THE SLEEPING CLUB- The Old Indian Cave

The trail to the cave, which was surprisingly well maintained, ran straight through three-hundred yards of dense pine forest before coming to an abrupt end about 50 feet from the base of a cliff. Creeper vines trailed down over the exposed and weathered limestone face of the cliff, and approximately five feet from the ground a gash, maybe thirty feet long and four feet wide at its widest, marked the opening to the cave.

I had first heard of the Demon Woods while watching a Halloween special on The Road Trip Channel called America’s Ten Spookiest Places. The host, Mathias Howles, had interviewed locals about the legends surrounding the place, with his smooth British accent juxtaposed sharply against the locals’ hillbilly talk, and then he had capped off the segment by spending a disappointingly uneventful night in the “Old Indian Cave,” which sits at the center of the woods.

Over the past year I had worked my way through Howles’ list of America’s Spookiest Places sleeping in old haunted mansions and such, and now I was standing in front of the Old Indian Cave deep within the infamous Demon Woods, number one on Howles’ spooky list, which so far was significantly less spooky than the back seat of Raymond and Nina’s car.

A small trickle of water dribbled out of the corner of the cave’s entrance exactly like drool from the corner of a sleeping giant’s mouth. The creeping vines completed the effect, resembling unruly hair. The imagery pleased me so much that I produced a notebook from my pack and began to scribble it down for my memoirs when I heard a voice call to me from the cave’s opening.

“John! You made it!”

Looking up I saw Tony Baldamo, on his hands and knees grinning at me from inside the cave. Tony owned a Mercedes dealership in Newport Beach, CA and, like me, had suffered from crippling insomnia for several years before joining the sleeping club. Tony, who easily tipped the scales at four-hundred pounds, was grinning infectiously at me as he bellowed, “What took you so long? We were beginning to wonder if the demons had gotten you.”

With a burly arm, Tony helped me up into the cave. Nearly a dozen cots were set up under mosquito netting, and in the center of the cave a couple of card tables had been set up, likewise under mosquito netting, with kerosene lamps glowing confidently on them. Looking around in the dim light I saw Jim and Nancy Bellows, Steve Ducette, Ronnie Robtoy, Shirley Paines, Oscar Montoya, and Annette LaGrassa- all members of the Sleeping Club.

“Where are the others?’ I asked.

“They wanted to go for a walk before the sun went down,” said Oscar, a lawyer, and a fellow insomniac who I had met three years prior at a 24 hour coffee house in Cathedral City. “I’m surprised they’re not back yet,” he added.