In the hill towns near Taiwan’s central ranges, people still speak of Taiwan Forest Whispers after sunset. Not all mountains. Only a few. The older ones. The trails that existed before painted markers and wooden signs—before anyone tried to explain what the forest was.
They speak carefully.
They avoid detail.
They never linger once the warning is given.
When asked why, voices lower. Eyes drift toward the trees. Someone repeats the same line passed down for years:
The forest remembers those who listen too closely.
I used to think that was superstition.
Now I understand it was instruction.
Years later, I returned to those highland paths as part of a volunteer survey, mapping footpaths before development erased them. I told myself I was preserving history.
Routine makes old warnings feel small.
That belief followed me into the forest the evening everything changed.
The Trail That Answers Back
The path looked ordinary. I had walked it enough times to stop studying it. Daniel—my closest friend since university, the one who never believed in ghosts—nudged my shoulder when I paused at the tree line.
“Still afraid of bedtime stories?” he said.
We went in anyway.
The canopy thickened sooner than I expected. Light narrowed into thin, shaking threads. The air pressed against my ears.
I heard footsteps behind us.
When I turned, no one was there.
The sound stayed—steady, measured—matching my pace as if it had practiced.
Daniel laughed once, too quickly. “You hear that too, right?”
Then the whispering began.
Not words. Just breath moving through leaves. I told myself it was wind. The air went still. The whispering did not.
We turned back.
The trail split into three.
There had only ever been one.
Each path looked worn. Used. Waiting.
“This wasn’t here,” Daniel said.
A voice spoke my name.
Clear. Familiar. Close enough to feel warm.
I almost answered.
My tongue pressed hard against my teeth.
Behind me, Daniel did respond.
The silence came down like a lid.
The trees creaked—not from wind, but from weight shifting inward, as if something leaned closer to listen.
That was when we ran.
Those Who Follow the Voices
We did not choose a direction. We fled.
The soil swelled under my boots. Branches brushed too deliberately against our shoulders. The forest darkened too quickly, like a room where someone had closed the door without sound.
I looked back once.
Near one of the abandoned paths stood a figure shaped almost like a person, only taller than it should have been. Its joints folded where they shouldn’t. Its face shifted like fog caught between branches, never settling long enough to become someone I knew.
It did not chase us.
It moved alongside the path we refused.
Every few steps, it whispered a name.
Not mine.
Not the same one twice.
Each name belonged to someone running.
Thinner paths peeled away from the main trail—softer, easier underfoot. Each angled gently toward the figure.
Toward relief.
Daniel’s steps slowed behind me.
“Do you hear it calling?” he asked.
I did.
I kept moving.
“Maybe it’s just—”
His voice stopped.
There was no sound of him falling. No cry. No struggle.
Only a long breath moving through the trees, as if something had finally been acknowledged.
I did not turn around.
What the Forest Leaves Behind
We stumbled onto a service road long after dark. I expected Daniel to burst from the trees behind me, cursing the joke for going too far.
The tree line remained still.
We counted twice.
He was missing.
Search teams combed the area the next morning. No broken branches. No footprints leading away.
I told no one that I returned alone at dawn.
The three paths were gone.
Only one narrow trail remained—one I did not recognize. It led to a clearing where a moss-covered stone marker stood at the center.
No name was carved into it.
Offerings rested at its base.
Still damp.
I did not step closer.
The elders told officials to leave the marker untouched. They did.
Some things are not placed for the living.
What Still Waits
I do not hike after sunset anymore.
I avoid old paths that feel too kind beneath my feet. I distrust trails that open too easily.
Sometimes, just before dawn, I wake with Daniel’s name caught behind my teeth.
I never let it out.
He answered because I stayed silent.
That balance does not disappear.
It lingers.
There are days when I feel watched from the edge of tree lines, even in places far from those mountains. Silence gathers as if listening for something unfinished.
Perhaps the thing that walked beside us did not lose interest when I left.
Perhaps it learned my shape and chose to wait.
Some forests do not chase.
They do not need to.
They simply listen—
until you speak.