America's national parks are designed to feel safe. Trails are marked. Maps are posted. Rangers explain what to avoid.

That sense of control ends after dark.

When the sun goes down and human movement slows, the parks change. Sound travels where it shouldn't. Footsteps circle camps without approaching. Upright figures stand just outside firelight and remain still until noticed. Water reflects things that aren't above it. Movement happens only when no one is looking directly at it.

These are not isolated stories. They are patterns reported again and again by campers, hikers, climbers, and rangers across the country.

National Parks After Dark documents what happens when the parks stop performing for visitors. The accounts in this book focus on consistent nighttime behaviors-figures that reposition without sound, voices that don't belong to anyone present, and landscapes that feel aware of where you are standing. The activity is rarely violent. It doesn't need to be. The fear comes from restraint.

Most nights, nothing happens. That's what makes the other nights harder to dismiss.

Written for adult readers, this book explores America's most familiar landscapes at their least comfortable-when the trails are empty, the lights are off, and something else seems to be paying attention.

Because the parks aren't empty after dark.

They're just no longer pretending to be.