From missing persons to animal encounters, I sometimes lose sleep thinking about the strange experiences one might face in the depths of the forest.
So, I did some digging (figuratively) and found all the very strange, very real experiences people have had in the woods. Let's get into it.
1. "I was on a multi-day off-road camping trip by myself in the wilderness. 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 in the distance. It wasn't screaming or singing, but something closer to chanting. I went to sleep nervous and with my army knife close. I woke up to someone knocking on my vehicle's glass. As I came out of my covers to observe, I saw a person looking in in the dark. I screamed something guttural, and they ran."
2. "I live in a really remote part of Alaska. I think the scariest thing I’ve ever encountered is how silent the woods [and] tundra can be in the dead of winter. It’s absolutely unnerving. I become hyper aware of my heartbeat, and my breathing sounds like a fucking airplane is taking off. And I know a lot of people will say, 'It’s because a predator was nearby' — nah man, some places up here just have nothing. That’s what really freaks me out. I am absolutely alone in this one spot. I could drop dead, and no one would ever find my body."
3. "I worked in national parks and also did some volunteer search and rescue. One blizzardy night, we hear that they are on the search for a woman who had disappeared from a group that was staying in a cluster of scenic cabins nearby. It took us about two hours to get to the cabins and talk to the people there. It was well under -17 C with a few feet of snow..."
4. "I 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. Anyway, I get the feeling that I’m being watched for, like, the third or fourth 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..."
5. "When I was a teenager, my family used to camp at a state park. Every night, my friend and I would walk through the woods. We called this 'the ritual.' We had flashlights, but we liked to try and navigate with them turned off. We were about half a mile from the nearest campsite when we heard soft whispering behind us. Obviously, we hit the flashlights and spun around. Didn't see anything. So, we kept walking, and we hear it again. Then, we see what's whispering. It's a lady crawling on the ground whispering just random words. She was wearing dark clothes and was covered in dirt."
6. "I was talking to an old fella that used to trap wildlife in New Zealand in the '80s. He said he would occasionally 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."
7. “I was hiking a section of the North Umpqua Trail in Oregon a few years back with my sister-in-law. There was this beautiful view of the river, so we stopped and took a water break, but I immediately felt extremely uncomfortable. Like someone was watching us. I slowly turned my head to look behind us, but as I'm looking, I noticed bones strung from the trees. Like creepy death wind chimes. My stomach just clenched and dropped... I could hear footsteps through the forest floor, coming from behind and slightly above us. I leaned forward and told her to pick up her speed. She did, I did, but so did whoever was behind us. For two middle-aged women, both slightly overweight, we ran like the damn wind."
8. "I was camping alone in a bit of secluded bushland (lots of sticks and leaf litter, so you can hear critters and people moving easily). I heard a plopping noise during the night (but no other noises), and I wake up to see a decapitated kangaroo's head next to the tent that obviously wasn't there when I put the tent up. No explanation. Got the f out of there."
9. "We like to hike 3–5 miles down a trailhead in deep Georgia. One night, the temperature dropped into the low 20s. We got a solid fire going, and the heat mixed with a full belly put us all to sleep until I woke up to my buddy tapping my foot with a stick. I looked up at him, and he nodded toward the fire. There were two wild boars kicking up dirt around the dying fire."
10. "We were in a semi-remote camping area. There were a couple of fire pits, a few rotten picnic tables, and a rundown outhouse. Parks checked this place once a year or so. We get there and start setting up when my buddy wanders over to the [outhouse]. He comes back to me and says to go check it out. I assume someone shit on the floor or an animal got stuck in there and died or something. Nope. Three full, big backpacks. So, we are nosy. We open them up. Two are full of good quality gear. The third is full of skittles. Bulk bags. Small bags. Regular. Tropical. Sour. Every flavor and size of bag you can imagine. Just full of fucking skittles. We camped for four days and never saw a soul. Bags were still there when we left."
11. "I was walking a section of the Appalachian Trail with a couple of buddies when we happened across a bundle of sticks. The sticks were made into a figure, kinda similar to the ones from The Blair Witch Project. It was obviously placed there by someone, as it was dead-center on the middle of the trail. I thought it was cool, so I grabbed it and put it in my backpack. Anyway, we finished the hike and set up for the night in our camping spot..."
12. "I was on a backwoods backpacking trip some years back with friends, and we stumbled upon a very makeshift and rundown cabin. There was no indication that anyone had been there in a while, but out back, there was a hand-carved cross that looked like it used to be a grave marker."
13. "My family used to go camping with friends when I was a kid. When I was 5, there were nine kids in total at our campsite. We were allowed to wander through the bush, and the parents would give us a walkie talkie (we never wandered far). Anyway, out of nowhere, an unfamiliar man's voice came on our walkie talkie. He said he was Santa and that he was trying to find us to give us presents and asked us to look for him."
14. "On New Year's Day in 2008, I wanted to start the year out right with a nice hike. I was living in Georgia, so I went for a climb up Blood Mountain. After making it up the mountain, I ran into an older man who was causing my creepy gauge to go to 11. Something about him was just ‘off.’ He stopped me and asked if anyone was in the shelter or if I had seen many people up there. I didn't know, so I told him as much, but I just wanted to end the conversation and get the hell out of there as quickly as I could. I successfully made it home, but a few days later, I heard that [the murder of Meredith Emerson] happened [near the trail I was on]. I can't say for sure that it was the same guy, but it certainly looked like him."
15. "I’m a soil conservationist for the USDA. One time, I was out looking at CRP (conservation reserve program) prairie restorations in a heavily wooded area of my county. I was probably half a mile or so off the road on a trail when I came upon a small clearing with what appeared to be an abandoned playground and school bus. There was a rusty swing set and a huge rainbow merry-go-round. Alone this would have creeped me out, but I was truly terrified to see the merry-go-round spinning extremely fast."
16. "My cousin is with the forest service in the Montana/Wyoming area, and I decided to go up there with her [for a trip]. On the second day [visiting], my cousin said, 'You want to see something weird?' I said yes, so she led me on a bit of a side journey about two hours away from our actual path. Out in the middle of fucking nowhere, there is a huge coil of wire sticking out of the ground. This wire strings across limbs of trees then back to the ground, then it snakes around rocks and finally dead ends into an outlet on the side of a desk."
How about you? Have you had any creepy encounters in the woods? Let me know in the comments below!
Note: Stories have been edited for length and/or clarity.