and forth swaying; something related to the jumping shadows in the badlands small, dark spaces.

     I wasn’t sure how to find out except to go back and look for myself. This time I would let friends and family know where I was going, I’d take someone along with me and I was going to be even more than Boy Scout ready.

     I talked my skeptical friend Ray, into going back there with me. Obviously two people could carry in more stuff, like ropes and be there to help pull someone out of steep death pits.

     With our backpacks full, we finally got onto the first part of the trail. I was sure every brush of a twig or rock was a maggot crawling on me. I had to stop and take my shoes off to look just to make sure I remained maggot free. The extreme stench and ick of my first trip had burned its way into a lifelong memory.

     We made it back to the Coyote Watch Butte and headed for the same tent site I used before. Again I planted florescent flags on the way. Things looked different this time, the trail was not the same. The buttes around me were darker, taller, and somehow more foreboding. Maybe it was just in my head.

     We did reach a spot that was very similar to the camp site I had used earlier. Last time the area was clear of any vegetation, this time there were tumble weeds tucked into the crevasses. The landscape really was spookier this time, but I had a buddy along and the campsite was good for what we needed.

     It was late afternoon when we arrived so we still had several hours to explore the region with the drones to look for the jumping shadows I saw last time; and they were there again! Yet when we went to those spots expecting to see something wondrous, all appeared normal. There was nothing but rocks and crunched up tumble weeds. It was too bright to use the black-lights, we’d have to wait until it got dark for that.

     The sky was clear except for a few scattered wisps of thin white clouds and it was warm. The badlands scenery was worthy of National Geographic covers. To think that an ancient feeding trap was awaiting our presence, was unthinkable.

     There was a bright, almost full moon that night, yet we could see the milky-way even with our sunglasses on. In the moonlight, our nylon tents shined like beacons, but I had brought along dark tarps to cover them this time.

     After waiting in the dark long enough to eat half of our supplies, we finally heard a screech! It was much further away this time than last. The cameras, the drones, the flash lights were at hand, and this time I was making sure to video it without the LED lights, only black-light. We were ready.

     After another hour of waiting, I opened my tent to grab something more to eat and turned on the LED flashlight. Of course my tent suddenly glowed like a neon lighthouse, and that’s when she came around the corner, screeched and burst right through our bodies! Sharp and stunning and it was over!

     We were unharmed but quite stunned! We didn’t move or talk, we just wildly looked around trying to figure out what the hell had just happened! Ray finally believed me.

     Next we saw it in the moonlight on a nearby butte, but it was not a girl swaying in the wind, instead the glow looked more like a sea monster shimmering in the water. The moonlight seemed to show off it’s blue and green glowing colors. She disappeared in a rush after some new target, which we couldn’t see.

     This was surprisingly like the “Badlands Banshee” story, only it wasn’t a banshee. It was the ghost of an ancient, large-headed sea beast with big teeth, no doubt from the times when this region was part of a warm, shallow, inland sea!

     After more than a little bit of shaking, we hooked a black-light to the underside of Ray’s drone and tried to find it again. Taking a video from high up, we saw an area on the screen that glowed as much as our nylon tents! Upon closer inspection, the drown showed the light was coming from a glowing tunnel entrance at the bottom of a large, deep pit.

     It took a little convincing, I repeated several times, “Fear is a Choice, if you don’t let it become a reaction!” Reacting was especially easy at that moment! After a few minutes of dissenting discussion, we convinced ourselves that there was really nothing to fear if we were smart about it all. We  took off to find the glowing tunnel the drone had reveled, taking extra time to plant the florescent trail markers to make sure nothing would disturb them. We walked very carefully, there were wisps of small things in the air around us. We tried to swat them away at times even though we couldn’t feel them. It was eerie and uncomfortable.

     When we got close to where the drone was leading us, we came upon a large crack in the ground which was visible in the LED light, but not visible in the moonlight or the black-light! Had we walked into that, we would have fallen into what I can only imagine as death and maggots. We got around it and continued on, now even more carefully than before.

     Finally we reached the butte and looked down upon the glowing tunnel. We were probably 40 or 50 feet above it. The sides going down to the tunnel were fairly steep and the gravel was loose; I was spooked! Ultimately I tied on a rope and slid down the loose gravel side very slowly while Ray held on to the other end of the rope at the top of the butte.

     When I finally made it to the bottom I saw it wasn’t an actual tunnel going into the badlands formation. The black-light instead showed something like a cocoon with the glowing end open and the other end leading into something I’d describe as a deep void of unending darkness.

     That’s when she attacked! The screeched was very much louder and painfully harsh! I spun around clenching my chest and black-light. The creature was almost on top of me! It was like a plesiosaurus crossed with a T.Rex! It’s mouth was wide open, I saw it’s teeth and I remember a grotesque, purple tongue! I believed I was about to die and instinctively cringed and curled up into a ball.

     Luckily for me, Ray had the presence of mind to turn on the LED flashlight and everything that was glowing disappeared, tunnel, creature, and all! I was in true shock and now I was also soaking wet with sea water!

     I had actually been in the water with that creature, in it’s world! Ray saved my life when he turned on the light and pulled me back up to the top of the butte. I was numb for an hour and visibly weakened for the rest of the trip.

     With the LED light, we could see the area was just an empty badlands natural trap, like a Venus flytrap plant, only this one feeds on large mammals! In the moonlight, we could again see the glowing tunnel at the bottom… a badlands “natural” trap, just not so natural if you ask me. This was a creature made trap, made to catch her supper!

     Fear is a choice, not a reaction…? Bullshit! I don’t know if it could have directly killed me or not. Maybe I would have only drowned and not been eaten, like the fate of the two boys.  Fear is maybe nature’s way of saying “LOOK OUT!”

     On our way back to camp, the drone spotted two other glowing regions not too far away. That’s when we realized that I had lit up my tent when I was reaching for more snacks. The tent’s bright neon glow is what called the creature in to start with!  That’s how the creature’s death pits are marked, with a florescent glow. It’s what she was looking for!

     I will never go back in there to explore again! All I can do is tell you, in hopes that you’ll go to see for yourself, and then let me know. If you disappear without a trace, the sheriff will think you’re just another hapless victim of the badlands deadly labyrinth, but I’ll suspect you were drowned and maybe even consumed, either by sea monsters or maggots or both!

     Soon after, I alerted the Park Rangers but when I went to show it to them, it was no longer there.  If you do go camping in the badlands, look (out?) for the Coyote Watch Butte.  It’s not always in the same place, it moves around.  If you hear something shriek, pray it’s only a hungry mountain lion! Bring extra flashlight batteries and don’t follow any phosphorus trails! I don’t know if she’ll kill you or not, but I know you will likely die if you follow that ill-guided, shreeker’s trail!

     Most importantly though, don’t sleep in loud, bright, florescent tents in the badlands! This is the creature’s feeding grounds that we’re tromping around in and the florescent tents are only calling them in while they’re out feeding! Keep the lights inside your tent turned off! In the badlands, only camp in dark heavy tents. Be ready, even more than Boy Scout ready. If the mountain lions don’t get you, the newly discovered, Stunning Badlands Badrosaurus might!

  Randy Peterson