The Poppy Carter Trail

Mademoiselle Chasseur's Cryptid Guidebook - The Poppy Carter Trail
A local legend! Apparently, it's some sort of local tradition for high schools seniors to try and walk the full trail. I've heard that less than a dozen have actually managed to make it.

On to the tale! Back in the winter of 1982, college freshman Poppy Carter was walking home drunk on the Robert's Lake Trail. Nobody quite knows what happened to Ms. Carter that night, but the mostly widely circulated tale was that she was grabbed by some sort of vagrant living in those woods and was killed so that he could eat her. The coroner's report tells a different story, one pointing to her passing out and succumbing the elements. But that makes for a far less exciting story, no?

The first report of the Poppy Carter Trail dates back to 1984. A jogger running through the woods noted that the trees around him were vibrating as if a hurricane was moving through, yet there was no wind blowing through the forest. The wind continues to pick up and a voice booms through the woods. Our intrepid little jogger describes it as so, "It was like the voice was coming from everywhere at once. It was coming from the woods itself, but it was being beamed directly into my brain at the same time. Like it [...] was just another voice in my head, you know? Like I was trying to remember what I came to the supermarket for? Freaky." Freaky indeed! Wherever this voice was coming from, it first told the jogger to leave their woods, to get out as soon as he could. Our jogger, confused, was frozen in place. The commands went on for a few more minutes, before the voice took a different tone. It asked if he wanted to hear a fun fact! A fun fact! The original fun fact has been lost to time, unfortunately, but then the voice asks him for a fun fact! He gives it to to the voice and the wind fully dies down, the forest is calm again.

So, our first source jogs back to town, terrified. He sprints into the local bar, rambling about what just happened to him. Turns out, Poppy Carter's sister was pouring drinks that afternoon. Ms. Carter remembering a fun fact of her own, her sister was obsessed with trivia facts. Poppy Carter lived on! Dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of reports would trickle in after that. Always opening up angry, but if you were able to last, all you had to do was trade fun facts to continue through the forest. Apparently, Poppy doesn't pick everyone that comes through the woods, there's no clear criteria for who she speaks to. Maybe she picks people who look like they have good fun facts?

As reports go, whoever she picks is the only person who experiences the forest shaking and the voice. I've spoken with a group of people where half their hiking group experienced the phenomenon and half were confused why their friends were freaking out. While she tends to speak to single travelers, the highest amount of simultaneous experience was a group of 18. There are occasional reports that she remembers certain people and will ask them the trade facts on subsequent trips down the trail. Thankfully, these trips do not include the earth shaking winds.