In 1969, U.S. Army Sent Soldiers to Mount Shasta Six Men Never Returned
Lieutenant Walter Briggs had seen nearly every kind of military routine the U.S. Army Signal Corps could offer—quiet radar stations tucked in desert valleys, lonely comms shacks perched on coastal headlands, remote outposts where wind rattled the tin siding all night. At thirty-nine, he had become the kind of officer commanders trusted with assignments that required competence but no heroics. And that was how, on a gray September morning in 1969, he found himself staring at a teletype machine printing out his next task.
MISSION: Repair and Test Mount Shasta Relay Station
DURATION: 72 hours
PERSONNEL: 3
CLASSIFICATION: Routine
Routine. Briggs folded the slip of paper with practiced precision before sliding it into his jacket. But even as he did, the name Mount Shasta tugged at him. He had heard it mentioned once by a sergeant years earlier—a throwaway campfire story about hunters avoiding the upper slopes after dusk. Something about the silence there. Something about… listening.
Briggs, being a man who believed deeply in procedure, had not asked for clarification.
He regretted that now.
1. Orders, Companions, and the Road South
At the motor pool, Sergeant Henry Tate was already waiting, tightening straps on the equipment packs stacked beside the olive-drab jeep. At forty-three, Tate looked older than his years—creased face, steady eyes, quiet presence. Two decades as a field engineer had turned him into the kind of soldier who could repair almost anything mechanical… or offer a single sentence that ended a conversation.
The third member of the team, Private Ellis Carter, stood apart from the jeep, hands in his pockets, staring at the ground. A quiet man of thirty-one. No awards. No reprimands. A steady but unremarkable record. What set him apart was the small leather-bound journal he kept with him at all times, writing in it in small deliberate letters whenever he thought no one was looking.
“Ready?” Briggs asked.
Tate nodded.
Carter finally lifted his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
The jeep rolled out at 0900 hours. Rain streaked the windshield, pattering steadily as Washington forests slid by in wet green curtains. Briggs rode shotgun, reviewing the mission brief again in his mind.
Relay station offline since early spring.
Antenna array damaged by ice.
Access road washed out.
Weather window closing.
Simple. Predictable. Routine.
Yet, as they crossed into northern California and the land shifted—pine forests rising into the flow of the Klamath foothills—Briggs felt the faintest pressure in his ears. Like altitude adjustment. Or like the air thickened the closer they drove toward the mountain.
By the time they reached the logging town of Weed, light was fading behind clouds. They refueled at a lonely roadside station where an older man stepped out, wiped his hands on a rag, and eyed their uniforms with the slow, appraising look of someone measuring possibilities.
“Army?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Briggs responded. “Routine maintenance. Relay station.”
The man paused, glanced north toward the looming bulk of Mount Shasta, its summit lost in cloud.
“You boys be careful up there.”
“We will,” Briggs said.
Another pause.
Then the man spoke again in a low voice:
“Folks around here don’t go past the treeline after dark. Not for years. Things get quiet up there. Too quiet. Compasses spin. Radios die. People lose their sense of direction. Lost a hunter two winters back. Found him sitting on a rock, staring at nothing. Never said what happened.”
Briggs thanked him, paid, and climbed back into the jeep. But as they drove on, he noticed Carter writing rapidly in his journal.
2. The First Night on the Mountain
The access road ended at a faded Forest Service gate marked RESTRICTED AREA. Tate cut the chain with bolt cutters, and they drove another mile until the undergrowth grew too dense. They pitched camp in a small clearing as night settled fully over the mountain.
The silence struck Briggs immediately.
No wind.
No insects.
No birds.
Just cold.
When he switched on the portable field radio, he heard only static, soft and steady like distant water running over stones.
“Signals weak here,” he muttered.
Tate nodded. “Always is near Shasta. Something about the geology. Volcanic substrates. Iron deposits. Rock’s strange.”
But Briggs wasn’t convinced geology explained the pressure building behind his ears. A weight like the air itself was compressing.
Carter sat near the fire, journal on his knee, scribbling by firelight. His face was pale and thoughtful.
“You feel that?” Tate whispered as they settled into the tent.
“Altitude,” Briggs said.
But Tate only shook his head.
“The air’s… listening.”
The pressure behind Briggs’s ears pulsed once, sharply, like the mountain had inhaled.
Sleep came badly.
3. The Climb to the Relay Station
They set out at dawn, the sky washed in dull metallic gray.
Pine needles muffled their footsteps. The forest fell away behind them with surprising silence, like even the trees were holding their breath.
An hour into the climb, Briggs checked his compass. The needle swung left, then right, then wavered between bearings.
Tate checked his. Same problem.
“Magnetic interference,” Tate concluded. “Iron in the rock. Could throw things off.”
But neither man liked the way the needles oscillated—as if reacting not to metal deposits but to something shifting beneath the surface.
Above the treeline, the relay station came into view: a small corrugated-steel shack perched on a rocky shelf. The antenna tower leaned crookedly—more damaged than the briefing suggested.
The wind died as soon as they reached the station. The silence returned, thick and unnatural.
Carter stared into the valley below for a long moment before whispering, “I don’t see anything.”
The valley was plainly visible. Trees. Ridges. Distance. But he said it like he was looking at a painted backdrop.
Briggs filed that away and ordered them to work.
4. The Station — Repairs and Static
Tate climbed the bent antenna tower. Briggs replaced batteries. Carter rewired damaged cabling.
By late afternoon, the technical repairs were complete.
Briggs powered up the transmitter.
Static.
He adjusted frequency.
More static—this time deeper, almost rhythmic.
He keyed the microphone.
“Fort Lewis, this is Relay Six. Radio check. Over.”
Static.
Then, faintly:
Three short pulses. Pause. One long pulse.
Tate stiffened.
“Morse code. Letter V.”
Briggs frowned.
“It’s interference. Maybe atmospheric refraction.”
“From where?” Tate asked.
Briggs had no answer.
They set camp beside the station as night fell. They ate while the mountain pressed down around them, darkness swallowing the ridge above.
Carter wrote again. When Briggs asked what he was writing, Carter said simply:
“The quiet. It’s louder than it should be.”
Later, sitting around the dimming fire, Tate murmured:
“I’ve been on a lot of mountains, Lieutenant. But this one… feels like it’s waiting.”
The pressure in Briggs’s ears deepened. He couldn’t shake the sense that the mountain was not merely an environment—but a presence.
5. The First Night at the Station — The Hum
At dawn, Briggs woke to silence.
Total silence.
No breathing beside him.
No wind rattling the tent.
No movement.
Just an immense quiet that felt like it had weight.
Then he heard it.
A deep vibration—a hum—almost below hearing range. It resonated inside his skull, behind his eyes, in his bones.
Tate whispered, “You hear it?”
“Yes.”
Carter sat up slowly. His eyes were red. “All night.”
The hum deepened as they stepped outside the tent. The world looked frozen. No movement in the trees below. No sound from the air.
The hum didn’t come from outside.
It came from inside.
Tate listened carefully, hand over his chest.
“Infrasound. Below audible range. You don’t hear it—you feel it.”
“From inside the mountain?” Briggs asked.
Tate nodded toward the ridge.
“Somewhere up there.”
They tried the radio again. Static. Then, faintly, the pattern again—three short pulses, one long. V.
Then something like a distorted voice—just one stretched, warped syllable.
A sound that made the hair rise on Briggs’s arms.
6. Carter’s Journal — “Come. Stay. Listen.”
The hum continued all day, vibrating through rock and bone. Work felt impossible. By afternoon, even Tate looked drained.
Carter kept glancing toward the ridge. His hands shook.
“What are you hearing?” Briggs asked.
Carter didn’t answer. He wrote faster.
Briggs finally took the journal.
Inside, repeated in tight cramped script:
Come stay. Listen.
Come stay. Listen.
Come stay. Listen.
Briggs snapped the journal shut.
“That’s the hum, Carter. Infrasound affects cognition. It’s just brain distortion.”
Carter stared at him with hollow eyes.
“I don’t think it’s just sound, sir.”
7. 0300 Hours — The Disappearance
That night, none of them slept. The hum grew louder. Pressing. Vibrating. Filling the space between thoughts.
Then, at precisely 0300 hours, the hum stopped.
The sudden absence of it felt worse—like the air had been sucked out of the world.
Briggs sat up.
Tate whispered, “Where’s Carter?”
Carter’s sleeping bag was empty.
They rushed outside. Their flashlights swept across the rocky shelf.
Then a voice carried faintly from higher on the ridge:
“Help!”
It was Carter.
They climbed fast, boots slipping on loose stone. The beam of Briggs’s flashlight found Carter standing on a narrow ledge, facing the rock wall. His arms hung limp at his sides. His eyes stared into nothing.
“Carter,” Briggs said, “turn around.”
Slowly, Carter turned. His pupils looked blown wide. A sleepwalker.
He lifted a trembling hand and pointed to a crack in the stone—a narrow fissure almost invisible in the dark.
“It’s coming from there,” he whispered.
“They’re inside.”
“Who?” Briggs asked.
“The ones who stayed.”
A cold pulse moved through Briggs’s chest. He grabbed Carter and pulled him away.
They guided him down the slope, one man on each side, as he moved with the docility of someone under a spell.
8. The Descent and the Blue Light
At dawn, Carter was lucid enough to hike, though silent. They began the descent.
The moment they crossed back into the forest, the pressure in Briggs’s chest lifted. Birds called from branches overhead—the first natural sounds they’d heard in nearly thirty-six hours.
Carter leaned against a tree, breathing hard.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he whispered. “For what I said.”
“You were exhausted. You weren’t yourself.”
Carter hesitated.
“But did you see it?”
“See what?”
“The light inside the crack,” he said softly. “Blue light.”
Neither Briggs nor Tate had seen any light.
“There was no light,” Briggs said gently.
Carter only nodded, though it was clear he didn’t believe him.
They reached the jeep by afternoon. The town of Weed looked deserted. On the drive north, the hum still echoed faintly in Briggs’s ears.
Back at Fort Lewis, Briggs filed a simple, sanitized report.
He did not mention the crack.
He did not mention the hum.
He did not mention the words in Carter’s journal.
That night, he dreamed of a mountain holding its breath.
THE MOUNTAIN Briggs returned to routine duty at Fort Lewis, but the mountain refused to leave him. Even in the comfort of the barracks, the hum lingered—a faint internal vibration, like a muscle twitch behind the eardrum. Carter avoided both him and Tate, spending long stretches alone, silent, staring at walls as though listening to something beyond them. Three days after filing his report, Briggs was summoned to a restricted wing of the communications building. Major Stanford, a rigid man with gray hair cut to regulation perfection, met him with a sealed envelope. No greetings. No preamble. “Lieutenant, you failed to include relevant anomalies in your report.” Briggs stiffened. “Sir, the mission was routine. No anomalies to declare.” “Then explain this.” The Major pushed a tape recorder forward. Briggs recognized the frequency label: Relay Six—Mount Shasta. The tape hissed before a sound emerged—a low, pulsing vibration. The hum. Briggs felt his stomach tighten. The Major replayed a section where the hum shifted in tone, rising and falling like breath. Under it, faint rhythmic pulses formed patterns—not random static, but sequences. “Three short, one long,” Stanford said. “Repeating. We’ve isolated it across three recordings.” Briggs swallowed. “Interference. Geological resonance.” “Lieutenant,” Stanford said with forced patience, “geological interference does not produce structured repeating signals.”
He clicked the recorder again. Another section played. This time a warped voice scraped beneath the hum—drawn out, dissonant, almost human. Briggs’s blood chilled. The voice did not form words, only a stretched vowel, bending unnaturally, like something imitating human speech without understanding it. “This was recorded forty-eight hours after your team evacuated,” Stanford said. “No personnel were present at the relay station.” Briggs forced himself to steady his breathing. “What do you want from me, sir?” “Your assessment.” Briggs kept his voice measured. “Atmospheric changes can—” “Lieutenant.” The Major’s tone sharpened. “Something transmitted from inside that mountain. Something that responded to our equipment. We need to know what you heard up there.” Briggs hesitated. A lie would be simple. Yet the memory pressed on him like a stone. “There was a hum, sir. Below audible range. We felt it. Carter claimed… he claimed he heard words.” “Words?” “He was exhausted,” Briggs said quickly. “Infrasound affects cognition. Causes hallucinations.” Stanford’s expression didn’t change.
“Carter has been placed under observation. He hasn’t spoken since yesterday. Just writes in that little journal.” Briggs said nothing. The Major slid a second file across the table. “Another team is being deployed.” Briggs stiffened. “Why?” “Because your report was incomplete.” Briggs opened the file. Three names stared up at him: NOVAK, HENRY — SGT. MORRIS, PAUL — CPL. LEWIS, RONALD — PVT. A three-man team. Like his. Briggs looked up. “You’re sending them back to the same site?” “Correct. They leave in six hours. This time, they go with updated seismic monitors and high-frequency equipment. They will remain seventy-two hours, same as you.” “Sir,” Briggs said, “with respect—something is wrong on that mountain.” “Exactly why they’re being sent.” “Then let me join them. I know the terrain. I know what we experienced. I can keep them alive.” Stanford shook his head. “This is not your mission anymore.” Briggs felt heat rising in his chest. “Sir—” “Dismissed, Lieutenant.” Briggs saluted and left, feeling the door close behind him like a gate. That night, he couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the crack in the rock, narrow and black, like a mouth trying to open. The hum echoed faintly in his skull, pulsing in perfect rhythm: three short, one long. ——— Novak’s team left at dawn. Briggs watched from the motor pool as the jeep rolled out—a sickening sense of déjà vu hollowing his chest. Tate stood beside him, arms crossed. “You should’ve told them the truth,” Tate said quietly. Briggs exhaled sharply. “Everything I said was already too much.” Tate didn’t look at him. “I saw something up there.” Briggs’s breath caught. Tate never volunteered information. Ever. “What did you see?” Tate hesitated long enough that Briggs understood: this was something he had buried. “When Carter went missing, up there on the ridge… I saw light. Blue light. Just for a moment. Thought it was my eyes playing tricks.” Briggs felt cold creep up his spine. “Carter said he saw the same.” “Yeah,” Tate murmured. “I know.” For a long moment, they stood in silence. Then Tate added, “Briggs… what if something’s moving under that mountain?” Briggs didn’t answer. He couldn’t. ——— Forty-two hours later, the first transmission came in. Briggs wasn’t authorized to hear it, but authorization mattered little when every comms officer on the base was whispering about the recordings. Tate knew someone in Signal Analysis. He passed Briggs a copy on a reel-to-reel tape, face pale. “You need to hear this.” Briggs took the tape to an empty storeroom. The recorder clicked. A hiss. Then Novak’s voice, distorted by static: “—station repaired. Readings unstable. Soil temperature fluctuating—don’t know why—equipment registering movement under—” The hum rose suddenly, drowning his voice. Not the steady pulse Briggs remembered. This one shifted, layered with harmonic overtones. Then a second voice appeared—Lewis, panicked, breathing hard: “Sergeant, the ground—something’s under—” The transmission cut to static. Briggs slumped against the wall. Something shifted beneath the mountain. Something alive. The second transmission came six hours later. This time there was no human voice—only the hum, louder than before.
But woven into it, faintly, Briggs heard whispers. Not English. Not any language he recognized. Something moving inside the sound itself, shaping it. The whispers seemed to say—or mimic—the syllable Carter had uttered in the tent. Something like: “Stay.” Briggs felt sick. ——— The final transmission came at dawn. A high-frequency screech, followed by a deep rumble. Novak’s voice appeared, broken and distant: “—don’t come up—don’t come—” Something slammed against metal. A howl tore through the static—not an animal, not human, but a raw, grinding roar of pressure and vibration, like the mountain itself bellowing. Then silence. Total. Absolute. Briggs sat frozen long after the tape ended. ——— Novak’s team was declared missing by noon. A search party was deployed and returned within a day, shaken and empty-handed. “There was nothing,” one of the rangers told Briggs quietly. “No equipment. No gear. Just a shallow depression in the soil—like the ground… sagged.” “Sagged how?” Briggs asked. The ranger hesitated. “Like something pushed up from underneath, then went back down.” Briggs felt the hum again, deeper, angrier, pulsing through the memory of that ridge. He went to find Carter. The observation wing was dim, quiet, lined with locked doors. A nurse led him to a small room.
Carter sat in the corner, knees pulled to his chest, journal open in his lap. He didn’t look up when Briggs entered. “Carter,” Briggs said softly. “I need to ask you something.” Carter’s pencil moved slowly across paper. Briggs knelt. “What did you hear on the mountain?” Carter stopped writing. He lifted the journal with trembling hands. Briggs took it and opened to the newest page. Six words repeated over and over, squeezed into the margin as though written in darkness: “They want us to come back.” Briggs closed the journal. “What wants us to come back?” Carter whispered without looking up: “The ones who stayed.” “Who are they?” Carter’s voice cracked. “The mountain remembers them.” A tremor passed through Briggs, cold and deep. On his way out, the nurse asked softly, “Did he tell you anything?” Briggs shook his head. He could not speak. That night, he opened his own journal for the first time in years and wrote a single line: “What if the mountain is not silent, but waiting?”
