There’s old folks up through the hills of Pennsylvania who’ll tell you, plain as day, not to whistle after dark.
Most young people laugh at it now, of course. They laugh at haints too, right up until some lonely night when the woods start sounding a little too alive.
But the old folks always knew better.
My gran used to tell us this story whenever the evenings got still and the thrushes, warblers, and whippoorwills started up beyond the fields. She’d sit out back with her old pipe, rocking slow, the tobacco glowing red in the dark while us kids huddled around trying to act brave.
“Don’t you kids go whistlin’ after sundown,” she’d say. “Ain’t nothing in them woods meant to answer back.”
Then she’d tell about Elias Griggs.
This would’ve been a long time before I was born, back when there were still logging camps scattered through the hills and whole stretches of mountain where a body could walk half a day without seeing another soul.
Elias Griggs lived alone in a little cabin near the timber mill just off Elk County Road. Had an old hound named Clem and not much else. Folks said he was decent enough, though nervous by nature. Superstitious too. Learned it from his gran, same as plenty of mountain folk back then.
She’d taught him all manner of old woodland notions.
If you got lost at night, turn your pockets out.
Switch your shoes to the wrong feet.
Never answer your name if it’s called from running water after dark.
And never - ever - whistle in the woods at night.
“Something might whistle back,” Gran would say at this part, and puff her pipe.
Well, one cold autumn night Elias was home alone with the dog. The wind had died off completely. No crickets. No frogs. Just one of them heavy quiet nights where even the trees seem to be listening.
Then old Clem got to howling.
Not barking.
Howling.
He planted himself at the back window facing the woods and wouldn’t move. Hair standing straight up along his spine. Every now and then he’d let out this low growl that sounded more worried than angry.
Gran used to say dogs still know the things people forgot.
Not long after, a screech owl started carrying on somewhere close to the house.
You ever hear one of them owls sudden-like in the dark, you’ll know why folks used to think witches traveled with them.
About that time Elias heard a tap against the front window.
Just one.
Then another a little louder.
Then a third that damned near made him spill his coffee.
He opened the door finally but there wasn’t nobody there. Just darkness and the glow from his front window spilling out onto the yard.
Still, something had the dog all worked up.
So Elias lit his lantern and stepped outside with Clem on the leash.
They walked the road some. Didn’t find nothing.
But when they got near the woods behind the house, Clem stopped dead.
Wouldn’t move another inch.
Dog just laid down making a pitiful whine toward the tree line like something in there had told him to stay put.
That was when Elias heard the woman.
Couldn’t make out the words. Just sounded like somebody calling from deep in the timber.
Then came a baby crying.
Gran always said that’s how they get you.
Not with growls or monster noises.
With something pitiful.
Something you can’t ignore if there’s goodness in you.
Elias hollered asking if somebody needed help.
The woman cried out again, sounding hurt this time.
Fool that he was, he grabbed his rifle and headed into the woods.
The deeper he went, the stranger things got.
The baby sounded close one minute and far away the next.
Sometimes off to his left.
Sometimes off to his right.
Like the woods themselves kept shifting around him.
Then came the whistles.
One bird call somewhere ahead.
Then another farther off.
Then more.
Six in total, according to Elias Griggs' memory.
Too regular to be natural.
Gran always lowered her voice at this part.
“Ain't no bird answers like that.”
By then Elias knew he was lost.
He set down his lantern and rifle right there on the path and turned his pockets out same as his gran taught him. Then he sat down to switch his boots around.
He got one boot off.
That’s all the farther he made it.
Because somebody picked up the lantern.
Now Elias swore afterward he never heard footsteps.
Said one minute the lantern was on the ground and the next minute somebody was holding it.
He claimed it looked like an old woman standing there in a black shawl.
But Gran said he never could really describe her face.
Only the eyes.
Always the eyes.
He said she spoke to him too, but not in any way he could understand.
After that, everything went black.
They found him the next morning sitting beside a stump on the work road near the woods.
Rifle unfired.
Lantern cold.
Eyes white as milk.
Blind for the rest of his days.
Gran would usually let the story sit there awhile while the night sounds crept around us.
Then she’d tap her pipe against the porch rail and say:
“And that’s why the old folks tell you not to whistle in the woods.”
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