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Some people say there is no hell.  Well, I am here to tell you, I have seen it first hand – right here on Earth. 

Let me explain, my name is Jesse Munroe, and I am a ghost hunter.  Am I a believer in the spirit world?  A week ago, my answer would have been no.  I had always been fascinated by tales that were mysterious and dark, but in the end, I believed them to be just that…tales.  If you think about it, most legends are based on an element of fact but somewhere in the retelling, the truth is exaggerated.  I was always curious as to where the line between fiction and fact was. And I felt the need to discover and expose the great mystery for what it was to the masses.

Now to be quite honest, there is not big money to be made as a ghost hunter.  And most of my past assignments were your standard haunted hotels, the spirit in the woods and the family tormented by a spirit dwelling in their home.  At the risk of sounding cynical, I never had any of these cases alter my belief in the supernatural.  It usually came down to one of three things: a publicity stunt hoax, a tool used by an individual to get attention and sympathy or a physical phenomenon that could be debunked by modern science.

The sad part was that I wanted to be proven wrong.  I wanted to find evidence showing that there truly was a supernatural world.  Well, little did I know that I was soon about to get that proof.

Last week, I had received a call from a Jonathan Emery, an architect from San Diego, California.  His wife Linda and he had seen me and my crew on an episode of a sci-fi reality TV series.  Mr. Emery was very urgent on the phone.  He was desperately seeking my assistance because nobody else would listen or was willing to help him.   Apparently, they had a thirty-two year old son that went missing in northern Arizona approximately three months ago.   He was white water rafting in the Colorado River deep in the Grand Canyon National Park with some friends and disappeared mysteriously.  The search and rescue crews tried to retrieve any evidence of the young man but failed to come up with any proof one way or the other.  The local authorities discounted this event as a tragic accident and told the Emerys that they assumed their son had died.  Both Jonathan and Linda were starting to come to terms with the loss of their son.  That was until a park ranger called them up out of the blue and told them about a bizarre legend…a legend whose origin is unknown.

The park ranger told them that he believed that their son might still be alive but that time was a factor.  He explained to them that there are certain areas of the Grand Canyon National Park that are off limits to the public.  The area has a history, a dark past.  Back around 1886, a band of outlaws called “The Balford – Walker Gang” had ruthlessly plundered various stagecoaches in the Arizona territory.  They were infamous for severing the Achilles heels of their victims and leaving them to die slowly in the desert sun, thus buying the band of thieves time to make their escape.  For a year and a half, they were able to elude the authorities until a posse led by Sheriff Duncan Leach of Williams, Arizona pursued them into the lower west canyon area of the Grand Canyon.

 It was there that a gunfight and standoff took place.  Pinned down and low on ammunition, the remaining six outlaws including Sam Balford and Ike Walker made a run for the river hoping the rapids would take them down river and they would be able to escape the posse.  The notorious six dove into the river and they were swept away by the current.  However, the current did not take them down stream as they had hoped but straight towards a side channel.  Sheriff Leach was an old, hard as nails lawman and he was damned and determined to see those men hang at the end of a rope.  He began to run for the river bank when one of the Arapaho scouts tackled him and began pointing feverishly and saying in his native tongue, “the forbidden land, beware the forbidden land”.  The other posse members watched as their guide began screaming and trembling in fear.  What could be so terrifying about that area that could make this man so petrified?  Sheriff Leach, not one to be superstitious, got up, pushed the scout away and ran for the water’s edge.  He dove in but the other posse members did not follow.  They watched as the current took him down stream and straight towards the side chasm.  Sheriff Leach, Sam Balford, Ike Walker and the others were never heard from again. 

The park ranger had told Mr. Emery about how the local tribes believe it is the land of the dead.  They believe the spirits control the water’s current.  If you are of a pure heart than you will guided down stream safely; however, should the spirits find a soul unworthy, the waters will filter out the bad souls and send them to the “forbidden land”.  One tribe even used it as a ritual area for years, sending their punished, rejected and deformed down the river to appease the spirits. Of all those poor souls, not one individual ever returned. 

The park ranger went on to add that no one knows how this area was created or how long it has been around.  One can only assume that for centuries, people have wandered into that area for various reasons and never came out.  The secret of what lies in that canyon remains a mystery to this day because no one seems to survive.

When the park was purchased by the Government, several tourists began to disappear. So, in 1979, the Government initiated a classified investigation due to all the strange disappearances on federal land and named it, “Project: Redwater”.   In April of ’79, a group of investigative government agents took a boat into the canyon slot.  Almost instantly, their transmissions became faint but the sound of their screams could be heard in the muffled static.  Two months later, a military group of special op soldiers were brought in.  Their transmissions were garbled as well.  There was about 15 minutes of silence, when suddenly a faint voice came over the speaker: “I have seen death…and it’s chasing me.”  There was a moment of silence, then a horrific scream, followed by the sound of eerie erratic breathing. Then - silence.  What could kill twelve special op soldiers within 20 minutes?  In September of 1979, the Government closed off a 20 square mile section of the park denying access to all public and personnel.  From that point on, the area was patrolled by the military until the financial cutbacks in the late 80’s.  For the past 20 years, the area has not been patrolled, and the number of missing people that have been reported at the park had increased dramatically. 

Mr. Emery told me over the phone that he and his wife are too old to make the trip themselves down into the canyon.  He explained that he wanted to hire us to investigate the area.  If there is a chance their son is alive, they need to try and save him. And if he is dead, they just need to know so they can have closure.  I told Mr. Emery that we would help him.

I must be honest; the story of such an ominous mystery in the Grand Canyon left me torn with emotion.  I was skeptical because I had never heard about any of these strange activities and disappearances before now.  In addition, I was apprehensive.  What if there was some truth about these mysterious events?  However, I could not stop my natural curiosity to find out what was really going on and to see if there was an actual, scientific explanation.

So two days ago, I came to Arizona with my fellow ghost hunting crew members, Ted Lester and Laura Banks.  Ted was my tech guy, while Laura was my research and documentary assistant and also my girlfriend.  We were all anxious that evening after we had hiked down into the west canyon area with mules hauling our equipment.  We made a base camp and started planning a strategy as to how we would research the area without entering it.

As I entered the canyon opening, all seemed normal at first but then I heard the sound of a train…but it was not a train…it was a waterfall.  How far was the drop?  Would I survive it?  Would I be able to get back out?  What seemed like eternity was actually just seconds. 

I suddenly felt weightless as my body was poured over the edge.  I shut my eyes, took one last gulp of air and prayed.  Suddenly, I felt the impact.  I could feel my body being tumbled around like a rag doll and then all at once I was released.  The waters seemed to spew me up and exposed me to the open air.  I gasped for breath, flailed around and then realized I had lived through the ordeal.  The waters were actually calm once I floated away from the waterfall.  I relaxed for a brief moment, took in my surroundings and then began to swim towards shore.  I pulled myself up onto the sandy rocky beach and collapsed on the edge.  My heart was pounding, I was out of breath, but I was alive!

I laid there on my back in the hot sun, just trying to get my composure.  After a while, I sat up and looked around.  There were high canyon walls on both sides of the river and they were very sheer.  For me to get out of this canyon, I would have to follow the river’s flow since I could not climb the canyon face or go back the way I came in, due to the height of the waterfall.  I was suddenly hit with the memory of all the past individuals that were never heard from again.  Did they all drown because of the waterfall?  Looking around, I knew my situation was difficult but far from impossible.  There had to be a way out.  It is only a canyon.  There is a river, it must go somewhere.  I had no choice, I had to make my way down river and see where it led.  I started my trek along the river bank heading in the opposite direction of the waterfall.  I could see a bend approximately ½ mile ahead of me and I was hoping that it would offer me a new perspective on my situation, perhaps a viable route that I could use to get out of this canyon. 

As I made my way, my thoughts went back to Laura and Ted.  My heart sank with sadness as I thought about the hell Laura must be going through.  I was sure that she was concerned that I might be dead.  I had no means to contact her and put her mind at ease.  Then there was poor Ted, that wench hit him hard.  Was he OK?  Did he need medical help? Was Laura alone?  This gave me even more motivation to push myself quickly to find an escape route.

I was almost at the bend and I noticed that the river bank path had narrowed.  I was walking past some desert shrubbery, the scratchy dry branches lightly cutting at my flesh as I brushed past them.  I kept walking, eyes looking forward, hoping the bend would reveal a glimmer of hope, when suddenly, something grabbed my leg.  I screamed and pulled my leg away violently and quickly.  My actions caused me to lose my balance and I fell backward into the river’s edge.  I feverishly regained an upright position with the full intent of fleeing from my attacker.  But I caught a quick glimpse of my assailant and instantly realized that there was no threat.  What I saw was so sad, so pathetic.  I saw a young man, weathered and dirty, laying on his stomach with his hands outreached to me begging for help.  The desert battered young man spoke, ever so lightly, “Please, help me.”  I truthfully was just happy to see another person, despite his appearance.  I was not alone.   

I dropped to one knee to try and help him up.  The young man began to cry out in pain.  I let him back down and then realized that he had wounds on both of his heels.  They looked like cut wounds…cut wounds across his Achilles heels. I helped re-position him so that he was slightly propped up but made sure that his legs were slightly turned and bent to keep the flesh wounds from being exposed directly to the ground.  I then got up, took off my shirt and dipped it into the river bank.  I wrung out the access water, walked back over to the injured male and ever so gently dabbed the young man’s sunburned face to help cool him down.  After a few minutes, a calm stillness began to set in as the young man’s pain started to subside. 

It was at this point that I began to speak to the young man.  “My name is Jesse Munroe.  What is your name”, I asked?  “Michael…Michael Emery”, he responded.  His response was like a baseball bat whacking the side of my head.  I thought, “Here is the very guy we were looking for and he is alive.”  I told him I was here to help him and how his parents hired us to try and find him.  Michael was comforted by news of his parents, looked up at me and said, “So, are there  more of you here?” I paused a moment, and said, “No, I’m alone.”  You could see the look of defeat come over the young man’s face.  His body went limp.  He ever so quietly said, “There’s no rescue party, no rangers…no police?”  I had no choice but to tell him how I ended up here in the canyon with him.  Michael began to laugh.  A laugh that was both happy and sad at the same time.  He looked me right in the eyes and said, “Then we are both dead men.”

His comment disturbed and angered me.  “What do you mean…dead men?” I retorted.  “You and I are living in a nightmare now.  There are things in this canyon…or should I say souls…that are roaming around and wreaking havoc.  Any living thing that passes away in this hell hole really doesn’t die.  I’m talking human, animal, insect, etc…  It’s all some kind of sick and warped zombie filled wasteland.”

I started thinking that perhaps this guy had sun stroke and was starting to hallucinate.  “Let me see if I understand you correctly, are you saying zombies and dead creatures are roaming around this desert?”  I asked.

Michael replied, “I know, I didn’t believe it either…at first.  Then I started seeing these things everywhere. There are ‘people’ from all kinds of walks of life here. From dead cowboys and Indians, to soldiers, tourists, FBI agents, hell - anybody who has ever entered this domain, and died.  Look -  I have watched a lot of movies about zombies, you know the kind, the slow brain eating ones.  But these things are different.  They actually function, I mean, they have retained the skills that they had when they were alive.  Like a cowboy who could ride a horse, rope cattle, build a fence.  Now, even as a zombie that individual can still do those activities.  A soldier can still shoot a weapon, fight with hand to hand combat, etc…  These bastards are dangerous! It’s frickin’ scary as hell.  I have seen things here that can only be described as “twisted”.  The damn things can even talk but that is whacked too.  The words come out in disjointed, deep, creepy speech.”

 “How can this be?  None of this makes any sense”, I sputtered as though everything I had ever believed had been turned upside down.

Michael nodded, “I agree, none of this makes any sense.  For weeks, I had managed to use my outdoor survival skills to stay alive, while eluding these bizarre entities.  All the while, I had been looking for answers about this world gone wild and how to escape it.  So far, any means of getting out of here has not presented itself.  And from what I can figure out, this re-animation of dead flesh is being caused by some kind of chemical reaction.  You see, if you follow this river for about another three miles, it feeds into a cave opening.  These bastardized beings have even built some kind of creepy ass ghost town on the shoreline just outside the opening of the cave.  It has been constructed out of materials rummaged from all the boats, rafts, branches and any other objects that have floated into this forgotten pit.  These half rotted residents have started to worship the cave as the home of their creator, complete with a church whose steeple displays an upside down cross.”

He went on to say, “One night I snuck past the dilapidated dwellings to get a closer look at the cave.  I went inside with my flashlight and started looking for any kind of clues that could help me understand this netherworld I was trapped in.  In my quest, I had found a strange bubbling pit which was emitting some kind of weird nasty smelling fumes.  I covered my mouth so that I didn’t inhale whatever it was. I still felt like gagging and throwing up.  I aimed my flashlight around the cavernous room and noted some type of natural material in the walls of the rock.  I knew it wasn’t copper or gold because the veins of the material running through the walls had a silvery white look to them.  As I continued looking around the rocky dome, I heard a noise and turned off my flashlight immediately.  However, the room maintained a very light greenish glow about itself even after I had doused my light.  I quickly dropped down and crawled over to a rock by the wall to hide.  I stayed there ever so quietly, my heart pounding in my chest.  I could hear what sounded like footsteps approaching.  Then they stopped.  The silence was maddening, time seemed to stand still.  I knew I wasn’t alone.  Suddenly, I felt something grab my shoulder and threw me away from the wall into the open area.  I tried to flip over onto all fours and crawl away but something stepped down on my back and pushed my face into the dirt floor.  I could feel what seemed to be three sets of hands holding me down.  Try as I might, I could not move.  What happened next was the most horrific thing I have ever endured.  I felt as both my Achilles’ heels were severed ever so slowly, as though the individual or individuals were savoring every moment of this torturous act.  The pain was so intense, I eventually passed out.  When I awoke, I found myself out in the desert sun.  Any movement of my legs would cause me to writhe in pain.  I managed to pull myself over towards some plant life and dug myself a little nest to hide into.  I have been eating nopales, leaves and bugs and periodically dragging myself over to the river for water.  From what I can tell, it has been about two days but I am very weak, and very tired.”

“Dear God”, I said, “I can’t believe you are still alive.”  Michael didn’t share the same feeling of accomplishment.  You could see the defeat in his eyes, that he would gladly welcome death.  I tried to make sense of his story.  I had no clue what the bubbly pit was, but as for the silvery white material in the cave…it was plutonium.   You see, I was never an “A” student back in school, but I did have a love of science.  I knew that plutonium was prevalent and commonly mined in the west.  However, plutonium certainly could not act alone as a re-animating agent on human flesh.  As a matter of fact, it would have more of an opposite reaction.   The mystery lies in what is in the substance of the bubbling pit.  It has to be emitting some kind of toxin that is working in conjunction with the plutonium.  This is obviously something that hasn’t been encountered before in our scientific world - or at least not documented.   

When I regained consciousness, my head was pounding.  I realized I must have been knocked out by a rock or some other hard object.  I found myself in a rickety old wooden room.  It roughly resembled a makeshift jail cell.  The cell door had been created using several sources of building materials, including wood, sheet metal, rocks and barbed wire.  I cautiously got up from the floor, and discovered that I was chained to the wall.  I did however have enough slack in the chain to roam around the entire perimeter of my dreary dungeon.  I wasn’t sure who my jailers were, nor did I look forward to meeting them.  The primitive cell had a barred window made up of various sizes of plumbing pipes.  I staggered over to the portal to take a look. 

My limited perspective offered a view of several dilapidated buildings and of the cave opening that Michael had described.  I could tell that the town was set up on the left side of the river bank adjacent to the river that flowed into the canyon opening.  There was a gallows off to my right that I could see, and a decaying skeleton writhing vigorously with life from the end of the hang man’s noose.  As I peered out, I heard the bustling sound of feet approaching outside the window.  I crouched down slightly as not to be seen but still peaked out to see what the commotion was.  A large group of hideous looking corpses paraded past and headed towards an open area at the end of the street near the river bank. 

There was a large object covered under a tarp near the water’s edge.  The gathering of ghastly ghouls formed a circle around the mysterious object.  The sight of these beings put the fear of God in me.  Two of the decaying dead came forward and unveiled the item and displayed Michael Emery.  His body was secured to two posts.  His appendages were stretched out and secured to the poles and his body hung there suspended.  He lifted his head…he was alive.  Dear God, he was still alive.  He frantically started struggling and he began screaming.  He did this for about a minute, his intensity began to weaken and he finally just went limp with exhaustion.  The residents of this God forsaken hell hole began to chant repeatedly, “Outsider, outsider”.  At which point, a tall dark figure, with straggly hair, rotting flesh and wearing a battered old duster approached Michael.  He drew out a bizarre looking bowie knife and began to cut the flesh and hair away from Michael’s scalp.  The blood began to ooze down Michael’s face, his screams of pain muffled by the chanting crowd.  As Michael wiggled in agony, a partially decayed female stepped forward and handed a canteen to the dark figure.  He took the container, held it up in the air and said in a garbled deep voice, “Let the creator set him free!”  At which point, the ominous leader began to pour the contents of the canteen onto Michael’s open wound.  The substance was brown and steaming.  Michael’s body went rigid as the fluid made contact on his open wound.  The burning sensation caused Michael to emit a hideous tirade of screams.  In the midst of the torture, Michael let out one last plea, “Please God!  Kill me now!”

Michael’s body went limp.  I thanked God for taking his life.  No one on Earth should ever have to endure such an agonizing death.  The dark figure cut the bonds that were holding Michael up and his body collapsed into a dead pile of flesh.  The legion of dead began to chant, “He is free, he is free”.  I looked in absolute horror at the sight.  And then without warning, I noticed Michael’s body began to move.  But that couldn’t possibly be.  My eyes had to be playing tricks on me.  I watched in utter amazement and fear as I saw Michael slowly stand erect.  For the love of God, what did they do to him?  What had he become? 

I stood there in the cell, just looking at the freak show in total bewilderment when it happened.  Michael, or what was left of him, stood looking right in my direction, pointed his finger and said, “Outsider”.  And just like a precision unit drill team, the entire group of forsaken dead turned towards me and started chanting, “Outsider, Outsider”.  They began to their slow and deliberate walk towards my detention center of doom.  I turned away from the window, pressed my back up against the wall and I slowly slide down in complete fear.  As I rocked myself in the fetal position, I realized I only had one thought that kept crossing my mind as I could hear the approaching mob. 

“How Can I Survive Carnage Canyon?”