Lakes of the Clouds Hut

An Appalachian Mountain Club hut built in 1915 in the saddle between Mount Monroe and Mount Washington, at 5,012 feet elevation.

Ben Campbell's hiking boots are nailed to the wall of the crew room at Lakes of the Clouds Hut because they would not stop walking on their own. The hut sits at 5,012 feet on the southern shoulder of Mount Washington, the highest and deadliest peak in the northeastern United States. Operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club since 1915, Lakes of the Clouds is the highest and most exposed of the AMC's eight White Mountain huts, perched between two small alpine lakes just below the summit cone. More than 160 people have died on the Presidential Range since record-keeping began in 1849 -- from falls, hypothermia, heart attacks, and the mountain's notoriously violent weather, which has produced wind speeds exceeding 231 miles per hour. The dead outnumber the hut's seasonal capacity many times over, and their presence is felt.

Ben Campbell was a crew member at the AMC's Greenleaf Hut who dreamed of one day managing Lakes of the Clouds. He was described by colleagues as "a handsome fellow with brown hair, laughing eyes, an impish grin, bright and one of the funniest guys we'd ever known." Ben never realized that dream in life -- he died while hiking in Scotland, far from the White Mountains he loved. His family, knowing how deeply he was connected to the hut system, brought his hiking boots to Greenleaf Hut as a memorial.

That is when things began to happen. Guests at Greenleaf reported hearing someone wearing heavy boots walking through the hut at night, pacing the corridors with deliberate, measured steps. Each morning, staff found the boots had moved from where they had been placed the night before, sitting in different spots around the hut as though someone had been wearing them. The boots were eventually transferred to Lakes of the Clouds -- the hut Ben had always wanted -- where the walking continued. The boots moved from shelf to shelf, corner to corner, always relocating overnight. The solution was permanent: the crew nailed the boots to the wall of the crew room, where they remain today.

But Ben is not the only presence in the hut. Guests report a girl named Betsy who is said to have drowned in the Dry River on the mountain's eastern slope. Visitors hear the sound of rain or dripping water inside the hut even when the sky is perfectly clear and the building is dry -- as though Betsy carries the river with her wherever she goes. One visitor described a vivid nighttime experience: a figure approaching from behind, followed by a distorted human face pressing against the glass of the hut's windows, appearing to melt through the glass into the bunkroom.

The hut operates seasonally, staffed by a crew of young AMC employees who live in the building for weeks at a time. They tell the stories of Ben's boots and Betsy's dripping water to guests gathered in the dining room after supper, with the wind howling against the walls and the summit of Mount Washington invisible in cloud above them. The mountain has taken more than 160 lives. The hut provides shelter from the worst of it. But at 5,012 feet, in the thin air and the fog, the boundary between shelter and exposure -- between the living and the dead -- is never as solid as the walls suggest.