There’s something creepy about the woods. Perhaps it’s the deep shadows, the unseen animals lurking in the brush, or the absence of people and lights. After reading these creepy tales from SurvivalistBoards.com, you’ll never want to go camping again. Enjoy!
The Land Remembers
The Thing
Haunted Hikes
When I was younger I used to visit family with my grandmother in Knoxville, TN. She had nine brothers and sisters that lived up there, and they all had children (my cousins). Everyone lived in one really large house. The house had a huge backyard, about three football fields long, but past the yard on all sides was nothing but mountains and woods.
On one visit, I was out in the woods (although wasn’t supposed to be, adults would always yell) when I saw what I guess to be a half-body apparition. I never found an explanation for it.
I can only describe it as a half person. The torso was missing. It was just black, but almost see-through black, if that makes sense. It wasn’t in a straight form, it was almost like moving gas. But it was definitely the lower portion of a very tall person. It just materialized suddenly, although the moment before I saw it I heard a noise that I can’t describe. It sounded like a really heavy person (around 300 – 400 pounds to make that noise) stepped on a really heavy or thick branch and cracked it.
I booked it up to the house as fast as I could. My oldest cousin stopped me, and I explained as much as I could at the time. He had also seen something similar a few summers before that.
The Scream
In a Dark, Dark Wood
We were all staring across the river and felt as if something or someone was staring back. It was a very uneasy feeling, to which some of the group tried to shake off with the typical macho humor, when a bloodcurdling sound erupted from the other shore that froze everyone in their tracks. This sound was unlike any other that I had heard and it made every hair on my body vibrate and tingle. The only way I can describe it is it sounded like a wild person with no language skills being gutted alive. No words, just this high pitched bloodcurdling scream. Nobody moved or said a word. We all just sat there fixed in our stare, when just as suddenly a second scream was let loose with even more force than the first.
By this time, several of us were sprinting to our trucks that were parked within 20 or 30 feet and retrieving various firearms. We all sat there quietly with our eyes fixed staring toward the opposite shore watching the light from our fire reflecting off the rocks. Hours later we packed it up and left, feeling very unsettled. We never did figure that one out or even hazard a guess as to what was on the opposite bank.
The Invisible Assailant
It was very early in the morning around 2-3 a.m. and I was in a very open area waiting for my boss to return with some equipment. As I was waiting I got that feeling like I was being watched by something that didn’t want me there and had some intent on harming me. I stood up and looked around. The moon was very bright that night and I could clearly see all the way to the tree lines, probably 50 yards on both sides of me. Nothing around. I calmed down a bit and took my pack off my back to get my drink out.
As I opened my drink, I hear this woosh woosh woosh sound flying through the air from behind me. It was like the sound that a stick makes if you throw it overhand. I literally dove out of the way with my bag falling to the ground and my drink flying through the air spilling as I jumped away. I recover from my diving experience and take my radio out of my bag to radio my boss. I go “I’m not trying to freak you out or anything but I’m on my way back to the shop. I just had something thrown at me.” As I’m talking to him I’m looking around on the snowy ground for anything that could have been hurled at me. There was nothing on the ground but snow. I had no idea what the hell was going on at this point. His reply of “I’ve already got a head start on you I’ll see you there” sounded out of breath like he was running. I gather my stuff and start hauling ass back to the shop.
Strange Things in the Woods
I get back and meet up with my boss. He’s pacing back and forth in our shop freaking out. I get him to calm down and he tells me he was on his way back up to me when he got the same feeling I got before something got thrown at me. He said after he got the feeling he stopped to look around and heard something clearly two legged start walking towards him, barely crunching in the snow. Then he said it started running at him but there was nothing in sight. All of the sounds of movement stopped and he froze to listen for more sounds. Then he said a “hot breath” was hitting the back of the neck and he proceeded to freak the f**k out. He said he ran the whole way back to the shop and about halfway back is when he heard me on the radio.
The crazy part about the whole thing is the area we were working has several burial mounds in the woods from Native Americans. Apparently, there also used to be an ‘altar’ of some kind made out of stone that was buried during a construction project a few decades ago.
The Thing in the Swamp
As I sat in the dark in my tree stand, I kept having that feeling of being watched. Now I have hunted, camped, and grew up in the woods and am completely at home, day or night, in the darkest, deepest swamps, and I had never had this feeling. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
When I was slithering down later that morning, I saw something out of the corner of my eye about the same time that I heard it! I heard the crash and just BARELY caught sight of something running through the palmettos parallel to me. Now I say barely because it looked like a huge, brown dog. Honestly, at first I thought it was a buffalo. It crashed through the thicket and I heard it hit water. It sounded like a herd of hogs plowing the trees!
Around two or so that afternoon, I had been sitting in the stand maybe an hour or so when I heard the faint splash of hogs across the thicket in the swamp. As it got louder, I begin getting nervous. It was so weird because I had never felt that way before. Well, what I thought was a bunch of hogs turned out to be one single critter. When it was within a hundred yards, I could hear it plain and clear. Whatever it was, it was in no hurry and stayed out of sight. I had scouted the area and I knew the water the creature was in was waist deep on me. I could hear the “splash, drip…drip…drip…splash” as it put one foot in front of the other, real slow, like it was trying to be quiet. I thought it might be another person till I thought about how deep that water was. I would never point a gun at a noise or anything I wasn’t planning to kill dead, but as that noise got louder I was looking down the barrel! I was actually shaking.
The creature eventually got to the edge of the water with about 40 yards of thicket before the open ground between us. It crashed about 10 or 15 yards and then went quiet. Deathly quiet. No frogs, no crickets, no birds, nothing. I might have imagined it, but I thought I could hear something every now and then, like it was slippin’ in on me. It was getting dark by then and to say I was shaken would be an understatement. I never saw or heard anything else that evening, but I was so put off by the sounds that I left my bag hanging on a nail in the stand. It was two days before I got the nerve up to go back after my bag, but when I returned the bag was gone and the bark of the tree had been scratched and clawed to hell! I have not been back to that swamp. I’ve told a few people about the creature, but no one believes me.
Have you experienced something creepy in the woods? Do share here!
This is in regrades to “The Scream”, although what you heard could have been of supernatural origin, it was more than likely a mountain lion. Their yowling is often compared to human-like screaming. This would explain the nonsensical screech of what you heard.
Whether one wants to believe or not, this is typical Bigfoot or Sasquatch intimidation activity!
There is nothing that compares to the Sasquatch scream–not even the Mountain Lion!
You’re exactly right, Lee. If you see a broken tree trunk turned upside down jammed into the ground, get da eff outta there, that is Sasquatch territory.
Or a fox…one scared the daylights out of me while camping. My friend just sat there laughing at me and told me that was the sound a fox makes. Youtube it, it’s absolutely scary the noise they make!
So you want me to look up what a fox says on youtube?
You were there. You heard the scream. That’s how you know it was “a mountain lion.” So, why didn’t you calm the other guys down, and go investigate? What’s that you say? You weren’t there? You didn’t hear the scream? You were just throwing your two cents in there even though you have no actual personal experience to base those two cents on? Oh, okay. Sounds legit. Just like using the adjective “nonsensical” to describe the scream you never heard. “Nonsensical” synonyms include “absurd,” “foolish,” and “meaningless.” Like your comment. Yeah, that’s the ticket. BTW, proper use/spelling is “REGARD”, singular case.
There are HUNDRED if not THOUSANDS of stories of “screams” unlike any animal (attested to by people who would know such things) that are heard in the woods across NA, if not the world. Could have been a sasquatch for all we know. Once, after finding a large rock next to a creek (this is in the northern panhandle of WV, a HEAVILY used indian trail) with engravings, or etchings of initials and a date from the 1700’s, immediately after we had read what we found out loud and realized it’s importance, a singe solitary tree from somewhere across the creek fell. No birds, no noise, just Creeeeeeeaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkk..BAMMMM….and ALL was silent. Like a dead zone. Needless to say we left shortly after and contact the historical society.
Where I grew up cougars have little to no fear of man. They WILL and they DO come into the town – we’ve had five cougars roosting near the local school yard in the last 2 springs because we are so close to nature we are literally the trespassers. This is a small rocky mountain town where no one bats an eye if a coyote or an elk and once a young black bear even parades itself down main street in the middle of the day. I’ve been hiking in the backwoods and had wolves chasing deer burst out of the underbrush so close I could pet them.
Now a couple years ago I got up in the middle of the night because outside the window of the house it literally sounded like something was been skinned or gutted alive – it is a noise that will cause the hairs on the back of your neck to stand on end and this is doubly so if you’ve never heard it before in your life. Guess what – my “concern” was so great I went downstairs and got a drink of water. On coming back movement out of the corner of my eye caused me to look towards the backyard – standing less than 100 yards away separated from me by a simple single panel screen door was a big cougar.
We starred at each other for about 30 minutes and when she went off on her way as my house is outside town by 20 minutes, made a call and went back to bed. It was so utterly “creepy”.
Problem with city slickers going to the backwoods – they know nothing about nature. Wouldn’t be surprised if some city slickers sh*t themselves if a bluebird suddenly started calling for a mate above their tent.
Dude. You just messed the whole story up with facts.WHY?!?!
heh @ Truth
THE SCREAM WAS PROBABLY A BIGFOOT
There’s a Sasquatch in these woods!
Excellent font color with the dark background. I could read your story so clearly.
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I like that there are still things out there that humans don’t understand. We need our mysteries, IMO, or life simply gets too boring.
We were chased out of the woods once as kids (there were three of us). We had spent the entire day in the woods as we usually did, until we began to make our way back out at around dusk. The woods get dark very quickly at this time of the evening. Anyway, whatever it was it chased us for awhile, but what we didn’t know was that it had ran ahead of us during our panicked sprint. Whatever it was, it was waiting for us at the tree line (a gravel road). We exited the trees thinking that we were clear of it, but it suddenly came out at us.
I glanced back but I didn’t see what it was. I did see the tree and some surrounding bushes shake violently, like it had been hit by an 18 wheeler, but at that point it was dark and we were nothing but adrenalin, panic, and speed as we dashed down the gravel road.
I’m sure that there was a reasonable explanation for it, but I’ve never been able to figure out what would shake a full grown tree like that.
Why are you “sure there’s a reasonable explanation?” From what you say, there doesn’t sound like anything reasonable about that experience. If there was, you wouldn’t have run in sheer primal terror like that. You don’t have to placate skeptics, you know. They weren’t there. They don’t know what happened. They refuse to believe anything that doesn’t fit in with their belief system. Cowards.
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fuck shit fuck shit
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I’m a cow you are a cow lets go to space now and take a poop on the moon #LOL #COW
I havent been in Michigan but about a year and already I have seen the lights in the national forest. I knew it was something strange so I looked it up and sure enough it happens all the time in the forests at night. I noticed it looks like a lantern swinging in the distance and it feels like it is beckoning you to come closer. I have also read of hundreds of people coming up missing in those same forests. For three nights, not consecutively, I saw a lantern type light appear in around the same spot in the woods behind my house. It swayed back and forth and looked just like a lantern. There is no road that direction or way for there to be a car either. The fourth time I saw it, the horizon lit up across with a blue glow and then looked like it was on fire, and then all at once it went dark. Also, not a single sound accompanied the lightshow, or the lantern. The weirdest part that got me was the feeling of serenity and calm as if something was beckoning me towards it. I can’t help but think of the siren song stories and ships meeting their doom and wonder if the lights have something to do with those missing people.
Check out baxters hollow in wi. Warning people have disappeared there.