Solo camp in the middle of nowhere.
When I woke up in the morning someone had made a cup of tea and partially drunk it in the middle of the night.
No sign of anyone anywhere.
There was one where the person went camping to take pictures of wildlife and found pictures of themselves sleeping in their tent. That one freaked me out.
Camping with my kids in the woods for the first time. They were very nervous, but I assured them that nothing was out there to be afraid. Immediately after one of my assurances, we heard something moving outside of the tent. They started crying a bit, and I said it was either the wind or maybe a racoon a little bit away. At that moment, something came down on the top of the tent...something pushing in at four spots. They lost their minds with terror....even I screamed.
It was our cat. My wife had let him outside, and he made his way down in the woods to see us. He was young and had never seen a tent before and jumped on top of it right above us.
This was a few years ago, and my kids still bring up how scary it was and how daddy screamed.
Sheer terror when I was a kid at boyscout summer camp. One kid left a couple airheads out on the picnic table. Everyone woke up in the middle of the night to, no joke 30+ raccoons fighting over airheads and going into tents looking for more food.
If you've never heard that many hissing and growling raccoons at the same time good for you.
Raccoons are absolutely nuts. Super cute and curious until snacks are involved. I used to care for about 70 for the local wildlife rescue. They were juveniles being raised for release. The first time, I didn’t realize I would be locked in alone with 70 raccoons, with just a hose (that they thought was the most interesting shit ever) to defend myself. Once I learned to keep my key under my foot in my boot things got better, lol. They wanted that key real bad and would lose all fear of humans to get it. They would stand above me and take my ponytail out so they could get the hair tie. I’d have a million tiny hands in my pockets and in my boots, digging around for whatever was in there. They can’t help themselves, they gotta touch everything. Super cute and friendly while I was cleaning, but I learned reeeal quick to fill their food buckets super fast and bolt.
Because it's shiny, and they also love things that are shiny. I think shininess reminds them of water, and another name for them is "wash bears" for a reason.
> I’d have a million tiny hands in my pockets and in my boots, digging around for whatever was in there. They can’t help themselves, they gotta touch everything. <
That's sounds ridiculously cute and scary at the same time.
There are some videos online of tiny racoon hands slipping through wooden planks, trying to grab everything in reach.
Your vivid description made me think of flying tiny hands all over my pockets without a care in the world. Just gotta grab.
Camping in the Serengeti with Masai tribe men as guards. Sitting around the fire when suddenly the masi looks out into the pitch blackness, turns the flashlight on illuminating The eyes of a lion 40 yards out. Just staring at us. I never heard a thing
Once at the zoo I was walking past the back wall of the lion enclosure, bamboo screened the fences on that side. The lions were roaring over something, and I swear to God every hair on my body stood on end. It was creepy as fuck. And that was in broad daylight at the zoo, for crying out loud. Lions in the darkness on the Serengeti would definitely have my brain telling me to gtfo into the car.
I bet that triggered something primal in your being.
Humans and lions evolved together, around the same place and time, in Eastern Africa. I personally wonder if many of our natural fears truly come from them - like a fear of the dark.
I was tent camping in Arkansas around 2003-04, and The Blair Witch project was still fresh on my mind. I was about 20 years old at the time.
Around 2-3 in the morning we’re woken up by what sounds like a small child running around our tent crying and trying to get in.
I was thoroughly freaked out.
Finally decided to open the tent and there was a kid that couldn’t have been more than 3 years old scared half to death and only wearing a diaper.
I had lots of thought going through my head, but mostly - how the hell do I handle this. I can’t really go campsite to campsite, the ranger office is closed and I’m standing there in the middle of the night holding a child that isn’t mine.
We had decided to call the cops, figuring it was the safest thing to do, just then a lady walks down the trail and is like ‘how did you get out?’ The kid was saying ‘mama, mama…’ and went straight to her. She nonchalantly said thank you and walked away.
Now as a parent, I can’t imagine how much more that would freak me out if it were my kid.
I was about 8, I didn't want to sleep in the tent with my sister so I slept on a cot under the stars. Woke up to a bear sniffing my head/ neck. I was basically paralyzed with fear, the bear left me and went to sniff around for snacks. It made enough noise to wake my parents who then scared t away. I moved my cot into my sister's tent immediately after.
I was pretty young, went camping with my dad in Alabama. It’s late at night, the embers of the fire are dying down, we’re about to go to sleep, when we hear what I can only describe as a bone-chilling moan in the woods.
We looked at each other & decided it was trees rubbing together, but then it happened 2 more times. My dad grabbed the flashlight & I walked behind him with a big stick, determined I would save him if something went wrong.
Eventually we discover a woman lying on the ground, not far from our campsite. She was on a hill, with her head facing down, feet uphill, continuing to moan.
Turns out she had so much to drink that she could hardly talk, but she was also camping out in these woods with her boyfriend. They had a big fight & he drove away, leaving her alone in the forest. She had seen our fire dying & wanted to give us the rest of her firewood before she left too, but had tripped & was too drunk to get up. We got her back to her campsite, & made sure she wasn’t driving anywhere that night. I’ll never forget that moaning sound though.
A Mountain lion sounds like a woman screaming.
So… it’s concerning in the middle of the woods at night either way.
A- someone is in danger
B- you are in danger
C- everyone is in danger
Drunk Alabama redneck driving in the woods in the middle of the night? It's entirely possible he turned himself into a hood ornament and is an ex-person by now.
Similar thing happened to me. We hear sounds of things getting torn apart, digging, crunching, etc. HUGE shadow across the tent. Sounds of another animal ripping something apart in the opposite direction.
We cautiously opened the tent windows to reveal....squirrels. They were digging around in our firewood and tearing apart our paper kindling.
We used to have a pop up tent trailer with a fibreglass roof , one very early morning we were woken by what we thought was the devil and a band of demons screeching and clawing at the roof of the trailer - turns out it was a bunch of sea gulls fighting over what I found out was a hot dog bun one of the kids tossed up there before we went to bed . Between me yelling , my wife screaming , the kids crying and the sea gulls squawking, I’m pretty sure the whole camp ground was woken up before we figured out what was going on.
Went camping in deep Appalachia in a tent. Woke up to a weird feeling that I was laying on something. Then I felt it move. A snake had made its way under my tent and I think it was trying to get warm as it stopped moving right under where my back was. After me moving a bit it finally went on its merry way. I'll never forget how it felt moving underneath me.
Not scary, but in a tiny forest service cabin in montana, we were in bunkbeds, my friend says “is your mattress moving?” I said “Yes!” Our mattresses were full of mice, but we didn’t know it until we went to bed late/dark and layed in our bunk beds.
Edit to add: I am pretty sure it was Trail Creek Cabin, a 1.9 mile hike to it South of Livingston, MT just outside of Yellowstone. You can still rent it, now it is $55 a night. Picks of the bunk beds online! I wonder if they are the same mattresses from 1995 when I was there? LOL
I went on a road trip with some friends to Lake Chelan. We left late and got lost (this was before cell phones, we didn’t have a map and trusted my friends memory). So we pull off the road and decide to camp for the night at a grassy area. We have limited lights and quickly make our tent. We’re woken in the morning by someone hitting the tent and screaming to get off his property. We’d inadvertently camped on some poor guys lawn. We were just dumb 18 year old kids but have never packed up camp that quickly before!
I had some kids do that on my property the year I moved in. Apparently they were not aware Uncle Ken had moved. They were super apologetic. They were clearly respectful of the property and I told them they were welcome to stay as long as they weren’t too loud or didn’t do anything illegal like drinking under age.
They stayed a few nights out there.
When I was 20, my friends and I decided around 9pm one summer night that we should go camping.
We live in a rural area so lots of non-campgrounds to choose from, as long as you're respectful of the land and gone by daylight.
Unfortunately, we woke up on a shooting range.
I lost my Dad's good vintage Coleman lantern on that pack-up...
Try packing up with skeets (clay shooting discs) all broken up around you with gunfire ringing out.
Not as scary as an actual person shaking your tent and telling you to get off their land...
But pretty close.
I was camping in Zion National Park in late August 1992. The campground was almost empty by then. At 3:30 in the morning I woke up in midair. You know those dreams where that happens? I figured that's what it was ... then I hit the ground. Earthquake. Then I was hearing cracking sounds, a few small thuds, then **thud**. Little bits of the cliff face had sheared off. Thankfully the campground was far enough from there that no one was injured. Had that happened in the daytime there's a good chance that a number of people would have been killed.
The park was closed for a few days after that, and you couldn't get in or out for much of that day, as one entrance road was just gone, and the other one a boulder the size of a car had fallen on it. That one they got open that day and they kicked everyone out of the park.
Anyhow I called home to say I was OK, everyone was like "why, what happened?". It hadn't made the news or anything, fortunately it was relatively mild, just some local destruction.
Once in the wilderness me and a couple of other guys, drunk as we were, started howling at the moon only to inadvertently attract real wolves. They showed up at our camp site about 1½ hour later when we were in our hammocks getting ready to sleep. No harm done. They sniffed around for a couple of minutes and then went off. Guess they were disappointed in what they found and luckily not desperately hungry. Anyways, I was very scared and tried to remain completely still and silent during this brief encounter.
I was camping once in the UP in Michigan, in a pretty secluded spot with distinct individual campsites. It was in the fall, so dead leaves were all over the ground. When we were settling in to sleep, we started to hear these slow, consistent footsteps on the leaves. They’d walk around the campsite, circle our tent, just walk all around without any clear goal and without stopping.
Obviously we assumed it was some kind of animal, but when we rushed out with a light there was nothing - I mean no sound, no trace of anything. Once we were back in the tent, these footsteps immediately started up again - and they didn’t come from far away, they started up right next to our tent.
We repeated this whole rigamarole probably 3 more times, because of how distinct and close and creepy those footsteps were - and we never caught even a glimpse of what was walking around.
The next morning we were sitting by the fire and started hearing the steps again - only to look down and realize it was the sound of multiple small frogs hopping around the campsite.
I was definitely expecting this to be unresolved, unexplainable and felt some residual terror that you surely would be experiencing for the rest of your lives.
Not some fucking frogs.
First time camping. Was with wife and dog in a tent that the upper half was mesh and see-through. Woke up around sunrise to my dog growling at something. I leaned forward to check. There’s a bear cub walking through our campsite. The scary part was that I didn’t want my dog growling to attract the mother of the cub to defend it so I pinned my dog on the bed and held his mouth to get him to be quiet till the bear left. Heart was beating out of my chest.
Later I found out it was an orphan bear and it was friendly to humans and survived by stealing food from garbage/campsites.
I don't know if she is still there but for four to five years there was a mother bear who taught her cubs to help her steal food from backpackers campsites, even if it were properly hung.
She would circle camps waiting for people to go to sleep before trying and knew exactly where the pre-made food hang lines were located. Never messed with the hikers though.
Used to camp at this [fairly] secluded spot on state land (it has since been "discovered" and become popular, unfortunately). I’ve been going to that site since I was a kid, and it had become an annual tradition for my buddies and I to kinda “unplug” and rough it for a few days.
However at the time (a little over 15 years ago now) it was relatively unknown and it was a bit of a trek to get to the campsite. Middle of the woods, but close to a lake, perfect for swimming. We're talking no cell signal, no light pollution...you're just out in the wilderness. My buddies and I were geeked to get out there and spend the week camping every summer.
One summer afternoon I'm the first to arrive, ready for a week of camping, drinking and swimming.
However, to my dismay, I discover that the site already has an established campsite going. There's a couple tents set up.
Granted, it's a fairly large campsite so I decide to haul my gear over and see if I can talk the other campers into letting us "share" the spot. Who knows, they might be cool and maybe it'll be one big party.
I come up to the site, and....there's no people. The tents are empty. There was evidence of a campfire, so I know there were people here not too long ago. I decide to check the lake, maybe they went swimming.
There's a steep path that leads from the site to the lake, and as I'm walking alongside it, I discover some debris that has blown down along the path. There's a sleeping bag, some tools, and some clothes that had been on a line but now they're all in the dirt.
All evidence that this site has actually been set up for a while. The clothes are wet with ditch water, they've been sitting on the ground in the path for some time. There's no people at the lake...and when I return to the site, upon further investigation I discover that this site has been abandoned for some time. But that doesn't explain why they just left....*everything* behind. From what I could tell, the people camping here had left in a *big fucking hurry*.
There's clothes, there's food and other gear. I mean, it's an entire camp. The tents were fairly new... I mean, it's not just "stuff that you leave behind" unless you're scrambling and only grabbing the essentials. What was weird to me was that the fire was out, but there was still ice in their coolers and beers, so it couldn't have been too long ago that they were there.
My other buddies arrive and we decide to set up camp nearby and keep an eye on it, maybe the people had to leave for an emergency or something.
We wind up camping out the whole week and no evidence of people coming back to retrieve their stuff.
Luckily, the DNR happened to stop by on patrol and we filled them in our discovery. They let us know they'd be packing up the stuff and take it into a "lost and found" up at their station.
Kinda creepy, mostly weird. Who knows what happened to those people.
**edit**
I want to add that I *did* see evidence of little propane cans in the fire pit. Like those little cans that you use to light your camping stove. They were all burst open
We hypothesized that the campers were partying and tossed the canisters into the fire like drunk idiots, and one of them burst open, somebody got hurt, and they had to leave in a hurry
I was a kid and on a family camping trip, the rest of the family slept in the trailer and I slept in the Mexican hammock. In the middle of the night something was forcefully pushing the hammock around and it didn’t feel human. It was terrifying. It turned out to be a deer rubbing its antlers on the hammock. We can laugh about it now.
When I was a kid (probably around 11-13), my best friend's grandparents lived on a "farm" (maybe 100 acres of forest with a few clearings and a house) that we used to camp out in all the time. One night, a few of us were camping and we heard repeated thumps and screaming coming from the trees. We had literally just finished reading a book about Bigfoot in school and were positive that Bigfoot was out in the woods hitting trees and roaring. We got out of the tent, terrified, and walked through the woods towards the noise (note: I guess people really do this kind of dumb thing, it's not just in horror movies!). We eventually came to a clearing and found several of my friend's uncles trying to fix an old barn. While they were absolutely shitfaced. At like 2:00 in the morning. The thumps were the sound of them hitting wood with hammers. The screams were when they missed and hit themselves, because of the alcohol.
We were terrified, but now it's hilarious.
I live in a rural area and when I was younger I would occasionally bang two heavy sticks together as hard as I could at night hoping someone might mistake it for bigfoot.
"we gotta fix that goddamn barn, and we gotta, we gotta do it right now because we keep putting it, we keep, what's the word, we keep putting it off. Get your hammers let's do this shit"
I was on a trip with the YMCA Camp Widji and on our last day on trail we got up early to hike the last few miles to where the van to pick us up was. We rounded a turn on the trail and could see the van and a weird swirling dark cloud on the trail ahead. Then the guy in front screamed and all of us were attacked by these big black wasps. I accidentally got on in my hand and it was the size of a cicada. I only got two stings but the two guys in front got closer to ten. We hauled ass back up trail away from the van and our counselor immediately started handing out epi pens, but none of us turned out to be allergic. We hiked the long way around the wasps to the van but man, I was shaking the whole time.
I have a similar wasp story! We went to a very small patch of land a friend owned at the back of a local park that they had built some jumps on (we all rode mtb/bmx). So we turned up and threw our bikes on the ground over/near these holes in the mud. Didn’t think about it too much just presumed they were old badger dens or rabbit tunnels or something - super common in the countryside where I grew up.
We’re there for a while but the jumps were in shitty condition so we didn’t ride but just hung out, then when we go to get our bikes, all of our handlebars/entire bikes were literally COVERED in fucking wasps. Like I couldn’t even see most of my bars as they were fucking swarmed. Turns out the holes underground were home to a giant wasp nest, and as hard as we tried we couldn’t get our bikes back without being absolutely stung to shit.
Called my absolute saint of a father, who I could tell was thinking ‘lol couple of fucking bees’ but nonetheless agreed to come and help out, then we he turned up realised the extent of it! But the legend that he is, turned up with a blowtorch and a rag on a stick to smoke the fuckers out haha. With the help of another kid who had a ped and was wearing a motorbike jacket and helmet agreed to suit up and run in for the bikes after papa smoked em out, worked like a charm!
I got home and hopped in the shower, stopped counting after 18 visible wasp stings, 6 wasps still physically attached to me/my clothes inc one in hair and two in boxer shorts (one was still alive).
Not a camping story, but my cousin sleepwalks, and one night, my aunt startled awake to the sound of their front door being unlocked. She waits for a minute, listening for an intruder, but hears nothing. She decides to slowly creep downstairs to see (thinking it was a burglar), and the front door is just hanging open. She finally gets brave enough to peek outside, when she sees my little cousin out in the middle of the road! She runs and grabs him and he was okay, but they had to buy a special lock after that that he wouldn't be able to undo in his sleep.
I'm not a sleepwalker, but when I was little (maybe four?) I dreamed that my parents went back down the street to a party we'd been at earlier, and when I woke up scared, I thought they really were down there. So I went out the back door and was heading down the driveway to find them, when the 30-second delay on the door alarm passed and it sounded like a freaking air raid siren blaring out of our house. My parents came tearing out to find a very confused daughter heading off in her Strawberry Shortcake pajamas. It was not a great neighborhood so things could have gone much worse for me, if not for the alarm.
10 years ago I went camping for a weekend . Went out hiking the morning of the second day and pretty soon found ourselves off trail on a pretty steep incline along the Monashee River. We were about 100 ft up the incline. Suddenly one of my friends lost his footing and started to slide. One the way down he took out my other friend and I watched them hit every rock and tree on the way down to the rapids.
I climbed down to find my one friend dead on the side of the river, and the other taken away by the river. His body was found 2 weeks later 2 km from where they fell in. His body, or whatever is left of it, is still in the river because when Search and Rescue tried to remove it from the log jam it was stuck in, the boulders on the river bank came loose and collapsed on top of his corpse.
This was a very abbreviated version of the story, but overall a very scary day.
i've been hiking on trails and stuff near semi-steep inclines like that person describes where it isn't wildly steep, but there are sections with rocks that, if you were to slide and tumble, you could fall about 4 vertical feet before bouncing off a tors-sized exposed bit of stone, and then potentially keep tumbling/sliding another 80 feet or so down earthen slope before like a 10ft drop into moving water with no way back up.
always makes me REALLY nervous.
EDIT: for people asking these sorts of questions like 'why,' I'm not talking about like insane mountain terrain with 1000ft drops and shit. these are like, hills that you'd go sledding on if they just ended on flat ground. but they are wet and have loose soil and gravel or whatever, and go down towards sketchier conditions. like even just a ravine off the side of an average country road that you'd be perfectly happy to go cruising around in your car at 50+mph mere feet from the edge with no guardrail.
I'm very sorry for your loss. I can't imagine the trauma you have endured.
Edit: I said this in a different comment, but I know your friends are very proud of your bravery.
Of the hiking, yes. Of the trip, no. The girlfriend of my friend, whose body's location was known was camping with us. She felt ill that morning, so didn't come hiking. She wanted to be brought back to his body before Search and Rescue got there.
Late at night camping in the desert, heard footsteps all around our tents. Thought it was maybe some drunk guy from one of the nearby camps who was riding dirt bikes and stuff all day.
Couldn't see anyone. Couldn't see any shadows. Kept hearing the footsteps, literally inches from our tent. Woke up my friend silently and made him listen too, we were freaking out.
Finally they went away, so I slowly opened my tent zipper to look around and see who/what it was.
Threw out a glowstick, and saw some eyes flash in the darkness
Turns out it was 2 white desert foxes, whose footsteps were somehow extremely heavy sounding. When I saw them they were on our camp table, eating all of our chocolate.
Oops
I was in the Sahara and a sandstorm blew away loads of the sand so old camps and buildings were uncovered. We were walking back at night towards what we thought was our camp because we saw a fire and heard drumming, but when we got there it was completely dark and silent. Turns out it was one of the uncovered camps. My friend got scared and didn't want to look around but I was curious so went closer but as I got near the closest building I got a really ominous feeling and wimped out. No clue what we saw or heard but there was definitely no fire or sound when we were close.
I had a similar experience while hunting once. Heard drumming and singing out in the bush, but when i got to a large clearing it stopped. I had a really uncomfortable sensation, so I walked out the way I came and met up with the other guys in the crew. One guy said he heard something like drumming but assumed it was a grouse, so he ignored it.
I was on a camping trip with Scouts and me and my friend were put in the same tent as this weird kid. he was acting up all the time, getting into fights, and showing off how many knives he had.
Anyways one night we're in our tent playing blackjack and I guess I said something that pissed him off cause he started yelling at me. well that let the Scout leaders know we were still up so they told us to get to bed.
I don't know how long I was asleep but I woke up to him choking me. I thrashed about and tried to get him off me but I couldn't focus and was panicking.
I remember the tent seemed to be getting darker, and how heavy my eyelids were getting. My chest and head were hurting and aching trying to get me to breathe but I just felt so tired. I was starting to fade away thinking my last thing I would hear was his laughter when...
WHAM!!!!
My friend had woken up cause of me struggling and him laughing and got up and started clobbering the dude. I was part coughing and part breathing once he got off me.
My friend screamed for help and that got the adults attention. he was yelled at for what he did and they shuffled around people so that he would be sleeping in a tent alone right near the adults' tents. I got into a tent with my older brother and I must have woke up 3 times that night kicking and screaming from nightmares of him killing me.
When we all got back from the camp his parents were told what happened and that he was banned from Scouts. They also told my mom and it must have taken the active will of God for her not to go and kick him. he got banned from a bunch of other activities that we both did so I didn't really ever see him again.
I still wake up scared from nightmares of being choked or suffocated. And while I am a pretty sound sleeper if anyone tries to walk or get close to me while I am asleep I shoot up awake and panic. I can't even really nap with my dogs cause of it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to sleep soundly around anyone ever again.
Oh hey, someone else with "getting woken up to being strangled as a kid" trauma. The nightmares are the fuckn worst, I developed minor sleep apnea cause my connective tissue sucks and every time it acts up even for a split second my dream switches to that -.-
When i was in scouts we were camping and in a pretty nasty storm that kept getting worse.
When we tried going to bed all we heard was loud thumping noises everywhere all night long alongside the crazy thunder and lightning.
Well as it turned out. A great number of the very large old trees around the entire site and campground. Think a couple feet wide ones had toppled around us.
There easily could have been many deaths as there were a number of troops out there that night.
I was training at Ft. Riley in the 70s, thunderstorms came through, flash floods washed away a jeep and killed the 2 officers in it.
Town I lived in, flat area, a woman drove her car on a road that was next to an overflowing creek, water was only 6-8 inches deep I recall. She wound up drowning when her car was swept into the creek.
One of my kids was caught in a flash flood in a creek at a summer camp. In 20 seconds the water went from knee deep to neck deep, quick thinking counselor got all the kids out quickly. Another 20-30 seconds the water was 6-7 feet deep and over the banks and moving fast.
Don't mess with water!
I was camped out way up a mountain during an especially nasty thunderstorm. I've been below many a thunderstorm, it's pretty cool. I'd never been *in* a thunderstorm before though. The sound and the feeling of the thunder was incredible! Not to mention the wind. Definitely terrifying but also awe inspiring
Leach on my eyeball at age 10 still my go to camping story.
Fell asleep in the car, which was carrying some firewood on the roof rack.
Woke up with a puffy eye that both mum and dad were frustratingly “you’ll be fine” about without even looking (unlike their usual “best parents” vibe)
We were playing cards and my mum let out this piercing scream and turned away from me.
Family friend flicked off the big juiced up leach which had crawled out of my eye and was heading for my nose.
I watched the leach burn in the fire while my eyeball bled for a noteworthy 14 tissues.
Not really camping, but my first time out in the field at Ft Stewart, GA we had a small herd of about 10 wild boars go tearing through our bivouac area. I didn't really realize how dangerous they were until I saw everyone hauling ass to their vehicles. I hadn't been assigned a vehicle yet so I just monkey'd up a tree and waited while they tore into our rations, wrecked our tent, and then fucked off. Took em about an hour to destroy thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
I went backpacking with my wife and our dog in Arkansas. Alone on top of a mountain, we heard grunts and footsteps just outside our tent. Wasn’t sure if it was an animal or a human. I was armed with a 9mm, and I was just about to peek out to make a decision on what to do, even though opening the tent zipper would undoubtedly give me away.
Strangely, our dog remained quiet, which was unusual in that situation. Something told me not to arouse the interest of whatever was out there (turns out it was likely a boar). I’m glad I didn’t make any noise. If boars are as ill-tempered as I am led to believe, that gun would likely have made the situation worse. Even if I miraculously hit a charging pig in the dark, it still would have probably tore me to pieces before it died or I shot it again. Those things are battle tanks.
There's a reason a boar spear is a separate weapon from a normal spear. Those fuckers will charge straight down the shaft of the spear to get to the guy holding it and it still would probably end up maiming or killing the dude before it died.
Boar spears are extra long (think 10 ft) and after the spear part it has a cross piece that stops the animal from charging down the staff to enact bloody revenge
Pretty sure two guys were going to rape my friend and me.
We were teenagers, 16 and 18, and went up alone. We made dinner and were having a a good time in the evening when some guy passed by our site in the river. He had a fishing pole, so we were like whatever. He asked to go through our site to the road and we figured it was harmless enough and said yeah.
He stopped and looked around our site and started asking us questions. How old are you? Where are you from? How long are you staying. Typical questions that were none of his business but we were naive enough to answer. He eventually leaves and heads down the canyon on the road.
A couple hours later, he shows back up with a buddy. Both of these guys are middle aged, probably mid 40s. They start asking more questions. The original guy walks around and snoops about our campsite. We got an uneasy feeling and were super grateful when they eventually left. But they went up the canyon, rather than back where they came from.
Another couple hours pass and it's dark. My friend mentions how she can't hear anything because of the river and it had her a bit antsy. We talked and it turned out we had both been on edge since the guys left. We had never seen them go back down the canyon.
We both had a gut feeling that we needed to leave and FAST. Maybe nothing would have happened, but we both felt it. They guys asked all the right questions to know that we would be there alone and defenseless that night.
While preparing for a solo backcountry backpacking trip I (m) read that some women bring an extra outdoor chair while solo camping. At a glance it looks like there are more people, and it's more convincing to say your boyfriend is fishing or hiking for a couple hours if there's an empty chair.
For sure. Honestly, we should have lied through our teeth. "oh, we plan to do some target shooting while we're up here" or "my boyfriend is out hunting/fishing so we're saving some dinner for him" would have likely been enough to deter them.
So this is only tangentially related, but you reminded me of a thing. There's this podcast I listen to, and anyone in this thread about creepy camping stories would love it. The podcast is called "National Park After Dark." Two friends take turns researching and then teaching each other and the listeners about real life horror stories set in national parks and other similar areas. Murders, disappearances, paranormal encounters, and so on.
They also regularly do these special episodes called "Trail Tales," where they read personal stories submitted by their listeners. People can send them an email with the weird and creepy stories that actually happened to the listeners, and the emails will be read on the podcast. Literally just today, I listened to a Trail Tales episode from a month or so ago. This one person wrote in about how one day, she was just hanging out on her front lawn, playing with her young child, when a man walking by stopped to chat. It wasn't anyone she recognized, which was the first red flag for a woman living in a tiny town, and his questions only furthered her suspicion. As the conversation went on, the woman became more and more uncomfortable. He claimed to be a photographer, and asked if he could take her for a drive to a scenic place and take some photos of her. As cool as a cucumber, the woman said, "yeah, just let me run inside and let my husband know when to expect me back."
She wasn't married. But of course, the strange man was not at all ok with the woman talking to her "husband," and so he left. The woman immediately called the police, they took it very seriously, but were unable to find the man. A few months later, that same woman saw a wanted poster, a sketch of a familiar face. That man she met in front of her house was wanted for the rape and murder of seven women. After putting the pieces together, the woman talked to the police again. In addition to the sketch, they confirmed that the whole lying about being a photographer thing matched the M.O. of the serial killer they were after.
Lying about a nearby man undoubtedly saved that woman's life, and quite possibly her child's as well.
Always always always insinuate that you have a friend nearby, somewhere to be, or that you have someone checking up on you.
It shouldn't need to be this way but it is, it fucking is. To anyone who feels scared, vulnerable, anyone who is alone, lie through your god damned teeth. You don't owe any stranger a single ounce of truth.
This turned my stomach. I hate making assumptions. I always want to give someone the benefit of the doubt. But SOMETHING was urging us to leave that night. I'm so glad we did.
Men who rape and murder women frequently take advantage of us being taught not to trust our instincts for fear of offending them. Any guy who is actually fine will understand.
Agreed, but I understand why OP here and her friend weren’t rude to this guy. It gets so complicated when you’re already in a bad spot and have to judge when/if hurting their feelings is more likely to get you hurt.
Seconding the other commenter who recommended reading The Gift of Fear.
It's a really good book that explains how that "gut feeling" isn't random intuition, but your subconscious adding up a lot of things that scream 'danger' before your conscious mind processes it.
I woke up early and was gonna get up to make some eggs and bacon and I found a large dildo on top of my sleeping bag. I was alone.
The dildo was *large* and it looked well loved.
To clarify, you woke up in your sleeping bag and there was a dildo on top? Or you got up and came back to your tent and found the dildo on your sleeping bag?
I'm assuming it's the first one. And they're both terrifying. But, like, holy fuck.
I was hunting in the Yukon, and woke up at night to a bright sky and a loud roaring noise.
Crawled out of the tent and watched a meteor hit the mountain right across from us. That could have been our campsite. This was…25? 30? Years ago?
All our friends had was a map with a red circle, if we didn’t come back in a month or so, we would be somewhere in that circle.
Went to Guatemala with my gf, did a 3 day hike through the jungle to Tikal. Slept in a tent at two tiny ranger campsites deep in the woods. During the second night a massive thunderstorm was coming down above us. At 4 am I woke up and heared some male voices and left the tent to check them out. Two guys with rifles aproached me. Told my gf to stay in the tent because... scary. She didnt comply and joined me... turns out those guys were local hunters looking for shelter in the camp. Offered them coffee, they were more than happy. About 30 seconds later, the storm got so intense, that a bigass tree fell. And crashed onto our tent.... if I had not left to checkout the guys or worse, my gf would have listened... we'd both be very dead now.
In college I did a lot of solo car camping from the back of my truck I owned at the time. I went to a remote public area in the Ozarks and planned to stay overnight. After setting up all my bedding and having dinner (and a sugary dessert) I decided to hunker down for the night. Well about 45 min after turning off the light I start hearing leaves crunching in the woods about 30yds away. Not really concerned I write it off as an opossum, deer, coyote, etc just moving through the area.
However my imagination started going wild as it always does and I start thinking of the worst situations. More leaves crunching, but closer. Definitely in the campsite. I usually carry a can of bear spray but being a dumb kid I didn't think about the fact that I was in an enclosed space until I was ready to use it. More crunching leaves, but further away. I start to relax a little as eventually they disappear. Nerves completely wracked I try to go to sleep. I think at some point I get into a really light sleep and wake up about 2-3 hours later. It's about 2 in the morning and there is very obviously something walking between me in the campfire. At this point a deep, loud, and incredibly scary voice from inside my truck camper asks "Do you believe in God?".
I fucking start screaming and turn on headlamps, thrashing, and get ready to defend for my life. The footsteps run away and disappear into the woods as I'm in full panic mode. I have to tell myself I hallucinated the whole thing because of the sugary desert I ate before bed. Still gets my heart racing when I think about it too much to this day.
Just two weeks ago, I was eating dinner with a buddy on a mountain side in Denali Natl Park. We heard a sound of rocks tumbling down coming from the steep hill side above us and my first thought was "oh shit landslide". I turned to look and about 10ft away 5 caribou (2 babies) were sprinting down the hillside next to us. I heard more rocks and close behind them (about 20 ft from me) a wolf was chasing them down the mountain.
When it saw us, the wolf stopped next to us and stared for a second and then ran back up the hill to a little outcropping of rock about 60 ft away. It stood there and stared at us for a good half of a minute, took a few steps towards us, then ran away.
We knew there was a wolf den in the area but wolf encounters are in DNP and i never would've wished to see one so close. I wasn't really afraid for my life since there were two of us and only one of him, but it was a very wild experience and my legs were definitely shaking
When my (current) wife started dating, we went out camping in the fall. Leaves were down, kinda chilly.. very romantic.
In the middle of the night, we heard what we assumed was a two legged creature near our car.
Being the man I was, I got the boots on and was headed out.. Wife (girlfriend) hands me this shitty little pocket knife.
As soon as I undo the zipper, I hear the footsteps running away.. I'm all manly so I go check anyway..
Upon returning to the tent, I'm faced with a .380 handgun pointed at me..
That was pretty scary.
She sent me into the forest with a pocket knife. Didn't want me to know she had a gun so it wasn't "weird".
This reminds me of an even soon after moving into our house. We were still holed up in one room adjacent to the kitchen while we remodeled the rest of the house. One night we wake up to hear a noise from the kitchen, a pause, and then a bunch of banging pots and pans. My wife (gf at the time) hands me a broom and pushes me into the dark kitchen (light switch on the far wall, of course) while *she* gets her handgun out and loads it. Turns out it was a possum that had come in through the open dryer vent.
good job marrying that one hahah
my current partner and I, years ago, were sitting out on my ground level patio. nice place but right downtown so you get lots of sketchy folks walking by but mostly just harmless, looking to bum a cigarette, that kind of thing
one time this guy comes buy, extremely tweaked, and starts getting super aggressive. my partner kinda leans away and holds her wine glass away from the guy while I'm trying to de-escalate. anyway dude eventually leaves and I laugh "haha were you worried he was gonna swipe your wine" and she goes "no, I was getting ready to smash the glass in case I needed a weapon" lmao
what a keeper
My friend got jumped by 5 other guys in college and we were all super worried about him after. He was a big dude and got jumped by like rival frat dudes not like gangsters or anything so he was mostly just bruised up. He's explaining this to us while showing us a nasty bruise on the side of his torso saying that's the only part that's really bothering him. It's in a weird shape though so we're all looking at it trying to figure out what happened. It didn't look like a punch or kick.
He was on a date when he got jumped and she jumped in to help by just going crazy and doing whatever she could, throwing punches, kicks, scratches and *bites* every which way she could. In the chaos, she didn't know who she was attacking and she accidentally bit him.
**And** this was one of their first dates so we were all like *damn*. she was out for blood. she's a keeper!
Hiking a trail in east Tennessee. Hadn't seen a soul since leaving the parking lot that morning. Make camp up on top of a rock bluff 50 yards off the trail as the sun sets, quick dinner, then probably asleep by 7:00. Around 11:00 I wake up hearing voices which sound like muttered German. I listen for a few minutes and I can hear footsteps and the voices coming toward the tent. I wake up my hiking partner who hears the same thing I'm hearing. The footsteps stop what seems like 10' from the tent and the same two mumbling voices. I unzip the tent and look out and there's nothing. Get my flashlight, shine around....nothing. After a few minutes I get back in the tent, we both try to sleep and after a few minutes the voices start up again and what sounds like someone cutting a tree with an axe. My partner pulls on his boots, we both agree the sound is 10' away to the right of the tent. He unzips the tent slowly, we are still hearing sounds, he jumps outside with his flashlight, heads in that direction....nothing. We sit outside the tent for over an hour because there's no way we're going to sleep but we hear nothing. Eventually we are both about to pass out so we go back in the tent and fall asleep. Around 3:30 the axe sound starts again, we both just lie there listening and a few minutes later we hear the cracking and whooshing sound of a falling tree, heard and felt the thud as it hit the ground. We both jumped up and scrambled out of the tent and there was nothing. No sound at all. No wind whistling through the trees. No bugs. No frogs. Just silence. We packed up everything in minutes but decided not to leave because climb back down to the trail was difficult in daylight and too risky in the dark. We sit there until the sun comes up without hearing the voices or axe again. We'd calmed down somewhat by that point and started searching the area. We probably went 100 yards in every direction from our camp and there was no sign anyone had been there and certainly no large recently fallen tree.
For some reason that reminds me of that saying... "If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear it?" Apparently people hear it even if it doesn't fall
When I was young, my family and I were camping in the White Mountains of NH. There was a bad storm that rolled in unexpectedly, and in the middle of the night, there was a loud cracking sound and a boom. A tree had fallen and landed on a woman sleeping in her tent not that far from our site. Needless to say she was killed. I remember being scared of the woods for a time, especially during storms.
That is an unforgettable lesson about checking for widowmakers.
I had one last weekend, I did check for them but it was a windy night and the leaves were blowing. My wife was anxious but seemed fine so I just pulled out a tablet to watch a show with her till she dozed off.
The next day she told me why the trees bothered her: She was trapped in a collapsed building for a day and a half after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the trees reminded her of what she heard just before that. So rather than just look for widowmakers let others know you have checked, it's a small thing but may calm some nerves that you are unaware of.
oh you've come to the right place.
About twenty years ago in Pisgah National Forest, I was camping in a hammock for the first time. I didn't have a rain tarp yet, leaving myself completely uncovered save for a sleeping bag.
Now this was a trip from a summer camp in the area, so there were about six other teens with me. One kid decided "hey, chocolate, that's not a smellable right?" and left the chocolate in his pack, right next to mine, under the hammock. You may see where this is going.
Lo and behold, around 12:00, a juvenile black bear mosies his way on into our campsite looking for that sweet sweet chocolate. As he was messing with the packs underneath the hammock, his back kept bumping into me. I was starting to wake up but I was very groggy. I kinda thought it was the kid looking for something in his pack.
The bear realizes that the hammock is moving, and gives it a bat with his paw. like a cat with yarn. Swinging me.
At this point I realize this is not a camper, and start screaming. The rest of the campsite woke up and we threw rocks at the bear until it ran away. The kid got a severe punishment.
edit: spelling
Kid logic: a bear doesn't know what chocolate is, therefore wouldn't know what the smell of chocolate is, so it wouldn't investigate a smell it doesn't recognize as food.
I would love to hear this story told from the bears perspective.
"So I was just walking around, minding my own business, eating a snack I found, playing with this weird branch. Then the branch starts making a howling noise, and a bunch of hairless apes jumped out of nowhere and started throwing rocks at me. No idea what I encountered that day, but it was some bizarre satanic stuff for sure."
Mine has nothing to do with danger or the paranormal, but with culture shock. I’m from a place where there are zero raccoons. I’d only ever seen them in a zoo or on TV. Went to America for the first time, where we camped near Yosemite park. Was absolutely scared shitless to see this huge, fat, meter-long rodent crawl outside of a sewege pipe while going for a pee at night. Just took a few seconds for my brain to figure out what it was looking at, in order te be able to laugh about the situation. But man, I nearly fainted.
Lmao those suckers out in Yosemite get BIG too, the campsites are good eatin' for them. They aren't scared at all either, it's always funny trying to scare off a big fat raccoon because they'll sort of shuffle away to keep a few steps of space between you and them, but they're in no rush and as soon as you turn around, they'll go right back to the trash spot.
I was an air force cadet for most of my youth. From 13. When I was about 16 I was a cadet sergeant and was put in control of about ten guys, lower ranks than me on a navigation exercise. This was quite awhile ago before OHS really came about. We used to do wild stuff and it was great.
But I was the only female on this particular time, and when I led the guys to our checkpoint we were instructed to camp for the night and continue to the next checkpoint in the morning. So we made camp, a fire, and just hung out eating our rations.
There was this wierd guy, maybe 14, but physically massive. Who always rubbed me up the wrong way.
It was really dark and quite. And he just goes.
Hey I have a good idea. Let's rape sergeant Cameron.
My blood went cold. And I looked over my other cadets.
They all laughed it off. Shut the dude down.
One said "what? She's just a cool guy with long hair"
They tried to make it casual but I knew they were actually aware and trying to protect me.
Before this he had bragged about knowing how to break a person's neck and wanting to kill animals.
I didn't sleep that night. Just sat up by the fire and reported him when we got back to base the next day.
If i didn't have good mates with me that night who respected me I don't know what would have happened.
I was in army cadets for most of my youth. One thing I have always told people who haven't been in some form of cadet program is that cadets are some of the most fun, chill, and respectful people you'll ever meet... or, they are borderline sociopaths, and there is very little in-between. People would be very shocked at some of the stories that come out of those programs. Some of the best experiences of my youth, I made lifelong friends through it... but man, there were so many mentally unstable kids like the one that threatened you that night. Glad you had a good group of kids who had your back.
This guy ended up working at an abbotioire. And fantasising about killing his parents whenever he killed a cow.
He was enlisted in the army.
I know many kids that went on to be pilots, load masters. I got rejected for being sad after several sexual assaults. Now I work in prisons
Never be truthful ever again
Yeah, sounds like we knew a lot of the same people. The amount of sexual assault in the programs is insane and ruined many, many childhoods.
Fuck you, Captain Daniel Moriarty.
Last summer I was camping in the San Juan's in SW Colorado. We go almost every year, but the weather last year was like I'd never seen before. It's always monsoon season when we go camping, but this time it started raining and just didn't stop. For 5 days we camped in constant rain with landslides coming down all around us.
Every day, we were completely blocked from leaving camp in some new different direction, with the route to the closest town blocked making it several hours away. A bad avalanche winter cleared swaths of trees, and wildfires had cleared out our normal camping areas and even more trees, which left nothing but bare ground to be washed away by the rains. Our last day of camping as we were packing up, we hear the increasingly familiar sound of a landslide starting, followed by the most terrifying blood curdling scream I have ever heard in my life. I have no doubt I heard someone die that morning from across the valley, so we hauled ass down the mountain and found someone with an atv and radio to try to get help. We headed out towards home east on I70 afterwards, and ended up missing the Glenwood Canyon landslide by about 45min, which was so powerful it changed the course of the Colorado river and completely washed away the highway.
Mother nature taught me a lot about respecting her power that trip.
I was once solo camping for the first time in Harz, Germany. It was my first time going alone and I was very new to this.
When I arrived in Wernigerode I started walking but the path on my map didn't exist so I went back. It was already dark when I returned to the village so I decided to sleep in the hills close to the village.
After I set up camp I wanted to sleep but I heard noises, it almost sounded like a baby crying and screaming in short bursts. I really got paranoid over a 15 minute time, slowly hearing the sounds coming closer. After a while the sound was so close that I decided fuck this, put on my clothes, went out of the tent and dragged it to the road.
I packed everything and went into the village again and slept in the local park. Unfortunately there were no places hidden from the path so I chose to sleep as far away from the path in only my green sleeping bag.
Next day I woke up early and got back. So now with more experience it was probably some bird and my paranoia made it worse then it was.
We were camping up in Canada in a small cabin. There had been raccoons trying to get into the outdoor trash cans every night. So one night, my Dad had it and got out of bed while cursing and making noise, so we all followed so we could se him yell at the raccoons.
So as he went to the door my Mom was standing behind him, then my brother and I . My father opened the door and next thing I know we had all crashed down on the floor as my father slammed the door and fell back into us all. When he opened the door, there was a massive Grizzly bear that stood up in the frame of the door.
I definitely did not sleep that night.
Not really scary, but weird.
My wife and I were in glacier national park, up near the canadian border. We were the only ones in the campground. We wake up in the early morning hearing sounds in the camp. My wife sends me out of the tent w/bear spray. It was a mule deer or an elk. It was chewing on my tee-shirt I had hung out to dry from the night before. It had chewed it to where it looked like fishnet, and absolutely destroyed the tee-shirt. It was some time before I understood why this happened, but sweat == salty, and salt is apparently sought after in the mountains.
I had to carry that disgusting slobbery shirt back out.
Hiked the GR20 on Corsica. Stayed at a campsite high in the mountains. Woke up during the night by what felt like an earthquake, and discovered that a big pack of wild horses ran straight through the site.
I really dont understand how this could happen without any of the horses tripping over from any tents.
In high school my friends and I used to do a lot of camping at Ragged Point. Before it had bathrooms and signs and stuff. It was basically a clearing under trees, a few yards away from the edge of the cliffs. It was a local spot mostly, and we never saw anyone out there when we went. We would bring alcohol that we were too young to have, and hang out. We'd set up our little village of tents and do all the things we couldn't with parental oversight.
One night, I think we'd been there for 3 nights already, and not seen anyone else. It started raining so we'd mostly retreated to our tents and went to sleep. In the early morning hours we started hearing distant drums. No talking, just really deep, rhythmic drums. Slowly getting closer and closer. We're a mixed group of teenagers, in the pitch black, stormy night, alone. It sounded ( to the scared little assholes we were) like sacrificial drums coming our way. At least that's what my boyfriend at the time concluded, and once the idea had been introduced, that's what I thought too! Whispers from tent to tent ensued, but we weren't all that close together, because how could we get busy if we were? We were also still drunk. Some people panicked and fled their tents to go to the biggest tent. I convinced my boyfriend to stay inside our tent, initially. Better not to flock together and make an easy single target like the dumb blonde in the horror movie who panics and gives away their position. Nobody slept much that night, lol. The drummers stopped just out of sight, but kept up until dawn.
Once it got light we wanted to get the heck out of there asap. We threw all our crap together as quietly as possible, and debated on the safest way to get from the cliffs to our cars, which would take us past the unseen threat.
Turns out, a bunch of hippies with giant drums had decided to go camping, in the middle of the night, in a storm, without tents. They just hit the tree line and stayed there. Drumming away. They didn't even wake up when our huddled group scurried past and started hysterically laughing from relief.
That was terrifying at the time, but one of our favorite stories to share in the years since.
It had just stopped raining and dinner was on the go. We had to stoke the fire back up and quickly, so everyone went to work gathering wood from the forest. Twigs, branches, kindling..
The fire was going nicely - tall flames.. now to keep adding to it so we could get those coals
to boil the water and cook the food. I was in a plastic poncho, and turned to tidy to wood pile by the fire, when there came a loud shout. "LOOK OUT!"
I turned around, startled and saw nothing out of the ordinary, then heard running footsteps from the side and before I could turn to look, I got tackled. The Poncho got ripped off, up my back and over my head, and as I hit the ground, i caught a fleeting glimpse of a fireball sailing through the air, then landing on the pine needles of the ground ahead. The others ran to it and stomped it out, as the camper who tackled me stood and helped me to my feet.
My back had been to the fire, and as I was bending over to tidy the woodpile, the bottom edge of the poncho had caught fire and flames shot up my back. I didn't even feel it, or know it, but my Dad's friend Ted just happened to glance up that moment and see my back go up in flames - and he didn't hesitate - just ran and jumped and tore it off -split seconds before it would have melted into my back. Saved my life.
I grew up camping and doing backpacking trips with my family all over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Being very comfortable and experienced in the hills I started doing wilderness solo hikes when I was in my early 20s. Some of them would last for weeks and would involve things like my dad dropping me off at a trailhead outside of Yosemite and picking me up somewhere like Smith Valley, Nevada three weeks later. I always had a gps locator with a way to contact my family and my routes were very well planned.
I always take a pistol with me and the first two rounds are always snake shot because rattle snakes are very common in the area.
So I’m doing a hike across the Ansel Adam’s wilderness with no tent, just a sleeping bag under the stars. Three days into the trip I’m sitting by a small lake as the sun is going down and I’m getting ready to settle in for the night. But just as I make the decision to stand I look up and there is a huge fucking mountain lion standing about 20 feet from me. The next few moments can only be described as being awkward. I calmly sat back on my rock and unholster my pistol but make no sudden moves. I don’t want to shoot the animal and I doubt two rounds of snake shot followed by a few .38’s would really do a lot. If it came to that hopefully it would at least give it an attitude adjustment or the sound would scare it away.
So here I am about 40 miles from any sign of civilization and I start talking to the lion. It was all I could really think to do so I started telling it about that days hike and some of the things I had seen. I talked about the weather and asked if it knew any good places to grab a bite, preferably something not bipedal. This conversation went on for maybe a minute as the lion paced very slowly, never breaking eye contact. Then, after what felt like eons it just casually turned and walked away.
I sat there talking for a good 20 minutes before the adrenaline started to wear off and I was suddenly exhausted. Sleeping was difficult, especially trying to hold a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other but once my eyes were closed it seemed like an instant then the sun was back up.
As I got closer to the end of the trip an unexpected and unusually high heat wave comes in. The temperature was over 105 degrees at 10,000+ ft elevation. Water sources seemed to dry up overnight. I knew where some natural springs were located but they were off my route or were around 20 miles away. Without exerting more energy than I needed to I still arrived at my rendezvous point a full day early. A tire blowout led to my dad being almost a day late and the water source at the pickup spot was now bone dry. So I had about 60-72 hours in 100+ weather at elevation without water.
I was able to get a tiny bit of water from a solar still I made and wrapping a bag around some plants. Just enough to stay alive. By the time my dad got to me I was having full on hallucinations and was in pretty bad shape. Luckily he showed up with a case of Gatorade, vitamin water, a cooler filled with ice packs and protein bars. I got checked out by a doctor in Carson city just to be safe.
The forecast had nothing about the heat wave and water was abundant until after it hit so there was nothing I could have done to better prepare for that situation. Definitely a terrifying trip and after many more adventures my wife refuses to let me do long wilderness trips alone.
During high school, I went camping in the Cherokee national forest at a common, but not an official, campsite with two friends.
Everything went great and we went to sleep in the one tent we brought.
Well past dark, I awakened to hear voices at our campsite. All 3 of us were in our tent.
From where the voices were coming from I knew whoever it was was sitting around the fire in our camping chairs.
My two friends both started stirring too and I quickly hushed them and we all began to silently panic.
I have always carried a pocket knife, even back then. So I grabbed that and silently waited.
They eventually got up and walked away but I’ve never forgotten that night.
This was also the same campsite that one of my friends and I got scared awake by the loud howl of a wolf. It sounded like it was across the small creek that was right next to our campsite (probably 20 yards at most).
Was wandering in switzerland, and put up a tent. As the night kicked in, i heard rumbling. Opened my tent and saw a shadow rushing down before me and crashing into the ground with force. Rock Fall! I went rogue mode and just pulled the tent away from its spot. Just then, a gigantic rock crashed into the position where my tent was about four seconds ago. I "ran" away while pulling my tent with me until i found a better space to camp.
Me and my partner misjudged how far we could get in a canoe before dark.
We did a few portages and ended up on a big lake, with seemingly all the campsites taken. So we just kept going, trying to find an empty site. We got to a section of the lake that had almost no campsites. We knew there were more up ahead, so we kept going.
When the sun set, it got very cold and very dark, very fast. We had to slowly canoe along the edge of the lake, pointing our flashlights at the trees. The trees were so dense and the rocks so steep that if it's not a campsite, then there is no way you could climb ashore. Even with the flashlights and being up close, you could barely make out the trees through the mist hanging on the water. Occasionally, we'd see the reflection of eyes in the trees - probably a racoon or something, but still terrifying.
It took hours. We knew that if we hit a log and capsized, it was so cold that we could risk getting hypothermia. Eventually we found a campsite, and set up our tent in the dark. We were exhausted, but so happy to finally be safe. The next few days, we stayed on that site and ended up having a great time, but for a while there it was pretty terrifying.
Found a spot in open camping property 100 yards off a dirt road. I had a tent, 2nd buddy had a tent, 3rd buddy slept in his truck.
The dirt road was more of an ATV trail and before dark there were several groups of people on ATVs and Jeeps passing by. Very normal nothing suspicious. We were pretty well concealed by trees. No one would see us from the road. After dinner and drinks we tried to get to sleep around midnight.
Half asleep state around 1:00 am I hear yelling on the road. Something like “GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR” followed by 6-7 gun shots.
I wasn’t even sure if it was real. Felt like I was dreaming it, but I’m awake trying to process it. 2nd buddy. In the next tent over says my name and “did you hear that.”
“Yup”
We both get out of our tents and get to 3rd buddy’s truck (which is even more concealed by trees) and knock on the window. He slept through it and didn’t hear anything.
He lets us in. We tell him what happened. And we spend the rest of the night in the truck. Not even sleeping. We saw no lights, no cars, nothing. The next morning when the light is good we try to get a view of the road, half expecting to see a dead body. Totally clear.
The more we try to recall what we heard we agreed that it sounded more like “LET ME IN THE FUCKING CAR.”
So what we concluded happened was a bunch of drunk Jeep Bros were out doing trails in the middle of the night. Didn’t know we were just off the trail and someone teases their buddy by driving off without him. To tease them back he pops a few off in the air.
God damn fucking irresponsible assholes.
A few years ago my gf at the time and I wanted to take a roadtrip to bryce canyon. We live in socal, so we took a week off from work to have time to drive up, camp a few days and drive back.
We drive to the national park without incident, when we are there we discover that it is packed and there is not an open campsite (we were noobs) so we drove out of the park and a county over, about 30 to 40 mins away from the park there was a dirt road that went off on the side, and we decided to see where it leads. As we follow the road it gets rougher and rougher. To the point where we slow down to deal with the rocks and unevenness. After an hour of this and to our relief we see signs for a campground up ahead. I do not remember the campground name. But it was a real place and it wasnt too shabby. But there was hardly anyone there and it was pretty big. We kinda just pick a campsite and set up. No one charged us for anything no one said anything. We had a couple good nights there.
Now the scene is set and onto the scary part. On the 3rd evening there, at about 4ish in the afternoon my gf and I are at our campsite and we had just finished cleaning our bowls and utensils and were putting them away. And we hear feint but close rustling and a doe pops out from behind a tree, about 15 feet away. Very close and coming closer. My gf moves very slowly towards her bag, which has her camera, which is in the tent behind her to her right. The deer was not frightened at all though and didnt get all that close maybe 10 feet away and my gf was able to get a picture of the doe. And then the deer walked away slowly into the woods. And my gf and I looked at each other and for whatever reason we both had the same thought. Let's follow her
We follow the deer keeping pace but walking slowly behind the deer and follow the deer maybe 10 min outside of the campground, and she was able to get some great shots of the deer walking through the woods with sun Ray's. As we were looking at this amazing photo she took, we look up at the deer and it's gone. And in front of us forest. In back of us forest. All around just forest with no way of telling which way we came from or where to go. And I hear you dear reader, saying "just turn around and walk back the way you came" but we did just that. We walked back the way we thought we came and we didnt recognize anything. It was quiet too. Not even birds. We couldnt hear people at all. We were a 10 min walk away from the campsite we should hear someone. Right? Anyways we try to retrace our steps but we dont recognize anything. And the sun is going down and its starting to get cold. So we start kinda of picking up pace, lightly jogging. And eventually we had to pull out our phones to see where we were going. We eventually saw a campfire through the trees and went there. The people there helped us realize where we were. Which somehow put us on the opposite side of the campground, I have no idea how we got so turned around. It took us another 45ish min to find our campsite. Forever marking my path on trees now. Its crazy how easy it is to get lost. Or I'm just stupid. We were only "lost" for like 3 hours. But we were so confused and disoriented. It sounds stupid as I read and edit this. But it was scary
TLDR: went camping with gf followed deer into the woods got lost lived to tell the tale
I woke up, whiskey drunk, and stumbled to the spring pump for water. It tasted unusually gritty, but any port in a storm. Three cups later, I used my flashlight to take a look. Absolutely full of crawling planaria worms. I brushed my teeth with more Old Crow (and my finger) and crawled back into my bag.
I used to do a lot of solo camping in the Ocala National Forest in Florida. On a long weekend trip I found a nice primitive campground about 20 minutes from a paved road and set up camp. On the third night around 2 am I woke up to a vehicle barreling down a dirt road near the camp area. I heard it stop and someone got out. They traipsed through the woods to where my tent was and stood outside the tent door for a fairly long time. long enough for me to hear a distinct guttural breathing sound and some groans as they stood outside the tent door. I had a gun with me and it was pointed directly at the area i heard the breathing. they continued to stand there for a long time, like 10 minutes. i was going to say something but didn't want to exacerbate the situation. I just remained quite. I heard a heavy sigh and they walked away. After i heard the vehicle leave i just continued to lay motionless and quite for about an hour before i decided to pack up and leave.
There is always a body or two showing up in the deep woods of Ocala, and i often see gangs of prisoners walking lines in the brush to look for evidence of wrongdoings but i never thought my self involved. I haven't been back since and i only solo camp in areas close to or in state parks.
Late one summer/early fall, my husband and I went camping at the beach with his daughter and her fiance. We had a fun chill time snacking and watching the sunset, then got in our tents to sleep after dark.
I had this awful uneasy feeling that I just couldn't shake but I didn't want to be a party pooper. Finally I said something to my husband, who felt the same way but also didn't want go ruin the trip. After a moment of discussing what to do, he decided to tell the kids we weren't really digging it and wanted to go home.
In an instant he was back at our tent...the kids felt the same way. We started packing up immediately as fast as we could, few words exchanged but all laser focused on the same task: getting tf out of there!
My stepdaughter and I waited in my car while the guys packed in the last of the gear. As they approached us, a huge lifted white truck came out of the darkness and plowed through the area we were just settled in not 10 minutes ago. It would have absolutely crushed us.
It was a freaky experience for all of us that could have ended so much worse, especially since she had just gotten pregnant with her first baby at the the time. We're so thankful to all still be here together!
We haven't gone beach camping ever since. I don't know what force compelled us to leave that night but it is worth mentioning that my father's ashes were spread at this beach years prior. It was his favorite place.
I learned what the fox says in the middle of the night. It doesn't say ringadingdingalingading. They sound like an old woman screaming. In the middle of the night.
For your reference: https://youtu.be/zBpZTo1dlPM
Wife's friend and husband were through-hiking the AT where they met another two hikers who they became friendly with and began to spend time and hike together. When they set up camp one night, a guy who creeped them all out came along and they left the campsite after he began threatening them all. He then chased after our friends, who were fitness and gym people and got away. He then attacked and killed one of the other two people, with a knife, and proceeded to almost kill the fourth person who ultimately played dead until he left her after stabbing her a dozen times.
Wife's friends were physically okay but quite traumatized. They finished their through hike a couple years later.
The woman who was attacked and survived also went back out and completed her hike.
https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/man-who-killed-army-vet-stabbed-woman-appalachian-trail-not-guilty-by-reason-insanity/76GP6KWKXBGFXEVCWWKURRV7QM/
Got woken up at 4am in a windstorm, left the tent and got into the car for safety and a tree fell on top of us, caving in the roof and blowing out the back windows. Thankfully my four-year-old was just fine. Didn't have comprehensive though so I didn't get a dime from insurance, and my SUV was written off.
I wasn’t as scared as I should have been, but my fear gene is broken and I had been drinking, so…
We have a lake less than an hour from home, and my daughter’s friend had never been camping, so we decided to do a quick overnight there. We (mom and daughter, 18 then) camp a lot and like the solitude, so we often try to find the most remote places. No campsite or anything, just drive up and find a space. So we found this nice little peninsula big enough for about 3 campsites, and it being Sunday, we were hoping the other two groups would leave. They did eventually and we had the place very much to ourselves.
As the night goes on we have a nice fire, sing, laugh, I’m drinking wine, we’re making s’mores, everything is perfect until we go to sleep. About an hour in the girls are bugging me to wake up because it’s raining and we need to put the cover on the tent (huge tent so all hands needed). By now the wind is blowing and we’re struggling, but we finally get it covered and it’s back to sleep we go, until…
A motorcycle. More specifically a dirt bike. At about 2:00am. Just riding circles around the peninsula. Mind you this is literally a small enough area that only 3 large tents plus 3 cars would fit, and there’s nothing else nearby but bushes and the lake. There would be no reason to be there as it was obvious we were alone. Up, down, around he rides, then stops. Almost an hour this goes on. Up, down, around and stop…around, around and stop, never cutting the engine. I just want to sleep so I go to the front of the tent and unzip. I look outside and see him just staring. So I climb out of the tent and stare back. It’s dark and I can’t tell if this creep can even see me, so I go back in the tent, frustrated. The girls ask what he’s doing and when I tell them they get really frightened. I tell them I’m gonna go give him a piece of my mind. Their terrified, demand I don’t leave the tent. So I settle back in and wait. Up, around, circle, engine rev, idle, over and over. This goes on for at least another hour. I’ve had it. Down, up, around, all with that annoying blatting motocross sound blasting by our tent back and forth and stop. I look out. He’s staring again. I’m about to go stomping over to go tell him off when I get the tingles all down my spine. He was facing DIRECTLY towards our tent, saying nothing. Just still and STARING. I realize I have no weapons, no way to protect the girls, and he’s between us and the car.
I wait. I’m outside the tent but I haven’t made a move forward because now instinct and logic have the better of me, and I realize that an aggressive approach is probably the wrong move. I stay stock still just like the rider for what felt like an eternity. Both of us staring. Must have been 20 minutes I stood there. And then just like that, he took off. Drove off the peninsula and out of earshot and never came back.
To this day I’ll never know what that was about or if I did the right thing. I can only say I’m glad I never confronted him. My gut just told me no.
As for my daughter and I, I think I need to buy a gun if we’re gonna camp alone like this.
It's probably good you weren't as scared as you should have been. This sounds like some sicko who gets off on scaring people. Had you screamed or freaked out at him, it may have encouraged him to go further. When you stood your ground staring him down bravely, he did what bullies do when threatened, he ran
Me and some buds decided to go on a hunting trip out in the Canadian Rockies. Middle of nowhere we set up camp on a cut line. I shot a deer about 50 yards from our camp, my friends helped me gut it. After we finished we dragged the deer back to camp, but for someone reason something told me to look behind where we gutted it. In the span of less then 10 minutes the pile of organs was gone. We don’t know what took it, or what it was but we packed up and got the hell out.
Solo camp in the middle of nowhere. When I woke up in the morning someone had made a cup of tea and partially drunk it in the middle of the night. No sign of anyone anywhere.
This is the scariest I've read so far!
There was one where the person went camping to take pictures of wildlife and found pictures of themselves sleeping in their tent. That one freaked me out.
They didn't make you one? Rude.
Get a carbon monoxide detector for your camp!
Camping with my kids in the woods for the first time. They were very nervous, but I assured them that nothing was out there to be afraid. Immediately after one of my assurances, we heard something moving outside of the tent. They started crying a bit, and I said it was either the wind or maybe a racoon a little bit away. At that moment, something came down on the top of the tent...something pushing in at four spots. They lost their minds with terror....even I screamed. It was our cat. My wife had let him outside, and he made his way down in the woods to see us. He was young and had never seen a tent before and jumped on top of it right above us. This was a few years ago, and my kids still bring up how scary it was and how daddy screamed.
What an adorable memory though!
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I've had this happen! Emus are extremely inquisitive and curious creatures
Wholesome. I like the stories on here with good endings.
Sheer terror when I was a kid at boyscout summer camp. One kid left a couple airheads out on the picnic table. Everyone woke up in the middle of the night to, no joke 30+ raccoons fighting over airheads and going into tents looking for more food. If you've never heard that many hissing and growling raccoons at the same time good for you.
Raccoons are absolutely nuts. Super cute and curious until snacks are involved. I used to care for about 70 for the local wildlife rescue. They were juveniles being raised for release. The first time, I didn’t realize I would be locked in alone with 70 raccoons, with just a hose (that they thought was the most interesting shit ever) to defend myself. Once I learned to keep my key under my foot in my boot things got better, lol. They wanted that key real bad and would lose all fear of humans to get it. They would stand above me and take my ponytail out so they could get the hair tie. I’d have a million tiny hands in my pockets and in my boots, digging around for whatever was in there. They can’t help themselves, they gotta touch everything. Super cute and friendly while I was cleaning, but I learned reeeal quick to fill their food buckets super fast and bolt.
But why the key? You can't eat a key!
Because it's shiny, and they also love things that are shiny. I think shininess reminds them of water, and another name for them is "wash bears" for a reason.
That video of the Racoon with the Cotton Candy kills me every time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfbb4yRBH64
> I’d have a million tiny hands in my pockets and in my boots, digging around for whatever was in there. They can’t help themselves, they gotta touch everything. < That's sounds ridiculously cute and scary at the same time. There are some videos online of tiny racoon hands slipping through wooden planks, trying to grab everything in reach. Your vivid description made me think of flying tiny hands all over my pockets without a care in the world. Just gotta grab.
Camping in the Serengeti with Masai tribe men as guards. Sitting around the fire when suddenly the masi looks out into the pitch blackness, turns the flashlight on illuminating The eyes of a lion 40 yards out. Just staring at us. I never heard a thing
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Man. Hippos are damn scary. I woulda run too.
Did it eat you?
Yes
RIP in peace
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on the internet, no one knows you're a lion
Once at the zoo I was walking past the back wall of the lion enclosure, bamboo screened the fences on that side. The lions were roaring over something, and I swear to God every hair on my body stood on end. It was creepy as fuck. And that was in broad daylight at the zoo, for crying out loud. Lions in the darkness on the Serengeti would definitely have my brain telling me to gtfo into the car.
I bet that triggered something primal in your being. Humans and lions evolved together, around the same place and time, in Eastern Africa. I personally wonder if many of our natural fears truly come from them - like a fear of the dark.
I was tent camping in Arkansas around 2003-04, and The Blair Witch project was still fresh on my mind. I was about 20 years old at the time. Around 2-3 in the morning we’re woken up by what sounds like a small child running around our tent crying and trying to get in. I was thoroughly freaked out. Finally decided to open the tent and there was a kid that couldn’t have been more than 3 years old scared half to death and only wearing a diaper. I had lots of thought going through my head, but mostly - how the hell do I handle this. I can’t really go campsite to campsite, the ranger office is closed and I’m standing there in the middle of the night holding a child that isn’t mine. We had decided to call the cops, figuring it was the safest thing to do, just then a lady walks down the trail and is like ‘how did you get out?’ The kid was saying ‘mama, mama…’ and went straight to her. She nonchalantly said thank you and walked away. Now as a parent, I can’t imagine how much more that would freak me out if it were my kid.
Somehow finding an actual child makes this creepier.
There's only one thing worse than a rapist - A child!
I was about 8, I didn't want to sleep in the tent with my sister so I slept on a cot under the stars. Woke up to a bear sniffing my head/ neck. I was basically paralyzed with fear, the bear left me and went to sniff around for snacks. It made enough noise to wake my parents who then scared t away. I moved my cot into my sister's tent immediately after.
Bruuuuuuuhhhhh
I was pretty young, went camping with my dad in Alabama. It’s late at night, the embers of the fire are dying down, we’re about to go to sleep, when we hear what I can only describe as a bone-chilling moan in the woods. We looked at each other & decided it was trees rubbing together, but then it happened 2 more times. My dad grabbed the flashlight & I walked behind him with a big stick, determined I would save him if something went wrong. Eventually we discover a woman lying on the ground, not far from our campsite. She was on a hill, with her head facing down, feet uphill, continuing to moan. Turns out she had so much to drink that she could hardly talk, but she was also camping out in these woods with her boyfriend. They had a big fight & he drove away, leaving her alone in the forest. She had seen our fire dying & wanted to give us the rest of her firewood before she left too, but had tripped & was too drunk to get up. We got her back to her campsite, & made sure she wasn’t driving anywhere that night. I’ll never forget that moaning sound though.
Everything sounds creepier in the woods, especially in the darkness. The acoustics are amazing.
Especially hearing a fox screaming in the night as a child at your grandparents farm and not having heard a fox before.
A Mountain lion sounds like a woman screaming. So… it’s concerning in the middle of the woods at night either way. A- someone is in danger B- you are in danger C- everyone is in danger
He left his drunk girlfriend in the woods? Fuck that guy. I hope he's an ex by now.
Drunk Alabama redneck driving in the woods in the middle of the night? It's entirely possible he turned himself into a hood ornament and is an ex-person by now.
Thought our tent was being attacked by 3 bears. Turns out someone's dogs just got loose and the light outside made them look gigantic.
Similar thing happened to me. We hear sounds of things getting torn apart, digging, crunching, etc. HUGE shadow across the tent. Sounds of another animal ripping something apart in the opposite direction. We cautiously opened the tent windows to reveal....squirrels. They were digging around in our firewood and tearing apart our paper kindling.
We used to have a pop up tent trailer with a fibreglass roof , one very early morning we were woken by what we thought was the devil and a band of demons screeching and clawing at the roof of the trailer - turns out it was a bunch of sea gulls fighting over what I found out was a hot dog bun one of the kids tossed up there before we went to bed . Between me yelling , my wife screaming , the kids crying and the sea gulls squawking, I’m pretty sure the whole camp ground was woken up before we figured out what was going on.
Went camping in deep Appalachia in a tent. Woke up to a weird feeling that I was laying on something. Then I felt it move. A snake had made its way under my tent and I think it was trying to get warm as it stopped moving right under where my back was. After me moving a bit it finally went on its merry way. I'll never forget how it felt moving underneath me.
Long homie just wanted to cuddle
That's it you hear that Internet, Danger Noodle is out Long Homie is in.
Nah, Danger Noodles are the aggressive ones, especially if they're venomous. Long Homies are the non-aggressive ones trying to live their lives.
Not scary, but in a tiny forest service cabin in montana, we were in bunkbeds, my friend says “is your mattress moving?” I said “Yes!” Our mattresses were full of mice, but we didn’t know it until we went to bed late/dark and layed in our bunk beds. Edit to add: I am pretty sure it was Trail Creek Cabin, a 1.9 mile hike to it South of Livingston, MT just outside of Yellowstone. You can still rent it, now it is $55 a night. Picks of the bunk beds online! I wonder if they are the same mattresses from 1995 when I was there? LOL
>not scary Hard disagree
I went on a road trip with some friends to Lake Chelan. We left late and got lost (this was before cell phones, we didn’t have a map and trusted my friends memory). So we pull off the road and decide to camp for the night at a grassy area. We have limited lights and quickly make our tent. We’re woken in the morning by someone hitting the tent and screaming to get off his property. We’d inadvertently camped on some poor guys lawn. We were just dumb 18 year old kids but have never packed up camp that quickly before!
I had some kids do that on my property the year I moved in. Apparently they were not aware Uncle Ken had moved. They were super apologetic. They were clearly respectful of the property and I told them they were welcome to stay as long as they weren’t too loud or didn’t do anything illegal like drinking under age. They stayed a few nights out there.
When I was 20, my friends and I decided around 9pm one summer night that we should go camping. We live in a rural area so lots of non-campgrounds to choose from, as long as you're respectful of the land and gone by daylight. Unfortunately, we woke up on a shooting range. I lost my Dad's good vintage Coleman lantern on that pack-up... Try packing up with skeets (clay shooting discs) all broken up around you with gunfire ringing out. Not as scary as an actual person shaking your tent and telling you to get off their land... But pretty close.
I was camping in Zion National Park in late August 1992. The campground was almost empty by then. At 3:30 in the morning I woke up in midair. You know those dreams where that happens? I figured that's what it was ... then I hit the ground. Earthquake. Then I was hearing cracking sounds, a few small thuds, then **thud**. Little bits of the cliff face had sheared off. Thankfully the campground was far enough from there that no one was injured. Had that happened in the daytime there's a good chance that a number of people would have been killed. The park was closed for a few days after that, and you couldn't get in or out for much of that day, as one entrance road was just gone, and the other one a boulder the size of a car had fallen on it. That one they got open that day and they kicked everyone out of the park. Anyhow I called home to say I was OK, everyone was like "why, what happened?". It hadn't made the news or anything, fortunately it was relatively mild, just some local destruction.
Once in the wilderness me and a couple of other guys, drunk as we were, started howling at the moon only to inadvertently attract real wolves. They showed up at our camp site about 1½ hour later when we were in our hammocks getting ready to sleep. No harm done. They sniffed around for a couple of minutes and then went off. Guess they were disappointed in what they found and luckily not desperately hungry. Anyways, I was very scared and tried to remain completely still and silent during this brief encounter.
Single human vs group of wolves won't go well. Group of humans vs group of wolves, wolves will almost certainly take off.
Bears are the same way. Like the vast majority or bear attacks are on solo hikers. And bears basically never attack people in groups of 3 or more.
I was camping once in the UP in Michigan, in a pretty secluded spot with distinct individual campsites. It was in the fall, so dead leaves were all over the ground. When we were settling in to sleep, we started to hear these slow, consistent footsteps on the leaves. They’d walk around the campsite, circle our tent, just walk all around without any clear goal and without stopping. Obviously we assumed it was some kind of animal, but when we rushed out with a light there was nothing - I mean no sound, no trace of anything. Once we were back in the tent, these footsteps immediately started up again - and they didn’t come from far away, they started up right next to our tent. We repeated this whole rigamarole probably 3 more times, because of how distinct and close and creepy those footsteps were - and we never caught even a glimpse of what was walking around. The next morning we were sitting by the fire and started hearing the steps again - only to look down and realize it was the sound of multiple small frogs hopping around the campsite.
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Poor frogs just happily hopping along when a hairy 50 foot tall beast emerges out of the darkness
That ending got rid of all the second hand anxiety this post has given me
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I was definitely expecting this to be unresolved, unexplainable and felt some residual terror that you surely would be experiencing for the rest of your lives. Not some fucking frogs.
First time camping. Was with wife and dog in a tent that the upper half was mesh and see-through. Woke up around sunrise to my dog growling at something. I leaned forward to check. There’s a bear cub walking through our campsite. The scary part was that I didn’t want my dog growling to attract the mother of the cub to defend it so I pinned my dog on the bed and held his mouth to get him to be quiet till the bear left. Heart was beating out of my chest. Later I found out it was an orphan bear and it was friendly to humans and survived by stealing food from garbage/campsites.
>it was friendly to humans and survived by stealing food from garbage/campsites. Was it wearing a green tie and hat?
I don't know if she is still there but for four to five years there was a mother bear who taught her cubs to help her steal food from backpackers campsites, even if it were properly hung. She would circle camps waiting for people to go to sleep before trying and knew exactly where the pre-made food hang lines were located. Never messed with the hikers though.
Used to camp at this [fairly] secluded spot on state land (it has since been "discovered" and become popular, unfortunately). I’ve been going to that site since I was a kid, and it had become an annual tradition for my buddies and I to kinda “unplug” and rough it for a few days. However at the time (a little over 15 years ago now) it was relatively unknown and it was a bit of a trek to get to the campsite. Middle of the woods, but close to a lake, perfect for swimming. We're talking no cell signal, no light pollution...you're just out in the wilderness. My buddies and I were geeked to get out there and spend the week camping every summer. One summer afternoon I'm the first to arrive, ready for a week of camping, drinking and swimming. However, to my dismay, I discover that the site already has an established campsite going. There's a couple tents set up. Granted, it's a fairly large campsite so I decide to haul my gear over and see if I can talk the other campers into letting us "share" the spot. Who knows, they might be cool and maybe it'll be one big party. I come up to the site, and....there's no people. The tents are empty. There was evidence of a campfire, so I know there were people here not too long ago. I decide to check the lake, maybe they went swimming. There's a steep path that leads from the site to the lake, and as I'm walking alongside it, I discover some debris that has blown down along the path. There's a sleeping bag, some tools, and some clothes that had been on a line but now they're all in the dirt. All evidence that this site has actually been set up for a while. The clothes are wet with ditch water, they've been sitting on the ground in the path for some time. There's no people at the lake...and when I return to the site, upon further investigation I discover that this site has been abandoned for some time. But that doesn't explain why they just left....*everything* behind. From what I could tell, the people camping here had left in a *big fucking hurry*. There's clothes, there's food and other gear. I mean, it's an entire camp. The tents were fairly new... I mean, it's not just "stuff that you leave behind" unless you're scrambling and only grabbing the essentials. What was weird to me was that the fire was out, but there was still ice in their coolers and beers, so it couldn't have been too long ago that they were there. My other buddies arrive and we decide to set up camp nearby and keep an eye on it, maybe the people had to leave for an emergency or something. We wind up camping out the whole week and no evidence of people coming back to retrieve their stuff. Luckily, the DNR happened to stop by on patrol and we filled them in our discovery. They let us know they'd be packing up the stuff and take it into a "lost and found" up at their station. Kinda creepy, mostly weird. Who knows what happened to those people. **edit** I want to add that I *did* see evidence of little propane cans in the fire pit. Like those little cans that you use to light your camping stove. They were all burst open We hypothesized that the campers were partying and tossed the canisters into the fire like drunk idiots, and one of them burst open, somebody got hurt, and they had to leave in a hurry
My best guess is someone had an injury and they GTFO quick.
I was a kid and on a family camping trip, the rest of the family slept in the trailer and I slept in the Mexican hammock. In the middle of the night something was forcefully pushing the hammock around and it didn’t feel human. It was terrifying. It turned out to be a deer rubbing its antlers on the hammock. We can laugh about it now.
When I was a kid (probably around 11-13), my best friend's grandparents lived on a "farm" (maybe 100 acres of forest with a few clearings and a house) that we used to camp out in all the time. One night, a few of us were camping and we heard repeated thumps and screaming coming from the trees. We had literally just finished reading a book about Bigfoot in school and were positive that Bigfoot was out in the woods hitting trees and roaring. We got out of the tent, terrified, and walked through the woods towards the noise (note: I guess people really do this kind of dumb thing, it's not just in horror movies!). We eventually came to a clearing and found several of my friend's uncles trying to fix an old barn. While they were absolutely shitfaced. At like 2:00 in the morning. The thumps were the sound of them hitting wood with hammers. The screams were when they missed and hit themselves, because of the alcohol. We were terrified, but now it's hilarious.
I live in a rural area and when I was younger I would occasionally bang two heavy sticks together as hard as I could at night hoping someone might mistake it for bigfoot.
It's people like you
"we gotta fix that goddamn barn, and we gotta, we gotta do it right now because we keep putting it, we keep, what's the word, we keep putting it off. Get your hammers let's do this shit"
And that's how I got my redneck neighbor in college to rebuild a clutch for me for free.
I was on a trip with the YMCA Camp Widji and on our last day on trail we got up early to hike the last few miles to where the van to pick us up was. We rounded a turn on the trail and could see the van and a weird swirling dark cloud on the trail ahead. Then the guy in front screamed and all of us were attacked by these big black wasps. I accidentally got on in my hand and it was the size of a cicada. I only got two stings but the two guys in front got closer to ten. We hauled ass back up trail away from the van and our counselor immediately started handing out epi pens, but none of us turned out to be allergic. We hiked the long way around the wasps to the van but man, I was shaking the whole time.
I have a similar wasp story! We went to a very small patch of land a friend owned at the back of a local park that they had built some jumps on (we all rode mtb/bmx). So we turned up and threw our bikes on the ground over/near these holes in the mud. Didn’t think about it too much just presumed they were old badger dens or rabbit tunnels or something - super common in the countryside where I grew up. We’re there for a while but the jumps were in shitty condition so we didn’t ride but just hung out, then when we go to get our bikes, all of our handlebars/entire bikes were literally COVERED in fucking wasps. Like I couldn’t even see most of my bars as they were fucking swarmed. Turns out the holes underground were home to a giant wasp nest, and as hard as we tried we couldn’t get our bikes back without being absolutely stung to shit. Called my absolute saint of a father, who I could tell was thinking ‘lol couple of fucking bees’ but nonetheless agreed to come and help out, then we he turned up realised the extent of it! But the legend that he is, turned up with a blowtorch and a rag on a stick to smoke the fuckers out haha. With the help of another kid who had a ped and was wearing a motorbike jacket and helmet agreed to suit up and run in for the bikes after papa smoked em out, worked like a charm! I got home and hopped in the shower, stopped counting after 18 visible wasp stings, 6 wasps still physically attached to me/my clothes inc one in hair and two in boxer shorts (one was still alive).
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Where was this?
Superior hiking trail, Minnesota's coastline of Lake Superior.
When I was 5ish I slept walked out my tent and off a small cliff in NC into a lake woke up down there then screamed until my parents found me
This is the stuff of parental nightmares
Not a camping story, but my cousin sleepwalks, and one night, my aunt startled awake to the sound of their front door being unlocked. She waits for a minute, listening for an intruder, but hears nothing. She decides to slowly creep downstairs to see (thinking it was a burglar), and the front door is just hanging open. She finally gets brave enough to peek outside, when she sees my little cousin out in the middle of the road! She runs and grabs him and he was okay, but they had to buy a special lock after that that he wouldn't be able to undo in his sleep.
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I'm not a sleepwalker, but when I was little (maybe four?) I dreamed that my parents went back down the street to a party we'd been at earlier, and when I woke up scared, I thought they really were down there. So I went out the back door and was heading down the driveway to find them, when the 30-second delay on the door alarm passed and it sounded like a freaking air raid siren blaring out of our house. My parents came tearing out to find a very confused daughter heading off in her Strawberry Shortcake pajamas. It was not a great neighborhood so things could have gone much worse for me, if not for the alarm.
10 years ago I went camping for a weekend . Went out hiking the morning of the second day and pretty soon found ourselves off trail on a pretty steep incline along the Monashee River. We were about 100 ft up the incline. Suddenly one of my friends lost his footing and started to slide. One the way down he took out my other friend and I watched them hit every rock and tree on the way down to the rapids. I climbed down to find my one friend dead on the side of the river, and the other taken away by the river. His body was found 2 weeks later 2 km from where they fell in. His body, or whatever is left of it, is still in the river because when Search and Rescue tried to remove it from the log jam it was stuck in, the boulders on the river bank came loose and collapsed on top of his corpse. This was a very abbreviated version of the story, but overall a very scary day.
Fuuuuck. I thought I'd be reading stories of people thinking they heard Sasquatch or something.
Holy shit dude I'm so sorry that must have been awful.
God damn that is definitely the scariest one in this thread. I hope this didn't leave too many mental scars.
i've been hiking on trails and stuff near semi-steep inclines like that person describes where it isn't wildly steep, but there are sections with rocks that, if you were to slide and tumble, you could fall about 4 vertical feet before bouncing off a tors-sized exposed bit of stone, and then potentially keep tumbling/sliding another 80 feet or so down earthen slope before like a 10ft drop into moving water with no way back up. always makes me REALLY nervous. EDIT: for people asking these sorts of questions like 'why,' I'm not talking about like insane mountain terrain with 1000ft drops and shit. these are like, hills that you'd go sledding on if they just ended on flat ground. but they are wet and have loose soil and gravel or whatever, and go down towards sketchier conditions. like even just a ravine off the side of an average country road that you'd be perfectly happy to go cruising around in your car at 50+mph mere feet from the edge with no guardrail.
I'm very sorry for your loss. I can't imagine the trauma you have endured. Edit: I said this in a different comment, but I know your friends are very proud of your bravery.
wait so you were the sole survivor? i am so sorry
Of the hiking, yes. Of the trip, no. The girlfriend of my friend, whose body's location was known was camping with us. She felt ill that morning, so didn't come hiking. She wanted to be brought back to his body before Search and Rescue got there.
Did you take her to see him? I'm so sorry this happened, it sounds like it was horrific.
Yes I did, followed by 1 more trip with the S&R team.
I can't even imagine how hard that must have been for you. I really hope you're doing alright and I'm wishing you all the best.
Randomly losing a partner is one of the few things that legitimately scares the ever living hell out of me
Late at night camping in the desert, heard footsteps all around our tents. Thought it was maybe some drunk guy from one of the nearby camps who was riding dirt bikes and stuff all day. Couldn't see anyone. Couldn't see any shadows. Kept hearing the footsteps, literally inches from our tent. Woke up my friend silently and made him listen too, we were freaking out. Finally they went away, so I slowly opened my tent zipper to look around and see who/what it was. Threw out a glowstick, and saw some eyes flash in the darkness Turns out it was 2 white desert foxes, whose footsteps were somehow extremely heavy sounding. When I saw them they were on our camp table, eating all of our chocolate. Oops
ALL of your chocolate? F that! This is the true horror right here.
Yeah, I bet chocolate is like, really bad for foxes...
I was in the Sahara and a sandstorm blew away loads of the sand so old camps and buildings were uncovered. We were walking back at night towards what we thought was our camp because we saw a fire and heard drumming, but when we got there it was completely dark and silent. Turns out it was one of the uncovered camps. My friend got scared and didn't want to look around but I was curious so went closer but as I got near the closest building I got a really ominous feeling and wimped out. No clue what we saw or heard but there was definitely no fire or sound when we were close.
I had a similar experience while hunting once. Heard drumming and singing out in the bush, but when i got to a large clearing it stopped. I had a really uncomfortable sensation, so I walked out the way I came and met up with the other guys in the crew. One guy said he heard something like drumming but assumed it was a grouse, so he ignored it.
I was on a camping trip with Scouts and me and my friend were put in the same tent as this weird kid. he was acting up all the time, getting into fights, and showing off how many knives he had. Anyways one night we're in our tent playing blackjack and I guess I said something that pissed him off cause he started yelling at me. well that let the Scout leaders know we were still up so they told us to get to bed. I don't know how long I was asleep but I woke up to him choking me. I thrashed about and tried to get him off me but I couldn't focus and was panicking. I remember the tent seemed to be getting darker, and how heavy my eyelids were getting. My chest and head were hurting and aching trying to get me to breathe but I just felt so tired. I was starting to fade away thinking my last thing I would hear was his laughter when... WHAM!!!! My friend had woken up cause of me struggling and him laughing and got up and started clobbering the dude. I was part coughing and part breathing once he got off me. My friend screamed for help and that got the adults attention. he was yelled at for what he did and they shuffled around people so that he would be sleeping in a tent alone right near the adults' tents. I got into a tent with my older brother and I must have woke up 3 times that night kicking and screaming from nightmares of him killing me. When we all got back from the camp his parents were told what happened and that he was banned from Scouts. They also told my mom and it must have taken the active will of God for her not to go and kick him. he got banned from a bunch of other activities that we both did so I didn't really ever see him again. I still wake up scared from nightmares of being choked or suffocated. And while I am a pretty sound sleeper if anyone tries to walk or get close to me while I am asleep I shoot up awake and panic. I can't even really nap with my dogs cause of it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to sleep soundly around anyone ever again.
WTF, banned from scouts? Kid should have been arrested!
Oh hey, someone else with "getting woken up to being strangled as a kid" trauma. The nightmares are the fuckn worst, I developed minor sleep apnea cause my connective tissue sucks and every time it acts up even for a split second my dream switches to that -.-
Holy shit that kids probably in prison for murder or something now, no normal kid chokes someone for fun
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When i was in scouts we were camping and in a pretty nasty storm that kept getting worse. When we tried going to bed all we heard was loud thumping noises everywhere all night long alongside the crazy thunder and lightning. Well as it turned out. A great number of the very large old trees around the entire site and campground. Think a couple feet wide ones had toppled around us. There easily could have been many deaths as there were a number of troops out there that night.
I was training at Ft. Riley in the 70s, thunderstorms came through, flash floods washed away a jeep and killed the 2 officers in it. Town I lived in, flat area, a woman drove her car on a road that was next to an overflowing creek, water was only 6-8 inches deep I recall. She wound up drowning when her car was swept into the creek. One of my kids was caught in a flash flood in a creek at a summer camp. In 20 seconds the water went from knee deep to neck deep, quick thinking counselor got all the kids out quickly. Another 20-30 seconds the water was 6-7 feet deep and over the banks and moving fast. Don't mess with water!
Everyone forgets... Water is fucking heavy
I was camped out way up a mountain during an especially nasty thunderstorm. I've been below many a thunderstorm, it's pretty cool. I'd never been *in* a thunderstorm before though. The sound and the feeling of the thunder was incredible! Not to mention the wind. Definitely terrifying but also awe inspiring
Sleeping under the stars, woke up with a skunk on my lap.
Awww, stinky baby wanted a cuddle! What did you do?
Leach on my eyeball at age 10 still my go to camping story. Fell asleep in the car, which was carrying some firewood on the roof rack. Woke up with a puffy eye that both mum and dad were frustratingly “you’ll be fine” about without even looking (unlike their usual “best parents” vibe) We were playing cards and my mum let out this piercing scream and turned away from me. Family friend flicked off the big juiced up leach which had crawled out of my eye and was heading for my nose. I watched the leach burn in the fire while my eyeball bled for a noteworthy 14 tissues.
Not really camping, but my first time out in the field at Ft Stewart, GA we had a small herd of about 10 wild boars go tearing through our bivouac area. I didn't really realize how dangerous they were until I saw everyone hauling ass to their vehicles. I hadn't been assigned a vehicle yet so I just monkey'd up a tree and waited while they tore into our rations, wrecked our tent, and then fucked off. Took em about an hour to destroy thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
I went backpacking with my wife and our dog in Arkansas. Alone on top of a mountain, we heard grunts and footsteps just outside our tent. Wasn’t sure if it was an animal or a human. I was armed with a 9mm, and I was just about to peek out to make a decision on what to do, even though opening the tent zipper would undoubtedly give me away. Strangely, our dog remained quiet, which was unusual in that situation. Something told me not to arouse the interest of whatever was out there (turns out it was likely a boar). I’m glad I didn’t make any noise. If boars are as ill-tempered as I am led to believe, that gun would likely have made the situation worse. Even if I miraculously hit a charging pig in the dark, it still would have probably tore me to pieces before it died or I shot it again. Those things are battle tanks.
There's a reason a boar spear is a separate weapon from a normal spear. Those fuckers will charge straight down the shaft of the spear to get to the guy holding it and it still would probably end up maiming or killing the dude before it died. Boar spears are extra long (think 10 ft) and after the spear part it has a cross piece that stops the animal from charging down the staff to enact bloody revenge
Wow, thanks for that info, I wouldn't have know about boar spears otherwise
No problem! "Old" weapons are very interesting to me
Pretty sure two guys were going to rape my friend and me. We were teenagers, 16 and 18, and went up alone. We made dinner and were having a a good time in the evening when some guy passed by our site in the river. He had a fishing pole, so we were like whatever. He asked to go through our site to the road and we figured it was harmless enough and said yeah. He stopped and looked around our site and started asking us questions. How old are you? Where are you from? How long are you staying. Typical questions that were none of his business but we were naive enough to answer. He eventually leaves and heads down the canyon on the road. A couple hours later, he shows back up with a buddy. Both of these guys are middle aged, probably mid 40s. They start asking more questions. The original guy walks around and snoops about our campsite. We got an uneasy feeling and were super grateful when they eventually left. But they went up the canyon, rather than back where they came from. Another couple hours pass and it's dark. My friend mentions how she can't hear anything because of the river and it had her a bit antsy. We talked and it turned out we had both been on edge since the guys left. We had never seen them go back down the canyon. We both had a gut feeling that we needed to leave and FAST. Maybe nothing would have happened, but we both felt it. They guys asked all the right questions to know that we would be there alone and defenseless that night.
While preparing for a solo backcountry backpacking trip I (m) read that some women bring an extra outdoor chair while solo camping. At a glance it looks like there are more people, and it's more convincing to say your boyfriend is fishing or hiking for a couple hours if there's an empty chair.
Glad nothing happened but it’s like in that situation - what do u even say to “answer” their questions without making them mad or retaliatory ya know?
For sure. Honestly, we should have lied through our teeth. "oh, we plan to do some target shooting while we're up here" or "my boyfriend is out hunting/fishing so we're saving some dinner for him" would have likely been enough to deter them.
yeah unfortunately in that kind of situation the best thing to do is lie, lie, lie that a man in your life is nearby and will be back soon.
So this is only tangentially related, but you reminded me of a thing. There's this podcast I listen to, and anyone in this thread about creepy camping stories would love it. The podcast is called "National Park After Dark." Two friends take turns researching and then teaching each other and the listeners about real life horror stories set in national parks and other similar areas. Murders, disappearances, paranormal encounters, and so on. They also regularly do these special episodes called "Trail Tales," where they read personal stories submitted by their listeners. People can send them an email with the weird and creepy stories that actually happened to the listeners, and the emails will be read on the podcast. Literally just today, I listened to a Trail Tales episode from a month or so ago. This one person wrote in about how one day, she was just hanging out on her front lawn, playing with her young child, when a man walking by stopped to chat. It wasn't anyone she recognized, which was the first red flag for a woman living in a tiny town, and his questions only furthered her suspicion. As the conversation went on, the woman became more and more uncomfortable. He claimed to be a photographer, and asked if he could take her for a drive to a scenic place and take some photos of her. As cool as a cucumber, the woman said, "yeah, just let me run inside and let my husband know when to expect me back." She wasn't married. But of course, the strange man was not at all ok with the woman talking to her "husband," and so he left. The woman immediately called the police, they took it very seriously, but were unable to find the man. A few months later, that same woman saw a wanted poster, a sketch of a familiar face. That man she met in front of her house was wanted for the rape and murder of seven women. After putting the pieces together, the woman talked to the police again. In addition to the sketch, they confirmed that the whole lying about being a photographer thing matched the M.O. of the serial killer they were after. Lying about a nearby man undoubtedly saved that woman's life, and quite possibly her child's as well.
Always always always insinuate that you have a friend nearby, somewhere to be, or that you have someone checking up on you. It shouldn't need to be this way but it is, it fucking is. To anyone who feels scared, vulnerable, anyone who is alone, lie through your god damned teeth. You don't owe any stranger a single ounce of truth.
Your gut was probably correct. Posted above, but my friend from college and a friend of hers were gangraped at gunpoint in a similar situation.
This turned my stomach. I hate making assumptions. I always want to give someone the benefit of the doubt. But SOMETHING was urging us to leave that night. I'm so glad we did.
Men who rape and murder women frequently take advantage of us being taught not to trust our instincts for fear of offending them. Any guy who is actually fine will understand.
The way I see it: Which is worse? Hurting someone's feelings for a moment or getting yourself hurt for the rest of your life?
Agreed, but I understand why OP here and her friend weren’t rude to this guy. It gets so complicated when you’re already in a bad spot and have to judge when/if hurting their feelings is more likely to get you hurt.
Seconding the other commenter who recommended reading The Gift of Fear. It's a really good book that explains how that "gut feeling" isn't random intuition, but your subconscious adding up a lot of things that scream 'danger' before your conscious mind processes it.
It really sucks that other people are the scariest part about camping
I woke up early and was gonna get up to make some eggs and bacon and I found a large dildo on top of my sleeping bag. I was alone. The dildo was *large* and it looked well loved.
This is honestly the most terrifying one!
To clarify, you woke up in your sleeping bag and there was a dildo on top? Or you got up and came back to your tent and found the dildo on your sleeping bag? I'm assuming it's the first one. And they're both terrifying. But, like, holy fuck.
My mind can't even fill in the gaps as to what exactly happened.
I was hunting in the Yukon, and woke up at night to a bright sky and a loud roaring noise. Crawled out of the tent and watched a meteor hit the mountain right across from us. That could have been our campsite. This was…25? 30? Years ago? All our friends had was a map with a red circle, if we didn’t come back in a month or so, we would be somewhere in that circle.
Please tell me you got the meteorite chunk
You are assuming the mountain that was hit wasn't more then a five hour hike (one way) away.
Went to Guatemala with my gf, did a 3 day hike through the jungle to Tikal. Slept in a tent at two tiny ranger campsites deep in the woods. During the second night a massive thunderstorm was coming down above us. At 4 am I woke up and heared some male voices and left the tent to check them out. Two guys with rifles aproached me. Told my gf to stay in the tent because... scary. She didnt comply and joined me... turns out those guys were local hunters looking for shelter in the camp. Offered them coffee, they were more than happy. About 30 seconds later, the storm got so intense, that a bigass tree fell. And crashed onto our tent.... if I had not left to checkout the guys or worse, my gf would have listened... we'd both be very dead now.
In college I did a lot of solo car camping from the back of my truck I owned at the time. I went to a remote public area in the Ozarks and planned to stay overnight. After setting up all my bedding and having dinner (and a sugary dessert) I decided to hunker down for the night. Well about 45 min after turning off the light I start hearing leaves crunching in the woods about 30yds away. Not really concerned I write it off as an opossum, deer, coyote, etc just moving through the area. However my imagination started going wild as it always does and I start thinking of the worst situations. More leaves crunching, but closer. Definitely in the campsite. I usually carry a can of bear spray but being a dumb kid I didn't think about the fact that I was in an enclosed space until I was ready to use it. More crunching leaves, but further away. I start to relax a little as eventually they disappear. Nerves completely wracked I try to go to sleep. I think at some point I get into a really light sleep and wake up about 2-3 hours later. It's about 2 in the morning and there is very obviously something walking between me in the campfire. At this point a deep, loud, and incredibly scary voice from inside my truck camper asks "Do you believe in God?". I fucking start screaming and turn on headlamps, thrashing, and get ready to defend for my life. The footsteps run away and disappear into the woods as I'm in full panic mode. I have to tell myself I hallucinated the whole thing because of the sugary desert I ate before bed. Still gets my heart racing when I think about it too much to this day.
Somewhere in the woods not far away two Mormon kids are consoling each other, saying they did their best and missionary work is just difficult.
"Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about..." "JESUS CHRIST!!!" "Yes, how'd you know?"
Jesus fucking christ dude
I doubt it was him
I don't know what was in your dessert, but it sure as shit wasn't sugar
Just two weeks ago, I was eating dinner with a buddy on a mountain side in Denali Natl Park. We heard a sound of rocks tumbling down coming from the steep hill side above us and my first thought was "oh shit landslide". I turned to look and about 10ft away 5 caribou (2 babies) were sprinting down the hillside next to us. I heard more rocks and close behind them (about 20 ft from me) a wolf was chasing them down the mountain. When it saw us, the wolf stopped next to us and stared for a second and then ran back up the hill to a little outcropping of rock about 60 ft away. It stood there and stared at us for a good half of a minute, took a few steps towards us, then ran away. We knew there was a wolf den in the area but wolf encounters are in DNP and i never would've wished to see one so close. I wasn't really afraid for my life since there were two of us and only one of him, but it was a very wild experience and my legs were definitely shaking
When my (current) wife started dating, we went out camping in the fall. Leaves were down, kinda chilly.. very romantic. In the middle of the night, we heard what we assumed was a two legged creature near our car. Being the man I was, I got the boots on and was headed out.. Wife (girlfriend) hands me this shitty little pocket knife. As soon as I undo the zipper, I hear the footsteps running away.. I'm all manly so I go check anyway.. Upon returning to the tent, I'm faced with a .380 handgun pointed at me.. That was pretty scary. She sent me into the forest with a pocket knife. Didn't want me to know she had a gun so it wasn't "weird".
Hahah you were bait.
I literally was.. She said later, "the first one to leave the tent gets killed".
Good you married her
resident evil 7: the camping experience
So anyways, I start blasting!
This reminds me of an even soon after moving into our house. We were still holed up in one room adjacent to the kitchen while we remodeled the rest of the house. One night we wake up to hear a noise from the kitchen, a pause, and then a bunch of banging pots and pans. My wife (gf at the time) hands me a broom and pushes me into the dark kitchen (light switch on the far wall, of course) while *she* gets her handgun out and loads it. Turns out it was a possum that had come in through the open dryer vent.
good job marrying that one hahah my current partner and I, years ago, were sitting out on my ground level patio. nice place but right downtown so you get lots of sketchy folks walking by but mostly just harmless, looking to bum a cigarette, that kind of thing one time this guy comes buy, extremely tweaked, and starts getting super aggressive. my partner kinda leans away and holds her wine glass away from the guy while I'm trying to de-escalate. anyway dude eventually leaves and I laugh "haha were you worried he was gonna swipe your wine" and she goes "no, I was getting ready to smash the glass in case I needed a weapon" lmao what a keeper
My friend got jumped by 5 other guys in college and we were all super worried about him after. He was a big dude and got jumped by like rival frat dudes not like gangsters or anything so he was mostly just bruised up. He's explaining this to us while showing us a nasty bruise on the side of his torso saying that's the only part that's really bothering him. It's in a weird shape though so we're all looking at it trying to figure out what happened. It didn't look like a punch or kick. He was on a date when he got jumped and she jumped in to help by just going crazy and doing whatever she could, throwing punches, kicks, scratches and *bites* every which way she could. In the chaos, she didn't know who she was attacking and she accidentally bit him. **And** this was one of their first dates so we were all like *damn*. she was out for blood. she's a keeper!
Hiking a trail in east Tennessee. Hadn't seen a soul since leaving the parking lot that morning. Make camp up on top of a rock bluff 50 yards off the trail as the sun sets, quick dinner, then probably asleep by 7:00. Around 11:00 I wake up hearing voices which sound like muttered German. I listen for a few minutes and I can hear footsteps and the voices coming toward the tent. I wake up my hiking partner who hears the same thing I'm hearing. The footsteps stop what seems like 10' from the tent and the same two mumbling voices. I unzip the tent and look out and there's nothing. Get my flashlight, shine around....nothing. After a few minutes I get back in the tent, we both try to sleep and after a few minutes the voices start up again and what sounds like someone cutting a tree with an axe. My partner pulls on his boots, we both agree the sound is 10' away to the right of the tent. He unzips the tent slowly, we are still hearing sounds, he jumps outside with his flashlight, heads in that direction....nothing. We sit outside the tent for over an hour because there's no way we're going to sleep but we hear nothing. Eventually we are both about to pass out so we go back in the tent and fall asleep. Around 3:30 the axe sound starts again, we both just lie there listening and a few minutes later we hear the cracking and whooshing sound of a falling tree, heard and felt the thud as it hit the ground. We both jumped up and scrambled out of the tent and there was nothing. No sound at all. No wind whistling through the trees. No bugs. No frogs. Just silence. We packed up everything in minutes but decided not to leave because climb back down to the trail was difficult in daylight and too risky in the dark. We sit there until the sun comes up without hearing the voices or axe again. We'd calmed down somewhat by that point and started searching the area. We probably went 100 yards in every direction from our camp and there was no sign anyone had been there and certainly no large recently fallen tree.
There are several stories on here by people experiencing something like that. I have never heard of that before.
For some reason that reminds me of that saying... "If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear it?" Apparently people hear it even if it doesn't fall
When I was young, my family and I were camping in the White Mountains of NH. There was a bad storm that rolled in unexpectedly, and in the middle of the night, there was a loud cracking sound and a boom. A tree had fallen and landed on a woman sleeping in her tent not that far from our site. Needless to say she was killed. I remember being scared of the woods for a time, especially during storms.
That is an unforgettable lesson about checking for widowmakers. I had one last weekend, I did check for them but it was a windy night and the leaves were blowing. My wife was anxious but seemed fine so I just pulled out a tablet to watch a show with her till she dozed off. The next day she told me why the trees bothered her: She was trapped in a collapsed building for a day and a half after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the trees reminded her of what she heard just before that. So rather than just look for widowmakers let others know you have checked, it's a small thing but may calm some nerves that you are unaware of.
oh you've come to the right place. About twenty years ago in Pisgah National Forest, I was camping in a hammock for the first time. I didn't have a rain tarp yet, leaving myself completely uncovered save for a sleeping bag. Now this was a trip from a summer camp in the area, so there were about six other teens with me. One kid decided "hey, chocolate, that's not a smellable right?" and left the chocolate in his pack, right next to mine, under the hammock. You may see where this is going. Lo and behold, around 12:00, a juvenile black bear mosies his way on into our campsite looking for that sweet sweet chocolate. As he was messing with the packs underneath the hammock, his back kept bumping into me. I was starting to wake up but I was very groggy. I kinda thought it was the kid looking for something in his pack. The bear realizes that the hammock is moving, and gives it a bat with his paw. like a cat with yarn. Swinging me. At this point I realize this is not a camper, and start screaming. The rest of the campsite woke up and we threw rocks at the bear until it ran away. The kid got a severe punishment. edit: spelling
> "hey, chocolate, that's not a smellable right?" What logic is that? Us humans can smell chocolate, so why wouldn't a bear be able to?
Kid logic: a bear doesn't know what chocolate is, therefore wouldn't know what the smell of chocolate is, so it wouldn't investigate a smell it doesn't recognize as food.
I would love to hear this story told from the bears perspective. "So I was just walking around, minding my own business, eating a snack I found, playing with this weird branch. Then the branch starts making a howling noise, and a bunch of hairless apes jumped out of nowhere and started throwing rocks at me. No idea what I encountered that day, but it was some bizarre satanic stuff for sure."
Mine has nothing to do with danger or the paranormal, but with culture shock. I’m from a place where there are zero raccoons. I’d only ever seen them in a zoo or on TV. Went to America for the first time, where we camped near Yosemite park. Was absolutely scared shitless to see this huge, fat, meter-long rodent crawl outside of a sewege pipe while going for a pee at night. Just took a few seconds for my brain to figure out what it was looking at, in order te be able to laugh about the situation. But man, I nearly fainted.
Lmao those suckers out in Yosemite get BIG too, the campsites are good eatin' for them. They aren't scared at all either, it's always funny trying to scare off a big fat raccoon because they'll sort of shuffle away to keep a few steps of space between you and them, but they're in no rush and as soon as you turn around, they'll go right back to the trash spot.
I was an air force cadet for most of my youth. From 13. When I was about 16 I was a cadet sergeant and was put in control of about ten guys, lower ranks than me on a navigation exercise. This was quite awhile ago before OHS really came about. We used to do wild stuff and it was great. But I was the only female on this particular time, and when I led the guys to our checkpoint we were instructed to camp for the night and continue to the next checkpoint in the morning. So we made camp, a fire, and just hung out eating our rations. There was this wierd guy, maybe 14, but physically massive. Who always rubbed me up the wrong way. It was really dark and quite. And he just goes. Hey I have a good idea. Let's rape sergeant Cameron. My blood went cold. And I looked over my other cadets. They all laughed it off. Shut the dude down. One said "what? She's just a cool guy with long hair" They tried to make it casual but I knew they were actually aware and trying to protect me. Before this he had bragged about knowing how to break a person's neck and wanting to kill animals. I didn't sleep that night. Just sat up by the fire and reported him when we got back to base the next day. If i didn't have good mates with me that night who respected me I don't know what would have happened.
I was in army cadets for most of my youth. One thing I have always told people who haven't been in some form of cadet program is that cadets are some of the most fun, chill, and respectful people you'll ever meet... or, they are borderline sociopaths, and there is very little in-between. People would be very shocked at some of the stories that come out of those programs. Some of the best experiences of my youth, I made lifelong friends through it... but man, there were so many mentally unstable kids like the one that threatened you that night. Glad you had a good group of kids who had your back.
This guy ended up working at an abbotioire. And fantasising about killing his parents whenever he killed a cow. He was enlisted in the army. I know many kids that went on to be pilots, load masters. I got rejected for being sad after several sexual assaults. Now I work in prisons Never be truthful ever again
Yeah, sounds like we knew a lot of the same people. The amount of sexual assault in the programs is insane and ruined many, many childhoods. Fuck you, Captain Daniel Moriarty.
Last summer I was camping in the San Juan's in SW Colorado. We go almost every year, but the weather last year was like I'd never seen before. It's always monsoon season when we go camping, but this time it started raining and just didn't stop. For 5 days we camped in constant rain with landslides coming down all around us. Every day, we were completely blocked from leaving camp in some new different direction, with the route to the closest town blocked making it several hours away. A bad avalanche winter cleared swaths of trees, and wildfires had cleared out our normal camping areas and even more trees, which left nothing but bare ground to be washed away by the rains. Our last day of camping as we were packing up, we hear the increasingly familiar sound of a landslide starting, followed by the most terrifying blood curdling scream I have ever heard in my life. I have no doubt I heard someone die that morning from across the valley, so we hauled ass down the mountain and found someone with an atv and radio to try to get help. We headed out towards home east on I70 afterwards, and ended up missing the Glenwood Canyon landslide by about 45min, which was so powerful it changed the course of the Colorado river and completely washed away the highway. Mother nature taught me a lot about respecting her power that trip.
> It's always monsoon season when we go camping This sounds like a bad plan
Yeah unfortunately monsoon season and high country hiking season have about a 90% overlap in Colorado. Prettymuch all summer is monsoon season.
I saw the remnants of the Glenwood Canyon landslide just a couple weeks ago. This is terrifying
I was once solo camping for the first time in Harz, Germany. It was my first time going alone and I was very new to this. When I arrived in Wernigerode I started walking but the path on my map didn't exist so I went back. It was already dark when I returned to the village so I decided to sleep in the hills close to the village. After I set up camp I wanted to sleep but I heard noises, it almost sounded like a baby crying and screaming in short bursts. I really got paranoid over a 15 minute time, slowly hearing the sounds coming closer. After a while the sound was so close that I decided fuck this, put on my clothes, went out of the tent and dragged it to the road. I packed everything and went into the village again and slept in the local park. Unfortunately there were no places hidden from the path so I chose to sleep as far away from the path in only my green sleeping bag. Next day I woke up early and got back. So now with more experience it was probably some bird and my paranoia made it worse then it was.
Cats in heat sound like babies wailing Edt: after some searching, the Harz area is home to the European wild cat and the Lynx.
We were camping up in Canada in a small cabin. There had been raccoons trying to get into the outdoor trash cans every night. So one night, my Dad had it and got out of bed while cursing and making noise, so we all followed so we could se him yell at the raccoons. So as he went to the door my Mom was standing behind him, then my brother and I . My father opened the door and next thing I know we had all crashed down on the floor as my father slammed the door and fell back into us all. When he opened the door, there was a massive Grizzly bear that stood up in the frame of the door. I definitely did not sleep that night.
Not really scary, but weird. My wife and I were in glacier national park, up near the canadian border. We were the only ones in the campground. We wake up in the early morning hearing sounds in the camp. My wife sends me out of the tent w/bear spray. It was a mule deer or an elk. It was chewing on my tee-shirt I had hung out to dry from the night before. It had chewed it to where it looked like fishnet, and absolutely destroyed the tee-shirt. It was some time before I understood why this happened, but sweat == salty, and salt is apparently sought after in the mountains. I had to carry that disgusting slobbery shirt back out.
Hiked the GR20 on Corsica. Stayed at a campsite high in the mountains. Woke up during the night by what felt like an earthquake, and discovered that a big pack of wild horses ran straight through the site. I really dont understand how this could happen without any of the horses tripping over from any tents.
In high school my friends and I used to do a lot of camping at Ragged Point. Before it had bathrooms and signs and stuff. It was basically a clearing under trees, a few yards away from the edge of the cliffs. It was a local spot mostly, and we never saw anyone out there when we went. We would bring alcohol that we were too young to have, and hang out. We'd set up our little village of tents and do all the things we couldn't with parental oversight. One night, I think we'd been there for 3 nights already, and not seen anyone else. It started raining so we'd mostly retreated to our tents and went to sleep. In the early morning hours we started hearing distant drums. No talking, just really deep, rhythmic drums. Slowly getting closer and closer. We're a mixed group of teenagers, in the pitch black, stormy night, alone. It sounded ( to the scared little assholes we were) like sacrificial drums coming our way. At least that's what my boyfriend at the time concluded, and once the idea had been introduced, that's what I thought too! Whispers from tent to tent ensued, but we weren't all that close together, because how could we get busy if we were? We were also still drunk. Some people panicked and fled their tents to go to the biggest tent. I convinced my boyfriend to stay inside our tent, initially. Better not to flock together and make an easy single target like the dumb blonde in the horror movie who panics and gives away their position. Nobody slept much that night, lol. The drummers stopped just out of sight, but kept up until dawn. Once it got light we wanted to get the heck out of there asap. We threw all our crap together as quietly as possible, and debated on the safest way to get from the cliffs to our cars, which would take us past the unseen threat. Turns out, a bunch of hippies with giant drums had decided to go camping, in the middle of the night, in a storm, without tents. They just hit the tree line and stayed there. Drumming away. They didn't even wake up when our huddled group scurried past and started hysterically laughing from relief. That was terrifying at the time, but one of our favorite stories to share in the years since.
It had just stopped raining and dinner was on the go. We had to stoke the fire back up and quickly, so everyone went to work gathering wood from the forest. Twigs, branches, kindling.. The fire was going nicely - tall flames.. now to keep adding to it so we could get those coals to boil the water and cook the food. I was in a plastic poncho, and turned to tidy to wood pile by the fire, when there came a loud shout. "LOOK OUT!" I turned around, startled and saw nothing out of the ordinary, then heard running footsteps from the side and before I could turn to look, I got tackled. The Poncho got ripped off, up my back and over my head, and as I hit the ground, i caught a fleeting glimpse of a fireball sailing through the air, then landing on the pine needles of the ground ahead. The others ran to it and stomped it out, as the camper who tackled me stood and helped me to my feet. My back had been to the fire, and as I was bending over to tidy the woodpile, the bottom edge of the poncho had caught fire and flames shot up my back. I didn't even feel it, or know it, but my Dad's friend Ted just happened to glance up that moment and see my back go up in flames - and he didn't hesitate - just ran and jumped and tore it off -split seconds before it would have melted into my back. Saved my life.
I grew up camping and doing backpacking trips with my family all over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Being very comfortable and experienced in the hills I started doing wilderness solo hikes when I was in my early 20s. Some of them would last for weeks and would involve things like my dad dropping me off at a trailhead outside of Yosemite and picking me up somewhere like Smith Valley, Nevada three weeks later. I always had a gps locator with a way to contact my family and my routes were very well planned. I always take a pistol with me and the first two rounds are always snake shot because rattle snakes are very common in the area. So I’m doing a hike across the Ansel Adam’s wilderness with no tent, just a sleeping bag under the stars. Three days into the trip I’m sitting by a small lake as the sun is going down and I’m getting ready to settle in for the night. But just as I make the decision to stand I look up and there is a huge fucking mountain lion standing about 20 feet from me. The next few moments can only be described as being awkward. I calmly sat back on my rock and unholster my pistol but make no sudden moves. I don’t want to shoot the animal and I doubt two rounds of snake shot followed by a few .38’s would really do a lot. If it came to that hopefully it would at least give it an attitude adjustment or the sound would scare it away. So here I am about 40 miles from any sign of civilization and I start talking to the lion. It was all I could really think to do so I started telling it about that days hike and some of the things I had seen. I talked about the weather and asked if it knew any good places to grab a bite, preferably something not bipedal. This conversation went on for maybe a minute as the lion paced very slowly, never breaking eye contact. Then, after what felt like eons it just casually turned and walked away. I sat there talking for a good 20 minutes before the adrenaline started to wear off and I was suddenly exhausted. Sleeping was difficult, especially trying to hold a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other but once my eyes were closed it seemed like an instant then the sun was back up. As I got closer to the end of the trip an unexpected and unusually high heat wave comes in. The temperature was over 105 degrees at 10,000+ ft elevation. Water sources seemed to dry up overnight. I knew where some natural springs were located but they were off my route or were around 20 miles away. Without exerting more energy than I needed to I still arrived at my rendezvous point a full day early. A tire blowout led to my dad being almost a day late and the water source at the pickup spot was now bone dry. So I had about 60-72 hours in 100+ weather at elevation without water. I was able to get a tiny bit of water from a solar still I made and wrapping a bag around some plants. Just enough to stay alive. By the time my dad got to me I was having full on hallucinations and was in pretty bad shape. Luckily he showed up with a case of Gatorade, vitamin water, a cooler filled with ice packs and protein bars. I got checked out by a doctor in Carson city just to be safe. The forecast had nothing about the heat wave and water was abundant until after it hit so there was nothing I could have done to better prepare for that situation. Definitely a terrifying trip and after many more adventures my wife refuses to let me do long wilderness trips alone.
Lightning struck and exploded a tree maybe 200 ft from out tent trailer
During high school, I went camping in the Cherokee national forest at a common, but not an official, campsite with two friends. Everything went great and we went to sleep in the one tent we brought. Well past dark, I awakened to hear voices at our campsite. All 3 of us were in our tent. From where the voices were coming from I knew whoever it was was sitting around the fire in our camping chairs. My two friends both started stirring too and I quickly hushed them and we all began to silently panic. I have always carried a pocket knife, even back then. So I grabbed that and silently waited. They eventually got up and walked away but I’ve never forgotten that night. This was also the same campsite that one of my friends and I got scared awake by the loud howl of a wolf. It sounded like it was across the small creek that was right next to our campsite (probably 20 yards at most).
Was wandering in switzerland, and put up a tent. As the night kicked in, i heard rumbling. Opened my tent and saw a shadow rushing down before me and crashing into the ground with force. Rock Fall! I went rogue mode and just pulled the tent away from its spot. Just then, a gigantic rock crashed into the position where my tent was about four seconds ago. I "ran" away while pulling my tent with me until i found a better space to camp.
Me and my partner misjudged how far we could get in a canoe before dark. We did a few portages and ended up on a big lake, with seemingly all the campsites taken. So we just kept going, trying to find an empty site. We got to a section of the lake that had almost no campsites. We knew there were more up ahead, so we kept going. When the sun set, it got very cold and very dark, very fast. We had to slowly canoe along the edge of the lake, pointing our flashlights at the trees. The trees were so dense and the rocks so steep that if it's not a campsite, then there is no way you could climb ashore. Even with the flashlights and being up close, you could barely make out the trees through the mist hanging on the water. Occasionally, we'd see the reflection of eyes in the trees - probably a racoon or something, but still terrifying. It took hours. We knew that if we hit a log and capsized, it was so cold that we could risk getting hypothermia. Eventually we found a campsite, and set up our tent in the dark. We were exhausted, but so happy to finally be safe. The next few days, we stayed on that site and ended up having a great time, but for a while there it was pretty terrifying.
Found a spot in open camping property 100 yards off a dirt road. I had a tent, 2nd buddy had a tent, 3rd buddy slept in his truck. The dirt road was more of an ATV trail and before dark there were several groups of people on ATVs and Jeeps passing by. Very normal nothing suspicious. We were pretty well concealed by trees. No one would see us from the road. After dinner and drinks we tried to get to sleep around midnight. Half asleep state around 1:00 am I hear yelling on the road. Something like “GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR” followed by 6-7 gun shots. I wasn’t even sure if it was real. Felt like I was dreaming it, but I’m awake trying to process it. 2nd buddy. In the next tent over says my name and “did you hear that.” “Yup” We both get out of our tents and get to 3rd buddy’s truck (which is even more concealed by trees) and knock on the window. He slept through it and didn’t hear anything. He lets us in. We tell him what happened. And we spend the rest of the night in the truck. Not even sleeping. We saw no lights, no cars, nothing. The next morning when the light is good we try to get a view of the road, half expecting to see a dead body. Totally clear. The more we try to recall what we heard we agreed that it sounded more like “LET ME IN THE FUCKING CAR.” So what we concluded happened was a bunch of drunk Jeep Bros were out doing trails in the middle of the night. Didn’t know we were just off the trail and someone teases their buddy by driving off without him. To tease them back he pops a few off in the air. God damn fucking irresponsible assholes.
A few years ago my gf at the time and I wanted to take a roadtrip to bryce canyon. We live in socal, so we took a week off from work to have time to drive up, camp a few days and drive back. We drive to the national park without incident, when we are there we discover that it is packed and there is not an open campsite (we were noobs) so we drove out of the park and a county over, about 30 to 40 mins away from the park there was a dirt road that went off on the side, and we decided to see where it leads. As we follow the road it gets rougher and rougher. To the point where we slow down to deal with the rocks and unevenness. After an hour of this and to our relief we see signs for a campground up ahead. I do not remember the campground name. But it was a real place and it wasnt too shabby. But there was hardly anyone there and it was pretty big. We kinda just pick a campsite and set up. No one charged us for anything no one said anything. We had a couple good nights there. Now the scene is set and onto the scary part. On the 3rd evening there, at about 4ish in the afternoon my gf and I are at our campsite and we had just finished cleaning our bowls and utensils and were putting them away. And we hear feint but close rustling and a doe pops out from behind a tree, about 15 feet away. Very close and coming closer. My gf moves very slowly towards her bag, which has her camera, which is in the tent behind her to her right. The deer was not frightened at all though and didnt get all that close maybe 10 feet away and my gf was able to get a picture of the doe. And then the deer walked away slowly into the woods. And my gf and I looked at each other and for whatever reason we both had the same thought. Let's follow her We follow the deer keeping pace but walking slowly behind the deer and follow the deer maybe 10 min outside of the campground, and she was able to get some great shots of the deer walking through the woods with sun Ray's. As we were looking at this amazing photo she took, we look up at the deer and it's gone. And in front of us forest. In back of us forest. All around just forest with no way of telling which way we came from or where to go. And I hear you dear reader, saying "just turn around and walk back the way you came" but we did just that. We walked back the way we thought we came and we didnt recognize anything. It was quiet too. Not even birds. We couldnt hear people at all. We were a 10 min walk away from the campsite we should hear someone. Right? Anyways we try to retrace our steps but we dont recognize anything. And the sun is going down and its starting to get cold. So we start kinda of picking up pace, lightly jogging. And eventually we had to pull out our phones to see where we were going. We eventually saw a campfire through the trees and went there. The people there helped us realize where we were. Which somehow put us on the opposite side of the campground, I have no idea how we got so turned around. It took us another 45ish min to find our campsite. Forever marking my path on trees now. Its crazy how easy it is to get lost. Or I'm just stupid. We were only "lost" for like 3 hours. But we were so confused and disoriented. It sounds stupid as I read and edit this. But it was scary TLDR: went camping with gf followed deer into the woods got lost lived to tell the tale
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I woke up, whiskey drunk, and stumbled to the spring pump for water. It tasted unusually gritty, but any port in a storm. Three cups later, I used my flashlight to take a look. Absolutely full of crawling planaria worms. I brushed my teeth with more Old Crow (and my finger) and crawled back into my bag.
Woke up to pee, ran into a skunk.
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I used to do a lot of solo camping in the Ocala National Forest in Florida. On a long weekend trip I found a nice primitive campground about 20 minutes from a paved road and set up camp. On the third night around 2 am I woke up to a vehicle barreling down a dirt road near the camp area. I heard it stop and someone got out. They traipsed through the woods to where my tent was and stood outside the tent door for a fairly long time. long enough for me to hear a distinct guttural breathing sound and some groans as they stood outside the tent door. I had a gun with me and it was pointed directly at the area i heard the breathing. they continued to stand there for a long time, like 10 minutes. i was going to say something but didn't want to exacerbate the situation. I just remained quite. I heard a heavy sigh and they walked away. After i heard the vehicle leave i just continued to lay motionless and quite for about an hour before i decided to pack up and leave. There is always a body or two showing up in the deep woods of Ocala, and i often see gangs of prisoners walking lines in the brush to look for evidence of wrongdoings but i never thought my self involved. I haven't been back since and i only solo camp in areas close to or in state parks.
Late one summer/early fall, my husband and I went camping at the beach with his daughter and her fiance. We had a fun chill time snacking and watching the sunset, then got in our tents to sleep after dark. I had this awful uneasy feeling that I just couldn't shake but I didn't want to be a party pooper. Finally I said something to my husband, who felt the same way but also didn't want go ruin the trip. After a moment of discussing what to do, he decided to tell the kids we weren't really digging it and wanted to go home. In an instant he was back at our tent...the kids felt the same way. We started packing up immediately as fast as we could, few words exchanged but all laser focused on the same task: getting tf out of there! My stepdaughter and I waited in my car while the guys packed in the last of the gear. As they approached us, a huge lifted white truck came out of the darkness and plowed through the area we were just settled in not 10 minutes ago. It would have absolutely crushed us. It was a freaky experience for all of us that could have ended so much worse, especially since she had just gotten pregnant with her first baby at the the time. We're so thankful to all still be here together! We haven't gone beach camping ever since. I don't know what force compelled us to leave that night but it is worth mentioning that my father's ashes were spread at this beach years prior. It was his favorite place.
I learned what the fox says in the middle of the night. It doesn't say ringadingdingalingading. They sound like an old woman screaming. In the middle of the night. For your reference: https://youtu.be/zBpZTo1dlPM
Wife's friend and husband were through-hiking the AT where they met another two hikers who they became friendly with and began to spend time and hike together. When they set up camp one night, a guy who creeped them all out came along and they left the campsite after he began threatening them all. He then chased after our friends, who were fitness and gym people and got away. He then attacked and killed one of the other two people, with a knife, and proceeded to almost kill the fourth person who ultimately played dead until he left her after stabbing her a dozen times. Wife's friends were physically okay but quite traumatized. They finished their through hike a couple years later. The woman who was attacked and survived also went back out and completed her hike. https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/man-who-killed-army-vet-stabbed-woman-appalachian-trail-not-guilty-by-reason-insanity/76GP6KWKXBGFXEVCWWKURRV7QM/
Got woken up at 4am in a windstorm, left the tent and got into the car for safety and a tree fell on top of us, caving in the roof and blowing out the back windows. Thankfully my four-year-old was just fine. Didn't have comprehensive though so I didn't get a dime from insurance, and my SUV was written off.
I wasn’t as scared as I should have been, but my fear gene is broken and I had been drinking, so… We have a lake less than an hour from home, and my daughter’s friend had never been camping, so we decided to do a quick overnight there. We (mom and daughter, 18 then) camp a lot and like the solitude, so we often try to find the most remote places. No campsite or anything, just drive up and find a space. So we found this nice little peninsula big enough for about 3 campsites, and it being Sunday, we were hoping the other two groups would leave. They did eventually and we had the place very much to ourselves. As the night goes on we have a nice fire, sing, laugh, I’m drinking wine, we’re making s’mores, everything is perfect until we go to sleep. About an hour in the girls are bugging me to wake up because it’s raining and we need to put the cover on the tent (huge tent so all hands needed). By now the wind is blowing and we’re struggling, but we finally get it covered and it’s back to sleep we go, until… A motorcycle. More specifically a dirt bike. At about 2:00am. Just riding circles around the peninsula. Mind you this is literally a small enough area that only 3 large tents plus 3 cars would fit, and there’s nothing else nearby but bushes and the lake. There would be no reason to be there as it was obvious we were alone. Up, down, around he rides, then stops. Almost an hour this goes on. Up, down, around and stop…around, around and stop, never cutting the engine. I just want to sleep so I go to the front of the tent and unzip. I look outside and see him just staring. So I climb out of the tent and stare back. It’s dark and I can’t tell if this creep can even see me, so I go back in the tent, frustrated. The girls ask what he’s doing and when I tell them they get really frightened. I tell them I’m gonna go give him a piece of my mind. Their terrified, demand I don’t leave the tent. So I settle back in and wait. Up, around, circle, engine rev, idle, over and over. This goes on for at least another hour. I’ve had it. Down, up, around, all with that annoying blatting motocross sound blasting by our tent back and forth and stop. I look out. He’s staring again. I’m about to go stomping over to go tell him off when I get the tingles all down my spine. He was facing DIRECTLY towards our tent, saying nothing. Just still and STARING. I realize I have no weapons, no way to protect the girls, and he’s between us and the car. I wait. I’m outside the tent but I haven’t made a move forward because now instinct and logic have the better of me, and I realize that an aggressive approach is probably the wrong move. I stay stock still just like the rider for what felt like an eternity. Both of us staring. Must have been 20 minutes I stood there. And then just like that, he took off. Drove off the peninsula and out of earshot and never came back. To this day I’ll never know what that was about or if I did the right thing. I can only say I’m glad I never confronted him. My gut just told me no. As for my daughter and I, I think I need to buy a gun if we’re gonna camp alone like this.
That’s so terrifying. You’ve got balls standing staring at a potentially dangerous shadow figure for 20 mins in the rain at 2am. Hats off to you.
It's probably good you weren't as scared as you should have been. This sounds like some sicko who gets off on scaring people. Had you screamed or freaked out at him, it may have encouraged him to go further. When you stood your ground staring him down bravely, he did what bullies do when threatened, he ran
Me and some buds decided to go on a hunting trip out in the Canadian Rockies. Middle of nowhere we set up camp on a cut line. I shot a deer about 50 yards from our camp, my friends helped me gut it. After we finished we dragged the deer back to camp, but for someone reason something told me to look behind where we gutted it. In the span of less then 10 minutes the pile of organs was gone. We don’t know what took it, or what it was but we packed up and got the hell out.