The great outdoors can be beautiful, but it can also be dangerous as heck. Seasoned hikers and campers know – the moment you step into the woods, you have to be extra careful. A strange sound, a suspicious-looking person, or a surprising encounter with the wildlife – anything can be on the table.
Some reports show that around 4,661 people in the U.S. get lost in the woods per year and need some kind of assistance. That’s roughly 13 people a day. Search and rescue teams also perform around 50,000 missions each year, so even the most knowledgeable never know what’s going to happen.
We recently came across a thread where people shared their scariest experiences while out in the woods. When one netizen asked, “Rangers, forest workers, hunters, and other woods-people of Reddit, what is your scary experience in the woods that you still can’t explain?”, people flocked to share their creepiest and most unsettling forest experiences. So, we’re sharing the most unhinged with you below!
#1
Friend and I were hiking in the woods. He was at the camp and I went to check on things about half a mile away. Suddenly, as if someone flipped a switch, the woods became silent. No wind, no russling leaves, no birds.. Just the most eery silence I’ve experienced. After a few minutes, it suddenly went back to normal forest noises.
Thinking I must have had a seizure or temporary deafness or something I hurry back to camp, only to see friend standing there with a confused/scared look on his face.
I must have had a similar look because he immidiately asked if I heard the silence. We tried to come up with an explanation, but absolute silence in the woods seems impossible. Even more so that it was so sudden.
ThatDamZoomer:
Sometimes, the woods will become silent when a predator is nearby. But what happened to you and your buddy I can‘t explain. The fact that it went dead silent so quickly and happened over such a wide area is quite bizarre.
Image source: hmfiddlesworth, PaulSchlemmer / Envato
#2
Not my story, but my younger sister’s (early 20s). She was in Colorado last year and went hiking with her friend. The plan was to hike up the mountain, stop midway and camp, then finish the hike the next morning. They started their hike and stopped for camp midway. She said it started dumping rain that night which meant the top would most likely be snow. The next morning they continued their hike, but it started getting complicated. Her friend only wore Chaco sandals and not proper hiking boots as they didn’t expect the snow.
They stopped at a creek and were deciding if they wanted to turn back on account they weren’t prepared properly when they heard a faint “help me”. They both stood still. They heard it again. They decided to follow up the creek to the woman’s voice. They got to a clearing that was covered in snow and found a woman laying in it in basic athletic clothing (leggings, light pull over jacket, and athletic shoes).
My sister said her legs were swollen, discolored and had nasty cuts on them. My sister asked her how long she had been out there and the woman said only a few hours. My sister was like okay we need to get you down this mountain. The woman was like “no I need to go up the mountain that’s where my car is parked”. My sister was like, no, there is no driving access at the top of the mountain which was a sign that this woman was confused.
They get her down the mountain and my sister just kept saying how confused this woman was. They get to the bottom and they find this woman’s car. My sister couldn’t get cell service to call 911 during this btw. Anyways, my sister tells this woman she’s going to drive her to the hospital but the woman is standing strong that she would just like to go back to her bed and breakfast. My sister takes her there while driving this woman’s car.
Once the woman is at the bed and breakfast she thanks them and goes in. My sister spoke to the owners and was like you have to call a medic, she is severely confused and not acting normal. They call a medic and transport her to a hospital. Turns out this woman is from Chicago, has low blood pressure and it was her first time ever hiking a mountain – she was also alone. She had passed out during her hike, then it dumped snow on her. She was hypothermic and only thought she’d been out for a few hours – she was out overnight in the dark, cold and alone. I couldn’t imagine the terror she must have felt. Anyways, my sister went and saw her at the hospital and the woman thanked her for saving her life. They still lightly keep in touch.
Image source: AmySaysGetBent, savinmadeleine / Envato
#3
We have a camp that we visit during the hunting months and about every other weekend in between that. To get to our camp, you have to turn off of a major road onto a gravel road, drive about a mile, then turn onto another gravel road for about a half mile. It’s set between a few other camps, plus some residents that live out there. It’s quiet, for the most part. There are some coyotes and bobcats. Bobcats are the worst due to their terrible scream. It sounds like a woman crying for help. There has also been a black panther and wild dogs.
2013 we were at the camp for Thanksgiving. We hunted, fished, cooked, drank, all that good camp stuff. One night, we’re sitting around a fire, swapping funny stories and just listening to the silence of the woods. As we’re talking, we all hear, “Help me!”. At first, we thought it was a bobcat. We listened some more and heard it again. It was a man’s voice yelling “help me!” repeatedly. Now, our first instinct was to grab our guns. Second was to go towards the voice, BUT you never know what you will encounter in the woods. It was dark and cold. The hunters knew the area very well.
We called the police, and explained everything to the responding officers. The weird part was that we NEVER once heard it while the officers were with us. Not once. The officers left and we heard the man again, repeating “help me”. About half an hour later, the officers came back and we didn’t hear any call for help. Again, silence. We all decided it was best to go inside our camp for the night. We never did find out anything. I’ve only been back to the camp once since then. Really freaked me out.
t_skullsplitter:
What is freaky about being in the woods like that is, people can be watching you, and you would never know… Just beyond the light of the fire.
Image source: redink85, duallogic / Envato
#4
I was once canoeing the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada. These aren’t your normal backyard ponds. The boundary waters are thousands of enormous lakes interconnected with each other (think mini-great lakes). We had been canoeing and camping along the lakes for about a week at this point. We didn’t really have an itinerary, just planned to boat and camp, fish, and live off the land two weeks. We had a GPS and a sat phone to call a helicopter for pickup whenever we were done.
Anyway, about a week in and we were set to canoe a few hours to the next lake. An hour or so in and we are in the center of a extremely long and narrow lake. Unfortunately, a storm started to blow in and the waves on the lake swelled to 2+ feet. Too much for our dinky canoes. We pull off to a random clearing on the shore and setup camp in rush to avoid being totally thrashed by a rainstorm. We just setup camp and hunker down for the night.
By the next morning it had cleared up. We started walking up the coast of the lake about 200 feet from our camp looking for a good fishing spot. What we actually found was another campsite. However, it was ABSOLUTELY wrecked. Trash strewn everywhere, tent collapsed and torn, clothes on the ground. At first we were just like disgusted like what a******s did this? or left their s**t out to be bear food?
The more we looked around though, the weirder things seemed though. For one, their garbage was still hoisted into a tree to keep it safe from bears, but the whole bag was ripped open despite being 30 feet in the air. Second, literally everything except the canoes were still at the campsite. Clothes, packs, food, rope, pans, like a serious set of hiking equipment. Enough for 2 or 3 people. Half of it was trashed and torn open, mostly the packs, tent, and clothes. The other half was totally untouched but thrown on the ground. Like somebody NOPE’d the hell out of there in nothing but their long johns ditching hundreds of dollars of gear in the process. We waited a couple hours and eventually called it back to our helicopter crew– but they hadn’t been aware of anybody else or gotten any distress calls. We eventually just left everything and moved camp. Everybody was pretty upset by it and a day or two later we ended the whole trip early because it seemed like nobody wanted to be out anymore.
It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen. First thought was bear attack, but there was food left uneaten, and I’ve seen bear attacks on camps before, but nothing like this. Bears rip open packs and go after food, and are generally pretty easy to scare away. What still sticks with me is why all their clothes and packs were still there with half being totally destroyed and half being untouched. I still don’t get it.
I’ve done a lot of other camping and hiking, rafting and biking, all around the country and I’ve never had any other weird experiences like that.
Image source: n0bel, RossHelen / Envato
#5
Backwoods hiking/camping trip up in Maine. Trail intersected overgrown logging road. Checked topo map. Saw logging toad lead to isolated pond. Hiked to pond. Found small clearing. Perfect spot to camp. Went to bed shortly after sunset (8:30pm-ish) woke up around 1:30am to distant but loud noises coming from all angles around us. Up the logging road both directions, across the pond and in the woods. Deep bass-y groans and hoots, occasionally hitting higher pitched noted. Been in the woods for most of my adult life. Have come in contact with just about all the larger mammals of the North East and have never heard those noises before. Haven’t heard them again either. Will never forget that sound.
biglebowshi:
If I’m not mistaken, this had been a phenomenon all around the world, if it’s the same sounds. Kind of like large pieces of metal moving?
TalesFromThe (OP):
Yes, very similar. But at the time, it just sounded like many different creatures all communicating around us.
Image source: TalesFromThe, Meniphoto / Envato
#6
About 20 years ago I had just finished my degree and was bummed because I couldn’t find a job. A former roommate/good friend and I went on an overnight backpack trip near Burr Oak State Park in Southeast Ohio. About 2 am we were awoken in our tent by the sound of dozens of horses being ridden all around us. We could hear muted conversation, harness jingling, hoofs clopping and we could feel it shaking the ground. We laid in our tent and the sound just kept on, like a whole convoy was passing right beside us. After a few minutes we unzipped the tent and the sounds immediately ceased and nothing was there. It was freaky, we were afraid they were going to ride over us it was so intense. I have no idea who or what it was but we’re camped on a trail that had been used by John Morgan Hunts Confederate raiders during the civil war. Not a logical explanation but it was deafening there were so many horses. I can still hear men’s voices murmering as they rode by. Next morning not a single hoofprint to be found.
Eleventy_Seven:
Yeaah, I think this one’s pretty easily explained.
Ghosts, dude. It was ghosts.
Image source: T*rd_Fergusons_, naraa .in.ub / Unsplash
#7
I’ve spent a lot of time in fairly wild places and never had an incident that I couldn’t explain.
Doesn’t make them much less scary, though. When you figure out it’s a cougar, bear, moose, or strange human, it’s not like you exhale and relax.
Scariest moment for me, to date, was the grizzly that was circling our camp in the dusk at about 20 meters. Packed my family into the car as fast as we could move but it wouldn’t have been fast enough if the bear had attacked. I really regret it – I feel that I failed as a parent, because it’s only luck that nothing horrible happened. I don’t think I’ll ever forget seeing its green eyes bobbing and swaying in my headlamp. It briefly rushed our vehicle as we left, too. Scary as f**k.
The closest I ever came to an inexplicable moment was when I was walking though trail-less black spruce up north in the fall and suddenly hit a wall of odor the likes of which I’d never smelled before. Stopped me in my tracks. Some instinct told me that it was a bull moose, and sure enough, in about 20 more meters, there was a clearing with a massive bull. It was rutting season so I got the hell out.
Image source: Historical-Regret, byrdyak / Envato
#8
When I was younger, around 14 or 15 years old. My family used to camp at a state park. Every night my friend and I would walk through the woods. We called this “the ritual” this particular night we decided to walk further into the woods than usual. We had flashlights be we liked to try and navigate through the woods with them turned off. We were about half a mile from the nearest camp site when we heard soft whispering behind us. Obviously we hit the flashlights and spun around. Didn’t see anything. So we kept walking and we hear it again. This time we stop and look around a bit before we decided to head back to our campsite. Then we see what’s whispering. It’s a lady crawling on the ground whispering just random words. She was wearing dark clothes and was covered in dirt. When she sees that we notice her she stands up and declares that she is looking for her campsite. We ended up walking her back to the campground and tried helping her find her group. Turns out she was just super drunk/high and got lost trying to find a bathroom. Her friends didn’t even notice she was missing and if we didn’t go that far into the woods she would have been lost all night. It was pretty creepy.
Image source: KMIAOFFICIAL, awbreyphotos / Envato
#9
Not anything like this myself, but a friend told me this story.
So he goes with a buddy to hike a trail near our town. Northern Washington state, so lots of woods and trees. When they get to the trailhead, there is one other car there, and he remembers seeing a person in that car. The person in the car was just staring at them, with what he described as a really white unchanging face. He kept staring right at them without trying to hide it or look away. My friend got creeped out, and decided to leave.
In the next week or two after that, a couple of hikers and a ranger turned up dead in that same area. Pretty sure they caught the guy, but I don’t remember if his photo was posted.
Super creepy.
Image source: addelorenzi, loskyt7 / Envato
#10
Couple good friends of mine fight fires and in WA state summers business is usually booming. This year a fair sized crew of about ten of them are miles and miles deep into the Cascades doing dig lines. I’m talking like 60 miles away from anything, middle of nowhere.
As they’re hiking through they come to a clearing and there’s two landed Blackhawk helicopters and about 7 fully armed military personnel. They all point their rifles at the fire crew and demand to know what they are doing there. My friend tells them they’re doing fire digs and they’re scheduled to be up there. They are told to turn around and forget that they saw anything up there. My friend says, “But this is government work, we have to do this, this is our job”. Military guy says, “Not today, you’re done, get the f**k out of here now”. Some serious Chronicle type s**t. I’ve never wanted to know so badly about what the hell was going in out there.
Deadmanglocking:
Could have been a Blackhawk that had mechanical trouble and was set down there. They flew a team out to provide security for it while waiting on the mechanics to get there to prep it for a sling load flight out back to joint base McChord.
Image source: Cidermonk, wirestock / Envato
#11
Stumbled across some some kind of…witch circle? Backpacking off trail in the Colorado Mountains.
Cobblestone circle, bones hanging from the trees, burned out candles and creepy pictures in a tree trunk that my family didn’t let me get a good look at before they dragged me away. Never did figure out exactly what was going on there.
That was a fun trip.
Metalbass5:
If it means anything: Most Wiccan/Pagan/Modern Druidic rituals only look creepy.
Image source: The_Random_Persons
#12
We lived on the Hopi/Navajo reservation growing up. My mom and I were feeding the horses very early in the morning before I went to school- it was still almost completely dark out- when we hear this low, dim humming noise. The horses start acting really nervous, ours included. Sweating, pacing, nostrils flared, eyes showing white- the works. We feed them and walk out from the barn/shack trying to figure out what’s happened. We look up after scanning the horizon for anything (squinting as best as we could) and there is a black triangle like thing hovering right over us. It was almost completely silent. It was perfectly over us so you couldn’t see it unless you looked straight up and it felt like it was so close I could touch it. It was pretty d**n large too- like a long triangle. Smooth and black. Thinking back, it was actually quite impressive and beautiful.
Mom mom grabbed me and ran back into the shed. This was before cellphones were really a thing so she just clutched me and told me not to make a sound. We waited for what felt like ages but was probably only 2-3 more minutes. The horses weren’t even eating, they just paced the shed inside back and forth. Finally the horses started settling down to eat and my mom went outside. It was gone.
We felt like we had the flu the rest of the day and I stayed home. We never told my dad. I think it was some sort of military aircraft since around the reservation there are quiet, secret military set ups but who knows.
Image source: anon
#13
I’ve lived in the Smokies most of my life. Anywhere I’ve lived in the Smokies, I’ve been completely surrounded by woods, naturally. One night at like 1 AM I was sitting on my porch drinking a beer. If you haven’t lived out here, during the summer time, nature is loud. It isn’t quiet. Cicadas humming, frogs belching, etc. Its like the ultimate white noise. While I was drinking my beer, I had noticed that everything in the woods had gone quiet. Which is pretty easy to notice when you live here because that doesn’t happen.
Suddenly, I heard the most terrifying noise I had ever heard about, mmm, I think maybe a good 30 or 40 meters away from me. It was a loud, shrieking, literally blood curdling scream like shrill. It sounded…non human. It wasn’t a mountain lion because I’ve heard them before, and they’re rare in the area I lived. I stood up, audibly said “nope.”, and walked the f**k inside. That was the one and only time that ever happened. I still live in the same house, and still drink the same beer on the same porch.
Image source: Dreazzzy, weewendy / Envato
#14
Inventory arborist tech here. I’ve found a cow tongue sliced open down the middle, wrapped in different vibrantly colored bands, and stabbed to the trunk of an oak tree with a knife.
Image source: LackadaisiesForDays, Unai82 / Envato
#15
Two stories.
First was the year I met my wife (ten years ago) we were 17 and I was a hunting nut. Decided to go camping in the sand dunes behind my suburb, just off the beach. We live in rural west Aus, so nothing happens. Anyway, pretty local area, lots of people around, we decided to just hang around the beach, go walking and settle down for the night. A few hours passed and we had a small campfire going, jumped into our shared sleeping bag and went to sleep. Woke up to thudding all around us and a huge ‘grock grock grock noise”. Ok, it freaked us out because I was half asleep. It was an emu that basically stood on us and honestly the big fella was as shocked as we were and he took off. So we settled to sleep and hear it. People everywhere. They walked past us, we didn’t see them though. They weren’t talking, we could just hear them walking. They broke into a run and started laughing. We heard them run over the dune to the sea side, and then the chanting started. People weren’t taking the p**s, they were chasing someone and loving it. There were a group of people running up and down the trails around us, with a group chanting. At that stage we noped the f**k out. Called my partner’s parents and the came with their rottweiler and gun to pick us up. We walked back to the parking lot that lead to the trails with our fog snarling at everything. We could hear people running out of the darkness behind us laughing at us, some of them even taunted us to come back to the dunes.
Never figured out what it was about but it wasn’t the local Aboriginal people (my wife’s extended family) and it wasn’t the local m**h heads, but it was over 50 people at around three AM.
The second tale.
We were homeless for a while at around 20. We rescued mastiffs and I had an opportunity to train in Melbourne and represent a gym for MMA. We drove across the Nullarbor with our three dogs and my wife’s mother. Halfway across we got tired and saw a dilapidated roadside stop. It was just some younger woman’s house with a shop attached. We pulled up and talked to the female owner and an older bloke. They looked at us and asked if we were tired. I said yeah and they asked us if we wanted to park around back. Sure, stop for a rest cause these folk seemed nice. Drove around the back to a carpark equivalent of car bodies. Ok sure, that’s odd already, because you know… The nearest town is a days drive. Anyway, one of our dogs was unwell and needed a strict diet and to poop regularly. I get her out of the car and the other dogs jump out too. The rottweiler takes off to explore. The dogs poop and I call our big girl back. No response. That’s pretty normal she was ignorant sometimes. I go to look for her and she is sniffing a sleeping bag. Ok fine, the place is a wreck with s**t everywhere. I didn’t give it a second thought. Then I looked up and saw a massive tarp wrapped up around.. something.. and it is strung up between a few trees. Completely suspended. And behind it a few sleeping bags suspended between some trees. Bout ten in all including the big one. Then I noticed the absolute swarm of flies. Got the dogs back in the car and left. Saw the woman and old bloke on the way out. Waved at them and acted natural. Nothing. No smile or wave, all former charm was gone. We dodged some Ivan Milat level s**t because my dog was picky about where she pooped.
Never reported this because we honestly have no idea where on the Nullarbor it was. We just kept heading east on the biggest road we could. I am sure as day we were going to be k**led by some hillbilly mother f*****s.
Image source: DollarPhilanthropist, tampatra / Envato
#16
I was hiking with my cousins in Guatemala when we came across a MASSIVE field of burnt forest. We decided to explore it and didn’t find anything interesting until we found a burnt car. I still can’t figure out how a car could have gotten there since we were hours away from any road.
Image source: Yaboiz77, marisap7 / Envato
#17
I come from a big country family. We live on a farm, we raise our own food and meat animals, and we hunt and process. My dad’s first cousin is even a licensed taxidermist. So we get a lot of hunting in. For a bit more backstory, on the homestead I grew up on (and still live on), it was my parents, my Pops’ first cousin and his wife, me and my four sisters, and my four female second cousins. So four adults and nine kids. And sometimes my Pops’ brother comes to stay with us too, especially when hunting season is starting up.
So hunting season (deer) is going on, and my Pops, his brother (Uncle K), and the cousin we live with (Uncle V) are all getting ready to go hunting. Some of us kids decide to tag along: me (12), my sister S (15), and my cousin A (14). We go out further into the woods than we normally do, set up camp, etc.
Important fact: during the time we’re setting up, my pops and uncles are being quiet, while the three of us kids talk. My voice hasn’t changed. This is important.
Us kids keep chattering away, while the adults are just letting us get our energy out while they check the survival equipment, make sure the guns are clean and working, etc. Strong silent Southern types hahaha.
There’s a rustling in the thick brush around us, and suddenly three creepy looking guys enter the clearing. They stop dead. One of them has a hand on his knife on his belt. They are clearly drunk as f**k. They keep looking between A and S and my pops and uncles, like they’re debating something.
My pops and uncles stand up. Last bit of backstory: every dude in my family is f**koff huge. I’m 19 now, and I’m 6’5″. My dad is the biggest at 6’10”, 280. Just deeply intimidating man, and so are Uncles V and K. The guys laugh nervously as my Uncle V picks up one of the freshly cleaned rifles and points it at them. These dudes start running out the clearing like the devil was after them.
My Pops immediately says we’re clearing out. My uncles don’t even question it, and neither do us kids. We’re freaking out, and we totally take things down sloppy but my pops doesn’t say anything about us messing up his camping equipment. We get back into cell service and my dad calls the cops about seeing those f*****s but the cops don’t seem to think it’s serious since nothing happened.
It’s at that moment I realized: A, S, and me with my unchanged voice were the only ones these guys could hear talking. They thought they’d come across a camp of three girls by themselves.
I don’t want to even think about what would have happened if my dad and uncles hadn’t been there.
Image source: raleighwh2001
#18
I was hiking through the remnants of a remote, long-abandoned town and the surrounding area. To get to as far into the woods as I was, you had to cross fallen trees over a creek three times. I had just crossed the third “bridge” and was about five miles in and something blue caught my eye just ahead of me.
There was a man, in his sixties at least, wearing blue satin pajamas, sitting in a tree. The closer I got to him the louder he laughed; it wasn’t a maniacal laugh, but it set off all the alarms in my head nevertheless. He also wasn’t wearing any shoes and looked well-groomed/cleaned.
I gave him a friendly nod as I passed and he just kept laughing. Then it stopped. I turned and he was gone. There was no branch cracking, plants rustling, nothing… He was just gone.
Still rubs me the wrong way. The area I was in was a pretty rough hike, very secluded. Not very many people venture as deep as I was that day. No idea what was going on there.
Image source: mrwitch, olgar23 / Envato
#19
Not my story, but my dad’s. When my dad was in his 20s, he was staying with my mom at a small cabin in the woods of Colorado. It was fairly remote (there was another cabin about a mile away and a camp ground maybe 3 miles down the valley.) Late one afternoon, he was out fishing on a nearby river by himself.
As the light started fading, he decided to call it a day and head back to the cabin for dinner. As he was walking back through the woods, he got an eerie feeling that he was being watched, but he couldn’t see anyone or anything. He kept walking back, and then suddenly he heard a stick break behind him. He stopped, looking back for the source of the sound, but still didn’t see anything.
He nervously kept walking back, a little quicker, and then heard another stick break, whirls around and still – nothing. This happens like three or four times, but every time he stopped to listen and look, there was total silence and nothing else moving. By the time he finally made it back to the cabin, it was nearly dark. He never did find out what was following him, but whatever it was left him alone after that. His best guess was a mountain lion stalking him or something. Really unsettling though.
Image source: rocketotter109, ArtRachen / Envato
#20
I spent a few nights in a lean-to. I fit snugly inside, underneath a widowmaker, falling asleep atop a bed of pine foliage.
In the middle of the night I hear and see this long black appendage impact, and then slide down the tarp. I had no weapons, save for the hatchet, and I wouldn’t make it out undetected so I watched the entrance intensely for a few hours. Turns out I had leaned my bow against the shelter, and the wind blew it over in the night.
Image source: jankDemes, olga2626 / Envato
#21
I live in south Spain, near some really ancient forest called “Los Alcornocales”, which has some kind of trees that are almost extint and only grow here and in another two or so places.
It’s a bit of a rocky terrain, and if you ever are walking on the forest and try to climb some rocks, you should be really careful, because usually you can have caves and hollow spaces under your feet and you can fall easily.
So, my father and his friends usually go hiking on thursdays so they dont find anyone on the woods, besides maybe a sheperd or a forest worker, and on this day they decided to climb a really large and rocky hill. My uncle Frank remembered that when he was young he slept on a little cave when he went hunting and got lost, and he wanted to try to find that cave.
After a few hours, they find the cave. It was covered in moss and grime but It was surelly the same cave. One of my father’s friend, John, tried to get as far as possible into the cave, because he was in a really good shape and wanted to see all of it. The rest of them waited outside.
Suddenly, John started screaming and calling for my father. He went inside and turned on his torch. Inside of the cave was a really weird shrine or something like that, with candles, two apples, bones, pieces of coal and ashes on the ground, a pair of gloves, a pot and a pan, etc. Everything looked really old and dusty and it was clear it haven’t been touched in a long time.
My father went to the shrine and it had a little bowl, and when he looked inside, there was something that looked like human teeth.
When they got out, they packed up all their things and got out of there really fast. My father refuses to hike around there anymore, and they started hiking on the other side of the hill and into the woods.
All of this was really strange, and I’ve never heard of something like this before. I don’t know anything about voodoo or this kind of things, but my father said it looked like some voodoo shrine or some stuff like that. If any if you guys know something like this, I would appreciate an explanation 😂.
Image source: ryulis99
#22
Absolute silence. It kind of freaked me out. I was on a short day hike by myself. I was walking down a trail near a stand of pine trees and came around a bend on the trail and all of a sudden everything got really quiet. No wind. No birds chirping. No rustling leaves. Only the sounds of my own footsteps and breathing. I kept hiking, but it gave me chills. I’ve since been back there and the woods seemed “alive” again.
Image source: Extrasherman
#23
A couple years ago while hunting I went out before first light and climbed into my deer stand like I’ve done countless times. Right at about 5am. My favorite part of the day is when the light starts to break into the sky and the forest wakes up.
The nocturnal creatures retreat and the day creatures stir and become active. That morning, as the light started to appear, nothing happened. And I mean nothing. No rabbits or raccoons retreating to a den, no squirrels searching for breakfast, no deer, no hogs, not even a single bird. The weather/temperature was unremarkable and the air was mostly still. There was just no movement and no sound throughout the woods that morning. Not a chirp nor a rustle.
As time passed I started to get an unexplainable sense of dread. Not a “this is weird” feeling of observing something strange but more of a “death is imminent” feeling that I’ve never experienced before. I stayed until about 8am (still early for deer hunting) until I was literally trembling with fear and I stormed out of there. I went back that afternoon and I found the woods to be completely normal with all the usual sights and sounds. Weirdest and most uncomfortable experience in the woods that I’ve ever had. Almost like a dream but I absolutely was not dreaming. I have not been scared in the woods since I was a boy going out the first few times with my dad. He would joke, “We’re hunting. We have nothing to fear. The forest is afraid of us.” Not that morning, dad. I was scared sh**less and I don’t know why. I was 45 years old at the time.
Image source: chairmaker45
#24
Walking down this long street that was completely downhill surrounded by woods. This place was known for king Phillips war, Native American burial ground. I was with a couple friends and we stopped to get drinks out of our bags and all the sudden the moonlight in the sky disappeared above the clouds that rolled in out of nowhere. It got eerily quiet and I looked down at my feet and noticed I was standing on the words “GET OUT” painted in red and after that it immediately started down pouring. Creepiest experience of my life. We ran back home and it stopped raining. They didn’t want our company that night.
Image source: anon
#25
We always built a tiki house in our woods, (just some normal kids) and had loads of fun. But every week when we came back, it was destroyed and we were sad as hell, and always built a new one. One day we saw a guy in a black hoodie taking our sticks apart. We never came back.
Image source: Chokelz
#26
A few years back (When I was around the age of 14 and my brother was 9), my dad, my little brother, and I all went out deer hunting in the afternoon right before sun down. While we were walking through the woods, before we even got started, my little brother tugged on my arm and asked me if I saw “that”. I said that it was probably his imagination and he let go of my arm. A few minutes later, I couldn’t hear him walking behind us anymore, and turned around to find him gone. I quickly told my dad and we looked for him for, at the least, half an hour, when he walked over out of nowhere towards the both of us, he was covered in mud like he’d fallen somewhere. I worriedly asked where he’d gone and he just stared at me, telling me that he couldn’t remember and thought that he had never left. He acted normally afterwards just as nothing had happened, I don’t know if this is really scary to anyone else, but it shook my entire family, including myself, quite a bit.
Edit: To answer a few of your questions. Several of you have been asking whether or not he could tell or show me where he had been and the answer is no. As I said, (although I hadn’t specified, so that might’ve been on me) he told me that he couldn’t remember a thing. Not what happened, not why he was covered in mud, not why he had walked away in the first place, nor that he had walked away at all. The only thing that he said he could recall was walking a few steps away from us, after seeing a doe from behind him, and that’s it. He told me that he genuinely hadn’t remembered walking away from us and acted like no time had passed. Also, one of you had asked how muddy it was. I distinctly remember that we had several flood warnings and heavy rains before then, but it wasn’t like knee-high deep mud. It had been in the middle of fall and I can remember myself being irritated at the mud and leaves sticking to my boots. He wasn’t drenched in mud, after we found him, but his knees and the palms of his hands were coated in it, along with having a few splotches here and there on his clothes. I had one other question on whether or not I asked him what he saw in the first place. He had initially told me after the entire event that he had saw a glimpse of a tall person standing next to a tree, which I, to be completely honest, doubt. As a kid, I also had one hell of an imagination, and was very paranoid, which I believe was passed down from my mother to the two of us. Lastly, someone had asked how I had found him? I’m not sure if that’s the right way to word it…? Anyways, all three of us had been walking North and later on, when I did find him, he had trotted out of the woods, avoiding trees, from the West. Before he had gotten to me, he hadn’t really spoke, until I ran up to him and hugged him, asking if he was okay. I hope this answers most of the questions you had.
Image source: SoManyQuestions24747
#27
I love to share a story my uncle told. TLDR at the bottom.
In 1992 he owned about 150 acres in a remote area of East Tennessee. On this land he had a large fishing pond and a stream running through it and he used to leave lines out at night to pull in big catfish. This pond was accessible by 2 small game trails through thick patches of woods and he would need to drive to the trail entrances from his house near the front of the property and walk about a half mile in with his gear and nothing but a head lamp for light. This was something he did pretty often and my uncle was a lover of the outdoors so this was business as usual for him. Vietnam vet as well.
Anyway this particular night in July 1992, he went down to the pond at about 9:30pm to check his lines. As he was doing so, he heard a loud splash and assumed it was a fish jumping. He carried on with what he was doing and then heard a low, gutteral groan and what he described as “monkeys flighting” just on the other side of the pond (it was about 70 yards across). Multiple loud splashes occured and he also heard a loud crash in the woods just yards away to his left. He talked about how he immediately felt a sense of panic and was attempting to get visuals using his head lamp but whatever was producing these sounds was behind tree cover.
He said that the woods then erupted in continued sounds of “fighting monkeys” and he opted to drop his gear and run down the trail toward his truck. Apparently, even in his adrenaline fueled state, he could hear foot fall on his left as he was being “hunted”. He got to his truck and hauled a*s out of there to the road and back to his home (which mind you, sits on the property about 6 miles away). He went inside and locked every window and door, grabbed a gun, and stayed up and vigilant the entire night but nothing more occured.
He called my dad the next day who sort of just laughed it off. Well, for my uncle whatever he experienced scared him so badly that he put his land up for sale and sold it a few months later. Until he died in 2017, he would maintain that he believes that he walked into a group of Sasquatch and they erupted in territorial displays to get him out of there. He never enjoyed the outdoors after that. This wasn’t a man who I took for a liar.
TLDR; my Vietnam vet/outdoorsman uncle claims he was chased out of the woods by a clan of Sasquatch and it scared him so badly he sold the property.
Image source: bloodyboppa
#28
I was out hunting with my older brother and his best friend a few years back, want to say 2016.
We had been walking along a trail for a good 5kms at least. On one side of this trail is a decent drop and then a river and on the other side is a decent uphill section and a huge pine forest. It was about 1am by this point and we were just sort of quietly talking to each other when a horrific noise split the air. We all froze and looked at each other with the expression on our faces doing all the work. “What the f**k was that.” We knew it came from up in the pine forest and where we are there aren’t any big predators or really anything out there that we should be “scared” of. So we shouldered our rifles and headed up to find out exactly what made this sound.
I wish we hadn’t. We got to a clearing and the trees were thinning out and my brother flicked on his spotlight. Big bright f****r, excellent range. Way up ahead of us was the strangest looking figure I’ve seen. Like the general shape of a wolf but just… off. It was just stopped on the edge of another tree line further up the hill looking right at us. Pacing side to side. My brothers friend and I had our rifles trained on it trying to get a good look. We couldn’t count out the fact it was another hunters dog that was lost so we (against my gut feeling) went up after it. As we went up after it it became increasingly obvious this thing was watching us very intently. The closer we got, more we realised this was definitely not a hunters dog. It was big. Really big and just the way it moved and it’s entire demeanour was just so unsettling. We kept two rifles on it and one the opposite direction, slowly made our way back down and haven’t been back there since.
Don’t really talk about it either as we still don’t know what we saw and people usually jump to the ‘B******t’ conclusion because like I said before where we live there’s not really any big predators.
TL;DR went hunting, saw what I can only describe as some kind of werewolf looking f****r.
Image source: wine-dine-and-69
#29
Walking through the woods in a state park. Saw a bunch of branches perfectly twisted in a vortex manner that resembled a swirling portal maybe 10-15 feet high. Obviously know that somebody made it but still creepy and you get that feeling that you dont know if your mind is tricking you because it almost looks hazy in the center of the branch-portal. Kept walking a bit further but then it got dark abnormally early and abnormally quickly. Semi jogging back (didn’t go too far deep) and somehow didn’t pass the portal again but felt a pretty worried even though I knew I was on the path. Got back to the parking lot and it was suddenly day time again as it had been since it was only mid afternoon. Still not sure if my mind fed into all of it because I love horror especially creepy pasta and everything creepy or cryptid in nature, but also definitely knew some weird s**t happened.
Image source: TheVapingPug
#30
I’m a landscaper and we manage some pretty big accounts in the woods. Well I stepped off a hundred feet or so to take a leak. I started peeing and looked up and around and off in the distance I see someone in a red hoody just fckn staring at me from behind a tree. This lot of land is next to a road but its all commercial and not residential so besides us there really shouldn’t be any other people out here but us. Especially this deep out there. I cocked my head to the side to make sure that it was in fact a person in a hoody and not something else my mind distorted into a human. Well once I move they move back behind the tree. I yelled at them hey what are you doing and they took off. I’m pretty sure whoever it was did not have pants on. They could have been flesh colored but I don’t believe so. And no shoes. I was shook by the all thing so I just called my boss man and told him what’s up. We all went to do a quick search together and we never saw the person again.
Image source: orphancrippler2219
#31
My best friend used to have a job as a research assistant on an owl census project in New Mexico. This basically involved systematically hiking through remote forests for two weeks at a time, and charting where owls were sighted/owl sounds were heard/pellets were found. Then you’d get two weeks off, then two weeks on, etc. The job required that two research assistants hike together for safety. Unfortunately, the guy she was paired with was slow and out of shape, so he generally trailed some distance behind her.
One week into a hike, she started to develop the feeling that she was being watched. She stopped in the middle of a clearing to wait for the other guy to catch up. Thankfully, he wasn’t too far behind and realized there was a mountain lion in the trees, watching her. They both put their arms up and screamed at it until it went away.
She said the most terrifying part of the whole experience was knowing that it had been following her for an entire week or longer, and was just waiting for her to be far enough away from her companion to attack.
Image source: sovietsatan666
#32
This happened one or two years ago to me and my Step-dad. We were in Colorado on a Elk hunting trip and we had been hiking all day when we got to a place that we would make camp. We are there for a few hours and noting really happens we scout a little and don’t come up with much, this was our second EVER elk hunt so we did really know what to look for. We cooked a dinner of MountainHouse freeze dried beef stew, on our gas stove.
After we finish up we both sit and catch our breath you see me and my step-dad are from Texas and at 11,000 feet our longs aren’t holding up to the thinner air, we sit there for a while and break out our biviees (not 100% on the spelling of that) which is basically a thicker trash bag made or reflective material and is waterproof. We shove our sleeping bags in and settle in, we were both pretty tired but we were slightly worried about bears because I have bear spray, my dad has his 9mm Glock and my dads Bow which is attached to his bag. We have our food bag in a tree out of reach of a bear so we have done all the things we need to make our camp bear proof.
We fall asleep and I have theses weird, f****d up dreams. I hear people talking about how they hope it doesn’t rain, then I hear them talking about the best way to put a fire together, and finally I just hear a fire going. I wake up to the feeling of a fat rain drop hitting me in the face. I then feel where the rain drop had hit me and it was dry, I look around and there is no fire and not evidence of any people, no nothing really.
This scared the s**t out of me and I sit there for a few hours, waiting for it to get light. When it finally does get light my step dad starts to wake and I’m sitting there still shivering even though it is only in the high 40’s and I’m wrapped in a jacket a sleeping bag and many other layers. He turns to me and says “dude we need to leave.” I say “why?” And my dad says “I had all sorts of f****d up dreams!”
He proceeds to explain to me That in the middle of the night he had heard what he thought was a bear, then what he thought was me screaming in the middle of the night, me getting dragged away, and then finally what he thought was a bear just standing over him and he had not been able to sleep much due to the fact that he thought his son was getting eaten by a bear. I then explained to him what I thought I heard and the rain drop and we both agreed that we should leave and that maybe that the altitude was messing with us. To this day I don’t know if it was altitude because I heard those voices and I still remember that conversation vividly.
Image source: Sten_Gustoffson
#33
As a kid, I lived by a decent sized conservation area in southern New Hamshire. Me and my friend from the neighboring town would go there during hunting season, because you weren’t allowed to hunt on it, unlike the forests he and I usually hung around. The area spanned a river, and there were a lot of little islands and sandbars that only appeared during parts of the year thanks to snowmelt. So we ford the river, and ended up on a peninsula not that far off the trail, maybe a quarter mile at most, but across water. You’d have to swim to it most of the year. So we’re checking it out, climbing the embankment and what have you, and then we both spot a camp at the same time.
It was set up in the middle of this peninsula, just hidden well enough that you couldn’t see it if you went boating. The d**n thing had bones *all over*. It looked like your typical homeless camp, with some garbage, a shopping cart of all things, and a tarp “tent” with a really grimy pile of blankets, but what stuck out was the bones. Hanging from branches on strings, strewn around a firepit, just generally littered about… I’m pretty sure they were deer and other animal bones, but I don’t know because once we both saw that, my friend wasn’t listening to my d*****s self who wanted to check it out anymore and f****d right off, and I followed. Never saw a person, never saw a boat, nothing. Just the camp and the bones.
It’s worth noting that the enforcement of conservation there is strict enough that you can get in major trouble if they even *suspect* you’re there to hunt or fish without permission, and they’re really vigilant about it. We also later realized that you could lay on the embankment we climbed up and watch people on the more popular trails without even needing binoculars, and there was a pretty good view of the river as well. Whoever lived there could watch people and not get seen. Friend and I agree, his gut instincts were right. It’s very probable the camp’s owner was there, watching us from hiding. I shudder to think what would have happened if we got closer.
Image source: blackfox24
#34
Background about where my dear stand is. To my back is woods, then field, to my front is a field that turns into a hill that I chose to kind of act as a berm in case I miss, to the left is more woods, right is more field. This area is my family’s farm and has been for a long time. Before that it was not really a forest, but slight wooded, the trees were planted by settlers, before that it was a clear area. I’m not a superstitious person, but it says can’t explain and I can’t.
I was sitting in my stand on a Saturday morning. I will never forget this, it was raining barely, sun just above the horizon. Suddenly I felt like I was being watched, I’ve never felt like that with deer. I looked into the woods and there were wolves on the edge of the woods, neat. Those d***s just stood there and watched me, you better bet I stared back. I know they take that as a challenge, but I’m in a tree, bring it. The wolves they just stood there, staring, watching. They stood there for three hours. I just started ignoring them, they scared away the deer anyways. All of the sudden they leave, double time and some big, black thing appears from the woods. Size of a black bear, skinny like a dog, head like a bat. It stood where the wolves were. I pointed my gun at it and shot into the ground (on purpose, I don’t wanna be the guy who k**led the last of whatever species). It looked at me, I chambered a new round, it ran. I have no idea what it was, but I asked my dad and uncles and they said they saw it too.
Image source: IDK0111
#35
Used to live across from a large wooded area. One day some friends and I were exploring, and we came across a big pit (probably 6′ deep and 8′ across) filled with ashes and charred bones. Never went back…
Image source: bagomangopulp
#36
I’ve lived on the high dessert for most of my life (6000′ above sea level if you’re wondering). I was out riding my horse alone in the absolute middle of BFE in the Badlands (no trees, and hardly any brush to speak of so sounds carry a long way and there is nowhere to hide for long) when all of a sudden his ears perk up. I feel my skin start to crawl like we’re being watched. My normally mellow gelding, starts to panic. I start to feel really dizzy, and my horse stumbles. I black out.
I come to an hour or so later about 3 Miles away from the inciting incident still on my horse. He is frothing with sweat and shaking all over. I’m still not sure what happened. I had plenty of water and snacks. It was 65ish Degrees and breezy, so I don’t believe weather or dehydration/hunger were a factor. I have never before or after had a fainting spell, and that was the most reliable, quiet horse I’ve ever owned.
I now have a serious case of the heebie jeebies again just thinking about it.
Image source: UintaGirl
#37
I was driving from Tucson to Denver in the middle of the night. Got tired, was pulling off and crawl in a sleeping bag in the desert far away from the two lane blacktop I was on (highway 666 btw) (it’s since been renamed because everybody was stealing the signs. Anyway pull off the road, onto a dirt road and then a little further. Kind of hid the truck behind some vegetation and toss down a sleeping bar and pad in the middle of pitch black huge star New Mexico night.
No one around, no light, nothing at all…. visibility for miles. I’m completely f*****g alone in pitch black nothing and getting wound down in my eyes are getting droopy. Then I hear it. It sounds goofy to say but it’s the same Indian music you’d hear in old black and white westerns. Native music, voices and a drum. I literally think I’m dreaming and when it starts I’m f*****g petrified because that noise just appearing out of nothing simply put ice in my veins.
Relax a little and unfreeze, and try to be logical about what I’m hearing, which has no physical manifestation of its origin… so..thinking logically… now instead of pure panic….. I could be on the reservation at this point. Perhaps it’s coming from behind a previously unseen hill… I get up, look around. I don’t see anything at all. It kind of comes and goes in volume. Doesn’t seem to be coming from a direction. I have no clue. I looked for evidence and didn’t find any. Crawled back in the bag because I’d been driving for hours, and they sang all night. Logic tells me it had to be a group of people I didn’t see. But I looked, and there were no ancillary noises like talking or stopping or anything. Just that Indian drum. And the “hiyaya HI Ya….” What was originally terrifying became calming and I ended up sleeping fantastically. Later learned that was a terrible stretch of road for very bad things to happen, it sort of lived up to its 666 moniker for wrecks and bad s**t occurring apparently.
Image source: Ankeneering
#38
Mine was not of monsters but of humans.
My friends and I were high in the woods deep in the Sierra Nevadas in the California back country and decided to travel a few miles off a path to reach a river and shoot at targets with our 22. The path is littered with deer bones and claw marks from bears so we’re freaking out a bit but finally make it to where we set up camp.
I notice off in the distance about a half mile upstream the river there are two men walking towards us in the exact direction we are firing our gun. I yell at the guys for them to stop shooting and we just watch these men, wide-eyed and in their late 20’s and early 30’s walking quickly alongside the river when suddenly they both decide to jump in.
I should say at this point that the river is moving very quickly and could easily sweep you under and is definitely not safe for a casual swim. We watch as both the men are swept away towards us downstream. One of my friends, we’ll call him Mike, decides to be brave and get close to the edge and extend a piece of wood for them to grab as they’re about to pass us. Both the men latch on and Mike is the hero pulling them to shore.
When everyone catches their breath we asked the men what they were doing out here as it’s super remote and they were at least 3 or 4 miles from the nearest trail and why they both jumped in the deadly river they give us short answers like “Oh we were just having fun boys” and “Just free swimming the river!” while they’re leering at us.
Immediately the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and every fiber in my body tells me they mean us harm. We tell them we’re going to head back to the trail and they say they’re coming with us. Given that we’re so far off from civilization and these guys are clearly high on something and a danger to themselves we reluctantly agree to allow them to follow us.
It was the most quiet hike of my life. I felt them trying to feel out if they could take us in a fight. There were three of us and two of them and we had a 22 but were young squirrelly adults. I don’t know how to explain it but the hike was us constantly positioning against each other with body language without ever directly fighting. They would get close to the gun and try to both be near it then we would counter by getting between them and the gun as naturally as possible while hiking up a path that was littered in bear claw marks and dung. We finally make it to the car and they decide we weren’t suitable targets and moved on. No idea what two random guys were doing risking their life in a freezing cold raging river in the Sierra Nevadas, or why they felt the need to size up if they could attack three random teens but I’m glad nothing happened that day.
Tldr: went hiking in the woods with friends as teens. Almost shot some random crazies. Crazies fall into river and we save them. Then crazies proceed to position themselves to fight us. Eventually get away.
Image source: EtherGorilla
#39
Kinda creepy thing happened to me when I was a student forester this summer. So, the forest I was working in was about 20 kms from the nearest town which contained around 1200 people and we usually set out for what ever task we have to do in the forest at around 7:00am. So we are at the forest at around 7:30am and we are about 12 kms up the road when we turn a corner very slowly and see what I initially thought to be a weird looking bush or statue but it was in fact a person, sitting on a carved out stump on the side of the road, just sitting there. What really threw me off was the fact that this person had a parka on and a balaclava underneath it IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER. We drove by this person real slow and he lifted a hand to wave slowly as we drove past and it was just super creepy. Never saw them again after that but it did make going out on excursions a little more uneasy sometimes when alone.
Image source: canIkick1it
#40
TL;DR at bottom.
I‘ve got one. When I was in Boy Scouts, my troop would always go to a camp called Camp Tahquitz for our yearly summer camp. That specific year, they had had abnormal bear activity in and around the camp. It was a pretty sizable camp, but was still way out in the boonies, so an encounter with a chipmunk was just as common as it would be with a California black bear. Wildlife management was done by some crazy old Gunnery Sergeant that we called Gunny, so you can see the situations you might find yourself in.
So anyway, I was tenting with my friend who had just joined the troop, lets call him James. So James and I are sleeping in our tent in the middle of the night, probably around 1 or 2 in the morning, when I was abruptly awoken by something. Everything is dead silent, aside from a plasticky creaking sound. Then I see it, right above my head. Something was pushing the tent in so hard that it began to cave in right above my head, like if someone was leaning into it with all of their weight. Except, these tents were relatively strong, you (I mean, I could as a preteen) could jump on them and you would just bounce right off.
So, being the scared little thirteen year old that I was, I began to smack whatever it was with all of my might whilst simultaneously clubbing James with my fist to get him to wake up. Mind you, James is an incredibly deep sleeper, so this in effect does nothing. Whoever or whatever it is is leaning so hard that it is almost touching my head when James wakes up from the nightmare that he was having and let out a blood curdling ten-year-old-girl-being-m******d-in-the-woods type scream. Whatever it was stopped leaning on the tent and vanished silently into the night.
So, for a few years, James (who has no recollection of the event whatsoever) and I always assumed it was a bear after the meds in my daypack. But, after staffing at the camp and getting to know the lore of the grounds a little better, I think something else might have been afoot. There have been many strange happenings in and around Camp Tahquitz, both paranormal and just normally unexplained. Theres the usual Bigfoot and ghost stories, but older scouts and even administrative higher-ups claim to have seen things. Claims of wendigo-skinwalker hybrids (things that look like both, not actual hybrids), some dead guy called Dragthump, and a bunch of Native American myths (Tahquitz has the biggest and most active Native American program West of Oklahoma).
The fact that there were no tears in the tent flap from the bear claws, we were the furthest away from the bear box, the fact that there was absolutely no sound from the supposed bear (black bears make a heck of a ruckus), and the fact that it was just persistently leaning into the tent instead of just clawing at it like most bears leads me to believe that it was no Yogi or Smokey. It just didn’t behave like bears do, and even if it was some older scouts attempting to play a joke on us, they wouldn’t have been heavy enough to lean that far in on the tent and probably would have erupted into laughter right afterward. Plus, my troop isn’t like that. Its full of a bunch of mild mannered city boys, perfect Eagle Scout material, (of which I am one). Everything just seems so off.
I don’t claim to know what it was (hence the unexplained part). Let me guys know if something similar happened to you.
TL;DR: Strange thing attempted to break into my tent in the night, thought it was a bear, but I don’t think so anymore.
Image source: ThatDamZoomer
#41
We have dense woods behind my house, and one evening I hear my dog barking up a storm. I ran out side to see what it was, and near our grape vines stood this wolf-like creature that was about the size of a huge bear. I freaked out when it made eye contact with me. It just stood there, about 10 yards away from me, just staring. I grabbed my dog and ran inside to tell my parents. They wrote it off as my imagination since I was about 10-12 at the time, but ever since then when I go into the woods it feels like I’m being watched.
I’m now 17, and still have the vivid memory of it.
Image source: thegirloverthere007
#42
Hiking part of the NCT north of Grand Rapids, MI. We hiked around 25 miles in a day and by the time we made camp I was in a huge amount of pain (hadn’t hiked for almost a year so going that hard was a mistake). I was starting to get sick and couldn’t get warm no matter how I layered up. I barely ate and then went to sleep. I woke up in the very early morning to slow footsteps walking around camp. They were pretty heavy and lumbering so I knew it was a bear. I didn’t dare move and tried to slow my breathing as much as possible to stay quiet. After around 20 minutes it started moving away again and I passed back out. When I woke up the shrubbery around camp was disturbed and a friend had also woken up and heard the same thing. She was somewhat new to hiking though and had no idea what it was so she was a little spooked when I told her. We got the f**k outta there as soon as we could.
Image source: anon
#43
SO and I were off-roading in the Cibola National Forest. On a few of the turns, there’s a spot in the trees looking out over a cliff. At one of these, we saw a weird thing in the air. I can’t even really say it was in the sky, because it was too close. I could see the other parts of the mountain *behind* this thing. It did this weird thing, almost like a loading bar, lighting up white back to front, then vanished. I still don’t know what that thing was. We both saw it. It had a wider back and went to a point at the front, and the front part curved down. It was terrifying the whole way out, because the road wasn’t wide enough to turn around on and there were more openings in the trees like that ahead of us. No missing time, nothing weird like that, but it was a good minute before either of us said anything. I’ve been back since (took months before I was willing tbh) and never saw anything like it since.
Image source: TisIFrienchiestFry
#44
Hunting alone in the middle of the Oregon Cascades, miles from any people. I’m sitting still watching a clearing when I hear a sound that I’ve never heard before or since. Only way I can describe it is that it sounded like wood cracking together, like someone hit a pine tree with a telephone pole and was doing their best Jose Conseco impression. The first time it happened I genuinely thought it was a gunshot because the initial crack was so loud but the last half of the sound was very clearly a tree being struck and shaking. There was a flood of instant terror once my mind worked out the calculation for how hard you would have to hit a tree to replicate that sound. I’d estimate the source was on the other side of a small valley from me well over 300 yards. I know it sounds stupid but it was such a tremendous show of force I Instantly started making my way back to my truck.
I’ve been hunting all my life and I’m an avid firearm enthusiast I go shooting almost every weekend. This was 100% not gunfire. Pine trees and cedar trees will also sometimes make poping sound in the morning and into the afternoon as the sun warms them. It was orders of magnitude louder than that.
Image source: Hkaddict
#45
Went trekking at this island based national park alone and the trail was alive with animals and insects sounds. Got to one part of the trail where it got so quiet to the point that I can hear my own breaths.
Didn’t realise it at first until I said out loud to myself, “why is it so quiet here?” Finally realised what’s going on and I moved away from that part pretty darn fast.
Don’t know what happened there and not sure I want to know.
Image source: popiahayam
#46
I distance hike when I can. Sometimes this means getting up early, or staying out late, to get as many miles in as possible. Sometimes, walking in the pitch dark with a low light headlamp gets spooky.
I grew up in the woods of this area. I’ve slept under our canopy of stars more nights than I can count. I’ve trekked thousands of miles of trail, river bank, lake shore, ridge, bottoms, bogs, and creeks. I’ve hunted the game. I’m establishing this because it’s important you understand I‘ve heard, seen, and smelt about all this region has to offer in the way of wilderness.
My scariest experience though happened at about 0430 in the morning. It was late spring, so the first morning light wouldn’t be visible in the tree tops for another 30-45 minutes; another hour past that until sunrise. I was on mile five.
I’m in a low bottom that’s wedged between two steep ridges. The trail I’m on was narrow, muddy, and completely hemmed in by thick underbrush, young maple, and old oak growth. I’m focused on the small light from my headlamp, just one step after the other, zoned out. Then I heard a loud CRACK! And I froze solid.
This is the part I have trouble describing. 0430 in springtime means I’m the only thing making noise. No birds chirping, nothing. Dead quiet.
Mid-step I froze. When fight or flight kicks in you have these immediate instinct thoughts. The thought that instantly flashed in my mind as I stood there balancing myself into silence was, “If I hear that again, I’m turning around, and I’m going back the way I came in a hurry.”
Why? Because that sound was not a branch breaking. It wasn’t deadfall. It wasn’t a widow maker. I was d**n sure I had just heard something intentional. Hearing it twice, well, that meant get outta here. To describe it as best I can, it sounded like a decent sized wooden stick being violently whacked against a smallish tree. More a fungo bat sized stick, than a baseball bat. The distinction in my head being that this sound was a crack, and not a thud or thump. And I have described it as, “explosive,” in the past because it was so sudden, and so terribly loud. I had the sense that it was about fifty yards directly in front of me, and it was loud, and clear.
Now, as I stood there, completely spooked, I realized the soon-to-be worst part of my situation. I knew where the sound came from. And I knew where the trail went. In about thirty yards, I was going to come to a 180 degree turn and start up the ridge going away from the creek. This meant, as soon as I got the courage to move towards this noise, I was going to have to turn my back to it, and get up that ridge. This made me very nervous. My heads somewhere between m**h fiend murder, and bigfoot bludgeoning.
Minutes pass. I just breathe my foggy breath into my glasses, and listen. Nothing. Dead quiet. I’ve got about 20-30 minutes until first light. I crank up the headlamp, and start to slowly creep to the 180 turn. When you wear a headlamp in the woods at night, every tree branch in front of you casts a big black moving shadow on the trail. It didn’t help.
I get to the turn, and quickly make the bend. I’m moving pretty fast at this point. Trying to be quiet. Taking tiny, shallow breathes so I can listen while humpin it up the trail.
And then I smell it. A stench hits me that I can’t describe. I just imagined wet, rotten, death. I’ve actually worked scenes where humans have expired in a past life as a firefighter. This was like days old decomposition, but it just smelled, strange.
I kept walking fast. By the time I made the top of that ridge, I was huffing, and the first light was showing. I didn’t stop moving until full light was out, and the birds were chirping.
I’ve heard it all in our woods. I’ve smelled it all. I’m telling you, I don’t know what the hell that was. Deadfall, and especially leafed out branches, make a lot of noise on the way down. I’ve heard it many times.
I don’t know.
Image source: anon
#47
I was maybe 16 at the time and was out deer hunting. I was a mile walk from home hunting in a valley and sitting on the top of a ridge on the one side overlooking a river bed and the sun was going down. I should’ve left earlier but didn’t want to scare the deer and figured I’d wait til they left or it was dark enough they wouldn’t see me leave. When I did leave it was still light enough to somewhat see but too dark to look through my rifle scope if that makes sense. I climbed over the top of the ridge and when I did I could hear something across the dried up pond at the bottom of this side. I then seen 5 animals. Don’t know what they were they were but they weren’t canines like wolves or coyotes. They were bigger than coyotes and a lot more bulky but were super agile. They were making weird sounds I’d never heard before too. I dont know if they seen or smelled but all of a sudden they all stopped moving and went silent for a few seconds before two of them took off running and started looping around to my left and going behind me and one looped to my right while the other 2 stayed where they were. I had become the hunted and I was terrified. I started shouting and making a lot of noise and I never seen them for the rest of the walk home but it was the scariest moment I’ve ever had in the woods. We went back the next day to look for tracks but it had snowed enough that night to cover them. I won’t forget that night.
Image source: Willard7600
#48
There were no campgrounds in my husband’s country of origin (Lebanon) but as a teen, he and his friends did camp occasionally. They once found a “good” spot, set up their tent, organized all their equipment, and retired for the night. They were taking turns keeping watch when they started to hear a sound like scores of people encircling their tent. The guy on watch ran inside the tent, scared to death. Then a wind started like they had never experienced before. It tossed their tent in the air and scattered all their stuff. They ran to the nearest lit house, where a kind lady made them tea and stayed up with them until dawn. She said they had been camping on an ancient graveyard. They never did go back to get any of their stuff.
Image source: mistmanners
#49
I used to work as a fire spotter in a remote tower deep in the woods, on any given day I would be the only human being for miles around, TLDR at the bottom.
For a couple of weeks every time it approached sunset when I’d finish for the day, everything would go eerily quiet, almost like clockwork, it stood out as it wasn’t normal, there’s usually more noise around that time of day, along with this every time I left the cabin to climb down there was the unnerving feeling of being watched, but for a while it was only while climbing down.
After that i started getting the same feeling while on the ground, and it somehow felt much closer and more menacing, can only liken it to knowing you’re being hunted/stalked, not overly great when it’s a 100 metre walk back to the car with nothing to put between you and whatever else might’ve been out there.
This continued on for another few weeks, but started hearing sort of chirps & calls, they stood out as everything was dead quiet, then one day walking back across the clearing to the car there was a long, low guttural growling somewhere behind me, and I noped the f**k out as fast as I could, and afterwards started parking the car at the base of the ladder, because f**k walking on open ground with angry sounding probably bitey things lurking about.
A few days later I was driving back out and spotted a movement on the upside of the road, looked again as it disappeared into the treeline, large, long & dark, it seemed to hang around until the end of the fire season as the quietness and eerie feelings were gone at the start of the next.
TLDR: worked alone in forest in buttf**k nowhere, got stalked by large nope for a couple months.
Image source: admiral_sinkenkwiken
#50
Was camping on a lake once with some friends and family up north, far enough north that there was 0 light pollution from any sort of city or town. For enough north you could see the Aurora on occasion. We would often see moving lights in the sky, they looked like stars and our friends would explain it away as satellites but they would zip back and forth across the sky, changing directions abruptly, crossing paths, sometimes up to 5 of them in one area. But that’s not what this story is about. We were sitting on the lake shore late one night gathered around the campfire when suddenly this bright orange ball of fire starts rising from the lake. We thought it might be a firework set off by someone else in the area but it rose incredibly slowly. And it wasnt an ember from the fire. We were all standing on the shore with our backs to the fire at this point. It rose..idk how high in the air, stopped and hovered for a few seconds, and then it was gone. We never really talked about it with them because of their dismissal of the other strange thing. I wish I could ask them about it now but I have since lost contact with all but one of them who is currently an oceanographer stationed in Antarctica.
Image source: Livinglark
#51
My father use to be an avid hunter when he was in his 20s, before family life and all; he’s hunted all around the state we live in and does not scare easily. At the time he was working on a farm that is just a couple miles away from where we live now. The farmer knew my grandparents and trusted my father.
The farmer owned a ton of land, which included quite of bit of woods. He told my dad he could hunt them whenever he wanted. My father didnt waste anytime in doing so. He went hunting a few weeks later, but something was off. He told us that when he went into the woods they wasn’t any noise, no bugs or tree frogs. It creeped him out, but he just played it off as an off day. He didn’t any deer that day and left after a couple hours.
My father went back the second time a few weeks later since he finally had a day off from the farm. This time was a bit stranger. He got a 100 or so yards into the woods and it was the same as before, no noise of any sort. Except this time he said it felt as he was being stalked. He said he stayed in the woods for 15 to 20 minutes before quickly leaving.
My dad never went back into those woods. He said in his entire life up until now he never felt like that again. This farmer was going to give his farm to my dad, but he refused because of how uneasy those woods made him feel. This happened back in the 70s and the woods currently have a reputation of being haunted with bigfoot sightings and even screams at night. There’s a website for my state that lists forgotten and historical places and has a section that shows legends and haunted places by county and the woods are listed there as a supposedly haunted location.
Image source: LadyRogue92
#52
Me and a group of friends where camping in a clearing just outside a large woods, we got there around noon and fished and hiked until sunset. Everything was normal, we made a fire and were cooking our fish and telling stories and once it got so dark you couldn’t see past the light of the fire things got a bit scarier. We heard the very loud Yelp, we thought it sounded like a wolf, so we decided to throw what ever fish we had left back into the creek to try to get the wolf to leave. We still on high alert but we sat back down and continued our story’s, a bit later we hear the Yelp again followed by a loud screeching noise, I’ve never heard anything like it before. After that we put more wood on the fire and went back to our tents, we hoped the light would keep what ever was in that woods away. In the morning we started to pack up and noticed some of the fish that we threw in the creek was laying next to our fire, I have no idea what did that but we decided it was best if we didn’t come back to that spot anymore.
Image source: GiveItMoreGasBuhh
#53
Lived the majority of my life in the mountains of Sweden.
1. This one is my dad’s. But he was out hunting, and he and the dog came upon a concrete house that had two storeys. A week later or so, one of the storey’s where gone, and the house was just one floor. Like it had been like that allways. Further more, concrete is not used for the buildings up there. Its always wood, not concrete. That house should not be there.
2. Me and my dad were deep in the mountains fishing. I start hearing whispers in the night, I can almost make out what they are saying. I look at my dad, who smiles, and says: “You hear them too, don’t you?”.
Image source: misunderstood_9gager
#54
Bow hunter. I set up a camp for a day or two. Keeping my bows and such in a vehicle. This particular year I had my jeep and a tiny tow behind sleeper. So nothing was left out, like knives, bows etc. Just a couple things like tables n chairs.
So there I am early morning following a trail, the ground is quickly being dusted with snow, my ghille suit becomes less useful by the minute so I opt to go swap to snowy Oak camo.
I had my little site set up to drag back a deer, hang it up and clean. When I got to my site, my cleaning setup that was unused hours ago was still in position, but a pool of semi frozen blood below it. The fire pit was out, but warm. My table was wiped off, but clearly just used.
Someone used my site to clean something, sort of tidied up, and sitting on the foot step to my sleeper, a wax paper wrapped slab of red meat. Looked to me like a decent chunk of venison.
No tracks in, but tracks leading out, so they must have come just as the snow started. I packed up and f****d right off. I was clearly out classed by the hunter, and had no idea where they were. Just decided best to go home.
Image source: Ferusomnium
#55
Ice storm in North Carolina everything is coated but the sun is out. I head out to fill the bird feeders.
I walk across the yard collecting feeders zig zaging from one side to the other probably 3 times to grab them from the trees. Head up on to the back porch to start filling and I Hear a CRASH.
30+ inch trunk Sweet gum crashes down over my tracks from seconds ago It never made a sound falling just the crash of impact.
Pulled up the whole root ball when it went.
I missed death by 10 feet and 30 seconds.
Image source: bakermonitor1932
#56
Went for a drive in the woods in southeast Alaska a few decades ago. It was my best friend driving, my fiance riding center seat, and me in the passenger seat of a single cab pick up. We stopped at a gas station to get snacks before heading out. It was late in the evening so it was already dark out by the time we stopped to eat some of our snacks. The night was cool as it was late fall. So here we are chatting in the truck and eating our food parked off of this long winding dirt road to nowhere. My buddy starts taking about local legends and lore including the “kushtaka”. I was fairly ignorant to the idea and myth and thought it was all BS.
I thought if would be funny to harass him a bit about it and push the limits of testing this kushtaka nonsense. He was dead serious when he told me to stop. But I continued. Then i heard what sounded exactly like fingernails tapping on my window next to my head. I looked over and seen nothing but assumed i was hearing things. I couldn’t see anything because the cab light was on it was pitch black out. A few moments pass and i hear it again. This time both my finance and friend heard it. My friend sorta nervously smiled and laughed. Then I realized I had to pee. So i jokingly tell them if I get snatched up by this kushtaka you best come after me. I open the door and pee by the front passenger tire. But the area felt very weird and uncomfortable. I mentioned that as i got back in. There we talked a bit more and I realised we had pulled off unknowingly (at the time we stopped) near a very old small cemetery that contained frog type headstones of the tlingit and haida culture in an area amongst large southeast evergreen trees. I still not being a believer and love flipping s**t to my friend then started yeah well if this kushtaka bs is real why dont they make themselves known? C’mon. C’mon already. No sooner had I said that than something punched or hit the front fender twice. My buddy turned ghost white and in one motion started the truck up and threw it in drive and we were f*****g gone. We got off the dirt road and back onto asphalt really quickly and stopped under a street light. We got out and looked. Sure enough, you could clearly see where something had hit, up high, the front right fender when we were parked. 2 distinct marks of dirt missing.
To this day, I still don’t know what it was, but with every other paranormal experience Ive had since that time, there’s no doubt in my mind that something was trying to tell me to stop pushing it or something bad would happen. Never again did I talk s**t about the kushtaka being bs. And I’ll never go into the woods of southeast ak alone…ever.
Image source: anon
#57
I was working out in the scrub over the summer on a bio job. One night, I woke up around midnight and notice it was super bright out and there was ambient light coming in through my tent. Which, generally doesn’t happen at night. So I unzipped my little one man tent and sat up out of it.
The entire area was glowing green in the moonlight. Just like someone had put a green tinted filter over the moon and cranked the brightness up.
I went back to bed because that was creepy and I wasn’t trying to get sucked into faerie or some s**t.
I’ve never seen lighting like that before. I’ve been out on plenty of clear nights with bright moonlight, and stuff wasn’t *glowing green* and shining so bright I could see it through my tent as if it was predawn light.
I had plenty of other weird experiences, but not any that made the f*****g moon brighter and changed the color of light.
Image source: anon
#58
I grew up in a house that was surrounded by woods, so I’ve heard my fair share of different animal noises/howls/shrieks/etc.
It was the night before I was moving away to college. Everything was packed, except I realized I left my headphones out in my car. It’s around midnight, and I go outside to snag the headphones. I decide to give myself a moment to “take it in” and appreciate the peace and quiet of the woods I’d grown up in.
After 2-3 minutes, I hear this noise unlike anything I’ve ever heard in my life. It was a howl at first that sorta slurred into this scream / roar. I could tell directly where it was coming from, about 30 ft away just beyond the foliage but I couldn’t see anything.
I froze for about 15 seconds before sprinting back inside. Both parents and friend heard the noise too but nobody knew what it was.
Image source: Matti_ice_21
#59
Buckle in for a long one. TLDR at the bottom.
When I was 6, my babysitter was this nice middle-aged lady and her equally nice husband. My twin brother and I were always at their house in the summer and we hung out with the couple’s 2 grand kids, another boy and girl sibling set of similar ages. This was literally my happy place. This lady had the *best* movie collection for a 6 year old. It is where I saw *The Last Unicorn* for the first time, as well as *The Little Mermaid*, *The Great Mouse Detective*, the first *Land Before Time*, and *The Brave Little Toaster*. And her husband was a phenomenal cook by a kid’s standard. Every day was chicken nuggets and pizza day. They had kid size 4-wheelers, a pool, a huge kids playhouse and jungle gym set up in the back yard. And they put on the best 4th of July show in the county for years. 6 year old me was the happiest girl on the freaking planet. They were some of the wealthiest people in our area too. Neither one of them worked so I have no idea where the money came from but I didn’t care.
One day, mid-summer, the 2 boys were being typical boys and the little girl and I thought they were being mean. In reality, the boys wanted to play war or something and the girls wanted to play wedding. Or something similarly stupid. Whatever. She and I were sad and we refused to play with the boys. Instead, we decided to go pick flowers that grew at the edge of the forest. We thought it was baby’s breath but it was really just poison hemlock (seriously). *Kids*, right?
So we are walking along the edge of this dense forest in the middle of banjo country in southern Ohio. This was in 1990 so we weren’t worried about stranger danger because we were just so far out in the country. The adults did worry about animals from time to time because the next county over has bears and mountain lions but us 6 year olds were *fearless*. We ended up walking onto the neighbor’s property picking these flowers when we found a break in the tree line. It was an old, well-worn path leading into the woods. For whatever reason (ie., we were dumb), she and I decided to ditch our flowers and take the path in the woods and see what it led to.
The path itself was unremarkable. Well-worn but unmaintained as there were tree roots growing up through the path in places. We came upon a little bridge at one point. We were both a little confused about it because we had been told there were no creeks in our area yet here was a bridge. It wasn’t a particularly old bridge either. But the creek bed under it was dry as a bone. Weird. We kept going because… why not, I guess?
I’m not sure how far we walked beyond the bridge but we ended up in a clearing with stones all around it in a circle. The clearing was big enough that there was a gap in the trees that allowed the sunlight in. And in the middle of the circle was a *massive* stone walled well. It was big enough that there were stairs built into the d**n walls in a huge spiral. My little friend was mesmerized by the well. She found a rock and tossed it in. We never heard it hit the bottom. As we were searching for more rocks to throw in, I was rooting around in the brush by the bigger stones and actually looked at the big ones. These were not normal stones. Nope. I was a smart cookie, already reading at a 3rd grade level the summer before 1st grade (something I *loved* to show off to anyone that would sit still for 3 seconds or more) so I could read the stupid stones. There were names and dates cut into rough hewn stone. We were in a f*****g graveyard. In the middle of the woods. Far away from our adults.
I remember getting chills realizing the this. Moments later, my little friend got really quiet and poked me. She pointed to the edge of the clearing on the other side of the well. Thankfully, not the side that we had entered the graveyard on. My little heart would have exploded, I think. She was pointing at a dark shape standing just inside the woods facing us. We both stood up very slowly and stared at this dark shape. At some point, the little girl took my hand and tried to get me to leave but I couldn’t move. The fear was paralyzing. It didn’t move until the clouds covered the sun and our bright, inviting clearing became slightly shadowy. Then, the shape moved. It was an adult shaped/sized *thing* wearing long dark robes with a hood over its face.
We were stupid kids but we weren’t that f*****g stupid. We both turned tail and ran as fast as our little legs allowed. My friend was faster than me because I was a chunker (a kid with a love of reading and movies and pizza is overweight, who would have thunk it?) so she made it to the bridge first. I wasn’t far behind her though. I looked back after we got over the bridge and that a*****e was standing at the edge of the bridge. Just standing there. I screamed, pissed myself, and kept running. I tripped over a tree root in the path, ripping my pants and shredding my knee in the process. I scrambled up and kept running.
We burst out of the trees like our hair was on fire, screaming and crying, and made a beeline for the girl’s grandparent’s house. Her grandfather was in the backyard planting something and came running when he heard us. We were absolutely hysterical and nothing could calm us down. We spent hours sobbing while the grandma and grandpa got us bathed and in clean clothes and tried to soothe us. The more they said there was no one in the woods, the more hysterical we became.
It took both of us months before we’d even go onto the back deck again. Everyone was convinced we made up the story with our hyperactive imaginations but the adults humored us. The kids, not so much.
The next summer, we were forced into the back yard for the annual 4th of July party. Tons of kids. They all knew our story and one of the teenage boys (a *badass*, don’t cha know) called b******t. He bullied us for hours until we told him where the path in the woods was. And then he made us go with him. Que another incident of me pissing my pants. Yay! To my utter relief, when we got to where she and I both remembered the path being, there was nothing. No path. Just a very heavy growth of hemlock. He tried to wade through it and ended up with chiggers from neck to foot. And he got in a ton of trouble for dragging us kids down there once we got back. So she and I were relieved not to go back but from then on, all those kids thought we were stone cold liars.
Fast forward 15 years later (16 years after this all happened), my mom mentioned that the grandpa passed away a few months prior while I was off to school. I was 22 at that point and had mostly forgotten the events in the woods. I expressed my condolences and asked what happened. I mean, this guy was a friend of my mom’s for 20+ years. My mom started being evasive so I got curious and pressed her. She said that he had hung himself in their garage. *Jesus*. Wow, okay. That sucks.
And then she told me the *bad* part. His granddaughter (my little friend) was the one that found his body. All around him were notebooks with crazy person writings that he had amassed over a very long time, some dating back to the early 70s apparently, detailing his dealings with demons and spirits and other crazy things. He had left notes for all of his loved ones. The note for his granddaughter was an apology for not protecting her from the *demon at the well*. And the note for his wife was an apology for leaving her as it was the only way to protect her and the other people he loved. It seems that the explanation for their wealth was deals struck with the demons. After a few decades of these deals, they had started coming to collect on the debts the old man owed and what they wanted was for him to *k**l his family* in payment so he killed himself instead.
It was the craziest thing I had ever heard but it made total *f*****g* sense. Everyone wrote the guy off as having a serious mental health issue; they threw the journals away, buried him, and moved on. No investigations. Nothing.
I can rationalize everything we saw and experienced as some kind of weird psychological reaction to picking hemlock. That wouldn’t explain how both of us had the exact same delusion though. I know what I saw was real. I might not remember all the details nearly 30 years after the fact but I remember the *fear*. And I still have a scar on my knee that had never faded. I’m not afraid of the woods or the dark or anything. But I have a very healthy respect for the dead and I don’t f**k with demon s**t. In the immortal words of Ducky, *Nope, nope, nope.*
**TLDR: Idyllic childhood ruined by a crazy demon worshiper.**.
Image source: H0us3Hunt3r
#60
I did a basics of survival course a while back.
While walking through forests in the middle of nowhere, I would often hear a loud trumpety sound. Kinda like a trumpet some days and a grinding sound on other days.
Not sure what it was, but it was super loud but there was nothing nearby that could make a sound like that.
Image source: Ricky_RZ
#61
Not inexplicable but every once in a while, when I’m out walking in the woods or just doing stuff around the property I’ll hear a flock of the Turkeys echoing out from the woods.
I swear to god they sound like predatory monsters.
Come to think of it I’ve never actually seen them making that noise.
please be turkey please be turkeys.
Image source: Fanfics
#62
So I live in quite a remote area and I never really believed in ghosts or monsters.
I was driving along at night and decided to pull up for the night and continue driving the next day at a spot known as the flat sands. It’s literally just a flat land that spans for 100s of kms. I was sleeping and I woke up to the most intense feeling of someone pinning me down and unable to move. I couldn’t see anything but it lasted a good minute. I was sweating and out of breath and had to take a moment to process wtf just happened. I ended up going back to sleep and drove home the next day. Fast forward a few weeks later in my own home the same s**t happened.
Later on I was chatting to a few locals and another fella who had stayed at the same sand flats started talking about how he refuses to sleep there anymore as he has been there twice and both times he’s had the same experience. On top of that the local inmates at the prison I’m at started to make complaints that they believe “the feather foot man” is about as they all experienced being pushed down in their sleep.
Its some wacky s**t
Edit: Feather foot man is a local myth of a bad spirit who k**l people.
Image source: FairDinkumBottleO
#63
Not scary but cant explain it to this day and I’ve wanted to share it for a while and have no one that I think would take it seriously.
Tl;dr at the bottom
Wildland firefighter in the US. I’ve fought fires all over the Northwest, eastern rockies, and Midwest forests and the only thing that’s ever thrown me off was fighting fires in the mountains of NE Wyoming, BLM land east of Yellowstone. Hiking into a recently burnt valley that was…just…eery, smoke can make that a norm but the colors were so vibrant (even after being touched by fire, most of the trees and shrubs were unburnt (uncommon but not rare or impossible)
Within a few steps of entering the base of the valley I knew the details like I had lived their all my life. Like deja vu, but with the clarity of reality and not a momentary second but 20 minutes and a hundread yards of hiking.
To be clear this was a place I’d never been before and I was hiking paths that were as fimillar to me as a brother. Trees I knew had scars opposite of me 20 yards away. Stones that I knew were going to be warm, almost hot to the touch, perched inches from an ice cold stream. Before I turned corners I knew about a rock shelf that was protecting a small pool with a lush green patch of grass the size of a small room with small untouched trees (green grass in Wyoming in August, fairly uncommon) I stayed their for a moment that felt like an hour.
The whole time my hairs were standing up and falling down like I was revisiting a favorite song and the symphony of emotions like nostalgia, joy and bliss just washing over me. Every thing just felt perfect. Every. single. detail, perfect.
(idk but star trek fans out their basically how Guinan described the Nexus in Star Trek VII: generations. “Like being inside joy…and never in my entire life have I ever been as content”)
Finished scouting the valley, went back to my crew and we moved on.
I kept it to myself not knowing how to explain this perfect place to anyone let alone myself. This shook me for days, I had no way to rationalize it and it kept me awake a few nights for the rest of that assignment. Even as we worked, ate, shared fun stories it still gnawed at me.
To this day (4 years and countless fires faught later) I’ve never had an experience like it and likely the only place I’ve desired beyond any to return to again just to touch that perfect world.
Tl;dr- while fighting fires I found a doorway to the Nexus/ribbon. Stayed for a short bit, and afterwords I’ve always wanted to go back
(Morty voice: everything’s crooked, reality is poison, I WANT TO GO BACK…LAMBS TO THE COSMIC SLAUGHTER!).
Image source: skullharvest
#64
My Husband worked as a logger in NSW in Penrose, Wingello and Belanglo state forests. It’s uncommon to see people walking and wandering in the mist in the early morning, but some appear from nowhere or disappear behind things they shouldn’t. The operators scare each other saying it’s the souls of the Ivan Milat’s victims, but they absolutely don’t get out of the cabs for anyone just in case. They have also found human remains a few times. Unfortunately they were both assumed homeless, we didn’t follow up for a cause of death.
Image source: lucyh5629
#65
Went out hunting, me and my dad were about 3 miles from camp when we heard a very deep, long growl. Initially thought it was a bear. Get back to camp where everyone talks about the growl. Not weird in itself until one of us realized there were probably 10-15 miles between the farthest groups of hunters. No bear growls loud enough to carry for 15 miles.
Image source: anon
#66
Not scary, but was creepy
Early 90’s I think 1990.
Well anyway western Washington, wandering, just for *fun*, found a modest sized car from the mid 60’s just sitting there no broken glass, covered in moss, tires flat, just sitting there no roads at all for probably 300 feet or so (access roads for logging/fire fighting)
Yah was a bit creepy, car looked fairly good just had been clearly sitting since probably the late 60s no damage rotted flat tire and tone of moss.
Never went back big “oh hell no”.
Image source: znm2016
#67
Was driving a quad on one of my buddy’s properties..about 8pm ish. We would take turns riding it and doing laps around the property (pretty big..about 50 acres,surrounded by woods). There’s a barb wire fence around property that’s hard to see at night so obviously I slow down as I’m getting close to it. as I start slowing down there is a star that catches my eye because it was real bright..as I’m looking at it the star starts getting brighter?! It was stationary with no movement as it got brighter and then it dimmed to reg brightness…once it dimmed to reg brightness it shot off ,like literally turned into a shooting star. I got creeped out and headed back. Don’t know what it was but I am prettysure it was a ufo..definitely wasn’t a star.
Image source: Davidhate
#68
I was camping with my church youth group when I was about 12-13 (I’m 23 now). At night we would split up into 3 or 4 and tent together. First night there, I could not sleep. My tent-mates were heavy asleep, but for some unexplainable reason, I had a really uneasy feeling that kept me awake. I passed most of my time just laying and looking through our mesh window in the tent. There was only one window that faced the gravel road and about 15 yards down the road was the camp’s restroom. Next to the restroom, was one single street light. This is all I could see through our window. Nothing but woods around the tent other than that. Early, around 1 or 2 am, a dull, hovering light caught my attention. At first I thought it was a headlamp because that seemed around the same hight that I was seeing this light. The light slowly moved from the restroom area to directly underneath the streetlight. That’s when I realized that no human was holding the light. The orb of light continued to slowly move, and I followed it with my eyes until it reached the tree line and disappeared behind the trees. I believed no one else had seen it until I told my younger brother the next morning (also happened to be on that trip). He said that he was awake all night and had seen the exact same thing.
Image source: jnut96
#69
I was hiking with my family in a small nature reserve near here. All of sudden we hear large crashing and branch snapping sounds. We turn behind us and see taking off from the cliff the biggest bird I have ever seen. But things about it looked off, like the legs and length of the body. Not to mention it had a really long neck and a strange shaped head. I’ll never be sure what that was. We weren’t in an area known for large birds. The biggest we get here in NJ are like hawks. This thing looked like it had a 40+ foot wingspan, and was bigger than any hawk I’ve ever seen.
Image source: anon
#70
I’ve experienced a lot of spooky stuff in the woods, but typically nothing I couldn’t explain. The most startling thing that ever happened to me in the woods, I cannot explain. I went north to go backpacking with a couple of friends. We stopped at a piece of land my family owns for a night on the way. We were sitting around a camp fire far from civilization when we heard the most blood curdling scream come from the trees right next to us. It sounded like
“WAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOO! Wooo woo.”
It sounded like a demon banshee child. My one friend fell back in her chair, my other friend immediately ran inside the pop up camper there, and my immediate reaction was to grab the hatchet nearby and stand at the ready.
We didn’t hear anything running away, we didn’t see anything, and we never heard it again. I have no idea what it was to this day. I’ve researched every possible call I could find from every animal in that region from night hawks and owls to foxes, coyotes, and big cats. I can find nothing that can produce the noise I heard that night.
Image source: anon
#71
I’m one of those, but I was at my lake where my cabin is surrounded by forest. I was about 7-10 years old and my siblings and I were playing outside at night. There is a line of trees just beside the cabin and a dirt road that goes around the cabin. Anyways, I ran around those trees to find a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring at me. I obviously freaked out and ran inside. I’m not sure what it was but I’m hoping it was just a deer, or that I imagined it. Still scares me to this day thinking maybe it could have been something more dangerous.
Image source: cloudamuse
#72
When my best friend and I were in middle school, we would often walk our dogs on this wooded trail that was located near our houses. We would occasionally run into wildlife out there like deer or fox, but the dogs (golden retriever and German Shepard) would just bark and Chase them for a second, then we would round them up and be on our way. This day when we were walking it was late in the evening and the sun was getting ready to set, and we didn’t see anybody else out in the woods. We let the dogs off the leash and they were running around having a good time. The dogs were about 30 feet in front of us sniffing/playing and just being dogs, when suddenly they both stopped almost simultaneously in the middle of the path, looked up in the sky (not too many trees in this spot), started barking, and backing up cautiously with their hackers up. We tried looking to see if there was something in the sky but didn’t see anything, so my friend and I looked at each other, then turned around and ran home. No idea what caused them to do this, maybe a random high frequency we couldn’t hear? We did live near a military base that does a lot of testing.
Image source: grimflys
#73
In my opinion, and I’ve lived in very rural areas my whole life, the majority of creepy night screams in N.America can be blamed on cats (cougar, bobcat), foxes and owls. The majority but not all. IF YOU WANT TO READ JUST MY SCARY EXPERIENCE SKIP TO LAST PARAGRAPH.
We live in a farm along a small feeder creek. In our area row crops (corn and soybeans) are the main crops so most land is cleared except along the creeks and rivers. This concentrates the wildlife.
For 20 years foxes have made a den under our barn and some generations are tamer and nosier than others. Two summers ago they were so loud, making every scream and weird sound you can imagine we couldn’t sleep with the windows open. We also have large numbers of Barred Owls (I got to see a batch learn to fly as both parents stood by) and these birds have an amazing vocabulary. .
When our young grandchildren visit in the summer months we usually put a tent in our back yard and my husband and I, “camp,” out there with them. The sounds you can hear on a night like that are truly amazing. One year we had foxes running past the tent about every 20 minutes making their weird strangled cry. When they got back to the den we’d hear growls, nips, barks, yelps and all manner of noise as the young ones played and fought.
The Barred Owls do the “Who-cooks-for-you-who-cooks-for-you-all,” call often during the day. But at certain times of the year groups of them start in at dusk with what I call, “Monkey calls.” It’s quite chilling the first time you hear it. I can’t describe it just imagine a bunch of monkeys doing their typical monkey chatter and you have it.
Screech Owls, especially if near your home, and I once had one perch on my chimney, are another level and sound like the devil is screaming.
All this said I’ve heard a scream 25 years ago in South Missouri that had to come from such a large chest it truly frightened and confused me. My husband also heard it an to this day has no idea what it was. We were camping at Meramac State Park. It was deep and long and induced terror in your heart. Whatever it was it was above the campground close to the river. We both sat straight up in our sleeping bags looking at each other and said, “WTF was that?”
I was raised in those hills, never heard it before or since.
Image source: pitpusherrn
#74
Deffinetly not as scary as your guys, but it freaks me out.
I was walking with my parents along a trail in the Rocky Mountains, it was sunset and we wanted to walk a bit more before we headed home.
Anyways my father told me to stay a little bit away from the edge, as to it was super crumbly and weak, so I stayed away.
Almost all the way up, where the edge was nearly a straight drop down, I blacked out. When I woke up a few seconds later I was falling down the edge, my Mom grabbed me, only to slip aswell. My dad then had to pull us both up.
Needless to say our walk ended.
Image source: ThatOneCheekyGopher
#75
My buddy and I were driving to the casino once and we both thought we saw this Gremlin/elf thing. We were driving up a hill in Minnesota going to treasure island in Red Wing from Winona. Well right in front of a guard rail this thing kinda took a step onto the road into our headlights, about 1.5’-2’ tall. And then kinda “oh s**t” jumped back out of our headlights into the darkness. Now, I think I’m crazy and just caught a glimpse of something else that my mind is tricking me. But I look over to my buddy driving and his eyes are wide as hell, “did you see that thing!?” He says. I don’t really think it was one but strange how both of us think the same thing and we still talk about it at times.
Image source: anon
#76
So I live in the pacific north west, I spend most of my time outside. Usually I hang around what me and my friends call, “the island” it’s in the middle of a river, and can be traveled to when summer rolls around and the water goes down. One day I was out on the island, and I was hearing some strange noises, I knew it wasn’t a deer because you get to know the noises animals make after a while. I was getting pretty freaked out by the fact that it was moving around me like a predator would. When you spend a lot of time in the woods you learn when an apex predator is on the hunt, they seem to control every aspect of nature, the wind stops blowing, trees stop creaking, and time stops. This began to happen when the creature was moving around me. Something felt wrong about this creature, I had heard story’s of nez perce legends, and never really took them to heart until I began to spend time outside. There are things you experience out in the woods that can’t, or shouldn’t be understood. A lot of nez perce tried to explain those things. When I looked around me I couldn’t see a thing but trees and brush, but I could hear the movement of something around me. When you know something it’s superior in strength it’s a law of nature to treat it with respect, so I began to walk away from the area. When I left the sound followed, this is never a good thing, it means that YOU are the object of there hunt. I began to fiddle with my pocket knife even though I knew it would do anything against a predator that would want to hunt a human. At this point it was getting dark and I was moving faster, that’s when I herd it, the screech. Now there’s no way I could explain it it just was wrong, I started running and anyone who knows anything about wildlife knows that you never run. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I didn’t make it to my little row boat. I would rather not know.
Image source: anon
#77
Our old house had a forest boarding our back yard. I would get up at 4:30 every morning for work. On this particular morning, my wife was already up, staring out the window at the woods. Tells me to look, “there’s something lighting it up.” I’m still half asleep, so I just glanced out, it’s lit up almost like daylight, and tell her it’s the moon, and go get in the shower. Come out when I’m done, a bit more awake now, and she points out the window, “it’s the moon? Then where did it go?” I look back out and the forest is it’s normal dark. I then realize how stupid my first assumption was, the forest is north of the house, the moon would never rise over it. Could have been a spot light. But, then it’d be the brightest spotlight I’ve ever seen, in the middle of the woods, for no reason.
Image source: jemajmsnmjemdrmhjm
#78
Walking the dogs at dusk, I had left my glasses at home so my vision wasn’t great. Cut through some bushes and saw something squirming on the floor. Couldn’t tell what it was. My first thought was a fox but stared a little while and realised it wasn’t. My dogs starred to growl a little too – if it was a fox they would have likely tried to chase it (I don’t hunt but they chase anything). It looked human size, pale. Almost like one of the creatures from the Cave films. I just grabbed the dogs by their collars and backed away.
I’m pretty sure I stumbled on a naked guy jacking off, thinking no one would see him. Which probably is the best explanation given that addicts and alcoholics frequent the area at times. I got out of there pretty quickly. But I’m not entirely sure what it was.
Image source: Blagtastic
#79
I live in the midwest and went to Springhill for a week as a kid. We stayed in a teepee in the woods, and the first night I woke up to find a bunch of dark figures moving around inside. I couldn’t quite make out any features, just silhouettes. I also couldn’t move, similar to when I have sleep paralysis. Maybe I was having sleep paralysis then. Either way when I woke up in the morning it was the first thought I had. I soon rubbed it off as a bad dream, until everyone else woke up to find clothes thrown all about the interior of the teepee. The counselor was distraught and started questioning all of the kids. Nobody said anything, including me, but we were all puzzled nonetheless. Nothing was ever figured out.
Image source: AJMcAARON
#80
Years ago me and my brothers were riding dirt bikes throughout the trails by our house. Now growing up I lived in the woods. Like no other houses around, bad cell reception, all that. Well we must have been miles from our house and we came to a stop in a cross road in the trail. We were chatting about whether or not to turn back or keep going when all the sudden my oldest brother looks down and sees a human foot print. Like a bare human foot print in the dirt.
It was so f*****g creepy. We got out of there so fast.
Image source: nutmegspice363
#81
2007, English Village of Playford, Bealings.
My mother my brother and I were sat in the car driving home from a friends house. It was sunset and about 30-45 minutes until the sun would go down. There are a lot of myths, particularly on that area, to do with crossroads/intersections. Living there is bad luck etc etc. We crossed over one with a house a little to the right which was distinguishable because it had a bright red door and two gargoyles on the wall outside. Immediately afterwards we went under some thick layer of trees which blocked out all sunlight and we were under there for perhaps 15 seconds as we went round a bend. Straight after coming out from the bed it’s literally pitch black in the middle of the night. The time moved forwards by an entire hour and a half. What’s even more confusing is that we ended up driving EXACTLY the same way up to EXACTLY the same house on the EXACT same cross roads (now with the lamp illuminated), despite having driven in an almost straight line.
I cannot explain it.
Image source: icelollied
#82
So this will most likely get buried but whatever. I was up at Montezuma’s Castle, Montezuma’s Well, and Tuzigoot in AZ for an internship with the NPS. Most of the job was trail maintenance and destroying of invasive plants. So lots of time outside pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
Many a time when I’d be out of hear what sounded like hoofbeats of horses but never saw any. The hoofbeats would get really close, within a few feet and there were times I could feel the vibration.
One day I was out with one of the rangers and I started hearing it. I asked him if he heard it and he said he did and that it happened a lot. I started to ask questions when he held up his hand and told me to just accept that it was happening and to not ask questions. He seemed frightened of the sound too.
I’ve heard it at home too in Phoenix. At my apartment complex there is a nice greenbelt area and one morning I was on the early shift for work, it’s pitch black outside. I was walking to my car when I heard the hoofbeats. It sounded like a horse charging at me. I whipped around expecting a giant dog that was running across the greenbelt but there was nothing. The hoofbeats continued until they got to where I was and just stopped.
I have never found anything on the internet about it, much to my dismay. I don’t know that I would really call it paranormal. But I definitely can’t find an explanation. The only two things I can think of is 1) The ground moving and it causes the hoofbeat sounds. 2) Gas escaping from underground.
I’ll probably never know.
Image source: FireWolf6711
#83
One time on a hunting trip we were in a tree stand when across the clearing we see someone standing just in the middle of the field we grabbed a scope to see what they were doin my buddy looked at me and said it was a kid we were in shock that a kid would be out in the middle of. The Montana woods in winter so we climbed down and started heading towards him. Well as soon as we got about 100 yards away the kid giggled and took off running the other way I yelled and started sprinting towards my bud right behind me but no matter how fast we ran we couldn’t catch him when we started getting into thick bush we lost track of him and couldn’t find a trace of him all we kept hearing was his child like giggle. That’s when my buddy just turned and said we should go something ain’t right. We got back to the tree stand and never saw him again. We stopped off in pray and asked some people if any kids were missing cause we saw a little boy in the woods but he ran from us, they said no one was missing from there. It was the closet town to us so who knows.
Image source: muddybuttbrew
#84
Not mine, but my moms and cousin.
My mom swears there is a werewolf creature around the Camp Douglas/Fort McCoy area of Wisconsin. In the late 90s, mom and boyfriend were driving on the frontage road along side the interstate between Tomah and Sparta. It was a full moon night in the fall. I call it a frontage road but its sometimes visible to the interstate and other times not because of trees. What they think is a exceptionally large man runs out of the trees on all fours and leaps over the chain link and barbed wire fence around some military area. This fenced in area has a stone entrance wall with a sign stating what it’s for and the army installation it belongs to. The thing has ears u like a human, more like a dog and leaps over the chain link barbed wire fence and disappears into more woods. They dont stop, but freak out asking the others in the car if they saw whatever it was.
About 5 years later, my dads cousin (didnt know my mom, broken family reasons) is talking to me about how he and his gf were on that frontage road driving out to look at a home they wanted to buy. It was dusk in winter. They come close to this stone entrance thing, and something is on top of it. They slowed and looked at it. They said it was a werewolf sitting on its haunches on the stone wall, and it looks right at them. Its ears move back like a dogs do when its thinking about taking off after something. His wife screams and he floors it away. They never stopped to see the house, just made it back onto the interstate.
What gets me is the 2 sightings happened years apart, and at least 6 total adults saw it. Some of them I think would just LOVE to say they saw something like this, but not all of them are this fanciful.
Nevertheless, when I had to go to Fort McCoy to get my CAC and the group of us from my employer got lost on the way in this wooded area, I couldn’t help but look into the woods just in case I saw it.
Image source: Minnesota_Nice_87
#85
I went mushroom hunting alone in the deep woods unarmed (very dumb idea in those parts lol) once as I have done yearly since 2014, and am pretty sure I was stalked by a Mountain Lion.
I don’t really have any proof of this; I just felt unusually on-edge like someone was keeping a close eye on me, I’d hear the occasional twig snap in otherwise eerie silence, and here and there I’d see non-herbivore droppings. It might not have been a Cougar but it very well could be, as it is cat country out there and they tend to stalk people and animals.
Also the first time I took my puppy out there on my second-to-last outing earlier this year, she found a bone and started chewing on it. Besides telling her to drop it I assumed it was likely from a deer or elk and let it be. In responding to this thread it just crossed my mind that a few years ago, someone found a human skull near there somewhat, and so it may have been from a human.
Image source: theshizirl
#86
Okay I’ve got two I will speak about but there’s others.
1.Last year I went deer hunting and I usually jump hunt… walk through the bush by myself with an old 30-30 lever action. Got out late and I had managed to get out to the back fields, and the sun was just cresting the horizons, now at this time I usually head in because your not suppose to shoot half an hour till dark, well this night I figured I’d go through the cedar groves at the back of the property just to see if there’s tracks. The property had been my family’s for my whole life and I know it like the back of my hand. Well right as dark crest the wolves (coy-wolves which are about 60-80 ballsy bastards start up. Now I always enjoyed there howling till tonight. That night they came up behind me and I could hear 4 howl out less than 50 yards behind me. All I had was 4 rounds in my gun and a cell phone flashlight. I start walking as quick as I could to get through the cedars a 45 minute ordeal. We’re another 4 wolves had cut me off. I never fired my gun but they blind charged me a few times and would start going into a circle pattern off running circles around me. I’d hear them start to do the same noises as a dog on a deer hunt. Twice they brushed me they got so close. By the time I got out of the cedars I was so happy to have at least a shot but I had an open field to cross and I could hear them on the out skirts the whole time. Also just think of that with only about 5 yards of sight off the cellphone light. It took me an hour to stop shaking when I got in. Driving out later that night I could see were they’d followed me up the driveway and there was 21 or so tracks.
2. Staying out an old cabin I had an interaction with nanabush ( one of the old trickster spirits) I was just finishing up for the night and this bird starts slamming into my window for a solid five minutes… middle of February, at 11pm is odd to see a bird let alone one doing this. I don’t think anything of it and carry on though till I’m ready for bed. Going for my bedtime smoke, I see the bird clinging to the screen door. Pushing on out it flies at me twice then hits all the windows on that side of the house. As it disappears I hear something scuttling towards me and I see a figure three feet tall running on two legs in the dark between the vehicles. I just booed out of that situation and locked the doors and went to bed.
Image source: anon
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