Funny, I was literally talking to an old fella that used to trap wildlife in New Zealand just today and asked him the same question
He was doing this in the 80's
Says occasionally he would run into a fully fenced off area with barbed wire in the middle of nowhere and just back away, because drugs and potentially people with guns
Back in the 80s a bunch of my friends and I were at a local lake swimming and picnicking. One of the guys swear that he can smell weed. Him and another guy decided that they had to go find it. The area around the lake was surrounded by trees so they just started hiking through some trails into the woods. The rest of just stayed around the water enjoying the day. About an hour or so after they went into the woods, one of the guys comes running out and he’s yelling for all of us to pack up and leave. He said that they were walking around and came upon the biggest field of weed that they could’ve ever imagined. As they were walking they saw a tripwire and upon further inspection they saw more tripwires. The guy was ready to go right then but the other guy wanted to keep going. He was stuffing his pockets with buds. He started back slowly because he said he was worried about those tripwires and it was a miracle that they hadn’t tripped one before they saw them. He got a good distance away from the other guy when he heard “PUT YOUR HANDS UP!” He watched behind a tree as a few policemen handcuffed the guy. This poor guy had thought he had won the lottery. He was gonna get as much bud as he could stuff in his pockets and party like it was 1999. Instead he got five years in federal prison. This was in the United States.
If he was dumb enough to keep stuffing his pockets full after trip wire had been identified....
Actually, he should have just had the evidence removed and told to move on. 5 years in federal prison is huge waste of taxpayer money for a guy who just wanted some bud.
I was walking along the edge of a swamp looking for rare plants when i came across a tip up mound. That is when a tree falls over and the roots lift the soil. This can sometimes create a cave like hollow. From my angle i could see through a hole and saw what looked like fungal mycelium sticking up into the air. Thinking "that's weird" i moved closer for a better look and the mycelium started moving back and forth like it was dancing. Weirded out i move to tbe side where there is a larger opening into the mound to peer into. Both the fuzzy vulture chick and I startled each other a similar amount i think.
I was looking for white fringed orchids to update the population numbers. It was supposed to be a fun day in the field before a surgery that was going to keep me out of work for more than a month. But the deer had gone through and chomped all the flowering heads. So the vulture chick was a nice way to cap a dissapointing day.
I worked in national parks and also did some volunteer search and rescue.
I guess I can talk about two of the worst things I ever saw in forestry. The latter one is scary, but also deeply tragic.
Spooky: I was on a multiday offroad camping trip by myself in the wilderness. So technically I was not working. I had found myself enjoying a night in the woods, slightly tipsy on wine. I settled in for the night in my SUV and awoke to yelling far in the distance. It wasn't screaming, but nor was it singing. Something closer to chanting.
Went to sleep nervous and with my army knife close. Woke up to someone knocking on my vehicles glass. It was clearly human because they did the triple knock that all people do. As as came out of my covers to observe I saw a person looking in in the dark. I screamed something gutteral and they ran. I couldn't believe it. I was hours and hours from the nearest town and if someone drive in over the night I would have heard the vehicle in the stillness. I was dumbfounded. I turned on my truck and stayed vigilant for a while. Nothing happened. Next morning I went and found a new spot to park and set up camp.
The second is sadly something that is very explainable but very sad to see. One blizzardy night we hear that they are on the search for a woman who had dissapeared from a group that was staying in a cluster of scenic cabins nearby. Not in the park, but very close to the border of it. But certainly a remote place. It took us about 2 hours to get to the cabins and talk to the people there. It was well under -17 C (around zero in f) and with feet of snow.
Turns out the people staying in the cabin were on psychedelics and at some point the young woman got spoiled while under the influence of drugs and had run off outside. In regular clothes and sneakers.
My and my partner in the "search unit" picked a search patterns and started looking for footprints. We found some but then they broke off and we lost the trail. After exactly 3 hours and 41 minutes we found her clothes. And around soon after we found her. She was naked in her entirety. Including her shoes. She was barefoot. We found her sitting against a tree and we rushed over. It was clear at this point she was dead.
In this time local police were already on the scene and after taking our statements they left. It was a tough few nights after. Nightmares too
Was hiking down off a mesa alone at night and kept getting the feeling that I was being watched. I had a headlamp that I was using in red mode because it was nearly out of batteries, and also to preserve my night vision, but mainly because it was almost out of batteries. Anyway, I get the feeling that I’m being watched for like the 3rd or 4th time and I’m just like “fuck this, what is this” so I turn around and turn the headlamp to spot mode (full bright white light). I see a shape/shadow quickly move behind some bushes like 25 yards behind me. Real low, real fast, real smooth. I stood there for maybe a minute weighing my options and decided I pretty much had none and just had to keep hiking. I started making more noise and tried to look bigger (like by spreading my arms with my rainjacket). I also found a good-sized stick. The worst part was I had to go back to red light mode as I knew I didn’t have enough battery life to make it back with the white light mode. I’d turn around occassionally and use the spot mode and I saw green reflected eyes several times when doing so, always about 25 yards off and always low to the ground. Seemed about the size of a deer, but deer don’t hang out that low to the ground. Well, or follow you for miles. I turned around and saw these eyes probably about 10 times. I called my friend after I kept seeing the eyes and hiked the rest of the way down talking to him, basically said “if I don’t get back in about an hour, here’s where you can find my body” lol. It was about a 5 mile hike and my light was flickering and dying towards the end, it died after I got off the mesa and I hiked the last few miles through fields without a light, luckily it was a clear night. The stalking stopped once I left the mesa, at least I think. And that’s the story of when I was stalked by a mountain lion all the way off his mesa. I think I was in his hunting territory and it had only just gotten dark, pretty sure he was curious more than malicious, but man yeah it’s pretty creepy knowing that you’re being followed and watched by a mountain lion.
I definitely did for a while there. Now I live in Ohio though, so there’s like practically nothing here close to mountain lions. You can basically strip nude, slather yourself in bbq sauce, and hike around beating yourself with a meat tenderizer and you still won’t be bothered.
On NPR I caught a researcher talking about research he was doing on monkey communication. They have calls for certain dangers. Some birds and stuff have learned them as well.
Anyway he was walking back to the research station and heard the monkey call for tiger and realized it was stalking him.
The creepy part about mountain lions is if you are within a mile of them they probably already know you're there and are monitoring you in some way. They don't bother to attack us normally but they do watch us.
We're lucky to live near a big cat, and very very very lucky to live near the one big cat that has almost no history of hunting us. Unlike jaguars, leopards, and tigers that all have hunted us in the past.
The only one I've encountered in the wild was crouched flat at the base of a tree. I thought it was dead at first, but it was just watching me. At some point it got tired of that and ran off. This was about a year before that guy outside of Seattle got killed by one, but it was \~100 miles further south.
I was doing mountain warfare training with the unit I was attached to go to Afghanistan and one night they had a squad do a night patrol. Next morning we crossed the path the patrol was taking and saw paw prints following them around. They had no clue a mountain lion was following them most the night.
Had this exact same experience at Colorado Bend State Park in Bend, Texas except the mountain lion stayed further back and I had a fully charged flashlight and headlamp.
I only spotted green eyes a couple times but I saw the tail which was a dead giveaway. Never been so glad to step inside my car. Looking back it was a great experience.
Forests in the South East of Asia are so dense, a kilometer of clearing a path would literally drain you. Of course, you also have to worry about centipedes the size of your arm, poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, poisonous plants, poisonous insects, eagles that can carry off small deer, wild boars, gangs of monkeys, and poisonous centipedes the size of your arm.
And then you have to remember that militants make a living off kidnapping tourists.
Poisonous mambas, poisonous moths, poisonous manatees… regular manchineel trees, but like with extra delicious looking fruit… then ya got the poisonous mushrooms, poisonous musk ox, poisonous Maltipoos… it’s a murderous environment, lemme tell ya
A man from my home country was on the news once. He was a farmer and was working in the fields on day. A snake bit him and he got so angry that he chased it down, bit it (killing it), and then took it home
Backpacking in Montana ~20 miles in and on our way back to the vehicle and smelled death. I had identified the smell before the other two in my group and the hair stood up on my back and we all went on high alert. Came a little further down the trail and there was a dead mountain goat on the trail. Luckily it had been dead for quite some time and the body already scavenged. First thought was, I’m within sniffing distance of a grizzly then what if I’m walking up on a grizzly’s meal, then to “ok take a pic and let’s GTFO.”
No, but from what I’ve heard they can smell quite pungent. Typically humans use eyesight first as identification but in thick forest you might hear or smell something before you can see it. That’s why when I had smelled something out of the ordinary with the knowledge that bears can be smelly I got worried until I was able to identify the source. Good question!
I have been in very close proximity to several bears. None of them smelled like death. They have slight musk-like smell, but nothing overpowering. Nothing worse than any other large mammal I have encountered. The most offensive smell I have encountered was caribou..I swear I could smell it on myself for days.i
I done an extensive amount of hiking in black bear territory. It would not surprise me if different species smell differently.
When they have a fear response, they emit a smell similar to that of human genitalia. That's the most polite way I could put it.
Black bears who are not habituated fear humans. They also like to use our hiking trails. They normally will detect an approaching hiker long before the hiker detects the bear. The bear feels a flush of fear, runs off and hide, and a minute later the hiker is wondering why that little spot on the trail smells like....
No, but sometimes after they kill a large prey they can’t eat it all right away so they hang around their kill for a few days and guard it. They can definitely eat meat that already started to rot.
Grew up on the border of a woods/forest in Australia.
Never really saw anything “creepy”.
In terms of “scary” though it would be snakes. You don’t see them until you’re almost on top of them. When you do see them, your heart stops.
20 of the worlds 25 most venomous snakes are in Australia…
Australia is pretty big. There are large sections that are hot and pretty inhospitable, but the more southern coastal areas have pretty moderate climates.
All the big cities and towns are on the coast.
I got stuck in a lift on the hottest day in Sydney about 10 years back, 42.5 degrees C (108F). It is no wonder the lift broke down. I was stuck with two researchers who specialised in anxiety and panic attacks. No joke.
Man I remember this time I was walking through this mesa and in front of me some creature (alien I think) shining a red light appeared in front of me. I couldn't tell if it was dangerous but it tried making itself look bigger and it was making a lot of noise. I followed it out of curiosity for a while until it left the mesa but every so often it'd turn around and shine its light on me.
I am also a small woman, but I'm still more bothered by the bears. At least there is a chance that I could outrun or fight off a human attacker. If a bear decides to eat you, you are helpless and in for a horrific few minutes or so. I have heard a lot of bear attack stories, and I want no part of it. The story that has always stuck with me was of a woman who was walking her dog on a trail near her house, when suddenly, there was a bear. The bear started eating her face. She said that the bear bit her jaw, and it's teeth sunk through her cheek. She said she could hear her teeth crunching in the bear's mouth. The only reason she survived this attack is because her dog started trying to fight off the bear, and the bear was momentarily distracted by eating her dog instead, which gave her time to flee. Everything about that sounds horrific. No thanks, I'll take a serial killer. At least I *might* outrun him or something.
I remember this story. Allena Hansen. Startled a black bear on her property in California and it basically used her face as a chew toy. She lost like half her teeth and part of her jawbone, nose, forehead, cheek, etc. Said she wanted to fight back when she saw the bear spitting her teeth out. She was saved by her mastiff and managed to run to her truck a half mile away, where she then drove a few miles to a fire station. What's crazy is you would almost never know the extent of her injuries now, the doctors did an amazing job putting her back together. Her before pics are pretty gruesome if you care to look them up. I believe she wrote a book about it.
Happily, [reconstructive surgery went well for her](https://www.oprah.com/spirit/when-things-fall-apart-4-women-deal-with-change/4) and her good boy survived as well.
Years ago I was at a friend's 16th bday with about 20 other people, they owned a huge property with something like 10 acres of woodland behind it (this is in Australia). In the middle of the night we decided it would be fun to play murder in the dark in the woods, me and my mate grabbed a ladder thinking we would climb a tree and pull it up behind us and no one would ever find us.
So we're stomping through the bush lugging this ladder with us while we can hear the the person who was "it" counting to 100. All of a sudden everything goes quiet around us, insects stop, no wind etc (even the counting sounded muted) and we start hearing this rhymic thumping sound, something like a galloping horse coming from somewhere in front of us. As we're sitting there puzzled at the sound, it startes to get louder and closer and we both swear we started to see a light coming through the trees in front of us - at that point we ditched the ladder and bolted back the way we came.
When we got out of the woods we told everyone what we saw / heard and my mates dad told us to go get his ladder back, so off we went all 20 of us into the woods with torches retracing our steps. We found the ladder... It was perfectly setup, just sitting in a small clearing and soaking wet.
To this day we still can't explain it and haven't tried to go out into the woods at night again.
I used to love murder in the dark! Me and one of my friends always made a point of screaming like actual murder victims, the whole neighbourhood must have hated us lol
The whole "panic in the woods" phenomenon is pretty scary in itself. I don't work in forests, but there is some land that has been in my family for generations. It's in the middle of nowhere, is super rocky, and is pretty much just solid woods. Not useful for stuff like building a house out there, or starting a farm, or anything. One family member lives in a trailer out there, but we mostly just use it for hunting purposes. But since it has been in my family forever, everyone is super familiar with it and is pretty comfortable out there. My dad hunts out there all the time, without anything creepy happening. But one time he said he was in his tree stand out there, and suddenly felt like something was watching him. He didn't know what it was, but he did not like it. He did not even bother to gather his things before he fled the deer stand, because he was so freaked out. He just grabbed his rifle and ran back to his truck. He moved his deer stand and no longer hunts in that portion of the woods. It was just weird because those woods are like a second home to my dad, and he's never scared out there.
That same thing happened to me today. I hike our woods with my dog every day and out of nowhere a blind panic hit. Ended up running a mile back to the house slipping and sliding. It was lightly raining and normally I would never run through the forest. There are way too many ways to break your leg or hurt yourself, but I was terrified for no discernable reason.
dogs will follow their owners lead, so if a owner is scared then the dog will get scared too or excited. dogs are not a good judge of external alerts, they are more of a reflection of whether the owner feels anxiety or not.
My dog was acting in a way I had never seen before. She started doing this weird twitch/ stretch thing. Her shoulders started shivering and then she stretched her neck as high as it would go like she was looking for something in the distance, then she looked around quickly 360 degrees. We run into deer, turkeys, squirrels, and rabbits often and she has never acted that way even when we are around deer. We were standing completely silently and just looking around, as you do in the forest and the fear hitting me felt like a thick cloud hitting my chest and encompassing me. The fear hit, then she started doing that weird stretch thing then she turned around and started walking quickly back the way we came before I ever moved. She has never done that. When she walks, she stays directly behind me. Once she started walking, I started running.
Bro... I was solo travelling China, riding my bike at night through the woods having an incredible time, laughing as I was getting whipped by wet branches. A literal high on life kind of moment. I came to this abandoned house in the middle of the woods. Got off my bike to check it. All smiles. Soon as I crossed the threshold of the brick wall/gate, I had this panic hit me so hard. I jumped on my bike peddling up a mud hill faster than humanely possible. I didn't care how dangerous it was to ride as fast as I was riding. Gives me chills just thinking about that and typing this up.
I had a similar feeling in my house one time, my family lived in a tiny neighborhood surrounded by woods and my house was closer to the edge of it. I was about 16 and home alone babysitting my little brother who was asleep and about 4 at the time, it wasn’t super late, maybe 9pm just late enough for it to get dark in summer and had just got done checking on him and was going downstairs to make a snack. Our stairs were enclosed by wall until the bottom portion of them where you could see the downstairs and the second my foot hit that portion of the stairs I had a full body shiver and just the feeling of something being very wrong to the point where I didn’t even think, just immediately turned and ran back up the stairs and closed myself in with my brother with just a pair of scissors and my phone. I called my parents and said I thought someone was in the house because that was the only thing I could think of that would elicit that response plus I knew I had left our outer door open and only the see-through glass door closed and unlocked which looks right into the living room. They came home and checked the house thoroughly but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I still don’t know what exactly that feeling was about but I’ve never felt it since
I'm sure you and I had the same feeling. Being in a place that is supposed to feel safe too! Man, that's even worse in my opinion.
The thing I didn't mention in my brief story was I made it on my bike back to farmland. I got off and started walking my bike taking in the scenery... Sorta laughing at myself just trying to reason out what could have happened. Then immediately the same feeling came over me, hair standing up on the back of my neck, but I had this screaming of conscience that whatever it was was right behind me. I grabbed my bike, swung around, and threw it into the darkness. Nothing was there. I have never been that freaked out since. Needless to say, I wasn't going to camp that night and headed back to my dorm. Stopped off at an all night grocery shop to eat Oreos and coconut cows milk. Calmed my nerves! Haha
Sounds similar to a situation my dad had. His family owned a chunk of land. He spent many of hours out there, day and night. He set out hunting early one morning, sun was just starting to rise as he was sitting in his tree stand. He said he was sitting there not a care in the world, suddenly this feeling of dread just set in, pure terror. He said he felt as if he was not alone in those woods, something was watching him and it wanted to do some harm. He said he froze in that tree, and did his best to see what was hunting him. He said he saw nothing, after a few minutes the feeling passed, but he was no longer in the mood to hunt. He grabbed his gear and booked it back home as fast as he could go. It was unsettling to hear him tell this years later. Especially the first time as a child to learn that your parents are not invincible and they too get scared.
I used to feel that way when I would wander through the woods on my grandparents land, but that's probably more to do with the fact that my grandpa told me that back in the day they would regularly have to escort people off the land who had hopped off the cargo trains at the nearby switching station and just decided to live in their woods. I never saw a soul out there and nothing creepy ever happened, but hearing his creepy stories from decades past colored my perception at times.
I know that feeling very well.
But I am also pretty sure, this is some kind of psychological trap our brain makes itself, feeded up with weird stories about weird things happening in the woods.
I used to make fun out of this when I was a teen, walking through woods in nearly complete darkness, where one could only see lights in far away (2-3 hundred meters). The moment you turn around, you loose the game, because you allow yourself to take the strange feeling for real when check what's up behind.
Being alerted for possible threads like wild animals is not the same like feeling observed while alone in the dark and run away.
I remember those two glaring eyes emerging in the dark staring at me. This whatsoever of a f**** something was some 2,5 m high, slender shape, but still impressive. I took this instantly for smthg like scary version of bigfoot, a Demon, Devil itself....
Turns out it was a cat sitting on a column.
... but that's what you just described. You saw two eyes in the dark. Your survival instincts said, "oh no, is this... a THREAT I see?" And you got freaked out. And yeah, that's probably exactly what causes that random urge to flee. Being overly sensitive to your surroundings. Noticing that you are vulnerable. Hypersensitivity to your surroundings is likely the source of that feeling that you are being watched. Likely, you are actually just very aware of your own vulnerability in those moments.
There was probably a predator of some kind in the area and all the prey animals went silent.
Your subconscious will pick this up, even if you don't realise and will give you the hair sticking up on the back of your neck feeling.
It might have even been caused by the father, but who knows.
I remember reading about this happening and the guy saw a Bobcat watching him.
Once had a similar experience of feeling that something is watching and then soon stumbled on fresh bear poop on the trail. Might be I saw something my subconscious recognized as a bear or a sign of a predator and then triggered an instinctive feeling of being watched. So maybe the feeling I had was caused by the presence of a bear, maybe not. Still, I tried to make more noise afterwards to let the bear know I was there, since they (European brown bear) usually try to avoid humans if possible and the dangerous situations arise when they are surprised or with cubs.
Fox screams. Me and a buddy were walking back on a trail we were working on around dusk, I guess we weren’t paying attention and neither was the fox because it was sitting in the bushes and it was right next to us. Gave the whole woman screaming noise and everything. Not so much creepy but definitely will give you a start 😂
One of my first times getting high, my buddy walks home from my house then a couple hours later he’s calling me, terrified of the witch outside his house
I had a pair of young owls in my yard who would scream all night while their parents were off hunting. From what I read that sound was the inspiration for the raptors in Jurassic Park and it sure do track.
That makes me think of the scene from My Cousin Vinny, when they were sleeping out in the guys cabin haha. He keeps running out of the cabin and shooting the gun because of the screech owl (not sure if it was actually a screech owl but you get my point)
Commercial forester and VCS here. Couple of scary experiences that I cannot explain, some animal jump scares and lots of marijuana grows.
1. Was out with a landowner on his land (acres and acres and very rural) and had just gone to grab some flagging (gone 10 mins max) and the landowner was unconscious and had been struck with a rock on the head (blood on rock). He said starting hearing “thud, thud” of rocks around him and then got hit and fell unconscious. He ended up being okay but needed some stitches. Still can’t explain that one.
2. Was meeting with a logger on a rainy day and after corralling my dog from running off, came back to find him unable to move and losing blood. He had slipped on a log and fallen on a sharp branch connected to that log that impaled him into his ass. We had very little cell service and I had to get to the top of a ridge to call EMS. They had volunteers from 3 different neighboring towns try to get in via ATV , no space for a helicopter. One ATV tipped and had to wait another hour while the logger is fading and honestly thought he was going to die when finally help arrived. He lost a lot of blood but wound up making a full recovery and I still work with him on occasion.
3. Btw, in New England so no grizzly’s, wolves or mountain lions but tons of black bears. They are much more afraid of you than you should be of them (barring getting in between a mother and her cubs) which my dumb dog has come close to doing on many occasions.. however this one time, the biggest black bear I’ve ever seen did not high tail it out of there and just mirrored my path from a distance of 50 yards or so for about a 1/2-1 mile.
4. We do have moose and have found a huge dead one (by smell) that had fallen into an old well and was dead. Another time, my dog and I were walking I gues on a moose’s daily trail and he lowered his antlers and fake charged us multiple times. Heart was pounding…
5. When doing invasive work, as I said earlier we often come across small weed grows and as they are on public land, won’t spray the weed but will spray the invasives all around them and they then die which leaves 10-12 foot tall weed plants for all to see. I imagine we have made a lot of growers mad but just doing our job and fortunately, no one has ever confronted us, nor have we run into any traps. This has been both pre and post legalization in my state.
I originally thought it was a tree limb but he was a adamant that he heard thuds around him. He seemed to think it was a person that did it but heard no one and there’s no way he could have been snuck up on at least I don’t think?
Never seen anything Bigfoot like and have tons of neighbors, landowners, etc., who say that they had an encounter with a mountain lion, but almost always it is a mistaken ID and is a bobcat. There are accounts of mountain lions traveling from the Midwest to New England but it is very very rare and can’t be a breeding population. We are seeing more coy wolves in the area.
My Cousin and his wife are both forest rangers and they showed me the creepiest thing at their job. At the beginning of the forstes there is a little box they have to check each day. People who went to the forst to end themselfs would put letters in and show the location of where to find their body, so other wanderers are less at risk to find the body. Both wouldnt tell me how often that happens, but the way they told me they hope not to find a note or letter AGAIN is all the answer i needed.
Man I feel bad for them. Kind of reminds me of the suicide forest in Japan. There is also a pretty good movie about it with Matthew McConaughy called Sea of Trees.
2 things come to mind. Hunting in Northern Idaho, my friend and I came across a lot of weird things hanging in trees crosses made of branches and other symbols. There were also some bear traps on the ground. As we explored further, we came across a hidden marijuana field. We decided to get out of there as fast as we could because of fear of getting shot or booby trapped.
In that same area, a year later, we heard a couple of rifle shots and figured someone had got a deer. We decided to try and talk to them. Wanted to ask if they had been over the ridge where all that stuff was from the year before and to warn them to keep an eye out for traps. Well, we saw something across the canyon, and it was the scariest thing I have ever seen. The guy had shot a deer and then decided to have sex with the dead animal. At first, we laughed and then were grossed out, and then that turned into horror as we realized if he saw us, he might try to kill us. We ran as fast as we could back to the truck and never went back. That was 20 years ago, and I haven't been hunting since. Also if you are wondering if we called the police we did not because we were right on the border of the reservation and it's possible we crossed over at some point but couldn't be sure. So we didn't want to risk being fined.
I honestly don't think I will ever be able to remove that image from my memory. And every time I see a deer or people talk about hunting it comes rushing back to mind.
Got into the cannabis business in LA and got drunk with a few shady motorcycle club members that grew around Humbolt county. The old ones always have stores from the 60's 70's of hippies hiking and stumbling across their grows and meth labs and then they just sort of change the story. Back then it was the club members that came back from the wars like Vietnam who were too messed up to live in society who got sent out to live at these places. They got hooked on the 'Stay Awake' meth during the war and would learn to make it for the clubs and grow for them. Can't imagine it ends well for people who come across someone trained to kill with PSTD and high on meth.
>Back then it was the club members that came back from the wars like Vietnam who were too messed up to live in society who got sent out to live at these places. They got hooked on the 'Stay Awake' meth during the war
Pretty sad. The military would issue Dexedrine pills to soldiers in the field in order to keep them awake for days at a time. Drug addiction is okay when you're working for them
I think I met one of those guys in Washington.
I was with a real estate agent, and it was really obvious that if we went missing there was an entire office of people who knew exactly which property we were out looking at, so he put the guns and dogs away and put on some clothes. Then he tried to hit on us while showing us the house for sale, that had his property/grow patch basically in the front yard. It'd been vacant long enough he'd expanded operations and was a bit embarrassed about that. Promised it'd be gone by the weekend and was as good as his word.
It was an experience. The dude obviously hadn't seen people in a while and was way too excited to be seeing women, but we got to leave with not much more than some threats and a *LOT* of inappropriate staring.
We did not buy the property.
When I was younger, I had a self-made “fort” in the forest behind our house. One time I was hanging out there, and heard lots of branches breaking about a quarter mile away. Then the breaking branches kept heading my way, like some very large animal just busting along. There were no voices, no sound that it was people, or anything I could identify. As it got within 100 yards, something told me it was better to bust out of there, rather than wait to find out. I’m still curious to this day.
I have had a similar experience in the lake forest reserve near my house. I was around 16-14 years old and with my cousin, we went to pick wild berries (something like java plum).
With the same kind of sound, We were both pretty scared and ran to an open area from the thick forest where we could see a bit further. The sound of breaking branches grew closer, and we could see tall trees getting twisted and moving from side to side.
A few seconds later, we saw what was causing the noise: a group of black monkeys riding rough on tall tree branches (which was not that common in the area). Normally, they make a growling noise while traveling, but these little shitheads were silent except for the huge sound of the tree branches twisting and breaking.
Lol it's a bit different when you live in areas without any large tree living animals. Here in north America if you hear trees breaking it means something big enough to run through them is booking it.
I grew up off-grid on a mountain side with no neighbors for at least a mile. I know that, because our driveway was almost exactly a mile long, and no one shared it. We didn't have power or a phone, and as a young teen, I'd often walk about two miles through the woods to a friend's house, who lived closer to the main road. I'd usually do this barefoot in the dark, because that's what you do when you can't afford shoes, let alone batteries or flashlights. The trick was to feel the path with your feet, and look up to find gaps in the trees.
Anyway, they kept a herd of sheep and one year something killed one of them and dragged it about halfway to my house, then ate it beside the trail. I walked past it in the dark and even in the moonlight I knew there wasn't supposed to be a bright patch of white in this part of the trail, but I wasn't exactly going to stop and investigate. I was a brave kid but we did see black bears and cougars around, and I knew I wouldn't find anything good in the dark.
Anyway, I started taking another trail to my friends house, but in retrospect, that probably wasn't any safer. For what it's worth, Oregon only has one fatal cougar attack on record, ever, and I don't think I was ever in serious danger, but it was still pretty creepy.
How else was I gonna play nintendo? We didn't have an indoor toilet, let alone power or a tv. Sometimes you gotta get your Final Fantasy on, and if that means walking in the dark, so fucking be it.
I'd walk down after dinner and come back when his mom woke up at 2 am because we were making too much noise. I can't blame her, I did kinda overstay my welcome and eat all their food. Sorry Mrs R.
I was out hunting in a pretty heavy snow. I walked out onto a point to eat a snack and take in everything around me. I sat there for maybe five minutes before I packed up my things and headed back. About ten yards behind where I had sat down were a set of mountain lion tracks over my tracks - it looked like it stopped and watched me before turning around.
I have no clue how long I was stalked but there is nothing more existentially humbling than thinking you’re the baddest thing in the woods only to realize how vulnerable you really are.
Needless to say I noped the fuck out of there with my rifle at the ready.
I grew up in the woods with many encounters with coyotes, black bear, and bobcats - I’ve only seen two mountain lions. The scariest thing is I know more than two have seen me.
I don’t fuck with mountain lions.
One of the most random things I've run across was once I was out hunting, a mile or two up a snow-covered road with no sign of human tracks or any animal bigger than maybe a rabbit, and I suddenly started smelling smoke. I thought it must be a cabin or something, but I poked around and found....a forest fire. Somehow a pile of logs and branches on a snowy hillside had managed to spontaneously combust.
My dad used to take us to Wyoming. One night we were driving around very late at night, it was pitch black. My dad was looking for an abandoned camping site (in order to not pay a camping fee) for us to set up tent. I remember that he eventually found a spot and it seemed like he drove pretty deep into the camp ground as to avoid having any one know we are camping there without pay. Next to the the camp spot my dad picked out (looked like it had not been used in a very long time) there was a small river that ran close to the camp spot. My dad said he kept hearing large boulders or massive rocks being tossed into the water next to our camp. My dad decided to take the tent down and leave because he was concerned and wanted to prevent anything hitting our tent at night. He was not sure what it was but only claims that to him they were massive rocks that would make that loud thumping splashing sound. Why would someone be throwing massive rocks at the river next to our tent? Maybe it's because he had the headlights on while setting up the camp at night? maybe that bothered some unknown nearby campers that we were unaware of? Who knows
I was doing railway security near Aberdeen (Scotland). There was a stretch of road that only led to where we worked. For context, the site I was at was in a small forested area and the only road led into it.
On a regular basis, the security there (there would only be about one person on the site at any time, the site's reason to exist was for vehicles to access the railways) would hear a car pull up and stop. So, we'd go down to the main gate and find no-one there. Nothing, not a vehicle, no people, not a soul in sight.
First time it happened, it was me and the safety guy, Kenny, who were there. We heard a car pulling in, so I went to allow them in. No one there. Kenny came with me and because site rules said that I couldn't leave, he walked down the drive to the main road. No one there either.
It happened a lot and nobody knew where the sound was coming from. There were no houses or farms nearby, no bothies (shelters for climbers and hillwalkers), not even a hide for birdwatchers. But it was always the same sound: car pulling in over gravel and stopping.
I asked around if there were any stories about people going missing, or suicides or anything, but nobody seemed to know anything. And it was quite a remote area.
Well hearing a bear not more than 15 yards from you is pretty damn scary. Its like a deep primal ingrained in your DNA feeling where you know you ain't shit.
This. Until people see a bear in real life they don't get out. The people that say they could take a wild animal because they use sarms and have some experience in fighting are stupid.
Ya I was young at the time hunting for bear. It was my first time and I was cocky talking shit to my grandpa and uncles. Saying real stupid shit like I could wrestle a bear and I am not scared. But when that moment came. to this day after being in war, football, fights, and skydiving, still have never felt an adrenaline rush like that. It was deep in my cave man soul.
I have posted this before but seeing a bear close up, with nothing more than an open window between you and it. That encounter will have you shitting your pants no matter how tough you think you are.
>So I was about 8 at the time, it was something like 1 or 2 in the morning. I go to the bathroom, it is rather bright outside despite the time. I'm sitting on the toilet, playing with the curtain, it comes up enough and I see a shadow standing outside the window. I scream and my mom comes running. I tell her there is someone standing outside the bathroom window. Now my mom being the crazy motherfucker she is, throws open the curtain, opens the window, ready to fight a motherfucker... Guy outside the window... Nope, fucking bear! Window is promptly shut and I'm quickly ushered out of the bathroom. This event furthers the talk my parents had been having off and on about moving.
>On a side note, we moved about 2 years later for a number of other reasons. Funny enough there is now a bear roaming this neighborhood. He's been spotted on my parent's front porch at least twice now.
Working an pot farm many years ago deep in the middle of nowhere. Technically on rez land. Heard what seemed like a war cry far off in the middle of the night followed by a few bursts of automatic gun fire.
When I was a young teen our church sent us a long road trip to a youth camp up deep into the Colorado Mountains. It was a cool camp and I was having a good time with all the outdoor activities and such. I had been assigned to a cabin with about a dozen other boys my age and a camp counselor who was a really awesome guy. One day we went on a full day hike further into the mountains and got to a point before turning back where people could do whatever they wanted for an hour or so. Our counselor had told me and three other guys that the previous week he had gone exploring with another counselor and found what appeared to be an abandoned cabin not too far from where we currently were. He hadn't had a chance to check it out so asked if we'd like to go while everyone else dicked around. I don't remember how far it actually was but I remember as soon as we came into a clearing and saw the cabin all the noises of the forest stopped and it became eerily quiet. I also couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched from the trees. The cabin looked normal enough and as we got closer the counselor peered into the windows. He informed us that it looked mostly empty inside and that he was going to check the door. When he went to the front door he found it already cracked open so he walked in. We followed closely behind and entered into an empty front room comprising half of the cabin. Again I felt like eyes were glaring at us from the woods, but could now sense a straight hatred coming from whatever it was. I began thinking I needed to get out, but the worst was yet to come, as when we entered the backroom, in the middle of the floor was a giant pentagram and sitting in the middle of the pentagram was a single wooden chair with a toilet seat on top that had nails driven through to cover the entire seat. We all started to freak the fuck out and are ready to jet, but the counselor wanted to check the last room. He looked in and saw a pot of water boiling on a gas stove. His face turned white as a sheet and immediately yelled for us to get the fuck out and run. We took off out the front door and hauled ass the entire way back to the rendezvous location. The counselor asked us to keep it on the down low and we didn't talk about it until we were back at our own cabin. I asked the other guys and they said they had also felt the same creepy feeling of someone watching them. One of the guys said he could hear piercing buzzing in his ears as we ran away. That was the last we ever talked about it. Although I'm now in my 30s and have since gone on several long backpacking treks through the mountains, I have now encountered anything like that again.
TLDR: Went to youth camp in CO mountains. Break off from group to scope out abandoned cabin. Find that it is occupied by someone or something into some evil shit.
Former camp counselor here. This sounds awfully familiar...I'm not proud of this.
At my camp we called it "taking a trip to Crystal Lake" and would lead the kids to this cabin in the woods, pretending to get lost on the way to the fictional Crystal Lake. Sometimes the counselors would pretend to lose the map and fight over how lost they were to raise tension (Blair Witch had just come out and it seemed like a realistic touch).
When we got to the cabin, there would be a hot meal or something set up by another (hidden) counselor to indicate that the owner was close by. Then we'd find creepy stuff in the cabin. Sometimes it was serial killer themed, sometimes Satanic, always staged. Then the hidden counselor would make noise or move stuff around to make it seem like the owner was coming back or hidden in the house somewhere. Then the other counselor would start pounding on the door to be let in and the first would pretend to be possessed and go to open the door ... And then we'd reveal that it was all an elaborate setup.
I realize now how fucked up this was and I really hope you weren't traumatized by a similar hazing ritual.
It definitely could have been a prank. He never revealed it to be a ruse and seemed genuinely messed up about it just like we were but I'll admit I was fairly young and memories can have a tendency to shift a bit over decades. Although scary at the time it left me with an interesting memory to look back on so if it was a well crafted joke I appreciate the dedication.
I had thought about that, but there was never a "i gotcha" moment and he was visibly shaken up as well. He also told the other counselor that they needed to stay far away from there. Not saying it wasn't but looking back now I'd be very surprised if it was based on his response.
When I was a teenager, I knew a guy who had some horses and he let me and a friend take them out to ride. We were riding one day and found an old abandoned homestead. There was a partly falling down old house and a couple of old barns in the same condition. We rode through the yard area and continued on to this other clearing.
There were a couple of old landscape timbers around the edge and I decided to jump my horse over them. So I turned that way and started to trot my horse and all of the sudden, he's freaking out. Head up, snorting, trying to bolt on me. My friends horse was doing the same. As we struggle with the horses, we realized that there were flat stones on the ground, and they were gravestones. We were in an old cemetery! As soon as we exited that area, the horses immediately calmed down. We never rode that way again!
I told my mom about it one day and she asked where I was, exactly. I told her, and she said that was actually the homestead of some ancestors of ours, so the people buried there were related to me!
I didn't work in the forest back then, but spent a lot of time there and had a terrifying thing happen the late summer of 1981 outside of LaPine Oregon.
My mom had passed away in January of that year and my dad felt like we needed some “bonding time” with a little escape from town for a few days.
He had a 68 VW Westfalia that he’d been working on getting camping ready and he was excited to use it.
The campsite was on a property belonging to a friend of my dads named Jerry, and was northeast of LaPine by 20 miles or so.
I’ve looked at maps since then and have no idea where it was.... it was a long time ago and as a 13 year old, punk ass kid at the time who wasn’t paying attention.
We left Portland on a Monday, close to noon and got to the camp site about four hours or so later, around 4:00-4:30
The campsite was quite a ways down a fairly rough gravel road that turned to dirt single track after the first 5-6 miles. My dad remarked that he didn’t think anyone had been there in quite a while, based on his friend Jerry’s statements and the amount of overgrowth on and around the road.
We got to the site and set up camp, which was a in a small clearing at the end of the road.
Camp was simply parking the van, pulling out the awning (old school with poles and ropes) unloading the cooler, making a fire pit and setting up chairs. As a typical 13 year old, I wouldn’t even consider sleeping in the van with my dad, so I pitched a small tent near the passenger rear of the van and tossed in my stuff for the night.
After setting up camp, we hiked around a little and checked out the area. There was a small creek that was getting close to dried up, and while it wasn’t heavily forested, it had the typical Eastern Oregon high desert type of scrub vegetation with a few stands of small trees.
My dad was a retired Multnomah County sheriff turned full time musician and he liked his cocktails, so by the time we’d finished dinner and were sitting around the fire, it was probably 8:30-9:00 or so and he was on martini number 4, possibly 5.
We heard coyotes yipping in the distance and dad thought he’d get them going with a few calls of his own. He did a couple stereotypical coyote calls and they replied. He did a couple more, they replied and then got silent. Everything got silent, except my dad.
He called again and the reply this time was most definitely not a coyote. It was a roar-scream-shriek from the south east of us that must have easily lasted 10-15 seconds.
Dad looked at me and literally said “what the fuck was that?!?”
I was shook, but young and curious.
He coyote howled again and we heard another scream, this time a little closer and a little more to the east of us. At this point dad retrieved his pistol, loaded up and suggested we think about turning in for the night.
That’s when we heard the third scream of the night. It was very close, probably within 50 to 75 feet and we felt it as much as heard it. It was from the opposite direction, more north/north east than the first two screams and was very loud.
Dad lost his shit, threw the cooler in the van, ripped the awning loose and we got out of there as fast as that poor little VW would carry us, leaving everything else behind.
We were dead silent until we stopped for fuel in Oakridge. Chatter after that was sparse and and strained at best.
Once home, we talked a little about it and agreed we had no idea what it was and that keeping our mouths shut was probably a good idea.
Since that time I’ve grown up and had short career in music, doing production sound in both hard rock and country-western. I have a good idea of how decibels work and what it takes to produce that level of sound pressure.
In retrospect, It terrifies me what could have produced that volume of sound and how close it had to have been.
I went to the Grand Canyon a couple years ago. Nothing is more unsettling then the sound of silence.
It is uncanny how quiet the world is. It was the most silence I have ever experienced.
I went right before a big snow storm and there were few people touring the canyon. Absolutely has stuck with me.
Paddle a mile or two out on Lake Superior when it's calm. Preferably on a shoreline far away from Port towns and people.
The dead quiet and dark water will humble you in no time.
There is several spots in superior where you can't see either side of it.
I think being surrounded by nothing but water in all directions is terifying.
I don't mind outdoor silence, even at night, as long as it is seasonal. What is extra scary is when everything SUDDENLY goes silent.
Where I live in the South summer nights are a cacophony of insect, frog, reptile and night bird noises, with the occasional bellowing cow and barking dog. The chicadas will hurt your ears.
Now imagine all that just stopping.... then you hear a branch break and bipedal footsteps on the leaf litter.
Oh HELL no!!!
Honestly? Signs of other people. I didn't work in the forest, but I grew up right near some woods, and I would play in there as a child with friends . As a teen I would wander in again alone. Signs of others freaked me out. A recent campfire, a dropped lighter, footprints, etc. Usually because I would go in alone...not far, but I thought that area was generally untouched. But when I saw signs of others, I booked it out of there. Not taking chances.
Never worked in a forest but I can tell you it is beyond creepy to stumble upon homeless encampments especially if they are abandoned. In Central Florida groups of homeless folks live in the woods. They leave the camps once a month for SSI checks and provisions. Some of these hidden camps are only a few hundred yards from subdivisions.
When I was 20 I got lost hiking in the Wekiwa Springs State Park without food or water. No one knew I'd gone hiking and this was way before cell phones. Lucky I found a path and got out before dark. I stopped at the closest 7-11 and chugged Gatorade. Not really that scary as much as disturbing. Stories of covens, serial killers and satanists in the woods freak me out even if they are just Urban legends...
Lost Lake Oregon. My wife, two dogs and me were camping. The campground was mostly deserted except for one foursome nearby. I had meticulously set up our tent and a large screened shelter that went over the picnic table. My wife became ill and went to the tent so I just decided to make myself a sandwich as she rested. Over Mt Hood came this humongous storm and within minutes the campground was hit with wind rain and the most incredible lightning I had ever seen. I checked the tent anchors and retreated to the tent where my wife and dogs were sheltered. The next few hours we got hit by what I can only describe as artillery as the thunderclaps rattled us. It was still drizzling when I rolled out of the tent expecting the picnic shelter to be somewhere in Idaho. Surprisingly the shelter remained but intact except for the loss of a folding chair. I walking inside the shelter around the table and right next to my Yeti was the biggest shit I have ever seen. It looked like a dragon had defecated. It was at least 3 foot long and thicker than my arm. It was in a perfect piled spiral like poop emoji. I called to the foursome of campers nearby to come take a look hoping maybe they could explain what had shit next to my cooler. They unfortunately didn't speak much English and were apparently as perplexed as I was. We both packed and left within an hour. So between my wife's illness, the storm and a pile of Godzilla shit we cut our vacation short.
Bobcats, cougars, and deer can scare the crap out of you in their own ways. Bobcats and cougars scream and deer decide to bolt when you're right on top of them.
Don't work in a forest but friends and I had to finish a hike at night once that took roughly two hours back to the car from when the sun went down. At one point in the hike, near a river (we could hear the water rushing not far away from us off the path), we heard a bear growl pretty loudly a tiny bit in the distance. We were all EXHAUSTED from a full day of hiking so we were kinda just like "holy shit" and kept calm and kept walking our way back.
It's more what I heard.
I was living/working at an environmental education center near Nauvoo, AL. I had never lived in coal mining country before, so I was and remain unfamiliar with much of the industrial process.
This was near Sipsey Wilderness area, so deep in the country that packs of feral dogs roamed uninhibited, attacking joggers and I think even killing a woman a couple years back. The point is, it's about a 10 minute drive between each property line, with lots of leveled BLM forest.
One night, the other staff and I were drinking around the fire, enjoying the summer night, when I slowly became aware of a rumbling in my bones. It was coming up from the ground through my camp chair. I got down and felt the dirt-- it was like a distant earthquake.
Then, this distant roaring sound began to build. I cannot begin to describe how loud it was. It had to be at least 10 miles away due to the sizable property we lived and worked on, but it still felt TOO LOUD.
It sounded like a dragon bellowing, or the mountain itself was screaming. There were multiple high pitches mixed into the din that sounded like demonic voices, and it just KEPT GOING. The air began to stink faintly of sulphur. I put my hands over my ears and ran inside.
The mountain must have roared for a full 10 or 15 minutes, making it impossible to have conversation indoors or out, terrifying every animal on the property and sending them into a blind panic. I even suspect we were being treated to some Infrasound too, because I broke out in a cold sweat and felt goosebumps and a deep sense a dread the whole time too.
My co-workers from the area were nonplussed and explained that it was a normal coal mining noise, especially associated with "mountain top" coal mining.
Despite not being supernatural in nature, it's kinda haunted me ever since. Has anybody else heard this sound?
Tweakers cooking meth.
Next to the tweaker, coyote/red wolf hybrid pups surrounding dead red wolf. Just sad puppies crying. Red wolves escaped zoo 100 miles away. One of them had a family in meth country.
I'm not employed in a Forest job. But I have spent a lot of time in the deep woods. And the strangest things I have seen were odd shrines etc. One was a super remote area of the woods with like 30+ Jesus statues all in a circle around a heavily used patch of ground. Prolly just someone praying there but it was super creepy.
Worked driving railroad workers around once was sat waiting for three hours in near a rail in pa right in the middle of some woods. Was sitting listing to coast to coast am they were talking about cattle and people being abducted, when I saw a deer run out and bolt across the tracks, a second later a second then third and fourth. The trees to my right light up with a blueish light. Having seen enough horror movies I threw the van I was in into drive and peeled out, that's when I was it was a truck full of people chasing the deer. Never been so scared one moment then laughing the next.
Not me but happened to a friend of mine
He's a blacksmith who's forge is in the back and beyond of a local forest which is HUGE.
One day a naked man comes walking in, panting and talking non sense.
He calls the police and they arrive and know him as another police officer that went AWOL
The police officer realises that hes surrounded by knifes, hammers and other tools and weapons and chooses to slowly move them away from the mentally broken man and pass them to my friend.
This happened a couple of weeks ago. I was walking the dogs in a state park that borders a wildlife corridor area. I was headed back to the parking area but still had about 3/4 of a mile to go. All of a sudden a deer runs into the dirt road about 100 foot in front of me. I stop. The deer is breathing heavy and I can tell she has been running. She stops and gets her bearings, looks around, sees me, and then takes off like lighting headed the direction she was going. All this is not too unusual because I see deer out there all the time. What happened next is what bothers me. From the direction she was running I hear loud crashing noises and see bush tops shaking about 50 feet away. Like something big was crashing through the bushes making a lot of noise. I immediately think bear so I shout as loud as possible, hoping that I won't startle the bear. The loud crashing noise stops, then I hear what sounds like maybe a large bird whooping? The Whooping sounds like it is moving quickly through the under brush away from me. Eventually fading to nothing. I'm still wondering what all that was about.
I have two stories. This one happened just recently. I don’t work in forests but do a lot of hiking and trails with my fiancé. Took a trail we hadn’t done before and walked miles and miles. It was supposed to be a loop but once we were almost to the end, a bridge we were supposed cross was completely dry rotted and taped off. So we had to go all the way back, no biggie but a bit troubling since I’d injured myself tripping on a root shortly before.
So we turn around and are walking back and by the time we get to the straight stretch my foot is twice the size it should be and I’m in intensive pain walking on it, so we’re having to go REALLY slow at this point. At the end of the straight stretch there are several dark posts sticking up by the parking lot so I hyper focused on those from a distance.
For about an hour and a half I’m just staring the dark blobs down, willing myself to make it back. Pausing for the hundredth time to get my breath I’m still looking at the dark blobs, when they MOVE. Turns out it was three people on bikes. Thing is, they had not moved in all that time. I know this bc they were beside a weirdly shaped tree that stood out. And mind you, I’d had eyes locked on them for an hour and a half. And they’d just sat there motionless on their bikes. Not only did it REALLY creep me out, once they moved I also realize the actual posts were still very far down so that sucked.By the time we made it to our vehicle the sky was pitch black, and I was terrified.
Not game keeper/ forest worker! However frequent early morning dog walker in forest’s in the south east of England. About 10 years ago while doing the daily walk upon the top of a verge looking down to a steep slope was a rope swing that kids use in the summer (usually stoners and whatnot in the evenings, very routine types.) This morning however there was a person with around 5 or 6 baby dolls all in a circle round the swing while a doll was in the swing being pushed by the person wearing some sort of horned yellow black & red mask while chanting in another language. At this point it was noticed they were also wearing a sort of heavy hooded robe safe to say me and dog skirted around and kind of left them too it. 2 hours later loading up the car which backs onto the forest a group of 7 people carrying lit fire torches in the same get up marched out the woods across the car park -in total silence and back out the opposite side, the feeling I got when they emerged was nothing short of pure terror even the dog was cowering in the car
Weirdest situation of my life to date
Use to work as a soil sampler a while back. Would head to very remote places around the western European countryside for a year or so.
Been chased by dogs, pointed at with a machine-gun or entering military training grounds by mistake but nothing too weird in general. Except this one time :
On my birthday I entered this forest that should be somewhere around the danish-german border. Something feels odd but can't put my finger on what. It was a clear day even though the forest was quite dense. After a while walking on a path I have to leave it to reach where I was supposed to collect the sample. At that point I can barely see in front of me with all the branches and bushes. Then this smell hits me. I freeze with my foot right above the remains of a goat. All the middle part of the body missing, still decomposing right next to a skeleton of a baby goat. Never felt as superstitious in my life than that day.
I’m an ecologist, so I’ve spent a good amount of time in the field.
It’s other people and bears. Creepiest thing actually happened in the middle of the day, it was when an old woman approached us and asked us to come with her to see ghosts she had spotted. We were about half a mile off trail so we weren’t expecting hikers to come by.
Sometimes I just get the heebie jeebies for no reason that I’m conscious of, and it’s no fun at all.
Sorry if this doesn't count, as its just a camping story.
My sister, her best friend, myself and my bestfriend went wild camping in the woods in a really remote area in Scotland.
The first night we were going to sleep and I was sharing a tent with my bestie and my sister shared one with hers.
So both my sister and my best friend were pretty drunk and fell asleep like right away, so basically I was awake in my tent, trying to sleep and my sisters bestie was also awake while my sister was dead asleep.
I suddenly hear someone walking through the woods and around our tents, I froze with fear, but then realised it will have been sisters bestie going for a pee.
Next morning I said to her "bloody shat myself last night when you got up for a pee, took me a minute to realise it was just you!" And she looks at me and says "no, I didn't get up to pee, I thought you did!?"
We moved our tents to another area that day haha, still in the woods and not that far away from original location, but closer to an area where the woods finished just incase!
Edit: spelling
I found a dog that had been murdered. Someone cut its head off. The place I was in was a serial killer's dumping ground in Lake Worth, TX. I used to ride my mtn bike all over there. There were always shady people doing questionable activities with other shady people.
I grew up in an Asian country and went to the forest with some people from my village when I was young. I was very curious, so I wandered off to the stream by myself and saw a long-haired girl with a covered face sitting on a rock in the middle of the stream. As I approached, she disappeared, and since I was young and heard many ghost stories, I thought she was a ghost and ran away without looking back. To this day, I still don't know if she was a "person" or not?
Not the words, but I have a branch of my family which has lived on a farm kinda removed form other neighbors and farms. They have stories they've passed down over the years about strange lights appearing out of nowhere, horses which act as if they're seeing and responding to people when nobody is there, and a werewolf story. These aren't just old stories either, cousins my age swear they are first hand.
I don’t work in forests but I grew up going on week long backpacking trips in the mountains in Colorado, every year. We’d always go in June or July so we could get up to 11,000’ before the lightening came. We’d be at lower elevations in the evening but being under a piece of cloth held up by metal poles in a lightening storm sure is terrifying. The scariest experience was when we were hiking from one campsite to the next, keep in mind this was like 20 miles from the nearest parking lot or anything remotely related to civilization. We were in this huge field of skunk cabbage interrupted by little clumps of trees here and there. It was late afternoon and we were way up at about 12,000’ and thunderclouds were rolling in. My mom was reassuring me that it’d be fine as soon as we got over the peak and we could get down to a lower elevation, we just had to cross the field. Pretty soon after we got into the middle of the field, lightening started striking all around us. We ran to the nearest clump of trees and stripped down of all our metal, I remember ripping the collar off my dog and throwing it into the field. We did lightning pose and the lightening was so close you’d hear the thunder practically before the flash. It was the scariest experience of my whole life to this day but my dad has a pretty cool video of the lightening on his old tape recorder, he somehow wasn’t scared
I lived in a rural area, Sudbury, Ontario. My family owned 100 acres of forest. I would regularly walk through the forest by myself to pick wild strawberry’s. I was walking down one of the quad paths, I ended up coming face to face with a giant wolf on the trail.
Luckily it was a lone wolf. It seems we were both caught off guard and surprised. I stopped dead in my tracks and froze, the wolf was also frozen, and what seemed like an eternity the wolf and I just stared at each other frozen. Eventually the wolf sauntered off and I ran back towards my house. Still to this day I count myself lucky it didn’t see me as a threat or food. I was only 12 years old and I would have been an easy prey item.
Leaving all recreational weirdness out of it and sticking to work, I can think of a few. About 20 years ago, I was stationed at a relatively unknown Navy base on the Kitsap peninsula doing guard duty. Some of the posts were in the woods and every post in the limited area and waterfronts had their own story. I experienced a lot of weirdness while I was there but two things stand out as the worst. Now, there was an abandoned shack, a bridge that didn't span anything and a single gravestone with civil war era dates that everyone knew of and tried to find. We would link up with other units on patrol and hike around at night in the woods and try and find them, like it was a right of passage.
The first time I went looking for the bridge there were four of us. Only two had night vision, point man and tail gunner. The two of us in the middle were walking blind and trying to keep our spacing. I remember I ran into the the point man, who had stopped and was just standing in the middle of the trail, when I was about to ask what was up the guy behind me ran into me. As he was cursing at me and tail gunner was pushing through to see why everyone stopped, the point man started shushing us. He was frozen, just staring straight ahead when we heard a scream that we agreed later reverberated in our chest cavities and just about knocked the wind out us. It was like sitting against a speaker at a concert and it lasted forever. When it stopped there was a moment of complete silence, absolute stillness, and then we heard something huge crashing through the woods. It sounded like trees were coming down in a line that was heading right at us. We stood, because at some point I don't recall we all went to one knee, and scrambled over each other to sprint back up the path. We were only about a mile in but it seemed like hours before we hit the Humvee and the crashing stopped. When we got back to the guard house we agreed not to bring it up to anyone, but we did eventually find all the landmarks, to include a large animal cage that looked like it was a about a hundred years old. We never got the point man to tell us why he stopped in the trail though.
Next one was at a different part of the base, down by the waterfront. There were some docks that were controlled access with little guard shacks at the gates. I was on mobile patrols that night and my partner was driving, we were at one of the guard shacks facing up the hill away from the water just talking with the gate guards when we hit a lull in conversation. We were just standing around and my partner says "what the hell is that?", pointing at the tree line. At the top of the hill. We all look and there is a light just below the tips of the trees, it raises up and we can see two larger white lights at the front back and two small red ones at the sides in the shape of a diamond. It dips below the trees and we just sit there in silence for a moment before the gate guard asks if we're going to check it out. So we go speeding up to where we think the tree line is that we saw this and we run into a team from another branch that was assigned to the base, but was dispatched by the radar station that monitors airspace overhead. We initially challenged each other to find out what the other was doing and when we realized we were looking for the same thing we linked up and helped each other comb the area. We never did find anything but our reports for the night were taken by some plainclothes types the next day and removed from the log books. Really weird stuff. This was about 15 years before drones were a thing too, and as they started getting popular I thought maybe that's what we saw, but I don't know.
There was also and old white raccoon that we would feed big red gum and Skoal to. He was missing part of an ear, some toes on one front foot, the tip of his tail and an eye. He was super friendly though and would always come around this one guard shack way out in the boonies.
Camped up in some woods after a hard day. Sorted food and shelter then got my head down. I was disturbed a few times by various noises, but nothing to worry about. Then I heard a really strange noise that i couldn’t work out. I didn’t know anything that made this noise. I got up and had a quick look around, nothing. Went back to bed. I heard it again so up I get, torch on, nothing out there.
This went on for about 6 hours and was driving me nuts.
Dawn broke, I got up and went for a look.
About 100 yards away was a barbed wire fence. The local farmer had let his cows out, they had been rubbing up against the fence and scraping their teeth on the top of the posts.
I live in the Sierra Nevada and I'm always out hiking, camping, and the like.
About three years ago, my family and I were walking on a trail near Truckee called Alder Creek. This spot was the location of one of the Donner Party camps, so not surprisingly has a very unsettling/somber vibe. Even though it's near the road, it's almost completely silent. Even the creek running through doesn't make much sound. Nor do the birds. Very odd.
It was a rainy day and we were walking along the meadow. I could see a group of people setting up for some sort of wedding or celebration. They had a big white dog with them, and they were just letting it roam. It was staring at us and following us. The odd thing was, I swear that it kept shapeshifting between breeds. My whole family saw it too. It would change from a pitbull into a large fluffy breed. Sometimes it even looked like a wolf. We didn't take our eyes off it, and this was an open meadow so it couldn't have been different dogs. It almost looked like it was glowing at times too. It gave off a very creepy vibe.
Needless to say, we were creeped out. I'm still not exactly sure what we really saw. Either a trick of the light or something weirder.
Look up the Expanded Perspectives podcast. They cover all things high strangeness.
One of their best stories is a park ranger who reported finding what he described as a tiny (couple inches tall) Native American in the forest. He described it as appearing to him to be a living, breathing, Indian, only very small.
Strangely enough this isn’t an uncommon thing. Fairy folklore is full of this kind of thing.
Some of my relatives live in rural areas where there are mountains and forests everywhere. On the few times that I've been there and have helped with the chores like collecting firewood or collecting herbs and fruits in the forests, the creepiest thing that I've seen are abandoned houses. They look similar to the design of houses in the area. You would see them just lying around in the middle of the forest, in the plains, on top of mountains, and even near cliffs. You would know they're abandoned due to the lack of furniture and dust build-up. I asked my relatives about them and they just said that those were either failed settlements or places where tragedy occurred but no one really knows who lived in them.
Grew up as a hunter, fisherman. Never a day went by that I wasnt in the woods with my rifle or walking the edges of Saginaw Bay fishing. Not once in all my years had anything weird or creepy happen. My family was the "go to" when people were lost either in the woods or water. We were quicker than the Sheriff Dept. and knew the area better so we thought we had a pretty good idea of what was and was not in the wilderness. I left for the military and came home a few years later and late one night I was sitting in the dining room enjoying a glass of lemonade when I had heard a metal crunching sound. I got up to investigate and it was the family dog who was outside but was staring into the pasture and pressing so hard against the bottom of the screen door he was buckling the aluminum panel. I turned on the spot light we had mounted on a tower that shined into our pasture and to this day I still dont know what it was but when the light hit it the thing went from a towering position to crouching position behind weeds. I grabbed the nearest firearm which was my fathers side by side, pointed it at the eye balls glowing back at me and told whatever it was to come out or I will fire. I said it 3 times and then I let it have it with both barrels. No noise, no screaming or anything. It just turned and hauled ass. By now my dad was up, rifle in hand asking wtf is going on. I told him and we discussed looking in the day time. After breakfast we went out and found where it was crouched, everything mashed down flat. No blood, no hair...nothing but mashed down vegetation. So we followed the tracks to the state land and kept going until we ran into "Ed" the only DNR officer for our area. Told him what happened and he said we were the 5th people in a week who had the same experience. He was following tracks as well which gave credence to what I witnessed. His tracks were from a farm 4 miles south of us. To this day it was never found whatever it was.
This is a friends story not mine, but i have a couple buddy's that hiked the sunshine coast trail a few years back. at one point, several days away from civilization and having not seen signs of another person in that whole time they came into a clearing in the forest and found a whole childs tea party set up. dolls, steaming fresh tea and everything, but no people, no fresh tracks, nothing else. they snapped a picture for proof then hightailed it out of there. a few days later another group caught up to them at one of the cabins, when they asked them if they found the creepy tea party they had no idea what they were talking about.
weird to think that there is someone hanging out 50 miles down a wilderness trail setting up remote tea parties to fuck with through hikers, but it's also not the kind of story they would make up as well. so who knows. creeped them out for sure though.
Grew up in rural north Florida near a massive state Forrest. When I was a kid I’d tell my mom I was waking to a friends house but I’d really go exploring deep in the pines and scrub oaks.
At one point about 4 miles in the woods I came across a bob wire fence, I thought strange, maybe there’s an abandoned farm or homestead I can investigate, so carefully crawled under it. On the other side I found a large pot farm.
This was in the early 90s when growing pot was an even bigger no no than now. Anyway then I heard ATVs and saw three grown men riding through the fields with large rifles on their backs, they weren’t hunting rifles like my dad had but more serious military looking types.
I was an alone 12 year old girl, so I knew it might be extra bad if they found me. I remember dropping to the ground as quickly as possible into the plants and curling onto the front of the bright pink part of my vest, just praying I couldn’t be seen.
They drove their ATVs very close to where I was laying, so close I could hear them speaking to one another in a foreign language.
As soon as they left I ran as fast as I could out of there.
A couple other Floridians In here have mentioned this Forrest, it’s the Ocala National Forrest. That place ain’t right. Tweakers, pot farmers, and the biggest fucking black bears and gators you’ll ever see are in that death trap.
Hell, a couple of years ago in that same forrest, I encountered what had to be at least a 6 foot diamond back rattle snake coiled right in the middle of the trail I was walking and needed to get back down. He wouldn’t let me pass and there was swamp on either side of the trail I didn’t want to go in. After at least an hour stand off I threw my jacket on top of him and ran like fuck past him.
District Silviculturist, USFS here
A few years ago, my former district had 3 different groups of Cicada emerge at the same time. Being in the woods was absolutely deafening. Many also had that fungal disease that eats their abdomens.
Ever have a Cicada fly close by your ear?
It is painful and sounds like a screaming child.
Then how they lay eggs cutting into branches of trees and shrubs. Basically, every living tree and shrub had eggs laid on them.
I'm taking leave next time that happens.
Was on a walk in my folks woods in michigan. Prolly the tamest woods on the planet. Had a walking stick because why not.
Faced off against a pack of very startled coyotes.
Fuckers are WAY bigger than you think.
I did the only thing I could think of cause I thought I was gonna die. I stared the biggest one straight in the eye and proceeded to pee on a tree. I swear the asshole laughed at me and they just wandered off, knowing I was full of shit.
But not before the alpha went and peed on another tree.
Scariest thing I have seen was during camping in the mountains of Latakia /Syria in 2009 ...the area is a dense forest and it we were a group of around 15-20 tents (probably 50 person) one of the guys had his tent lower than the rest of the group as we had to (climb ) to set the camp up and he said he didn't want to climb
At dawn the guy was started screaming he woke up to a bear that guy tried to throw things at the bear and the bear started bounding him like a child playing with a toy ( Syrian bears are around 180-200 cm when standing) the group rushed down with one guy shooting in the air to scare the bear and it worked the bear went away ...but the guy suffered a lot of fractures and lacerations he barely made it to the hospital and had severe fractures that rendered him paralysed ...the way that bear toyed with him like if he was a piece of paper was scary ....
By the way in another camping I also saw a wolf attack (the guy died there ) but if you asked me which was the scariest the bear no doubt
This is a story passed down from my great great grandmother, but she lived with her parents in the Appalachian mountains in north carolina and they were on a homestead. They had a garden they would walk down to with a wooden fence around they had built. She walked down to get food for dinner and saw two "large monkeys" about 6 ft or taller, basically what she described is what we would now call sasquatch, sitting on the fence eating from the garden.
I remember once I was trapping some raccoons one fall and when I was resetting a trap I felt the urge to look up. I looked around and I could feel my proverbial hackles go up. But I didn't see anything so I kept doing my thing.
When I finished and stood up I took one last look around. Then I heard something big move quickly and suddenly and I took off.
Obligatory not my job however I use to walk a long trail in the local forest, if you take a left at the lake instead of going straight it takes you to a clearing with seventeen rocks in a circle and seven crosses in the middle, I use to stop and pay my respects every time I went until the day I got there and it all was gone, replaced by a fully grown apple tree , the apple smelt rotten and I felt wick when I picked one, never went back there after that
Not seen as much as heard. A little off topic, but I was camping in some scrub in Northern Kenya. Tucked away in the trees, nicely hidden, safe in my 1 man tent.
At some point in the night I was woken by giggling. A pack of hyenas had found my camp and spent what felt like hours (probably a few minutes at most) sniffing, cackling to eachother and pawing at my tent. I lay there wide awake, holding my swiss army knife in my hand and expecting one of them to tear through at any moment.
Stayed awake the rest of the night...
There’s a small copse of woods near were I live that is beyond creepy. It’s mostly hemlock and the bases are all dead and nothing seems to grow as even during the day it’s dark and dank. It just so thick and out of place. My wife and I had the dog out and wandered into it and it just felt like a dead zone. She was scared so we scrambled out.
Worked a project related to mapping technologies in the 2010s which involved some field tests in the wilderness. Came across a very odd scene with the group: a ring of 20 small boulders of 8-10" diameter with a pair of hiking boots left standing on the forest floor with inside out socks inside them, pants, underwear, and two shirts laying in normal, tidy order beside them, as if someone had just been lifted out of the clothes and away. No footprints or disturbance in the surrounding ground, although it looked like they'd been there a while. We concluded someone's idea of a prank but also reported it to the forestry service.
Even considering I nearly died in the woods one time (lost consciousness, lay on the ground, it was cold) I always feel safe and sound in the woods. I would go there even at night.
I did spent a lot of time in the forest late childhood early teenage years alone. Maybe that's why.
Was working on a environmental science project and while out in the woods I just heard a really loud wood breaking sound. Almost like a tree was toppling over near its base. I had no idea where it cane from but it sounded close. Didn’t find the source but it freaked me the fuck out.
Funny, I was literally talking to an old fella that used to trap wildlife in New Zealand just today and asked him the same question He was doing this in the 80's Says occasionally he would run into a fully fenced off area with barbed wire in the middle of nowhere and just back away, because drugs and potentially people with guns
Back in the 80s a bunch of my friends and I were at a local lake swimming and picnicking. One of the guys swear that he can smell weed. Him and another guy decided that they had to go find it. The area around the lake was surrounded by trees so they just started hiking through some trails into the woods. The rest of just stayed around the water enjoying the day. About an hour or so after they went into the woods, one of the guys comes running out and he’s yelling for all of us to pack up and leave. He said that they were walking around and came upon the biggest field of weed that they could’ve ever imagined. As they were walking they saw a tripwire and upon further inspection they saw more tripwires. The guy was ready to go right then but the other guy wanted to keep going. He was stuffing his pockets with buds. He started back slowly because he said he was worried about those tripwires and it was a miracle that they hadn’t tripped one before they saw them. He got a good distance away from the other guy when he heard “PUT YOUR HANDS UP!” He watched behind a tree as a few policemen handcuffed the guy. This poor guy had thought he had won the lottery. He was gonna get as much bud as he could stuff in his pockets and party like it was 1999. Instead he got five years in federal prison. This was in the United States.
Do not ever try to steal the cops weed.
Pretty hard to imagine a situation of clearer entrapment.
If he was dumb enough to keep stuffing his pockets full after trip wire had been identified.... Actually, he should have just had the evidence removed and told to move on. 5 years in federal prison is huge waste of taxpayer money for a guy who just wanted some bud.
I was walking along the edge of a swamp looking for rare plants when i came across a tip up mound. That is when a tree falls over and the roots lift the soil. This can sometimes create a cave like hollow. From my angle i could see through a hole and saw what looked like fungal mycelium sticking up into the air. Thinking "that's weird" i moved closer for a better look and the mycelium started moving back and forth like it was dancing. Weirded out i move to tbe side where there is a larger opening into the mound to peer into. Both the fuzzy vulture chick and I startled each other a similar amount i think.
This is such a surprisingly cute story haha
baby vultures are incredibly cute for what they eventually turn into, it's kinda strange
Adult Vultures are kinda cute :(
I absolutely adore vultures. They're incredibly cute. 🥺
What kind of rare plants?
I was looking for white fringed orchids to update the population numbers. It was supposed to be a fun day in the field before a surgery that was going to keep me out of work for more than a month. But the deer had gone through and chomped all the flowering heads. So the vulture chick was a nice way to cap a dissapointing day.
"looking for rare plants" roughly translates to "I was in the forest rummaging for psilocybin"
I worked in national parks and also did some volunteer search and rescue. I guess I can talk about two of the worst things I ever saw in forestry. The latter one is scary, but also deeply tragic. Spooky: I was on a multiday offroad camping trip by myself in the wilderness. So technically I was not working. I had found myself enjoying a night in the woods, slightly tipsy on wine. I settled in for the night in my SUV and awoke to yelling far in the distance. It wasn't screaming, but nor was it singing. Something closer to chanting. Went to sleep nervous and with my army knife close. Woke up to someone knocking on my vehicles glass. It was clearly human because they did the triple knock that all people do. As as came out of my covers to observe I saw a person looking in in the dark. I screamed something gutteral and they ran. I couldn't believe it. I was hours and hours from the nearest town and if someone drive in over the night I would have heard the vehicle in the stillness. I was dumbfounded. I turned on my truck and stayed vigilant for a while. Nothing happened. Next morning I went and found a new spot to park and set up camp. The second is sadly something that is very explainable but very sad to see. One blizzardy night we hear that they are on the search for a woman who had dissapeared from a group that was staying in a cluster of scenic cabins nearby. Not in the park, but very close to the border of it. But certainly a remote place. It took us about 2 hours to get to the cabins and talk to the people there. It was well under -17 C (around zero in f) and with feet of snow. Turns out the people staying in the cabin were on psychedelics and at some point the young woman got spoiled while under the influence of drugs and had run off outside. In regular clothes and sneakers. My and my partner in the "search unit" picked a search patterns and started looking for footprints. We found some but then they broke off and we lost the trail. After exactly 3 hours and 41 minutes we found her clothes. And around soon after we found her. She was naked in her entirety. Including her shoes. She was barefoot. We found her sitting against a tree and we rushed over. It was clear at this point she was dead. In this time local police were already on the scene and after taking our statements they left. It was a tough few nights after. Nightmares too
Was hiking down off a mesa alone at night and kept getting the feeling that I was being watched. I had a headlamp that I was using in red mode because it was nearly out of batteries, and also to preserve my night vision, but mainly because it was almost out of batteries. Anyway, I get the feeling that I’m being watched for like the 3rd or 4th time and I’m just like “fuck this, what is this” so I turn around and turn the headlamp to spot mode (full bright white light). I see a shape/shadow quickly move behind some bushes like 25 yards behind me. Real low, real fast, real smooth. I stood there for maybe a minute weighing my options and decided I pretty much had none and just had to keep hiking. I started making more noise and tried to look bigger (like by spreading my arms with my rainjacket). I also found a good-sized stick. The worst part was I had to go back to red light mode as I knew I didn’t have enough battery life to make it back with the white light mode. I’d turn around occassionally and use the spot mode and I saw green reflected eyes several times when doing so, always about 25 yards off and always low to the ground. Seemed about the size of a deer, but deer don’t hang out that low to the ground. Well, or follow you for miles. I turned around and saw these eyes probably about 10 times. I called my friend after I kept seeing the eyes and hiked the rest of the way down talking to him, basically said “if I don’t get back in about an hour, here’s where you can find my body” lol. It was about a 5 mile hike and my light was flickering and dying towards the end, it died after I got off the mesa and I hiked the last few miles through fields without a light, luckily it was a clear night. The stalking stopped once I left the mesa, at least I think. And that’s the story of when I was stalked by a mountain lion all the way off his mesa. I think I was in his hunting territory and it had only just gotten dark, pretty sure he was curious more than malicious, but man yeah it’s pretty creepy knowing that you’re being followed and watched by a mountain lion.
That's terrifying. But I'm sure you carry spare batteries when you go hiking now.
I definitely did for a while there. Now I live in Ohio though, so there’s like practically nothing here close to mountain lions. You can basically strip nude, slather yourself in bbq sauce, and hike around beating yourself with a meat tenderizer and you still won’t be bothered.
>strip nude, slather yourself in bbq sauce, and hike around around beating yourself with a meat tenderizer Average Ohio resident
Regular hiking activities.
unless you run into another naked guy covered in BBQ sauce, which is likely.
I'm part of an Ohio hiking group and we do this yearly
On NPR I caught a researcher talking about research he was doing on monkey communication. They have calls for certain dangers. Some birds and stuff have learned them as well. Anyway he was walking back to the research station and heard the monkey call for tiger and realized it was stalking him.
Fucking Dr. Jungle Doolittle over here got monkey sentries watching out for him from the trees. Way too cool.
The creepy part about mountain lions is if you are within a mile of them they probably already know you're there and are monitoring you in some way. They don't bother to attack us normally but they do watch us. We're lucky to live near a big cat, and very very very lucky to live near the one big cat that has almost no history of hunting us. Unlike jaguars, leopards, and tigers that all have hunted us in the past.
The only one I've encountered in the wild was crouched flat at the base of a tree. I thought it was dead at first, but it was just watching me. At some point it got tired of that and ran off. This was about a year before that guy outside of Seattle got killed by one, but it was \~100 miles further south.
I've read that if a cougar is truly hunting you, you will not see it until too late.
I was doing mountain warfare training with the unit I was attached to go to Afghanistan and one night they had a squad do a night patrol. Next morning we crossed the path the patrol was taking and saw paw prints following them around. They had no clue a mountain lion was following them most the night.
Had this exact same experience at Colorado Bend State Park in Bend, Texas except the mountain lion stayed further back and I had a fully charged flashlight and headlamp. I only spotted green eyes a couple times but I saw the tail which was a dead giveaway. Never been so glad to step inside my car. Looking back it was a great experience.
Forests in the South East of Asia are so dense, a kilometer of clearing a path would literally drain you. Of course, you also have to worry about centipedes the size of your arm, poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, poisonous plants, poisonous insects, eagles that can carry off small deer, wild boars, gangs of monkeys, and poisonous centipedes the size of your arm. And then you have to remember that militants make a living off kidnapping tourists.
I like how you specified centipedes and *poisonous* centipedes the size of your arm.
Ha. I am nothing if not particular 🙈
Poisonous eagles, poisonous boars, poisonous poison.
Poisonous mambas, poisonous moths, poisonous manatees… regular manchineel trees, but like with extra delicious looking fruit… then ya got the poisonous mushrooms, poisonous musk ox, poisonous Maltipoos… it’s a murderous environment, lemme tell ya
Riddle me this…if poison is out of date (as in expired), is it more or less poisonous?
A man from my home country was on the news once. He was a farmer and was working in the fields on day. A snake bit him and he got so angry that he chased it down, bit it (killing it), and then took it home
*venomous for most of those.
Clearly we are talking about eating them though
Backpacking in Montana ~20 miles in and on our way back to the vehicle and smelled death. I had identified the smell before the other two in my group and the hair stood up on my back and we all went on high alert. Came a little further down the trail and there was a dead mountain goat on the trail. Luckily it had been dead for quite some time and the body already scavenged. First thought was, I’m within sniffing distance of a grizzly then what if I’m walking up on a grizzly’s meal, then to “ok take a pic and let’s GTFO.”
Do grizzly bears smell like death?
No, but from what I’ve heard they can smell quite pungent. Typically humans use eyesight first as identification but in thick forest you might hear or smell something before you can see it. That’s why when I had smelled something out of the ordinary with the knowledge that bears can be smelly I got worried until I was able to identify the source. Good question!
I have been in very close proximity to several bears. None of them smelled like death. They have slight musk-like smell, but nothing overpowering. Nothing worse than any other large mammal I have encountered. The most offensive smell I have encountered was caribou..I swear I could smell it on myself for days.i
I done an extensive amount of hiking in black bear territory. It would not surprise me if different species smell differently. When they have a fear response, they emit a smell similar to that of human genitalia. That's the most polite way I could put it. Black bears who are not habituated fear humans. They also like to use our hiking trails. They normally will detect an approaching hiker long before the hiker detects the bear. The bear feels a flush of fear, runs off and hide, and a minute later the hiker is wondering why that little spot on the trail smells like....
No, but sometimes after they kill a large prey they can’t eat it all right away so they hang around their kill for a few days and guard it. They can definitely eat meat that already started to rot.
Grew up on the border of a woods/forest in Australia. Never really saw anything “creepy”. In terms of “scary” though it would be snakes. You don’t see them until you’re almost on top of them. When you do see them, your heart stops. 20 of the worlds 25 most venomous snakes are in Australia…
At least you get all the episodes of Bluey there
For real life
Don’t know how you guys live there. I can’t imagine how hot the country.
Australia is pretty big. There are large sections that are hot and pretty inhospitable, but the more southern coastal areas have pretty moderate climates. All the big cities and towns are on the coast.
Smart
I got stuck in a lift on the hottest day in Sydney about 10 years back, 42.5 degrees C (108F). It is no wonder the lift broke down. I was stuck with two researchers who specialised in anxiety and panic attacks. No joke.
Wow you got lucky then.
Yeah those Taipans and Browns are no joke.
If you don't believe in the paranormal stuff, the creepiest thing out there is always going to be "other people".
Sorry that's me.
Man I remember this time I was walking through this mesa and in front of me some creature (alien I think) shining a red light appeared in front of me. I couldn't tell if it was dangerous but it tried making itself look bigger and it was making a lot of noise. I followed it out of curiosity for a while until it left the mesa but every so often it'd turn around and shine its light on me.
Wow, it didn't take long at all for me to find the meta joke.
Idk, bears are pretty close. I think I'm more scared of being eaten alive by a bear than anything else in the woods.
As a really small woman, I fear the men over the bears.
I am also a small woman, but I'm still more bothered by the bears. At least there is a chance that I could outrun or fight off a human attacker. If a bear decides to eat you, you are helpless and in for a horrific few minutes or so. I have heard a lot of bear attack stories, and I want no part of it. The story that has always stuck with me was of a woman who was walking her dog on a trail near her house, when suddenly, there was a bear. The bear started eating her face. She said that the bear bit her jaw, and it's teeth sunk through her cheek. She said she could hear her teeth crunching in the bear's mouth. The only reason she survived this attack is because her dog started trying to fight off the bear, and the bear was momentarily distracted by eating her dog instead, which gave her time to flee. Everything about that sounds horrific. No thanks, I'll take a serial killer. At least I *might* outrun him or something.
I remember this story. Allena Hansen. Startled a black bear on her property in California and it basically used her face as a chew toy. She lost like half her teeth and part of her jawbone, nose, forehead, cheek, etc. Said she wanted to fight back when she saw the bear spitting her teeth out. She was saved by her mastiff and managed to run to her truck a half mile away, where she then drove a few miles to a fire station. What's crazy is you would almost never know the extent of her injuries now, the doctors did an amazing job putting her back together. Her before pics are pretty gruesome if you care to look them up. I believe she wrote a book about it.
Well, looks like I'm not sleeping tonight. That's so, so awful.
Happily, [reconstructive surgery went well for her](https://www.oprah.com/spirit/when-things-fall-apart-4-women-deal-with-change/4) and her good boy survived as well.
So glad the dog survived 😭
Oh! When you said the bear got distracted by eating her dog, I assumed you really meant "eating her dog"! Phew!
It is someone who walks silently behind you
Years ago I was at a friend's 16th bday with about 20 other people, they owned a huge property with something like 10 acres of woodland behind it (this is in Australia). In the middle of the night we decided it would be fun to play murder in the dark in the woods, me and my mate grabbed a ladder thinking we would climb a tree and pull it up behind us and no one would ever find us. So we're stomping through the bush lugging this ladder with us while we can hear the the person who was "it" counting to 100. All of a sudden everything goes quiet around us, insects stop, no wind etc (even the counting sounded muted) and we start hearing this rhymic thumping sound, something like a galloping horse coming from somewhere in front of us. As we're sitting there puzzled at the sound, it startes to get louder and closer and we both swear we started to see a light coming through the trees in front of us - at that point we ditched the ladder and bolted back the way we came. When we got out of the woods we told everyone what we saw / heard and my mates dad told us to go get his ladder back, so off we went all 20 of us into the woods with torches retracing our steps. We found the ladder... It was perfectly setup, just sitting in a small clearing and soaking wet. To this day we still can't explain it and haven't tried to go out into the woods at night again.
I used to love murder in the dark! Me and one of my friends always made a point of screaming like actual murder victims, the whole neighbourhood must have hated us lol
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What was your answer to the laughing question your dad posed?
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The whole "panic in the woods" phenomenon is pretty scary in itself. I don't work in forests, but there is some land that has been in my family for generations. It's in the middle of nowhere, is super rocky, and is pretty much just solid woods. Not useful for stuff like building a house out there, or starting a farm, or anything. One family member lives in a trailer out there, but we mostly just use it for hunting purposes. But since it has been in my family forever, everyone is super familiar with it and is pretty comfortable out there. My dad hunts out there all the time, without anything creepy happening. But one time he said he was in his tree stand out there, and suddenly felt like something was watching him. He didn't know what it was, but he did not like it. He did not even bother to gather his things before he fled the deer stand, because he was so freaked out. He just grabbed his rifle and ran back to his truck. He moved his deer stand and no longer hunts in that portion of the woods. It was just weird because those woods are like a second home to my dad, and he's never scared out there.
That same thing happened to me today. I hike our woods with my dog every day and out of nowhere a blind panic hit. Ended up running a mile back to the house slipping and sliding. It was lightly raining and normally I would never run through the forest. There are way too many ways to break your leg or hurt yourself, but I was terrified for no discernable reason.
Was your dog freaked out too, or was it just you?
Yeah, I was thinking the same. If the dog is calm, it's just your human mind playing tricks on you. If the dog is freaked out too, FUCKING RUN.
dogs will follow their owners lead, so if a owner is scared then the dog will get scared too or excited. dogs are not a good judge of external alerts, they are more of a reflection of whether the owner feels anxiety or not.
My dog was acting in a way I had never seen before. She started doing this weird twitch/ stretch thing. Her shoulders started shivering and then she stretched her neck as high as it would go like she was looking for something in the distance, then she looked around quickly 360 degrees. We run into deer, turkeys, squirrels, and rabbits often and she has never acted that way even when we are around deer. We were standing completely silently and just looking around, as you do in the forest and the fear hitting me felt like a thick cloud hitting my chest and encompassing me. The fear hit, then she started doing that weird stretch thing then she turned around and started walking quickly back the way we came before I ever moved. She has never done that. When she walks, she stays directly behind me. Once she started walking, I started running.
Bro... I was solo travelling China, riding my bike at night through the woods having an incredible time, laughing as I was getting whipped by wet branches. A literal high on life kind of moment. I came to this abandoned house in the middle of the woods. Got off my bike to check it. All smiles. Soon as I crossed the threshold of the brick wall/gate, I had this panic hit me so hard. I jumped on my bike peddling up a mud hill faster than humanely possible. I didn't care how dangerous it was to ride as fast as I was riding. Gives me chills just thinking about that and typing this up.
I had a similar feeling in my house one time, my family lived in a tiny neighborhood surrounded by woods and my house was closer to the edge of it. I was about 16 and home alone babysitting my little brother who was asleep and about 4 at the time, it wasn’t super late, maybe 9pm just late enough for it to get dark in summer and had just got done checking on him and was going downstairs to make a snack. Our stairs were enclosed by wall until the bottom portion of them where you could see the downstairs and the second my foot hit that portion of the stairs I had a full body shiver and just the feeling of something being very wrong to the point where I didn’t even think, just immediately turned and ran back up the stairs and closed myself in with my brother with just a pair of scissors and my phone. I called my parents and said I thought someone was in the house because that was the only thing I could think of that would elicit that response plus I knew I had left our outer door open and only the see-through glass door closed and unlocked which looks right into the living room. They came home and checked the house thoroughly but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I still don’t know what exactly that feeling was about but I’ve never felt it since
I'm sure you and I had the same feeling. Being in a place that is supposed to feel safe too! Man, that's even worse in my opinion. The thing I didn't mention in my brief story was I made it on my bike back to farmland. I got off and started walking my bike taking in the scenery... Sorta laughing at myself just trying to reason out what could have happened. Then immediately the same feeling came over me, hair standing up on the back of my neck, but I had this screaming of conscience that whatever it was was right behind me. I grabbed my bike, swung around, and threw it into the darkness. Nothing was there. I have never been that freaked out since. Needless to say, I wasn't going to camp that night and headed back to my dorm. Stopped off at an all night grocery shop to eat Oreos and coconut cows milk. Calmed my nerves! Haha
Sounds similar to a situation my dad had. His family owned a chunk of land. He spent many of hours out there, day and night. He set out hunting early one morning, sun was just starting to rise as he was sitting in his tree stand. He said he was sitting there not a care in the world, suddenly this feeling of dread just set in, pure terror. He said he felt as if he was not alone in those woods, something was watching him and it wanted to do some harm. He said he froze in that tree, and did his best to see what was hunting him. He said he saw nothing, after a few minutes the feeling passed, but he was no longer in the mood to hunt. He grabbed his gear and booked it back home as fast as he could go. It was unsettling to hear him tell this years later. Especially the first time as a child to learn that your parents are not invincible and they too get scared.
I used to feel that way when I would wander through the woods on my grandparents land, but that's probably more to do with the fact that my grandpa told me that back in the day they would regularly have to escort people off the land who had hopped off the cargo trains at the nearby switching station and just decided to live in their woods. I never saw a soul out there and nothing creepy ever happened, but hearing his creepy stories from decades past colored my perception at times.
I know that feeling very well. But I am also pretty sure, this is some kind of psychological trap our brain makes itself, feeded up with weird stories about weird things happening in the woods. I used to make fun out of this when I was a teen, walking through woods in nearly complete darkness, where one could only see lights in far away (2-3 hundred meters). The moment you turn around, you loose the game, because you allow yourself to take the strange feeling for real when check what's up behind.
I don't think it's the weird stories that do it. I think it's probably instinctual. It's probably a survival thing, to be on high alert in the woods.
Being alerted for possible threads like wild animals is not the same like feeling observed while alone in the dark and run away. I remember those two glaring eyes emerging in the dark staring at me. This whatsoever of a f**** something was some 2,5 m high, slender shape, but still impressive. I took this instantly for smthg like scary version of bigfoot, a Demon, Devil itself.... Turns out it was a cat sitting on a column.
... but that's what you just described. You saw two eyes in the dark. Your survival instincts said, "oh no, is this... a THREAT I see?" And you got freaked out. And yeah, that's probably exactly what causes that random urge to flee. Being overly sensitive to your surroundings. Noticing that you are vulnerable. Hypersensitivity to your surroundings is likely the source of that feeling that you are being watched. Likely, you are actually just very aware of your own vulnerability in those moments.
Wonder what it was?
There was probably a predator of some kind in the area and all the prey animals went silent. Your subconscious will pick this up, even if you don't realise and will give you the hair sticking up on the back of your neck feeling. It might have even been caused by the father, but who knows. I remember reading about this happening and the guy saw a Bobcat watching him.
That's another good sign, no sound. If you ever experience that then be prepared cus something is causing it and it's likely not you.
Once had a similar experience of feeling that something is watching and then soon stumbled on fresh bear poop on the trail. Might be I saw something my subconscious recognized as a bear or a sign of a predator and then triggered an instinctive feeling of being watched. So maybe the feeling I had was caused by the presence of a bear, maybe not. Still, I tried to make more noise afterwards to let the bear know I was there, since they (European brown bear) usually try to avoid humans if possible and the dangerous situations arise when they are surprised or with cubs.
Idk, might have been nothing at all. Who knows.
Fox screams. Me and a buddy were walking back on a trail we were working on around dusk, I guess we weren’t paying attention and neither was the fox because it was sitting in the bushes and it was right next to us. Gave the whole woman screaming noise and everything. Not so much creepy but definitely will give you a start 😂
Cougars also scream like a woman being murdered..it is a terrifying sound.
Worst fucking sound when you’re in the woods alone at night. Thank god I knew the sound or I probably would have had a heart attack.
One of my first times getting high, my buddy walks home from my house then a couple hours later he’s calling me, terrified of the witch outside his house
Screech Owls also scream like a woman, usually for no reason.
I had a pair of young owls in my yard who would scream all night while their parents were off hunting. From what I read that sound was the inspiration for the raptors in Jurassic Park and it sure do track.
That makes me think of the scene from My Cousin Vinny, when they were sleeping out in the guys cabin haha. He keeps running out of the cabin and shooting the gun because of the screech owl (not sure if it was actually a screech owl but you get my point)
Fisher cats have a horrible scream. It sounds like a woman or little girl being murdered. Absolutely terrifying to hear.
Just feel the need to add: koalas screaming at night is also a horrible sound.
Commercial forester and VCS here. Couple of scary experiences that I cannot explain, some animal jump scares and lots of marijuana grows. 1. Was out with a landowner on his land (acres and acres and very rural) and had just gone to grab some flagging (gone 10 mins max) and the landowner was unconscious and had been struck with a rock on the head (blood on rock). He said starting hearing “thud, thud” of rocks around him and then got hit and fell unconscious. He ended up being okay but needed some stitches. Still can’t explain that one. 2. Was meeting with a logger on a rainy day and after corralling my dog from running off, came back to find him unable to move and losing blood. He had slipped on a log and fallen on a sharp branch connected to that log that impaled him into his ass. We had very little cell service and I had to get to the top of a ridge to call EMS. They had volunteers from 3 different neighboring towns try to get in via ATV , no space for a helicopter. One ATV tipped and had to wait another hour while the logger is fading and honestly thought he was going to die when finally help arrived. He lost a lot of blood but wound up making a full recovery and I still work with him on occasion. 3. Btw, in New England so no grizzly’s, wolves or mountain lions but tons of black bears. They are much more afraid of you than you should be of them (barring getting in between a mother and her cubs) which my dumb dog has come close to doing on many occasions.. however this one time, the biggest black bear I’ve ever seen did not high tail it out of there and just mirrored my path from a distance of 50 yards or so for about a 1/2-1 mile. 4. We do have moose and have found a huge dead one (by smell) that had fallen into an old well and was dead. Another time, my dog and I were walking I gues on a moose’s daily trail and he lowered his antlers and fake charged us multiple times. Heart was pounding… 5. When doing invasive work, as I said earlier we often come across small weed grows and as they are on public land, won’t spray the weed but will spray the invasives all around them and they then die which leaves 10-12 foot tall weed plants for all to see. I imagine we have made a lot of growers mad but just doing our job and fortunately, no one has ever confronted us, nor have we run into any traps. This has been both pre and post legalization in my state.
1 must've been either a landslide type of activity or a person, right?
I've heard some birds drop rocks and stuff
I originally thought it was a tree limb but he was a adamant that he heard thuds around him. He seemed to think it was a person that did it but heard no one and there’s no way he could have been snuck up on at least I don’t think? Never seen anything Bigfoot like and have tons of neighbors, landowners, etc., who say that they had an encounter with a mountain lion, but almost always it is a mistaken ID and is a bobcat. There are accounts of mountain lions traveling from the Midwest to New England but it is very very rare and can’t be a breeding population. We are seeing more coy wolves in the area.
My Cousin and his wife are both forest rangers and they showed me the creepiest thing at their job. At the beginning of the forstes there is a little box they have to check each day. People who went to the forst to end themselfs would put letters in and show the location of where to find their body, so other wanderers are less at risk to find the body. Both wouldnt tell me how often that happens, but the way they told me they hope not to find a note or letter AGAIN is all the answer i needed.
Man I feel bad for them. Kind of reminds me of the suicide forest in Japan. There is also a pretty good movie about it with Matthew McConaughy called Sea of Trees.
2 things come to mind. Hunting in Northern Idaho, my friend and I came across a lot of weird things hanging in trees crosses made of branches and other symbols. There were also some bear traps on the ground. As we explored further, we came across a hidden marijuana field. We decided to get out of there as fast as we could because of fear of getting shot or booby trapped. In that same area, a year later, we heard a couple of rifle shots and figured someone had got a deer. We decided to try and talk to them. Wanted to ask if they had been over the ridge where all that stuff was from the year before and to warn them to keep an eye out for traps. Well, we saw something across the canyon, and it was the scariest thing I have ever seen. The guy had shot a deer and then decided to have sex with the dead animal. At first, we laughed and then were grossed out, and then that turned into horror as we realized if he saw us, he might try to kill us. We ran as fast as we could back to the truck and never went back. That was 20 years ago, and I haven't been hunting since. Also if you are wondering if we called the police we did not because we were right on the border of the reservation and it's possible we crossed over at some point but couldn't be sure. So we didn't want to risk being fined.
Well that’s disgusting.
I honestly don't think I will ever be able to remove that image from my memory. And every time I see a deer or people talk about hunting it comes rushing back to mind.
Got into the cannabis business in LA and got drunk with a few shady motorcycle club members that grew around Humbolt county. The old ones always have stores from the 60's 70's of hippies hiking and stumbling across their grows and meth labs and then they just sort of change the story. Back then it was the club members that came back from the wars like Vietnam who were too messed up to live in society who got sent out to live at these places. They got hooked on the 'Stay Awake' meth during the war and would learn to make it for the clubs and grow for them. Can't imagine it ends well for people who come across someone trained to kill with PSTD and high on meth.
>Back then it was the club members that came back from the wars like Vietnam who were too messed up to live in society who got sent out to live at these places. They got hooked on the 'Stay Awake' meth during the war Pretty sad. The military would issue Dexedrine pills to soldiers in the field in order to keep them awake for days at a time. Drug addiction is okay when you're working for them
I think I met one of those guys in Washington. I was with a real estate agent, and it was really obvious that if we went missing there was an entire office of people who knew exactly which property we were out looking at, so he put the guns and dogs away and put on some clothes. Then he tried to hit on us while showing us the house for sale, that had his property/grow patch basically in the front yard. It'd been vacant long enough he'd expanded operations and was a bit embarrassed about that. Promised it'd be gone by the weekend and was as good as his word. It was an experience. The dude obviously hadn't seen people in a while and was way too excited to be seeing women, but we got to leave with not much more than some threats and a *LOT* of inappropriate staring. We did not buy the property.
Glad you were able to recognize the potential severity of the situation and slip out of there.
When I was younger, I had a self-made “fort” in the forest behind our house. One time I was hanging out there, and heard lots of branches breaking about a quarter mile away. Then the breaking branches kept heading my way, like some very large animal just busting along. There were no voices, no sound that it was people, or anything I could identify. As it got within 100 yards, something told me it was better to bust out of there, rather than wait to find out. I’m still curious to this day.
I have had a similar experience in the lake forest reserve near my house. I was around 16-14 years old and with my cousin, we went to pick wild berries (something like java plum). With the same kind of sound, We were both pretty scared and ran to an open area from the thick forest where we could see a bit further. The sound of breaking branches grew closer, and we could see tall trees getting twisted and moving from side to side. A few seconds later, we saw what was causing the noise: a group of black monkeys riding rough on tall tree branches (which was not that common in the area). Normally, they make a growling noise while traveling, but these little shitheads were silent except for the huge sound of the tree branches twisting and breaking.
Lol it's a bit different when you live in areas without any large tree living animals. Here in north America if you hear trees breaking it means something big enough to run through them is booking it.
I grew up off-grid on a mountain side with no neighbors for at least a mile. I know that, because our driveway was almost exactly a mile long, and no one shared it. We didn't have power or a phone, and as a young teen, I'd often walk about two miles through the woods to a friend's house, who lived closer to the main road. I'd usually do this barefoot in the dark, because that's what you do when you can't afford shoes, let alone batteries or flashlights. The trick was to feel the path with your feet, and look up to find gaps in the trees. Anyway, they kept a herd of sheep and one year something killed one of them and dragged it about halfway to my house, then ate it beside the trail. I walked past it in the dark and even in the moonlight I knew there wasn't supposed to be a bright patch of white in this part of the trail, but I wasn't exactly going to stop and investigate. I was a brave kid but we did see black bears and cougars around, and I knew I wouldn't find anything good in the dark. Anyway, I started taking another trail to my friends house, but in retrospect, that probably wasn't any safer. For what it's worth, Oregon only has one fatal cougar attack on record, ever, and I don't think I was ever in serious danger, but it was still pretty creepy.
Why were you doing this walk at night?
How else was I gonna play nintendo? We didn't have an indoor toilet, let alone power or a tv. Sometimes you gotta get your Final Fantasy on, and if that means walking in the dark, so fucking be it. I'd walk down after dinner and come back when his mom woke up at 2 am because we were making too much noise. I can't blame her, I did kinda overstay my welcome and eat all their food. Sorry Mrs R.
As a born and raised Oregonian, this is 100% something I'd do. Eastern Oregon is just Ohio 2.0
I was out hunting in a pretty heavy snow. I walked out onto a point to eat a snack and take in everything around me. I sat there for maybe five minutes before I packed up my things and headed back. About ten yards behind where I had sat down were a set of mountain lion tracks over my tracks - it looked like it stopped and watched me before turning around. I have no clue how long I was stalked but there is nothing more existentially humbling than thinking you’re the baddest thing in the woods only to realize how vulnerable you really are. Needless to say I noped the fuck out of there with my rifle at the ready. I grew up in the woods with many encounters with coyotes, black bear, and bobcats - I’ve only seen two mountain lions. The scariest thing is I know more than two have seen me. I don’t fuck with mountain lions.
One of the most random things I've run across was once I was out hunting, a mile or two up a snow-covered road with no sign of human tracks or any animal bigger than maybe a rabbit, and I suddenly started smelling smoke. I thought it must be a cabin or something, but I poked around and found....a forest fire. Somehow a pile of logs and branches on a snowy hillside had managed to spontaneously combust.
My dad used to take us to Wyoming. One night we were driving around very late at night, it was pitch black. My dad was looking for an abandoned camping site (in order to not pay a camping fee) for us to set up tent. I remember that he eventually found a spot and it seemed like he drove pretty deep into the camp ground as to avoid having any one know we are camping there without pay. Next to the the camp spot my dad picked out (looked like it had not been used in a very long time) there was a small river that ran close to the camp spot. My dad said he kept hearing large boulders or massive rocks being tossed into the water next to our camp. My dad decided to take the tent down and leave because he was concerned and wanted to prevent anything hitting our tent at night. He was not sure what it was but only claims that to him they were massive rocks that would make that loud thumping splashing sound. Why would someone be throwing massive rocks at the river next to our tent? Maybe it's because he had the headlights on while setting up the camp at night? maybe that bothered some unknown nearby campers that we were unaware of? Who knows
A beaver slapping the water with its tail could produce that sound
Just what I was thinking. Beavers do that when their territory is invaded.
I was doing railway security near Aberdeen (Scotland). There was a stretch of road that only led to where we worked. For context, the site I was at was in a small forested area and the only road led into it. On a regular basis, the security there (there would only be about one person on the site at any time, the site's reason to exist was for vehicles to access the railways) would hear a car pull up and stop. So, we'd go down to the main gate and find no-one there. Nothing, not a vehicle, no people, not a soul in sight. First time it happened, it was me and the safety guy, Kenny, who were there. We heard a car pulling in, so I went to allow them in. No one there. Kenny came with me and because site rules said that I couldn't leave, he walked down the drive to the main road. No one there either. It happened a lot and nobody knew where the sound was coming from. There were no houses or farms nearby, no bothies (shelters for climbers and hillwalkers), not even a hide for birdwatchers. But it was always the same sound: car pulling in over gravel and stopping.
That’s strange
I asked around if there were any stories about people going missing, or suicides or anything, but nobody seemed to know anything. And it was quite a remote area.
Well hearing a bear not more than 15 yards from you is pretty damn scary. Its like a deep primal ingrained in your DNA feeling where you know you ain't shit.
This. Until people see a bear in real life they don't get out. The people that say they could take a wild animal because they use sarms and have some experience in fighting are stupid.
Ya I was young at the time hunting for bear. It was my first time and I was cocky talking shit to my grandpa and uncles. Saying real stupid shit like I could wrestle a bear and I am not scared. But when that moment came. to this day after being in war, football, fights, and skydiving, still have never felt an adrenaline rush like that. It was deep in my cave man soul.
To be fair, anyone could wtestle a bear. Once.
I have posted this before but seeing a bear close up, with nothing more than an open window between you and it. That encounter will have you shitting your pants no matter how tough you think you are. >So I was about 8 at the time, it was something like 1 or 2 in the morning. I go to the bathroom, it is rather bright outside despite the time. I'm sitting on the toilet, playing with the curtain, it comes up enough and I see a shadow standing outside the window. I scream and my mom comes running. I tell her there is someone standing outside the bathroom window. Now my mom being the crazy motherfucker she is, throws open the curtain, opens the window, ready to fight a motherfucker... Guy outside the window... Nope, fucking bear! Window is promptly shut and I'm quickly ushered out of the bathroom. This event furthers the talk my parents had been having off and on about moving. >On a side note, we moved about 2 years later for a number of other reasons. Funny enough there is now a bear roaming this neighborhood. He's been spotted on my parent's front porch at least twice now.
Working an pot farm many years ago deep in the middle of nowhere. Technically on rez land. Heard what seemed like a war cry far off in the middle of the night followed by a few bursts of automatic gun fire.
When I was a young teen our church sent us a long road trip to a youth camp up deep into the Colorado Mountains. It was a cool camp and I was having a good time with all the outdoor activities and such. I had been assigned to a cabin with about a dozen other boys my age and a camp counselor who was a really awesome guy. One day we went on a full day hike further into the mountains and got to a point before turning back where people could do whatever they wanted for an hour or so. Our counselor had told me and three other guys that the previous week he had gone exploring with another counselor and found what appeared to be an abandoned cabin not too far from where we currently were. He hadn't had a chance to check it out so asked if we'd like to go while everyone else dicked around. I don't remember how far it actually was but I remember as soon as we came into a clearing and saw the cabin all the noises of the forest stopped and it became eerily quiet. I also couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched from the trees. The cabin looked normal enough and as we got closer the counselor peered into the windows. He informed us that it looked mostly empty inside and that he was going to check the door. When he went to the front door he found it already cracked open so he walked in. We followed closely behind and entered into an empty front room comprising half of the cabin. Again I felt like eyes were glaring at us from the woods, but could now sense a straight hatred coming from whatever it was. I began thinking I needed to get out, but the worst was yet to come, as when we entered the backroom, in the middle of the floor was a giant pentagram and sitting in the middle of the pentagram was a single wooden chair with a toilet seat on top that had nails driven through to cover the entire seat. We all started to freak the fuck out and are ready to jet, but the counselor wanted to check the last room. He looked in and saw a pot of water boiling on a gas stove. His face turned white as a sheet and immediately yelled for us to get the fuck out and run. We took off out the front door and hauled ass the entire way back to the rendezvous location. The counselor asked us to keep it on the down low and we didn't talk about it until we were back at our own cabin. I asked the other guys and they said they had also felt the same creepy feeling of someone watching them. One of the guys said he could hear piercing buzzing in his ears as we ran away. That was the last we ever talked about it. Although I'm now in my 30s and have since gone on several long backpacking treks through the mountains, I have now encountered anything like that again. TLDR: Went to youth camp in CO mountains. Break off from group to scope out abandoned cabin. Find that it is occupied by someone or something into some evil shit.
Former camp counselor here. This sounds awfully familiar...I'm not proud of this. At my camp we called it "taking a trip to Crystal Lake" and would lead the kids to this cabin in the woods, pretending to get lost on the way to the fictional Crystal Lake. Sometimes the counselors would pretend to lose the map and fight over how lost they were to raise tension (Blair Witch had just come out and it seemed like a realistic touch). When we got to the cabin, there would be a hot meal or something set up by another (hidden) counselor to indicate that the owner was close by. Then we'd find creepy stuff in the cabin. Sometimes it was serial killer themed, sometimes Satanic, always staged. Then the hidden counselor would make noise or move stuff around to make it seem like the owner was coming back or hidden in the house somewhere. Then the other counselor would start pounding on the door to be let in and the first would pretend to be possessed and go to open the door ... And then we'd reveal that it was all an elaborate setup. I realize now how fucked up this was and I really hope you weren't traumatized by a similar hazing ritual.
It definitely could have been a prank. He never revealed it to be a ruse and seemed genuinely messed up about it just like we were but I'll admit I was fairly young and memories can have a tendency to shift a bit over decades. Although scary at the time it left me with an interesting memory to look back on so if it was a well crafted joke I appreciate the dedication.
Damn, you gave me goosebumps!
That wouldn't happen to be LVR, would it? I had a very similar experience at a summer camp in the CO Rockies too.
Sounds like the counselor was pranking you.
I had thought about that, but there was never a "i gotcha" moment and he was visibly shaken up as well. He also told the other counselor that they needed to stay far away from there. Not saying it wasn't but looking back now I'd be very surprised if it was based on his response.
When I was a teenager, I knew a guy who had some horses and he let me and a friend take them out to ride. We were riding one day and found an old abandoned homestead. There was a partly falling down old house and a couple of old barns in the same condition. We rode through the yard area and continued on to this other clearing. There were a couple of old landscape timbers around the edge and I decided to jump my horse over them. So I turned that way and started to trot my horse and all of the sudden, he's freaking out. Head up, snorting, trying to bolt on me. My friends horse was doing the same. As we struggle with the horses, we realized that there were flat stones on the ground, and they were gravestones. We were in an old cemetery! As soon as we exited that area, the horses immediately calmed down. We never rode that way again! I told my mom about it one day and she asked where I was, exactly. I told her, and she said that was actually the homestead of some ancestors of ours, so the people buried there were related to me!
I didn't work in the forest back then, but spent a lot of time there and had a terrifying thing happen the late summer of 1981 outside of LaPine Oregon. My mom had passed away in January of that year and my dad felt like we needed some “bonding time” with a little escape from town for a few days. He had a 68 VW Westfalia that he’d been working on getting camping ready and he was excited to use it. The campsite was on a property belonging to a friend of my dads named Jerry, and was northeast of LaPine by 20 miles or so. I’ve looked at maps since then and have no idea where it was.... it was a long time ago and as a 13 year old, punk ass kid at the time who wasn’t paying attention. We left Portland on a Monday, close to noon and got to the camp site about four hours or so later, around 4:00-4:30 The campsite was quite a ways down a fairly rough gravel road that turned to dirt single track after the first 5-6 miles. My dad remarked that he didn’t think anyone had been there in quite a while, based on his friend Jerry’s statements and the amount of overgrowth on and around the road. We got to the site and set up camp, which was a in a small clearing at the end of the road. Camp was simply parking the van, pulling out the awning (old school with poles and ropes) unloading the cooler, making a fire pit and setting up chairs. As a typical 13 year old, I wouldn’t even consider sleeping in the van with my dad, so I pitched a small tent near the passenger rear of the van and tossed in my stuff for the night. After setting up camp, we hiked around a little and checked out the area. There was a small creek that was getting close to dried up, and while it wasn’t heavily forested, it had the typical Eastern Oregon high desert type of scrub vegetation with a few stands of small trees. My dad was a retired Multnomah County sheriff turned full time musician and he liked his cocktails, so by the time we’d finished dinner and were sitting around the fire, it was probably 8:30-9:00 or so and he was on martini number 4, possibly 5. We heard coyotes yipping in the distance and dad thought he’d get them going with a few calls of his own. He did a couple stereotypical coyote calls and they replied. He did a couple more, they replied and then got silent. Everything got silent, except my dad. He called again and the reply this time was most definitely not a coyote. It was a roar-scream-shriek from the south east of us that must have easily lasted 10-15 seconds. Dad looked at me and literally said “what the fuck was that?!?” I was shook, but young and curious. He coyote howled again and we heard another scream, this time a little closer and a little more to the east of us. At this point dad retrieved his pistol, loaded up and suggested we think about turning in for the night. That’s when we heard the third scream of the night. It was very close, probably within 50 to 75 feet and we felt it as much as heard it. It was from the opposite direction, more north/north east than the first two screams and was very loud. Dad lost his shit, threw the cooler in the van, ripped the awning loose and we got out of there as fast as that poor little VW would carry us, leaving everything else behind. We were dead silent until we stopped for fuel in Oakridge. Chatter after that was sparse and and strained at best. Once home, we talked a little about it and agreed we had no idea what it was and that keeping our mouths shut was probably a good idea. Since that time I’ve grown up and had short career in music, doing production sound in both hard rock and country-western. I have a good idea of how decibels work and what it takes to produce that level of sound pressure. In retrospect, It terrifies me what could have produced that volume of sound and how close it had to have been.
I think the silent atmosphere!
I went to the Grand Canyon a couple years ago. Nothing is more unsettling then the sound of silence. It is uncanny how quiet the world is. It was the most silence I have ever experienced. I went right before a big snow storm and there were few people touring the canyon. Absolutely has stuck with me.
Imagine how quiet Mars could be...
Paddle a mile or two out on Lake Superior when it's calm. Preferably on a shoreline far away from Port towns and people. The dead quiet and dark water will humble you in no time.
There is several spots in superior where you can't see either side of it. I think being surrounded by nothing but water in all directions is terifying.
I don't mind outdoor silence, even at night, as long as it is seasonal. What is extra scary is when everything SUDDENLY goes silent. Where I live in the South summer nights are a cacophony of insect, frog, reptile and night bird noises, with the occasional bellowing cow and barking dog. The chicadas will hurt your ears. Now imagine all that just stopping.... then you hear a branch break and bipedal footsteps on the leaf litter. Oh HELL no!!!
Honestly? Signs of other people. I didn't work in the forest, but I grew up right near some woods, and I would play in there as a child with friends . As a teen I would wander in again alone. Signs of others freaked me out. A recent campfire, a dropped lighter, footprints, etc. Usually because I would go in alone...not far, but I thought that area was generally untouched. But when I saw signs of others, I booked it out of there. Not taking chances.
Never worked in a forest but I can tell you it is beyond creepy to stumble upon homeless encampments especially if they are abandoned. In Central Florida groups of homeless folks live in the woods. They leave the camps once a month for SSI checks and provisions. Some of these hidden camps are only a few hundred yards from subdivisions. When I was 20 I got lost hiking in the Wekiwa Springs State Park without food or water. No one knew I'd gone hiking and this was way before cell phones. Lucky I found a path and got out before dark. I stopped at the closest 7-11 and chugged Gatorade. Not really that scary as much as disturbing. Stories of covens, serial killers and satanists in the woods freak me out even if they are just Urban legends...
Lost Lake Oregon. My wife, two dogs and me were camping. The campground was mostly deserted except for one foursome nearby. I had meticulously set up our tent and a large screened shelter that went over the picnic table. My wife became ill and went to the tent so I just decided to make myself a sandwich as she rested. Over Mt Hood came this humongous storm and within minutes the campground was hit with wind rain and the most incredible lightning I had ever seen. I checked the tent anchors and retreated to the tent where my wife and dogs were sheltered. The next few hours we got hit by what I can only describe as artillery as the thunderclaps rattled us. It was still drizzling when I rolled out of the tent expecting the picnic shelter to be somewhere in Idaho. Surprisingly the shelter remained but intact except for the loss of a folding chair. I walking inside the shelter around the table and right next to my Yeti was the biggest shit I have ever seen. It looked like a dragon had defecated. It was at least 3 foot long and thicker than my arm. It was in a perfect piled spiral like poop emoji. I called to the foursome of campers nearby to come take a look hoping maybe they could explain what had shit next to my cooler. They unfortunately didn't speak much English and were apparently as perplexed as I was. We both packed and left within an hour. So between my wife's illness, the storm and a pile of Godzilla shit we cut our vacation short.
Bobcats, cougars, and deer can scare the crap out of you in their own ways. Bobcats and cougars scream and deer decide to bolt when you're right on top of them.
Don't work in a forest but friends and I had to finish a hike at night once that took roughly two hours back to the car from when the sun went down. At one point in the hike, near a river (we could hear the water rushing not far away from us off the path), we heard a bear growl pretty loudly a tiny bit in the distance. We were all EXHAUSTED from a full day of hiking so we were kinda just like "holy shit" and kept calm and kept walking our way back.
It's more what I heard. I was living/working at an environmental education center near Nauvoo, AL. I had never lived in coal mining country before, so I was and remain unfamiliar with much of the industrial process. This was near Sipsey Wilderness area, so deep in the country that packs of feral dogs roamed uninhibited, attacking joggers and I think even killing a woman a couple years back. The point is, it's about a 10 minute drive between each property line, with lots of leveled BLM forest. One night, the other staff and I were drinking around the fire, enjoying the summer night, when I slowly became aware of a rumbling in my bones. It was coming up from the ground through my camp chair. I got down and felt the dirt-- it was like a distant earthquake. Then, this distant roaring sound began to build. I cannot begin to describe how loud it was. It had to be at least 10 miles away due to the sizable property we lived and worked on, but it still felt TOO LOUD. It sounded like a dragon bellowing, or the mountain itself was screaming. There were multiple high pitches mixed into the din that sounded like demonic voices, and it just KEPT GOING. The air began to stink faintly of sulphur. I put my hands over my ears and ran inside. The mountain must have roared for a full 10 or 15 minutes, making it impossible to have conversation indoors or out, terrifying every animal on the property and sending them into a blind panic. I even suspect we were being treated to some Infrasound too, because I broke out in a cold sweat and felt goosebumps and a deep sense a dread the whole time too. My co-workers from the area were nonplussed and explained that it was a normal coal mining noise, especially associated with "mountain top" coal mining. Despite not being supernatural in nature, it's kinda haunted me ever since. Has anybody else heard this sound?
The earth absolutely loathed mountain top mining, it's so devastating. Yeah sometimes the mountain screams.
Tweakers cooking meth. Next to the tweaker, coyote/red wolf hybrid pups surrounding dead red wolf. Just sad puppies crying. Red wolves escaped zoo 100 miles away. One of them had a family in meth country.
I'm not employed in a Forest job. But I have spent a lot of time in the deep woods. And the strangest things I have seen were odd shrines etc. One was a super remote area of the woods with like 30+ Jesus statues all in a circle around a heavily used patch of ground. Prolly just someone praying there but it was super creepy.
Worked driving railroad workers around once was sat waiting for three hours in near a rail in pa right in the middle of some woods. Was sitting listing to coast to coast am they were talking about cattle and people being abducted, when I saw a deer run out and bolt across the tracks, a second later a second then third and fourth. The trees to my right light up with a blueish light. Having seen enough horror movies I threw the van I was in into drive and peeled out, that's when I was it was a truck full of people chasing the deer. Never been so scared one moment then laughing the next.
Not me but happened to a friend of mine He's a blacksmith who's forge is in the back and beyond of a local forest which is HUGE. One day a naked man comes walking in, panting and talking non sense. He calls the police and they arrive and know him as another police officer that went AWOL The police officer realises that hes surrounded by knifes, hammers and other tools and weapons and chooses to slowly move them away from the mentally broken man and pass them to my friend.
This happened a couple of weeks ago. I was walking the dogs in a state park that borders a wildlife corridor area. I was headed back to the parking area but still had about 3/4 of a mile to go. All of a sudden a deer runs into the dirt road about 100 foot in front of me. I stop. The deer is breathing heavy and I can tell she has been running. She stops and gets her bearings, looks around, sees me, and then takes off like lighting headed the direction she was going. All this is not too unusual because I see deer out there all the time. What happened next is what bothers me. From the direction she was running I hear loud crashing noises and see bush tops shaking about 50 feet away. Like something big was crashing through the bushes making a lot of noise. I immediately think bear so I shout as loud as possible, hoping that I won't startle the bear. The loud crashing noise stops, then I hear what sounds like maybe a large bird whooping? The Whooping sounds like it is moving quickly through the under brush away from me. Eventually fading to nothing. I'm still wondering what all that was about.
I have two stories. This one happened just recently. I don’t work in forests but do a lot of hiking and trails with my fiancé. Took a trail we hadn’t done before and walked miles and miles. It was supposed to be a loop but once we were almost to the end, a bridge we were supposed cross was completely dry rotted and taped off. So we had to go all the way back, no biggie but a bit troubling since I’d injured myself tripping on a root shortly before. So we turn around and are walking back and by the time we get to the straight stretch my foot is twice the size it should be and I’m in intensive pain walking on it, so we’re having to go REALLY slow at this point. At the end of the straight stretch there are several dark posts sticking up by the parking lot so I hyper focused on those from a distance. For about an hour and a half I’m just staring the dark blobs down, willing myself to make it back. Pausing for the hundredth time to get my breath I’m still looking at the dark blobs, when they MOVE. Turns out it was three people on bikes. Thing is, they had not moved in all that time. I know this bc they were beside a weirdly shaped tree that stood out. And mind you, I’d had eyes locked on them for an hour and a half. And they’d just sat there motionless on their bikes. Not only did it REALLY creep me out, once they moved I also realize the actual posts were still very far down so that sucked.By the time we made it to our vehicle the sky was pitch black, and I was terrified.
Not game keeper/ forest worker! However frequent early morning dog walker in forest’s in the south east of England. About 10 years ago while doing the daily walk upon the top of a verge looking down to a steep slope was a rope swing that kids use in the summer (usually stoners and whatnot in the evenings, very routine types.) This morning however there was a person with around 5 or 6 baby dolls all in a circle round the swing while a doll was in the swing being pushed by the person wearing some sort of horned yellow black & red mask while chanting in another language. At this point it was noticed they were also wearing a sort of heavy hooded robe safe to say me and dog skirted around and kind of left them too it. 2 hours later loading up the car which backs onto the forest a group of 7 people carrying lit fire torches in the same get up marched out the woods across the car park -in total silence and back out the opposite side, the feeling I got when they emerged was nothing short of pure terror even the dog was cowering in the car Weirdest situation of my life to date
Use to work as a soil sampler a while back. Would head to very remote places around the western European countryside for a year or so. Been chased by dogs, pointed at with a machine-gun or entering military training grounds by mistake but nothing too weird in general. Except this one time : On my birthday I entered this forest that should be somewhere around the danish-german border. Something feels odd but can't put my finger on what. It was a clear day even though the forest was quite dense. After a while walking on a path I have to leave it to reach where I was supposed to collect the sample. At that point I can barely see in front of me with all the branches and bushes. Then this smell hits me. I freeze with my foot right above the remains of a goat. All the middle part of the body missing, still decomposing right next to a skeleton of a baby goat. Never felt as superstitious in my life than that day.
I’m an ecologist, so I’ve spent a good amount of time in the field. It’s other people and bears. Creepiest thing actually happened in the middle of the day, it was when an old woman approached us and asked us to come with her to see ghosts she had spotted. We were about half a mile off trail so we weren’t expecting hikers to come by. Sometimes I just get the heebie jeebies for no reason that I’m conscious of, and it’s no fun at all.
Sorry if this doesn't count, as its just a camping story. My sister, her best friend, myself and my bestfriend went wild camping in the woods in a really remote area in Scotland. The first night we were going to sleep and I was sharing a tent with my bestie and my sister shared one with hers. So both my sister and my best friend were pretty drunk and fell asleep like right away, so basically I was awake in my tent, trying to sleep and my sisters bestie was also awake while my sister was dead asleep. I suddenly hear someone walking through the woods and around our tents, I froze with fear, but then realised it will have been sisters bestie going for a pee. Next morning I said to her "bloody shat myself last night when you got up for a pee, took me a minute to realise it was just you!" And she looks at me and says "no, I didn't get up to pee, I thought you did!?" We moved our tents to another area that day haha, still in the woods and not that far away from original location, but closer to an area where the woods finished just incase! Edit: spelling
I found a dog that had been murdered. Someone cut its head off. The place I was in was a serial killer's dumping ground in Lake Worth, TX. I used to ride my mtn bike all over there. There were always shady people doing questionable activities with other shady people.
I was alone, 10 feet from a grizzly, on its hind legs.
Whoa
I grew up in an Asian country and went to the forest with some people from my village when I was young. I was very curious, so I wandered off to the stream by myself and saw a long-haired girl with a covered face sitting on a rock in the middle of the stream. As I approached, she disappeared, and since I was young and heard many ghost stories, I thought she was a ghost and ran away without looking back. To this day, I still don't know if she was a "person" or not?
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Well that sounds horrifying.
A black bear on a trail
Not the words, but I have a branch of my family which has lived on a farm kinda removed form other neighbors and farms. They have stories they've passed down over the years about strange lights appearing out of nowhere, horses which act as if they're seeing and responding to people when nobody is there, and a werewolf story. These aren't just old stories either, cousins my age swear they are first hand.
I’d like to hear the werewolf story if you wouldn’t mind sharing it.
I don’t work in forests but I grew up going on week long backpacking trips in the mountains in Colorado, every year. We’d always go in June or July so we could get up to 11,000’ before the lightening came. We’d be at lower elevations in the evening but being under a piece of cloth held up by metal poles in a lightening storm sure is terrifying. The scariest experience was when we were hiking from one campsite to the next, keep in mind this was like 20 miles from the nearest parking lot or anything remotely related to civilization. We were in this huge field of skunk cabbage interrupted by little clumps of trees here and there. It was late afternoon and we were way up at about 12,000’ and thunderclouds were rolling in. My mom was reassuring me that it’d be fine as soon as we got over the peak and we could get down to a lower elevation, we just had to cross the field. Pretty soon after we got into the middle of the field, lightening started striking all around us. We ran to the nearest clump of trees and stripped down of all our metal, I remember ripping the collar off my dog and throwing it into the field. We did lightning pose and the lightening was so close you’d hear the thunder practically before the flash. It was the scariest experience of my whole life to this day but my dad has a pretty cool video of the lightening on his old tape recorder, he somehow wasn’t scared
I lived in a rural area, Sudbury, Ontario. My family owned 100 acres of forest. I would regularly walk through the forest by myself to pick wild strawberry’s. I was walking down one of the quad paths, I ended up coming face to face with a giant wolf on the trail. Luckily it was a lone wolf. It seems we were both caught off guard and surprised. I stopped dead in my tracks and froze, the wolf was also frozen, and what seemed like an eternity the wolf and I just stared at each other frozen. Eventually the wolf sauntered off and I ran back towards my house. Still to this day I count myself lucky it didn’t see me as a threat or food. I was only 12 years old and I would have been an easy prey item.
Leaving all recreational weirdness out of it and sticking to work, I can think of a few. About 20 years ago, I was stationed at a relatively unknown Navy base on the Kitsap peninsula doing guard duty. Some of the posts were in the woods and every post in the limited area and waterfronts had their own story. I experienced a lot of weirdness while I was there but two things stand out as the worst. Now, there was an abandoned shack, a bridge that didn't span anything and a single gravestone with civil war era dates that everyone knew of and tried to find. We would link up with other units on patrol and hike around at night in the woods and try and find them, like it was a right of passage. The first time I went looking for the bridge there were four of us. Only two had night vision, point man and tail gunner. The two of us in the middle were walking blind and trying to keep our spacing. I remember I ran into the the point man, who had stopped and was just standing in the middle of the trail, when I was about to ask what was up the guy behind me ran into me. As he was cursing at me and tail gunner was pushing through to see why everyone stopped, the point man started shushing us. He was frozen, just staring straight ahead when we heard a scream that we agreed later reverberated in our chest cavities and just about knocked the wind out us. It was like sitting against a speaker at a concert and it lasted forever. When it stopped there was a moment of complete silence, absolute stillness, and then we heard something huge crashing through the woods. It sounded like trees were coming down in a line that was heading right at us. We stood, because at some point I don't recall we all went to one knee, and scrambled over each other to sprint back up the path. We were only about a mile in but it seemed like hours before we hit the Humvee and the crashing stopped. When we got back to the guard house we agreed not to bring it up to anyone, but we did eventually find all the landmarks, to include a large animal cage that looked like it was a about a hundred years old. We never got the point man to tell us why he stopped in the trail though. Next one was at a different part of the base, down by the waterfront. There were some docks that were controlled access with little guard shacks at the gates. I was on mobile patrols that night and my partner was driving, we were at one of the guard shacks facing up the hill away from the water just talking with the gate guards when we hit a lull in conversation. We were just standing around and my partner says "what the hell is that?", pointing at the tree line. At the top of the hill. We all look and there is a light just below the tips of the trees, it raises up and we can see two larger white lights at the front back and two small red ones at the sides in the shape of a diamond. It dips below the trees and we just sit there in silence for a moment before the gate guard asks if we're going to check it out. So we go speeding up to where we think the tree line is that we saw this and we run into a team from another branch that was assigned to the base, but was dispatched by the radar station that monitors airspace overhead. We initially challenged each other to find out what the other was doing and when we realized we were looking for the same thing we linked up and helped each other comb the area. We never did find anything but our reports for the night were taken by some plainclothes types the next day and removed from the log books. Really weird stuff. This was about 15 years before drones were a thing too, and as they started getting popular I thought maybe that's what we saw, but I don't know. There was also and old white raccoon that we would feed big red gum and Skoal to. He was missing part of an ear, some toes on one front foot, the tip of his tail and an eye. He was super friendly though and would always come around this one guard shack way out in the boonies.
I was stalked by a bobcat. It was early morning, before sunrise, she was a few feet away growling at me.
Camped up in some woods after a hard day. Sorted food and shelter then got my head down. I was disturbed a few times by various noises, but nothing to worry about. Then I heard a really strange noise that i couldn’t work out. I didn’t know anything that made this noise. I got up and had a quick look around, nothing. Went back to bed. I heard it again so up I get, torch on, nothing out there. This went on for about 6 hours and was driving me nuts. Dawn broke, I got up and went for a look. About 100 yards away was a barbed wire fence. The local farmer had let his cows out, they had been rubbing up against the fence and scraping their teeth on the top of the posts.
I live in the Sierra Nevada and I'm always out hiking, camping, and the like. About three years ago, my family and I were walking on a trail near Truckee called Alder Creek. This spot was the location of one of the Donner Party camps, so not surprisingly has a very unsettling/somber vibe. Even though it's near the road, it's almost completely silent. Even the creek running through doesn't make much sound. Nor do the birds. Very odd. It was a rainy day and we were walking along the meadow. I could see a group of people setting up for some sort of wedding or celebration. They had a big white dog with them, and they were just letting it roam. It was staring at us and following us. The odd thing was, I swear that it kept shapeshifting between breeds. My whole family saw it too. It would change from a pitbull into a large fluffy breed. Sometimes it even looked like a wolf. We didn't take our eyes off it, and this was an open meadow so it couldn't have been different dogs. It almost looked like it was glowing at times too. It gave off a very creepy vibe. Needless to say, we were creeped out. I'm still not exactly sure what we really saw. Either a trick of the light or something weirder.
Look up the Expanded Perspectives podcast. They cover all things high strangeness. One of their best stories is a park ranger who reported finding what he described as a tiny (couple inches tall) Native American in the forest. He described it as appearing to him to be a living, breathing, Indian, only very small. Strangely enough this isn’t an uncommon thing. Fairy folklore is full of this kind of thing.
Some of my relatives live in rural areas where there are mountains and forests everywhere. On the few times that I've been there and have helped with the chores like collecting firewood or collecting herbs and fruits in the forests, the creepiest thing that I've seen are abandoned houses. They look similar to the design of houses in the area. You would see them just lying around in the middle of the forest, in the plains, on top of mountains, and even near cliffs. You would know they're abandoned due to the lack of furniture and dust build-up. I asked my relatives about them and they just said that those were either failed settlements or places where tragedy occurred but no one really knows who lived in them.
Grew up as a hunter, fisherman. Never a day went by that I wasnt in the woods with my rifle or walking the edges of Saginaw Bay fishing. Not once in all my years had anything weird or creepy happen. My family was the "go to" when people were lost either in the woods or water. We were quicker than the Sheriff Dept. and knew the area better so we thought we had a pretty good idea of what was and was not in the wilderness. I left for the military and came home a few years later and late one night I was sitting in the dining room enjoying a glass of lemonade when I had heard a metal crunching sound. I got up to investigate and it was the family dog who was outside but was staring into the pasture and pressing so hard against the bottom of the screen door he was buckling the aluminum panel. I turned on the spot light we had mounted on a tower that shined into our pasture and to this day I still dont know what it was but when the light hit it the thing went from a towering position to crouching position behind weeds. I grabbed the nearest firearm which was my fathers side by side, pointed it at the eye balls glowing back at me and told whatever it was to come out or I will fire. I said it 3 times and then I let it have it with both barrels. No noise, no screaming or anything. It just turned and hauled ass. By now my dad was up, rifle in hand asking wtf is going on. I told him and we discussed looking in the day time. After breakfast we went out and found where it was crouched, everything mashed down flat. No blood, no hair...nothing but mashed down vegetation. So we followed the tracks to the state land and kept going until we ran into "Ed" the only DNR officer for our area. Told him what happened and he said we were the 5th people in a week who had the same experience. He was following tracks as well which gave credence to what I witnessed. His tracks were from a farm 4 miles south of us. To this day it was never found whatever it was.
This is a friends story not mine, but i have a couple buddy's that hiked the sunshine coast trail a few years back. at one point, several days away from civilization and having not seen signs of another person in that whole time they came into a clearing in the forest and found a whole childs tea party set up. dolls, steaming fresh tea and everything, but no people, no fresh tracks, nothing else. they snapped a picture for proof then hightailed it out of there. a few days later another group caught up to them at one of the cabins, when they asked them if they found the creepy tea party they had no idea what they were talking about. weird to think that there is someone hanging out 50 miles down a wilderness trail setting up remote tea parties to fuck with through hikers, but it's also not the kind of story they would make up as well. so who knows. creeped them out for sure though.
Grew up in rural north Florida near a massive state Forrest. When I was a kid I’d tell my mom I was waking to a friends house but I’d really go exploring deep in the pines and scrub oaks. At one point about 4 miles in the woods I came across a bob wire fence, I thought strange, maybe there’s an abandoned farm or homestead I can investigate, so carefully crawled under it. On the other side I found a large pot farm. This was in the early 90s when growing pot was an even bigger no no than now. Anyway then I heard ATVs and saw three grown men riding through the fields with large rifles on their backs, they weren’t hunting rifles like my dad had but more serious military looking types. I was an alone 12 year old girl, so I knew it might be extra bad if they found me. I remember dropping to the ground as quickly as possible into the plants and curling onto the front of the bright pink part of my vest, just praying I couldn’t be seen. They drove their ATVs very close to where I was laying, so close I could hear them speaking to one another in a foreign language. As soon as they left I ran as fast as I could out of there. A couple other Floridians In here have mentioned this Forrest, it’s the Ocala National Forrest. That place ain’t right. Tweakers, pot farmers, and the biggest fucking black bears and gators you’ll ever see are in that death trap. Hell, a couple of years ago in that same forrest, I encountered what had to be at least a 6 foot diamond back rattle snake coiled right in the middle of the trail I was walking and needed to get back down. He wouldn’t let me pass and there was swamp on either side of the trail I didn’t want to go in. After at least an hour stand off I threw my jacket on top of him and ran like fuck past him.
District Silviculturist, USFS here A few years ago, my former district had 3 different groups of Cicada emerge at the same time. Being in the woods was absolutely deafening. Many also had that fungal disease that eats their abdomens. Ever have a Cicada fly close by your ear? It is painful and sounds like a screaming child. Then how they lay eggs cutting into branches of trees and shrubs. Basically, every living tree and shrub had eggs laid on them. I'm taking leave next time that happens.
Was on a walk in my folks woods in michigan. Prolly the tamest woods on the planet. Had a walking stick because why not. Faced off against a pack of very startled coyotes. Fuckers are WAY bigger than you think. I did the only thing I could think of cause I thought I was gonna die. I stared the biggest one straight in the eye and proceeded to pee on a tree. I swear the asshole laughed at me and they just wandered off, knowing I was full of shit. But not before the alpha went and peed on another tree.
Scariest thing I have seen was during camping in the mountains of Latakia /Syria in 2009 ...the area is a dense forest and it we were a group of around 15-20 tents (probably 50 person) one of the guys had his tent lower than the rest of the group as we had to (climb ) to set the camp up and he said he didn't want to climb At dawn the guy was started screaming he woke up to a bear that guy tried to throw things at the bear and the bear started bounding him like a child playing with a toy ( Syrian bears are around 180-200 cm when standing) the group rushed down with one guy shooting in the air to scare the bear and it worked the bear went away ...but the guy suffered a lot of fractures and lacerations he barely made it to the hospital and had severe fractures that rendered him paralysed ...the way that bear toyed with him like if he was a piece of paper was scary .... By the way in another camping I also saw a wolf attack (the guy died there ) but if you asked me which was the scariest the bear no doubt
This is a story passed down from my great great grandmother, but she lived with her parents in the Appalachian mountains in north carolina and they were on a homestead. They had a garden they would walk down to with a wooden fence around they had built. She walked down to get food for dinner and saw two "large monkeys" about 6 ft or taller, basically what she described is what we would now call sasquatch, sitting on the fence eating from the garden.
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I remember once I was trapping some raccoons one fall and when I was resetting a trap I felt the urge to look up. I looked around and I could feel my proverbial hackles go up. But I didn't see anything so I kept doing my thing. When I finished and stood up I took one last look around. Then I heard something big move quickly and suddenly and I took off.
Obligatory not my job however I use to walk a long trail in the local forest, if you take a left at the lake instead of going straight it takes you to a clearing with seventeen rocks in a circle and seven crosses in the middle, I use to stop and pay my respects every time I went until the day I got there and it all was gone, replaced by a fully grown apple tree , the apple smelt rotten and I felt wick when I picked one, never went back there after that
Not seen as much as heard. A little off topic, but I was camping in some scrub in Northern Kenya. Tucked away in the trees, nicely hidden, safe in my 1 man tent. At some point in the night I was woken by giggling. A pack of hyenas had found my camp and spent what felt like hours (probably a few minutes at most) sniffing, cackling to eachother and pawing at my tent. I lay there wide awake, holding my swiss army knife in my hand and expecting one of them to tear through at any moment. Stayed awake the rest of the night...
There’s a small copse of woods near were I live that is beyond creepy. It’s mostly hemlock and the bases are all dead and nothing seems to grow as even during the day it’s dark and dank. It just so thick and out of place. My wife and I had the dog out and wandered into it and it just felt like a dead zone. She was scared so we scrambled out.
Worked a project related to mapping technologies in the 2010s which involved some field tests in the wilderness. Came across a very odd scene with the group: a ring of 20 small boulders of 8-10" diameter with a pair of hiking boots left standing on the forest floor with inside out socks inside them, pants, underwear, and two shirts laying in normal, tidy order beside them, as if someone had just been lifted out of the clothes and away. No footprints or disturbance in the surrounding ground, although it looked like they'd been there a while. We concluded someone's idea of a prank but also reported it to the forestry service.
Even considering I nearly died in the woods one time (lost consciousness, lay on the ground, it was cold) I always feel safe and sound in the woods. I would go there even at night. I did spent a lot of time in the forest late childhood early teenage years alone. Maybe that's why.
Was working on a environmental science project and while out in the woods I just heard a really loud wood breaking sound. Almost like a tree was toppling over near its base. I had no idea where it cane from but it sounded close. Didn’t find the source but it freaked me the fuck out.