Our adventure started on a crisp May day, in Yosemite National Park on the Meadow Trail. We are on this beautiful path surrounded by a meadow of grasses and flowers and ahead of us is just wilderness. We’ve been walking for a while and are nearing our second mile from the trailhead. Suddenly, as we pass around a bend, an old Victorian house comes into view in the distance.

As we near the old home, we are better able to see the old, two story houses. Everything is old and it looks to be at least one hundred years old. The two round windows on the top floor make the home seem to have eyes and the huge oak door looks almost like a mouth. My hiking partner, Ryder, wants to leave but I’m suddenly asphyxiated on the strange markings above the huge door. Something inside tells me to go in and explore.

When I find the door slightly ajar, I’m intrigued. I push open the mammoth door and peer in. A desk almost like at a hotel sits to the left of the door and to the right is a drawing room fitted with dusty couch and musty armchairs. Unexpectedly, we here a shrill shriek coming from the interior of the building, startling us. Now Ryder, also intrigued, implores the possibilities of the noise maker and requests that we go in. We step in and see that on the desk there is a bell blanketed in cob webs and dust and a book that simply says “Memory.” Ryder blows at the dust and a small sign becomes visible.

“The Meadow Inn.”

And all of a sudden, another shriek this time somewhat muffled and seemingly farther away. As Ryder and I explore we discover all the makings of the inn under piles of dust. In the drawing room a dust covered sofa, two armchairs and a few side tables are scattered around the grand room. Opposite the desk on the left is a grand fire place with a huge stone hearth. On either side of the huge hearth are two pictures. On one side a picture of the meadow with a woman and her baby in the middle of the landscape. On the other a picture of the inn with about twenty people standing in front of it all dressed in their finest attire. A plate read “The Grand Gala- 1903” along with a mysterious symbol that matched the one above the door.

We turn back toward the desk and find a small scroll lying under a pile of pictures. On the tattered scroll it read ‘reader, heed warning this inn is not what it seems. But within is the greatest treasure of all.’ A pang of worry rushes through me and by the look on Ryder’s face I can tell he is too. I mutter something about leaving but Ryder tells me we must press on. He walks on and I follow suit. We pass a massive dining room and a library with all the books anyone could ever need. Passing a door leading outside, Ryder spots another scroll on the floor. He picks it up and we read it. This time it says ‘Go to the scarlet room and find your fate.’ Find your fate? Ryder insists that we try upstairs after failed attempts on every other room on the first floor.

We walk up the grand staircase at the front up to a series of door all open with symbols similar to the ones above the door outside. After checking a few rooms, we find a room surrounded with scarlet wallpaper with a desk and nothing else.

A mysterious wooden desk layered in dust, but in the middle a handprint and what looks to be caked blood. Ryder opens the drawer to find a small bizarre sculpture like object in the drawer. When Ryder closes the drawer I see a small slip of paper pop out from underneath the desk. I pull it out and with the same writing as the last two scrolls this paper say ‘go to the library and find the transcendentalist hero’s finest work.’ I remember back to junior English reading Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and implore Ryder that we must find those authors books.

After scouring the library for Thoreau and Emerson, I find Walden but cannot find any other transcendentalist novels. A bookmark in the book has a small hand drawn map of the house. On the bottom in script it says ‘find the location at the meaning of this work, for the true reward of life.’ I search the novel and find that the quote, “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth” is circled with ‘fate’ written next to it. And below it is a small symbol that resembles the other ones in the house.

Ryder and I, puzzled by the trivial quote ponder the note and the symbols. I relook at the map and realize that there is an x on one the rooms, so I figure why not. Ryder and I follow the map to a small gray room with a bed and a nightstand. We go in and the door behind us slams. We both jump and we both turn around to see writing all over the back of the door that says ‘GET OUT’ A rush of panic rushes over me and I just want to get out. I can tell that Ryder is feeling the same thing.

We both decide to get out here and the door won’t open. Behind us a shriek and Ryder pulls even harder. The door squeaks open and we run. More and more shrieks come out from behind us. A book falls off the table causing us to run even faster.

We make it outside and the front door slams. We look back and the symbols above the door magically turn into ‘GET OUT.’ We run all the way back to the car and drive back to the village as fast as possible.

We return to our hotel to calm down. After resting we go to the village and go see the new museum. In the museum there’s an old book with some old pictures of what looks like the inn. We ask the docent about the pictures and he tells us

“As the story goes, that inn used to be up by the meadow in the early 1900s and one night in May there was a mysterious guest that came in one night and over a few days all the guests disappeared but never checked out. And after no one ever returned home the police came and found the bodies of all the guests in a gray room. They tore down the inn and buried all the remains of the building. Stories told by the workers, which tore down the inn, have said that they heard shrieks out of nowhere. The building has been gone for about one hundred and ten years now, a shame; it really was a gem of Yosemite.”