"My Friends and I Found a Secret Sidewalk" by Banjofitzgerald | CLANCYPASTA

[00:00:01] Hollywood loves remakes. That's because Hollywood itself is a remake. Close your eyes and imagine a silent film. I bet you're seeing Charlie Chaplin in all of his black and white greatness. But what you might not realize is this movie you're picturing doesn't take place in Los Angeles. It's actually 350 miles north in Niles Canyon, America's first Hollywood.

[00:00:30] Niles is nestled between the base of sprawling foothills and sits at the outside edge of the San Francisco Bay's marine layer. It's a quaint little neighborhood, one that remained frozen in the era of its former glory. A classic Americana Main Street serves as an anchor to craftsmen and Victorian-style homes.

[00:00:49] At the end of Niles Boulevard is the Silent Film Museum honoring the area's historic past life. And in the hillside that overlooks the retired train station, you'll see big white letters reading,

[00:01:03] Niles, in the same style Hollywood made iconic.

[00:01:08] Niles has always been connected with something darker, though. For how small the area is, there has been a surprisingly high amount of death, mostly due to the winding one-way lane roads that run through the steep hills.

[00:01:23] Niles. Naturally, this has spawned a lot of urban legends. Like the one about a girl who walks the canyon road at night asking for a ride back home to San Francisco, only to disappear before getting there.

[00:01:37] Or the tales about the woods, and the stories about mysterious societies that meet under midnight's obscurity. Hell, there's even sightings of Charlie Chaplin's ghost. This is my personal favorite, because witnesses always claim to see him in grayscale and moving at 16 frames per second.

[00:02:00] I think every town that is old enough has this kind of lore. Where I figure Niles is a bit different, though, is that it is home to the Secret Sidewalk.

[00:02:13] Deep in the foothills is what is known as the Secret Sidewalk, a long and mysterious stretch of cement that slithers through the hills for miles.

[00:02:24] It's hard to get to, and it's one of those kind of places that's passed down from one generation of young people to the next.

[00:02:32] A place that you hear your friend's older brother bragging about for years, before they get too old for it and finally shows you how to get to it.

[00:02:40] Some of my favorite memories were the days my friends and I would ditch 6th period, fill a backpack with beer, and spend all day wandering the sidewalk.

[00:02:51] What the quote-unquote sidewalk actually is, is an aqueduct that used to carry water from the bay to local reservoirs.

[00:03:01] Long dried up and out of service, it now rests covered in graffiti with multiple openings pried ajar,

[00:03:08] turning the square cement structure into hollow tunnels for urban explorers or anyone brave enough to go in.

[00:03:15] I can't lie, there actually is a pretty weird feeling when you walk the sidewalk.

[00:03:22] An adrenaline boost.

[00:03:23] I don't know if it's the fact that you're legally not supposed to be there,

[00:03:28] or the suspended train track bridge you have to cross to get to it,

[00:03:31] or the silent absence of everyday bustle.

[00:03:35] But the feeling of vulnerability is palpable and hangs in the air.

[00:03:40] If you go at the right time of year, fog spills down the hill crevices like fingers reaching out for the lower canyon,

[00:03:48] adding to the eeriness of it.

[00:03:51] Earlier I said that it's what is known as the secret sidewalk.

[00:03:56] That's because it's not the real one.

[00:03:59] I know this because my friends and I regrettably found the real one a few years ago.

[00:04:07] The guys and I were far removed from our teenage youth,

[00:04:11] and to be honest, at this point, we were too old to still be going there.

[00:04:15] But we were all together and feeling nostalgic.

[00:04:19] So, we decided to go.

[00:04:21] We were about an hour or so into the hike,

[00:04:25] and, disappointingly, nothing too memorable was happening.

[00:04:28] The sidewalk was still there, as it always was,

[00:04:32] but now it was without our names adorning the sides of it in bright, obnoxious, bad spray-painted fonts.

[00:04:40] Our names, now entombed under the brighter, more obnoxiously bad,

[00:04:46] spray-painted fonts of Generation Alpha and Z before them.

[00:04:51] The initial rush of adrenaline had worn off,

[00:04:55] and I forget who finally said it, but we all agreed to call it and head back.

[00:04:59] I think it was less boredom,

[00:05:01] and more so that we felt a little embarrassed at how immature it all was.

[00:05:06] I mean, we were closer in age to being the people who say,

[00:05:09] aren't you a little old to be trick-or-treating,

[00:05:11] than the people who were a little old to be trick-or-treating.

[00:05:15] So, in a collective moment of clarity,

[00:05:18] we realized that we shouldn't have been doing what we were doing.

[00:05:22] My friend had to piss before we left,

[00:05:25] which didn't help our immaturity-rooted insecurities,

[00:05:28] but he went off to the side to handle his business regardless.

[00:05:33] We had explored the secret sidewalk at least a hundred times,

[00:05:38] and felt pretty comfortable knowing our way around.

[00:05:41] I say this because my friend came back and said he saw something that he had never seen there before.

[00:05:48] Being the aforementioned stupid men that we were,

[00:05:52] we couldn't resist checking it out.

[00:05:56] Through the shrubbery, you could see what looked like a sidewalk on the other side.

[00:06:00] A real sidewalk, not an aqueduct.

[00:06:04] Overgrown and beaten, sure,

[00:06:06] but there was definitely cobble-looking stones joined together forming a walkway.

[00:06:11] We joked and named it the Super Duper Secret Sidewalk.

[00:06:16] We decided that we didn't invest years of our life exploring here to not see where it led to.

[00:06:23] We pushed the branches aside and started to walk it,

[00:06:27] walking on this man-made structure in the middle of the wilderness.

[00:06:30] Felt unnatural.

[00:06:33] But the fact that it wasn't destroyed by asshole kids made it feel unexplored by anyone else.

[00:06:40] That excited us.

[00:06:42] We all were kind of giddy at the thought of actually discovering something.

[00:06:47] Usually, all you found out there was crushed natty ice cans and the occasional unwrapped condom.

[00:06:53] This was a best-case scenario to us,

[00:06:57] because it was new and also not an unwrapped condom.

[00:07:02] Every now and then, we'd actually see signs that we weren't the first to walk this path.

[00:07:07] An occasional sweater or a beanie,

[00:07:10] and even a single shoe could be found laying off to the side of the sidewalk.

[00:07:15] At first, I weirdly found comfort in the discarded clothes.

[00:07:20] It made me feel less alone that someone had done this before, if that makes sense.

[00:07:25] Like trail markers reminding you that what's ahead has been formerly walked.

[00:07:30] But the further we got, the more that feeling changed.

[00:07:35] I didn't clock it at first because of how smoothed down they were,

[00:07:40] but what I originally thought was cobblestone didn't actually seem to be.

[00:07:45] It was subtle, but every now and then, I'd catch it.

[00:07:49] Etched in stone were letters and numbers.

[00:07:55] They were hard to see because the stones were laid out in mosaic fashion.

[00:07:58] If you just looked at one piece, you would assume they were just scratches.

[00:08:03] But when you looked at multiple, it became clearer.

[00:08:07] We were walking on a path made of shattered headstones.

[00:08:13] At this point, I noticed that we were growing increasingly irritable.

[00:08:18] At first, I thought some of us were just tired or hungry,

[00:08:22] but it got to the point that it was what I would call irrational.

[00:08:28] Everything seemed heightened and annoying.

[00:08:31] I actually ended up snapping at one of my friends for dragging their feet and kicking up too much dust.

[00:08:37] That kind of thing never bugs me.

[00:08:40] But for some reason, it did in that moment, and I couldn't help it.

[00:08:45] I wasn't the only one either.

[00:08:48] Simple bickering turned into heated arguments and deep cuts.

[00:08:52] Our innocent day of nostalgia had become a chore to get through.

[00:08:56] In retrospect, it's strange because we were clearly not feeling right,

[00:09:02] but not once did we talk about turning around and leaving like we planned to previously.

[00:09:09] Something was luring us deeper.

[00:09:13] Finally, we rounded a bend that ended up revealing the last bit of sidewalk,

[00:09:19] just faded away into a big empty field.

[00:09:22] It felt incredibly anticlimactic.

[00:09:26] You know the reaction some people have when a movie cuts to black and doesn't stick the landing?

[00:09:32] The, that's it, kind of feeling?

[00:09:35] That's how we felt.

[00:09:36] I think one of us might have even said that out loud.

[00:09:40] We walked who knows how far, and all we got was a lousy field to show for it.

[00:09:46] The hills surrounded the field almost like a cove or a cul-de-sac.

[00:09:52] Crunchy yellow grass carpeted the ground.

[00:09:55] In the middle was one giant, lifeless tree,

[00:09:59] which was weird because it was late spring after a really good rainy season.

[00:10:03] But this tree only wore rigid and empty branches.

[00:10:09] Once we shook the initial feeling of disappointment,

[00:10:13] we noticed what looked like pieces of old wood strewn about.

[00:10:17] Not like fallen branches, but more so resembling posts or panels.

[00:10:24] We felt obligated at this point to investigate it.

[00:10:28] As soon as we stepped off the path, the air changed.

[00:10:33] Almost a subtle pressurized feeling.

[00:10:36] The wood was clearly from some sort of shelter structure.

[00:10:41] I couldn't tell if it was enough to be a house or a hut,

[00:10:44] but it looked extremely weathered and almost half of the pieces were charred.

[00:10:49] My friends were trying to puzzle the wood back together,

[00:10:53] but I couldn't look away from the tree.

[00:10:55] One branch in particular.

[00:10:58] I can't explain why I was drawn to it.

[00:11:02] I was standing right under it and almost transfixed.

[00:11:06] The harder I looked, the more I could hear a sound coming from it.

[00:11:11] Which didn't make sense because it wasn't a windy day.

[00:11:15] The tree wasn't visibly moving, but I could 100% hear a sound.

[00:11:21] Like a back and forth type of sound.

[00:11:24] Like a swaying that was speaking to me.

[00:11:29] A minute or an hour could have passed and I wouldn't have known.

[00:11:35] I lost track.

[00:11:36] I was so locked onto the tree that I hadn't even noticed my friends heading back to the trail.

[00:11:44] I don't know if I ever would have noticed.

[00:11:47] If not for their voices calling my name.

[00:11:51] When I looked at them, I saw each one of their faces slowly morph into a confused worry.

[00:11:59] They weren't looking at me, but around me.

[00:12:04] Like when you're talking to someone and they're looking just above your eye or something.

[00:12:10] It didn't seem like any of them were looking at the same thing either.

[00:12:15] I followed eyelines and couldn't figure out what they were looking at.

[00:12:20] There wasn't anything there.

[00:12:24] I rejoined the group and no one said a word.

[00:12:29] I asked what they were looking at and I couldn't get a straight answer from anyone.

[00:12:34] It was all, I don't knows, and nothing.

[00:12:39] I don't think anyone wanted to sound like the crazy one.

[00:12:43] So, like every other expedition we had ever completed,

[00:12:47] we just left, very unceremoniously.

[00:12:51] Just headed back to our everyday lives like nothing happened.

[00:12:57] Before getting too far, I felt the sudden urge to sneak one last peek at the field.

[00:13:04] I can't say for sure what it was, but I know that I saw something.

[00:13:11] I think we all did in our own way.

[00:13:13] To me, it looked like a fuzzy black shadow with two piercing, reflective, eye-like dots.

[00:13:22] Like three-dimensional shaped TV static or a dark smudge on a pair of glasses.

[00:13:28] Almost like a translucent Rorschach test.

[00:13:32] You could probably draw any conclusion that you wanted to as to what you were seeing.

[00:13:37] I still haven't quite figured it out.

[00:13:41] What I do know is that something was under that tree when I looked back.

[00:13:48] I know that much.

[00:13:50] I don't know exactly what it was, but I don't believe that it was of this world.

[00:13:57] Before the silent film era took over Niles, the land was home to Spanish missionaries and the Olon tribe.

[00:14:06] So who knows what kind of unfortunate entities are blood-bound to those hills.

[00:14:14] My friends and I never really talked about that day ever again.

[00:14:19] I tried, but it was like pulling teeth.

[00:14:23] Every now and then I'd get a crumb of what someone saw or a retelling of what a friend told another friend they saw.

[00:14:32] Oddly, it didn't seem like any of us had the same experience.

[00:14:37] No one else saw the single figure under the tree like I did.

[00:14:41] Some even said they saw multiple silhouettes.

[00:14:45] Two big ones off to the side or a big one and a couple of small ones linked together or groups of them clashing.

[00:14:53] None of it made sense to me.

[00:14:57] How could we all share a completely different experience of the same thing?

[00:15:04] I should have known something was wrong though, because we are a reminiscing kind of group.

[00:15:10] We never hesitated to tell a story we've told or heard a thousand times.

[00:15:15] But a hidden sidewalk and strange figures in a field didn't warrant at least a couple million retellings?

[00:15:24] It never sat right with me.

[00:15:27] Our friendships weren't the same afterward.

[00:15:30] Slowly, we stopped hanging out as much and talked even less.

[00:15:35] No one ever tried to give a reason as to why either.

[00:15:39] We just accepted it as the way life moves.

[00:15:42] Friends got married, started families, chased careers, and had less and less time for each other or until our friendships dwindled.

[00:15:52] One by one, my friends started to move away.

[00:15:57] One to Texas, another to Minnesota, one went to Idaho, and one even landed in Hollywood.

[00:16:05] I believe the field pulled us there.

[00:16:10] Some days, I could feel it pulling me back.

[00:16:14] I'm sure they felt it too.

[00:16:17] I wouldn't know because they never talked to me about it.

[00:16:21] When they started moving away, it always seemed like they were trying to get as far away from it as they could.

[00:16:28] Like they were trying to escape something.

[00:16:32] I didn't.

[00:16:34] I'm still here.

[00:16:36] And most days when I'm feeling lonely and miss my best friends, I try to replay my favorite memories of them in my head.

[00:16:45] But now, when I do, I don't hear my friends anymore.

[00:16:50] All I'm able to hear is the slow, back and forth creaking of that tree branch.