Shadows In The Pines

Mini Pines - The Man Who Carried His Own Key

The Man Who Carried His Own Key You hike eleven miles on snowshoes to a locked Forest Service cabin. You have the only key. And the stove is warm. For thirteen years in the 1930s and ’40s, someone lived off the locked backcountry cabins of north-central Idaho, letting himself in and out without ever breaking a thing. The men who worked that country had a nickname for him before they ever had a face. They called him the Ridgerunner. In this episode of Shadows in the Pines, Dan and Bekah head into the Idaho backcountry to uncover who the Ridgerunner actually was, how he managed to open seemingly every lock in two national forests with a strip of metal cut from a meat can, and what Forest Service workers discovered beneath a sheet of canvas on a ridge above Skull Creek in February 1945. For years, his story became the stuff of wilderness legend. But the real story is stranger, darker, and far more human than the legend that survived him. Some legends are made from what a man did. This one is made from what he was running from. Shadows in the Pines New episodes every Sunday at 8 PM Pacific.

Bryan Kohberger Update

Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty to the murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. But that plea ended the case before a jury ever heard the evidence, before experts were cross-examined, and before some of the biggest unanswered questions surrounding 1122 King Road were tested in open court. Now, with Kohberger attempting to withdraw his guilty plea, those questions matter again. In this episode of Shadows in the Pines, Dan takes another look at the evidence and the parts of this case that still don’t sit right: the handling of the knife sheath, the identification of the white sedan, the complete absence of identified victim DNA from Kohberger’s Elantra, the late-night Moscow trips, unidentified DNA, conflicting accounts from inside the house, the seven-and-a-half-hour delay before 911 was called, and the destruction of 1122 King Road before any trial took place. This isn’t an argument that Kohberger is innocent, and it isn’t about blaming anyone for surviving. It’s about asking questions that never received complete answers. Four young people were murdered. Their families deserve to know exactly what happened.

Mini Pines - The Hahn House

The House Made of the Hill: The Wilbur-Hahn House At the end of a dead-end road on Spokane’s South Hill sits a century-old house built directly into the basalt beneath it. It’s beautiful, historically significant, privately owned—and by local reputation, one of the most haunted houses in Spokane. But the documented history of the Wilbur-Hahn House is stranger than most of the legends. Built in 1916 as an elaborate “love cottage,” the house passed from mining wealth and a marriage that lasted barely two years into the hands of Rudolph Hahn, the man newspapers would eventually call the “Mad Doctor of the South Hill.” His years there brought enormous parties, illegal liquor, radio towers, Jimmy Doolittle performing aerial stunts overhead, gunfire inside the house, the death of his wife Sylvia, a manslaughter conviction, and eventually Hahn’s own violent death. Then the house sat vacant for years, and Spokane supplied the rest: a woman seen on the staircase, screams from the basement, slamming doors, arguing voices, shadow figures, disappearing bloodstains, secret tunnels and stories of money hidden somewhere on the property. Some of those claims have roots in documented history. Others fall apart once you look closely. This episode separates the history from the haunting and the people who actually lived and died there from the legends that grew around them. The House Made of the Hill: The Wilbur-Hahn House.

Kit Mora - Missing In Omak

Finding Kit: Missing in Omak In the summer of 2021, sixteen-year-old Kit Mora left Yakima for what was supposed to be a temporary stay with their biological mother in Omak, Washington. By November, their closest friends and family had stopped hearing from them. Kit stopped posting online. They stopped attending school. And yet months would pass before anyone realized this teenager had seemingly disappeared. In this episode of Shadows in the Pines, we follow Kit’s story from the people who knew and loved them through a welfare check that left serious questions, 33 unexcused school absences, a runaway classification, and an investigation that didn’t fully begin until more than a year after Kit’s last known communication with the people closest to them. Kit is Indigenous and nonbinary, and their disappearance also brings us into the larger crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People and the gaps that can exist between schools, child welfare, local police, tribal authorities, state agencies and federal investigators. Kit Mora is still missing. If you know anything about Kit’s disappearance, contact the Omak Police Department at 509-826-0383, the Washington Attorney General’s Office MMIP Cold Case Unit at 844-770-7900, or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678. Finding Kit: Missing in Omak — Shadows in the Pines.

Mini Pines - Bridge Of the Gods

The Bridge of the Gods There was a bridge across the Columbia River. Not the steel one at Cascade Locks with the toll booth and the hikers walking single file — the first one. Stone and dirt and the broken bones of a mountain, wide enough to walk across, with the river running underneath it in the dark. For a long time, the people who told you about it were not believed. This is the story of a tired man in a canoe who wrote down the answer in 1805 and didn’t know it. A young novelist who heard the story from Klickitat elders, believed it when nobody respectable would, and died at twenty-nine without ever learning he was right. A botanist and his wife who spent the winters of the Great Depression counting dead trees in the freezing shallows of the Columbia, racing a dam that was about to drown the evidence forever. And the tree rings that finally answered the question — not to the century, not to the decade, but to a single season. It’s also the story of a girl named Kalliah, who was a year and a half old when the Army hanged her father, and who refused for the rest of her life to leave the river. The mountain came down in the winter of 1446. The story survived four hundred years to tell us so. Lamplight on the Trail — folklore, landmarks, and lost history of the Pacific Northwest.

The Murder Of Mandy Stavik

The day after Thanksgiving in 1989, 18-year-old Mandy Stavik left her family’s home in the small community of Acme, Washington, for an afternoon run along the roads she’d known her entire life. She never came home. What followed was one of the Pacific Northwest’s most haunting unsolved murders. Despite an extensive investigation, a massive search effort, and crucial biological evidence, detectives spent nearly three decades without knowing who had taken Mandy’s life. Then an ordinary conversation between two women, a determined detective who refused to let the case die, and a discarded plastic cup changed everything. In this episode, we trace Mandy’s story from the quiet roads of Acme through one of Washington State’s longest-running homicide investigations, following every step that ultimately led to justice nearly thirty years later. Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of murder, sexual assault, and violence that may not be suitable for all listeners. If you enjoy the show, please follow Shadows in the Pines on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and consider leaving a five-star review. It genuinely helps more people discover the stories of victims who deserve to be remembered. New episodes premiere every Sunday at 8:00 PM Pacific. Keep your eyes open and your footsteps light… because in the pines, the truth never stays buried.

Mini Pines - Stick Indians

Don't Whistle Back: The Stick Indians of the Pacific Northwest There's a rule some people in this part of the country still follow: don't whistle at night. No explanation offered. Just — don't. Because something will hear you. This episode is about what's on the other end of that whistle. The Salish called them tsiatko. The Nisqually called them Seatco. In English they became the Stick Indians, or the Night People — though the older tradition holds that naming them at all is a way of drawing their attention. We trace what the historical record actually preserves, drawing on the work of Arthur C. Ballard, an Auburn city clerk who began sitting with Puget Sound elders in 1916 and writing down stories from people born before 1880. Beings who sleep by day and move at dusk. Who never cross water. Whose language is a series of whistles, low to high, carrying impossible distances through the trees. We walk through the rules the legends encode — don't go out alone after dark, don't disrespect them, don't say their name — and what those rules were quietly teaching about survival in the deep woods. We also look at the related traditions that get flattened into one another: Dzoonokwa, Slapu, Sasquatch. And we're honest about the modern cryptid layer that's grown up alongside the living tradition, and where one ends and the other begins. The forests here are old, and they are large. Take that seriously. Mini Pines explores the folklore, mysteries, and layered histories of the Pacific Northwest. New episodes wherever you listen.

The Lewis Clark Valley Murders - Part 3 - Lance Voss

The Lewis-Clark Valley murders remain one of the Pacific Northwest’s most haunting unsolved mysteries. Between 1979 and 1982, five people either disappeared or were murdered across southeastern Washington and north-central Idaho, leaving investigators to wonder whether they were hunting a single offender who operated undetected for years. In the conclusion of our series, we follow the investigation as detectives begin laying decades of evidence side by side, transforming what were once separate cases into a single, sprawling investigation. We examine why one man became the focus of so much investigative attention, why suspicion alone has never been enough to support criminal charges, and how advances in DNA testing and investigative genetic genealogy continue to keep hope alive for the families still searching for answers. We also look at where these cases stand today, the work of investigators and family members who refused to let them be forgotten, and the questions that remain unanswered nearly half a century later. If you have information about the disappearances of Christina White or Steven Pearsall, or the murders of Kristin David, Kristina Nelson, or Brandy Miller, please contact the appropriate law enforcement agency. Even the smallest detail can matter in a long-running investigation. New episodes of Shadows in the Pines premiere every Sunday at 8:00 p.m. Pacific. If you enjoy the show, please follow, rate, and review us wherever you listen—it helps more people discover these stories.

Mini Pines - Gumberoo of the Cedars

Deep in the cedar and spruce forests of the Oregon coast, where the fog comes in sideways and you can lose fifty feet of visibility in the time it takes to blink, the men who logged those slopes in the 1880s and 1890s had a story. It was called the Gumberoo. Coal-black, barrel-bodied, and completely indestructible — bullets bounced off its glossy hide, axes glanced away, even a charging elk got knocked backward by its own momentum. It would eat anything, couldn't be hurt by anything, and the only way out of an encounter was to lead it toward fire and hope you were standing far enough back when it went up. Tonight we're getting into the Fearsome Critters — the monsters of the American lumberwoods, born in bunkhouses, carried from camp to camp like gear — and specifically into what the Gumberoo was actually doing for the men who told stories about it. Because it wasn't just a campfire tale. It was a very specific kind of story, invented by people doing genuinely dangerous work in genuinely unforgiving country, about the one thing no amount of skill or strength could protect you from. Something that turns your own force back on you. That doesn't resist. That returns. Pull up a chair.

The Lewis- Clark Valley Murders Part 2

The Lewis-Clark Valley was already living with unanswered questions after the disappearance of Christina White and the murder of Kristin David. Then, in the span of just a few months, the investigation took a devastating turn. In Part Two of our deep dive into the Lewis-Clark Valley murders, we examine the disappearance of two-year-old Ricky Barnett, the vanishing of Kristina “Brandy” Miller and Kristina Nelson after a short walk to a neighborhood grocery store, and the mysterious disappearance of Civic Theatre volunteer Steven Pearsall later that very same night. As investigators struggle to make sense of an ever-growing list of missing people, unsettling similarities begin to emerge, raising a question that will haunt the Lewis-Clark Valley for decades: are these isolated tragedies, or are detectives witnessing a single investigation unfold before them? Join us as we continue following the evidence, the timeline, and the people forever changed by one of the Pacific Northwest’s most enduring unsolved mysteries. 🎙️ New episodes premiere every Sunday at 8:00 PM Pacific Time. Follow Shadows in the Pines on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you’re enjoying the show, leaving a rating and review is one of the best ways to help others discover us.

The Lewis-Clark Valley Murders Part 1

In April 1979, twelve-year-old Christina White left a friend’s house in Asotin, Washington, and never made it home. Two years later, University of Idaho student Kristin David disappeared while riding her bicycle between Moscow and Lewiston. Her murder would send shockwaves through the Lewis-Clark Valley and leave investigators asking whether these two cases were connected—or simply heartbreaking coincidences. In Part One of our deep dive into the Lewis-Clark Valley murders, we follow the investigation exactly as it unfolded. From the quiet communities that shaped these victims’ lives to the desperate searches, witness interviews, and mounting questions, this episode traces the first chapters of one of the Pacific Northwest’s most enduring unsolved mysteries. Join us as we separate fact from speculation, examine the documented evidence, and begin uncovering a case that has haunted families and investigators for more than four decades. New episodes premiere every Sunday at 8:00 PM Pacific Time. Follow Shadows in the Pines on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you’re enjoying the show, leaving a rating and review helps more listeners discover us. This episode discusses violence, murder, and crimes involving children. Listener discretion is advised.

Mini Pines - Bigfoot Of The Selkirks

The Selkirk Mountains are among the oldest and most remote wilderness areas in the Pacific Northwest—and for generations, they’ve been home to stories of something that walks upright through the trees. In this episode of Mini Pines, we explore documented Bigfoot encounters, Indigenous traditions, eyewitness accounts, mysterious tracks, and why the Selkirks have quietly become one of North America’s most active Sasquatch regions. From a hunter’s unforgettable encounter near Sasquatch Lake to modern reports from the Idaho Panhandle, we separate documented history from legend and ask why these mountains continue to produce the same stories decade after decade. Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, the Selkirks are a place that has a way of making you look twice into the tree line. Follow Shadows in the Pines on Spotify and visit ShadowsInThePines.com for more stories from the Pacific Northwest.

Show Announcement

Mini Pines - The Witches Of Rathdrum

The Witches of Rathdrum | Mini Pines For decades, people across North Idaho whispered about a lonely stretch of Highway 41 where hooded figures formed human chains across the road, bonfires flickered deep in the trees, and anyone brave enough to drive through after dark risked encountering something they couldn’t explain. But where did those stories come from? In this episode of Mini Pines, we separate folklore from fact as we trace the origins of the infamous Witches of Rathdrum legend. What begins with a single mutilated cow and a wave of nationwide Satanic panic soon collides with the tragic disappearance and murders of Ron and Rita Marcussen, a misunderstood religious community, and decades of fear that transformed rumor into one of the Pacific Northwest’s most enduring legends. Sometimes the truth is stranger than the myth. And sometimes the myth makes it harder to see the truth at all. 🎙️ New episodes of Shadows in the Pines premiere every Sunday at 8:00 PM Pacific. Follow, rate, and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Bound By Assumption - Part 2

The investigation into the murders of Jennifer Bastian and Michella Welch had already spanned decades. Detectives had followed leads, families had endured years of unanswered questions, and an entire community had learned to live with the possibility that the truth might never be known. Then everything changed. In Part Two of Bound by Assumption, Dan and Bekah follow the investigation through the breakthroughs that finally transformed these cold cases. From groundbreaking DNA analysis and genetic genealogy to the shocking discoveries that forced investigators to rethink everything they thought they knew, this chapter reveals how persistence, science, and a refusal to give up ultimately brought answers to two families who had waited more than thirty years. Along the way, you’ll meet the detectives who refused to let these cases die, the families who never stopped fighting for justice, and the unexpected twists that turned one of Tacoma’s most infamous mysteries into something no one saw coming. This is the conclusion of the story of Jennifer Bastian and Michella Welch. New episodes premiere every Sunday night at 8 PM Pacific Time. Keep your eyes open and your footsteps light, because in the pines, the truth never stays buried.

Mini Pines - The Maury Island Incident

The Maury Island Incident It’s the summer solstice, 1947. A man named Harold Dahl is out on a salvage boat in Puget Sound when six enormous, doughnut-shaped objects appear in the sky above him. One of them falters. Debris rains down — burning the hull, injuring his teenage son, killing the family dog. And the morning after Dahl tells his story, a stranger in a dark suit shows up at his door, knows exactly what happened, and tells him to stay quiet. That stranger is, by most accounts, the very first Man in Black. But that’s only where this story starts. Because the other man in it — Dahl’s business partner, Fred Crisman — turns out to be one of the strangest figures in postwar American history. A man who spent twenty years drifting through the weirdest precincts of the American century: secret caves, shell companies, a far-right radio show broadcast under a fake name. And then, in 1968, a New Orleans prosecutor investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy subpoenaed him by name. The same Fred Crisman. The Maury Island man. Today we’re going out on the gray water near Tacoma — to the UFO case the Air Force called the dirtiest hoax in flying saucer history, and the one thread you can pull that somehow connects the Men in Black to Dealey Plaza. Mini Pines is a single-host narrative podcast for people who like their stories unhurried.

Bound By Assumption - Part 1 - The Story Of Michella Welch & Jennifer Bastian

For decades, the murders of Jennifer Bastian and Michella Welch haunted Tacoma, Washington. Two young girls. Two bicycle rides. Two families left searching for answers. And for more than thirty years, investigators believed they were looking at a single mystery. In Part One of Bound by Assumption, Dan and Bekah examine the disappearances that terrified an entire community, the massive search efforts that followed, the heartbreaking discoveries that changed countless lives, and the decades-long investigation that seemed destined to remain unsolved. As detectives Gene Miller and Lindsey Wade revisit the evidence, new forensic technology begins revealing answers investigators never thought possible. But the deeper they dig, the more they realize that some of the assumptions surrounding these cases may not be as solid as everyone once believed. Join us as we trace the stories of Jennifer and Michella from the summer of 1986 through the breakthroughs that finally began to crack open one of the Pacific Northwest’s most haunting cold case investigations. New episodes premiere every Sunday night at 8 PM Pacific Time. Keep your eyes open and your footsteps light, because in the pines, the truth never stays buried.

Crimecon 2026 Experience

CrimeCon 2026 was an experience we’ll never forget. This week, Dan and Rebekah take a break from the case files and pull back the curtain on their trip to Las Vegas for CrimeCon 2026. From Nancy Grace’s opening remarks and discussions about the Gabby Petito investigation, to meeting victims’ families still searching for answers, this episode explores the people, stories, and moments that left a lasting impact. We’ll talk about the creators we met, including our favorite booth from Shirley You Can’t Be Serious, the powerful work being done by Ring True Co. to support survivors of human trafficking, and why the lack of Pacific Northwest representation reinforced our mission to keep telling the stories of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia. We’ll also discuss meeting listeners, seeing industry heavyweights like Wondery and True Crime Garage, hearing from advocates and families, and what we learned about the true crime community as a whole. Sometimes the most memorable part of true crime isn’t the cases themselves—it’s the people who refuse to let those stories be forgotten. New episodes premiere every Sunday night at 8 PM Pacific Time. #CrimeCon2026 #CrimeCon #TrueCrimePodcast #ShadowsInThePines #NancyGrace #SteveGoncalves #GoingWest #ShirleyYouCantBeSerious #RingTrueCo #TrueCrimeCommunity #PacificNorthwest #PNWTrueCrime #LasVegas #PodcastLife #VictimAdvocacy #MissingPersons #CitizenSleuths #GabbyPetito #TrueCrimeFans #CreatorRow

Mini Pines - The Loneliest Road to the Stars — Nevada’s Extraterrestrial Highway

The Loneliest Road to the Stars — Nevada’s Extraterrestrial Highway What if the most famous alien highway in America has been hiding its biggest secret in plain sight? This week on Mini Pines, we travel Nevada’s mysterious Extraterrestrial Highway—a lonely stretch of desert road forever linked to Area 51, Bob Lazar, UFO sightings, and the legendary Black Mailbox that became a pilgrimage site for believers from around the world. But beneath the stories of flying saucers and government secrets lies a far stranger truth. Long before UFO hunters gathered under the desert stars, something really did arrive from space. An ancient cosmic impact left one of the largest craters in North America buried beneath the Nevada desert, and most travelers drive directly through its remains without ever knowing it. Join us as we explore the history of Nevada State Route 375, the rise of the Area 51 phenomenon, the curious story of the Black Mailbox, and the astonishing geological evidence of a visitor from the stars that changed this landscape forever. Sometimes the greatest mysteries aren’t hidden in the sky above us. Sometimes they’re buried beneath our feet. New episodes of Mini Pines and Shadows in the Pines premiere every Sunday night at 8 PM Pacific Time. Follow, rate, and share the show, and remember: Keep your eyes open and your footsteps light, because in the pines the truth never stays buried.

Diane Downs and Old Mohawk Rod - Part 2

🔎 Part 2 of our Diane Downs series is available now. As detectives continue pulling apart the story from Old Mohawk Road, the investigation begins shifting in a dramatic direction. What started as the search for a mysterious roadside gunman slowly becomes something much darker as timeline problems, forensic evidence, and survivor statements begin pointing investigators toward an unthinkable possibility. In Part 2, Dan and Bekah cover Christie Downs’ recovery and testimony, the mounting case against Diane, the arrest that shocked the nation, the bizarre courtroom behavior that captivated the media, Diane’s own testimony, the guilty verdict, the prison escape that reignited national headlines, and the lasting impact left on Christie and Danny. We also examine how the case evolved into a cultural phenomenon through endless television coverage, public fascination, Ann Rule’s Small Sacrifices, and the disturbing way the offender nearly overshadowed the victims in the public consciousness. At the center of it all remain three children in a car on a dark Oregon road in May of 1983. One never came home. Two survived. And the questions surrounding that night continue to haunt people decades later. 🎙️ Shadows in the Pines Hosted by Dan Morgan & Rebekah Haler 🕯️ New episodes premiere every Sunday at 8 PM Pacific. #ShadowsInThePines #DianeDowns #TrueCrimePodcast #OregonTrueCrime #PacificNorthwest #OldMohawkRoad #AnnRule #SmallSacrifices #TrueCrime #CrimePodcast #ChristieDowns #DannyDowns #SherylDowns #OregonHistory #CourtroomDrama #PrisonEscape #ColdCaseCommunity #TrueCrimeCommunity #SpotifyPodcasts #PodbeanPodcast