Something Was Tapping on the Glass | Ten Nights in an Appalachian Fire Tower

I took an emergency fire lookout position in the George Washington National Forest to escape grief after my wife's funeral. The tower stood seventy feet above the Appalachian ridgeline in the Massanutten Mountains of Virginia—total isolation, glass walls on all sides, and nothing but forest for miles. For the first four nights, it was exactly what I needed. Then something started tapping on the glass. Something that learned to mimic my voice on the radio. Something that knew my dead wife's voice even though I'd never spoken about her. By night ten, it wasn't just mimicking anymore. It was trying to get inside.This is my account of what hunts the remote fire towers in the Appalachian Mountains, what happens when you're trapped in a glass cage seventy feet above the forest floor, and why that tower was quietly decommissioned three weeks after I descended.If you've worked in fire lookout towers or remote Forest Service stations in Appalachia and experienced something similar, I need to know I'm not the only one.