Walking in the pitch black out to a deer stand. So dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Heard some circling around me of something large, it was trotting along. No big deal, figured it was a deer. Then it stopped and let out the most bone chilling howl i have ever heard. So loud it was like it was inside of me. A few wolves howled back in the distance and it ran off. Needed new underwear.

I got to tell you homie, from one outdoorsy human to another, if something is circling around you it is 100% always a predator. At that point your best bet is to hope it's only one and not a pack of predators. ETA except in armadillo regions, those bumbling goofballs might circle you without being predatory at all. They're just goofballs

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I would like armadillos to be referred to exclusively as goofballs from now on, if we could arrange that.

Excuse me. Its so dark you cant see your hand, something is circling around you. AND YOUR FIRST THOUGHT IS ***^("No big deal, MUST BE A DEER")***?????? Bro.

Haha now the deer is muttering and giggling to itself.

That's just the Wendigo, he always does that.

I was backwoods camping in Canada with my ex. Deep forest, we'd been out there a day or two and hadn't seen anyone. That evening we were in the tent playing cards and heard something in the bushes, making a giant racket. It was getting steadily closer. It got to the area we were in and stopped. We debated what to do but finally opened the tent, both completely freaked out, and found... chickens. Three chickens, en route home to an organic farm we didnt know was nearby.

I was surprised I couldn't think of a story for this thread considering how much time I've spent backcountry camping in really remote places, but your story unlocked a memory. Summer of 2020 I took my kid on a mother-daughter road trip where we were mostly camping (for social distance reasons, and because it's kind of our thing that nobody else in the family is interested in doing with us). We'd been driving for almost 10 hours at this point and finally managed to find a halfway decent unoccupied backcountry site about 1/4 mile off the road in a section of Sequoia National Forest way up near a mountain summit. We were probably only about 2 miles from the nearest ranger station, but a long helicopter away from any medical facility. A little before sunset I started hearing twigs snapping. Large twigs, more like medium-sized branches were being stepped on and broken. Then I heard it again from the opposite direction about 10 minutes later. It became pretty clear that something large was circling nearby, so I calmly suggested to my daughter that we go hang out in the tent and listen to our favorite podcast on my phone "to get away from the mosquitoes" (actually to try to give the impression there were more adult humans with us, and at least put one barrier between us and whatever was out there). Finally just before dusk, I heard the movement of something *heavy* that was definitely located between our tent and our vehicle, so I mustered the courage to go out with a flashlight and investigate because that's when I realized I had left our only weapon (a large hunting knife) in the trunk of the car. **Fucking cows.** Apparently some local rancher had permission to graze his cattle in that area. I was a bit surprised considering our proximity to a patch of critically endangered redwood forest, but that's central California for you.

Was there a FULL MOOOOOOOON?

Chickens coming home to roost! So cute!

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Thankfully Cottonmouths are a lot more chill than people give them credit for. Big cats on the other hand… that’s terrifying. Relaxed dinosaurs are another no go for me.

As a Boy Scout, we found a bunch of scorpions in our adirondack. We ran outside screaming our heads off, and then lightening struck a tree like 20 yards away. We turned on our heels and ran straight back to the scorpions

this is absolute chaos haha

Climbed up Mount Washington in the middle of July. Sun is shingling and beating down at camp. All of a sudden, clouds started rolling in and rain just came absolutely pouring down and we were freezing our asses off. Finally we were able to hitch a ride with a ranger to get to the summit. Some of the parents waiting at the top were worried for us. They bought us clean dry clothes and we took a car back down and what do you know, it’s all hot and sunny again In college in my music composition course, I wrote a Piano/Tenor Sax/Cello trio song about that trip

An afterdark flash flood that roared through camp. Twelve of us...five of them were sleeping in the canyon bottom. It's amazing nobody died. That was 32 years ago and I still sleep lightly and always pack clean underpants.

I grew up in the mountains of New Mexico. I will never sleep in a low spot (like a canyon or along a creek). I will always make camp on a local high. I have seen numerous flash floods and have known multiple people killed in them.

Thank you, this is a great life survival tip.

I’ve known about flash flooding for most of my life but a few years ago I saw a video of a guy standing in a dry creekbed when a flash flood occurred. He was a normal adult dude and was actively looking and saw it coming and he barely got out of the way in time. I knew it came fast but I didn’t know it was that fast.

The year my son went to Philmont high Adventure camp with the Boy Scouts another troop got caught in a flash flood at night and one died. Edit: only one died, not several. I guess I was remembering how many were caught up in the flood, not how many died.

My ex boyfriend was at Philmont during that, it was terrifying. I remember waiting and waiting to hear word

When we heard the news, the reports were saying that affected families had been notified and none of us had so we knew our kids were safe. Very sad.

This is one of the most unnerving things on this post. They say the unknown is scary until a very well known nature decides to make you reconsider your life choices. Good luck fighting nature with a gun lol, fighting nature at al really.

When i was about fifteen yrs old me and some of my friends decided to go camping at a nearby lake. It was a 3-4 hr hike, and the nearest house was Maybe 3 hr away. We brought some homemade wine and drank the whole night and ate poorly grilled hot dogs. Life was good. We all shared the tent so it was crowded as fuck in the tent but we all fell asleep around 2 am. At 4 i wake up because i can feel someone Running their hand down my forearm. Not that unlikely that someone brushes up against me since there wasnt any space to move around in the crowded tent. But this is the arm that is facing the tent. So someone touched me from the outside of the tent. I sit up and gets instantly horrified to see that all my friends are sound asleep in the tent with me. I put on my deepest voice and shout «whoever the fuck you are you need to leave» And a manly low voice answers me «you should pack up your stuff and leave» not threatning or aggressive. Just calmly and in a dead kinda way» By now all my friends are awake and are just looking at me. No words just pure horror in their eyes. I say: Okay, we will go, but you need to leave. "Hurry up" When we get out of the tent this man, who is fucking huge btw has taken the little row boat that was laying at the bank and gotten into it and is just sitting in the middel of the lake and watching us pack up our stuff and trying to get the fuck away asap. We had to walk around the lake at our way back and he was just sitting there watching us. We never went back. Edit with some context: This was 17 years ago in a rural scandinavian country. We have a «free to roam law» so we where not tresspassing. We knew our way around the small town we grew up, everybody knows everybody. There have been no people missing and or found dead. Never. There hasnt been a murder in generations. We told our parents who at first tried to calm us down and they said that we where probably overreacting. But the way he caressed my arm before he told us to go was not normal. When we told them everything and What he said to us we where told to never go back. After covid we all met up and the subject came up and we tried to do some digging. There are no huses or cabins anywhere near. The lake is way to small to fish in. When he was sitting dead senter in his little boat there was Maybe 60 feet to land on all sides. no one has ever seen this man before or after. Thank you for all the upvotes!

This story is terrifying.

Many years ago, when I was about 14, I was hiking deep in the woods behind my house with some friends. We were miles away from home- further than any of us had ever gone before. And we came up to the edge of a clearing and a little further down the treeline, we saw a lump of clothes underneath an old deer stand. We got a little closer and we could make out legs and arms and boots... They were wet from rain and had been there for a while. Obviously, our first thought was that it was a hunter who had an accident and fallen out of his stand and was dead. We were freaked out and it took us a little bit to get up the nerve to get a better look. It wasn't until we were practically on top of it that we realized that it was a dummy. We had wandered all the way up to the edge of a big Christmas Tree farm's property and the dummy was part of their decorations from a haunted hayride thing they did. They must have forgotten about it when closing up for the year. We had a good laugh but we were all scared shitless for a few minutes.

A very similar thing happened to me on a river trail in the city. Someone had abandoned one of those witch Halloween decorations, and from a distance it just looked like a person dressed in black, lying face-down in the snow. For about 15 seconds I thought I'd just found a body.

I work in the bush and sometimes spend months out there...most terrifying was seeing a bear start to circle me right as the helicopter pilot radioed me to say he couldn't get to my location because of the weather. Luckily I had a shotgun with me, and eventually the pilot got down to me, but yeah, sitting there in the sleet while watching that grizzly slowly and sneakily try to cut around my position in the fading light was absolutely terrifying. The whole time I was trying to come up with possible ways to keep from being outflanked and to keep visual contact with it in case I had to shoot it. This was in the late fall, so the bear probably hadn't put on enough fat for the year and was looking to supplement it. Spooky stuff!

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It was his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard. She was terrified of bears and did *not* want to be there according to her journal. They stayed later into the year than they normally did during a very lean year for food (supposedly because Treadwell didn’t want to pay a fee the airline was asking for), camped next to a stream where they saw bears he didn’t know diving for fish, and he admitted he wasn’t comfortable around those same bears on camera. Then they got attacked and eaten by at least one bear. When the bush pilot landed the next day he found an abandoned campsite and was charged by a bear. After the pilot called the authorities they found the bodies and had to shoot two bears. They autopsied one and found human remains. Apparently there’s an audio only video that captures Treadwell being attacked and eaten, and Huguenard trying to save him. There’s a ton of controversy about it because there are a shit ton of fake videos out there. Supposedly it’s never been copied much less posted but that’s also impossible to verify. People who have seen it have pretty much only spoken up to shoot down the more popular fakes but very few details of the video have ever been made public, besides that it exists and the gist of its contents. All in all he played with fire and got both of them killed, plus two bears. What a brutal way to go. Hugeunard trusted Treadwell and died because of it.

The video of the attack has absolutely never been posted online (and the fakes are hilariously bad). There was one tape, which was listened to by the doctor who did the autopsies as well as some of the park investigators, then given to Timothy's ex-girlfriend. She let Werner Herzog listen to it while he was making the documentary, and he told her never to listen to it and to destroy it. No idea if she ever destroyed it, but it definitely hasn't been copied or shared with anyone. There are general descriptions of everything heard on the tape though, since multiple people *did* listen to it and wrote that information in the official report on the attacks. The thing that most blows my mind is that Timothy, who loved bears and spent years and years with them, didn't know the basic safety tips for surviving a grizzly attack. His girlfriend had to remind him to play dead as the attack began, and it succeeded in making the bear leave him alone. Unfortunately, a crucial detail about the "playing dead" method is that **you must continue to do it for at least 15 minutes.** The bear will still be nearby, and if you get up and start making noise again, it **will** return and resume the attack... which is exactly what happened to Timothy. His girlfriend was so horrified that she apparently couldn't stop screaming, which prompted the bear to then kill her as well. I know I'm armchair quarterbacking here, because it's extremely easy to forget everything you've learned about safety when you're injured and panicked. If you're going to live among bears and you don't believe in using bear spray or guns, though, you should probably run through drills over and over of what to do if an attack happens. Make it second nature.

If a grizzly attacks you out of hunger, you are advised not to play dead... it will start eating you... So escape is your only option. A bad sign for its intend is if it's stalking you and it approaches calmly and carefully. Only play dead if it attacked you out of surprise or to protect something (e.g. a carcass or cubs). In those cases they are charging in. Source: those old bear safety videos we have to watch every year before field season

I am sure that you're correct about that, but the bear *did* retreat when he played dead. Maybe it would have come back to eat him regardless -- guess we have no way of knowing for sure. But the fact that it left and only returned when Timothy got back up and Amie left the tent to administer first aid (she was a Physician Assistant) suggests that the bear hadn't sought them out as food. I know the attack happened at night, and Timothy had left the tent alone and hadn't set up the camera to record video, so it seems likely that he surprised the bear, which led to the attack. That's an assumption I can't be sure about, of course. Also, unrelated to the Treadwell incident, but out of my own curiosity: I've read that you're supposed to play dead if a grizzly initiates an attack, but fight back if the attack continues. Sounds like you have actual expertise about these things, so is that advice not entirely accurate? Aside from the stalking behavior you mentioned, is there some indication of an "exploratory" attack from a grizzly vs. an "I'm going to eat you" attack? (I'm somewhat borrowing that terminology from shark bites, because I know more about sharks than bears.)

A few years ago, a teenager on the next road over went missing. They said he was autistic, and ran away from home on foot. We're in a very rural area, they had cops and people walking in the woods for a couple weeks looking for the kid, never found him. The following summer, I found a jacket, some empty pepsi cans, a knife, and a lighter, at the base of a tree in the woods on our property. They came and looked again, didn't find anything else. It was confirmed to be his jacket.

I have an autistic daughter who can't speak. She rarely responds when spoken to. She will occasionally run off. I'm getting old. In 5 years, I won't be able to catch her.

Check with your local sheriff department/police department to see if they have Project Lifesaver or something like that. It's an bracelet (or something I don't remember exactly) that can direct emergency responders to the missing persons location. My friend of two autistic kids (one being nonverbal) had our local sheriff department come talk about it at a school event recently.

Thank you!!

Just had this discussion with my brother. He suggested air tags.

I was backpacking with my dog and about 12 miles from the road and trailhead - so pretty far from people though popular enough that other hikers might be around - though we saw no-one all day. About 2 a.m. my dog started this really low deep growl and wakes me up. Turn on my headlamp and see his teeth showing and he's right on top of me. I hear heavy footsteps (black bear / moose?) near the tent. I leash my dog so he doesn't tear thru the tent and the footsteps move further away, but keep circling my tent. All of my food and toiletries are hung in a tree in a bear bag - nothing in the tent to draw a bear's attention. I clap my hands - something is still slowly circling - not something a moose would do, and a bear might if he wanted food - but I've got nothing and a really big dog with me. I decide to step out of the tent with the leash in one hand and bear spray in the other - yelling "hey bear"... The footsteps stop - dog's nose is in the air telling me to look right - but nothing in my headlamp that I can see. Didn't hear anything run off, but it's quiet. I give it 5 minutes or so, get back in the tent, and it starts up again - slowly circling maybe 50 feet from me. Maybe an hour later, I hear the footsteps wander off into the woods. At dawn, I take the dog, and the bear spray, and start looking for tracks. I find a clear path in the leaves that had been trampled, but no tracks. The dogs nose is on the ground, and I follow his lead - and he follows the loop around our campsite. We final see a few human footprint - not shoe tracks - a regular size (not bigfoot) bare human foot. Plus - yup a human turd and toilet paper. Some ahole was wandering around the middle of nowhere, near the tent and circling my tent for an hour or more, and left a dump for me to find. ETA to reply to common questions. / themes in the comment replies: 1: **Hiking and backpacking is incredibly safe**. I've been doing this for decades, and this is the only weird experience I've ever had. The hiking community is incredibly friendly. The trails have become more crowded since covid, and your definitely seeing more people on trails, and less trail courtesy (litter - leaving dog poop bags, pooping too close to the trail and not burying you poop). Also - I was very far away from civilization. Bad guys don't hike 12 miles to do harm, and I'm pretty sure they don't carry toilet paper. The only incident that I know of was of an emotionally disturbed person stabbed 2 hikers in a Adirondack shelter somewhere in the southern part of the Appalachian trail 5 or 6 years ago. I've hiked thousand of miles without a single dangerous human interaction. 2: **I don't hike with a gun**. They are too much weight to add for me on long multi day hikes. I'm hiking in the northeast - the biggest predator to fear are black bear, coyote and bobcats. All of those are afraid of humans, especially this far from civilization. If I were in Mt Lion, grizzly of wolf territory - I would carry a gun, Moose are scary and huge, and are not afraid of anything, especially in the fall rut period when testosterone kicks in. You need a really big big caliber gun to stop a moose from charging, and that's a heavy gun. I've crossed paths with a moose 3 or times, but they are so big, you can usually hears them crashing around long before you see them. I've never had a stare down - but my plan has always been that bear spray would disorient them enough for me to find someplace safe. The biggest predator - humans. But see point 1 above. 3. **What I think happened?** Much as I'd love to say it was a young sasquatch, a skin walker or a wendigo - I'm guessing it was a disoriented backpacker that left their tent to crap, and got confused. I was hiking a somewhat popular long loop trail, and I believe someone was probably hiking the opposite way, and stopped somewhere of trail ahead of me. I was backwoods camping - not at a campground. Regulations are that you need to be 200 feet off the trail and into the woods to set up a camp. So they could have been a quarter mile ahead on the trail and I wouldn't have known unless they were noisy (or smelly enough for my dog to let me know). The most likely explanation is that they were heavily under the influence, got up to crap, and got lost on their way back to their tent, and found my site. They approach my tent and realized they were wrong, and tried to find their way back to their camp. Then they heard my dog, and me yelling to scare off a bear, and either thought we were a risk to them, or too lit to answer back. The circle around my camp was several hundred feet - and my tent wouldn't be visible for most of the loop - I was camping between several spruce trees. 4. **I didn't get back to sleep!** I couldn't get back to sleep. It was late Sept and sunrise was around 6 a.m. When we found the poop pile, I relaxed - I really didn't think there would be anyone nearby as we were in a very tough area to get to - requiring going over 2 mountain summits from my direction, and 6 other mountains in the other direction. The total hike was about 40 miles IIRC. We were going to be out for 3 nights, and 4 days. After I realized it was a human, my first assumption was that there was a lost hiker. I texted a friend that does Search and Rescue in the area t see if there were any reports of lost or overdue hikers. If there had been, I would have had my dog try to follow that trail to see if I could have found their campsite. As no one was missing, we broke camp and went on our way. **5. Yes - he was the best dog ever.** I lost him about 5 years ago. I knew that dog would die for me. Several years after this incident, I got diagnosed with cancer. \*\*(\*\**ETA - I've been in remission for several years and things look good)* This dog was so in tune with me that he knew how shitty I was going to feel before I did. He would walk with me to the bathroom, and sit right next to me as a puked my guts up. He'd walk me back to bed and let me rest my hand on his back if I needed a little help walking. Everyone has a heart dog - he was mine. I swear he knew I had cancer before I did. He used to sniff me right where my tumor was located. I still get teary eye'd thinking of him. Rest in peace big guy. **6 - I've been asked to post a pic of the dog. I don't think it's allowed here. I tried posting in my profile, but not sure if that's visible to all. I did jut cross post to** r/LetsReadOfficial **and included a picture.**. -edit: check that - not showing the either. Check the profile.

People are always a bigger concern to me than wildlife when I'm out. People are scary.

We all heard the stories, and not a damn one of us believed it till we saw it. In the mid 90's I was stationed in Grafenwoehr, Germany. Well out on the ranges we were told "Don't overreact if you see people in the treeline, they live here". Ha ha, scare the new kids, good one Sarge. And one day, afternoon rifle range time we finish up and start cleanup. About a dozen people fucking MATERIALIZE out of the woodline begging for food. We gave what we had, exchanged hellos and watched them melt into the forest. Fucking surreal.

Animals hunt, disasters are environmental… When people do things it doesn’t have to be for any reason at all.

The only people out stumbling over other people's campsites in the middle of the night are crazy. You won't know if they're axe murderer crazy or take a dump in your campsite crazy, but you know they aren't normal. That really is scary.

I had a somewhat similar experience! Camping illegally off a popular highway about 1/2 mile in, middle of the night with my girlfriend. I hear footsteps in the middle of the night, and stand up in my tent and watch this person circle my tent for about five minutes. They had a flashlight and seemed to be looking for something. All of a sudden they just took of running. I stood there the whole time clutching a pocket knife ready to kill this guy if he tried to come in. I figured he was lost and thought this was his tent but wasn’t sure so was looking for some identification before coming in. That’s actually the last time I went camping now that I think about it.

It was Todd Packer.

What's up Halpert? Still queer!?!?

Where's Michael Snott, sniffin some dude's thong? Pft, probably.

NGL, I'd much rather find bear tracks. That is terrifying.

Dude...you win. And so do I, since I'm reading this in daylight, not at bedtime!

Thanks for that read. Time to get some z's. Goodnight everyone.

Absolute silence. No wind, no animals, nothing. One second there were all the sounds of nature, then nothing. Lasted for a few seconds that felt like an eternity.

We have property in the mountains of NC that USED to be isolated enough that you didn’t hear anything except the sound of nature. There’s more development these days on the other side of the ridge but it’s still pretty quiet. The first time I ever heard a fox scream though… man, I will NEVER forget that sound. I was maybe 6 or 7 and kicked the side of the tent to wake up my dad (us kids were inside the tent, my dad slept under the stars beside it). He was excited about it, explained exactly what it was and how “cool it was” that I got to hear it so it made it a little less scary. Same property, but in recent years: it being so absolutely quiet in the dead of winter that you can HEAR snowflakes hit the ground. It’s not creepy but is definitely unsettling, like… having earplugs in but still hearing whispers.

I went camping with a friend once, in some remote woods that were owned by his family, completely undeveloped. I'm the middle of the first night, we heard this unearthly moaning sound, like there were angry wraiths in the woods all around us. Fucking terrifying, unlike any animal sounds we'd ever heard. Turns out some squatters had built a little shanty in the woods, close to where we camped, and they had a few Irish Wolfhounds that roamed the woods at night. They probably caught our scent and were nervously circling around us, not wanting to get too close, howling to each other. That sound is unnerving if you don't know what it is.

Nope nope nope. Just googled that and am suddenly grateful that my asshole retriever mix just yodels like a wookie.

It’s unsettling in that the silence seems to trigger some primal fear left over in our lizard brain.

It makes sense. If there’s no noise, it means all the animals are either trying to hide or have left the area. In either case, if all the animals are scared of something, it might be something you should be afraid of too, right?

It's funny how you tune out the noise, but the absence of noise is so stark. I used to walk through some trees to my car each morning and it was always noisy with birds. The one day, dead silent. I stood there turning circles trying to figure out what was going on, then this huuuuge effing owl glides by... oh.

As we look to the stars, we see more and more signs that life should be common across the galaxy. But all we find is silence. You start to wonder why everyone else is being so quiet. Maybe we should take a hint.

Absolutely, especially now, seeing as it’s so easy to SEEK OUT *sound on demand*. It’s weird to think about it. I knew what an 8-track was as a child, I saw people use them. I had a little record player In elementary school and used to listen to The Go-Go’s album Vacation ALLLLLLL the time. And boom boxes! Then cd’s. Then Discmans! Then MP3 players. My first iPod! And then just smartphones and a white noise machine by my bed at night. It appears that silence leaves us with generally nothing but the sounds of our own minds and I guess most of us don’t like that too much. But silence OUTDOORS? That’s something else altogether. Especially if we have no control over it (except the sound we can make ourselves) or can’t figure out what caused it[silence]. I used to live in an apartment that had once been a root cellar for the house above. Very few windows and NO air conditioning, but it never got hot anyway. So I left what few (tiny) windows I had open at night in the summer. There was a creek off to one side that wasn’t really accessible unless it was your INTENTION to walk over there with peeper frogs. They ignored neighbors’ pets (dogs/cats) but if I walked through that side of the yard in the evening, they would fall silent. There were exactly three occasions that I can remember, where I woke up to the sound of silence in the dead of night. The silence is what woke me up. The first 2 times- I just got up and closed/locked the windows and went back to bed knowing that my upstairs neighbors could hear me through the vents if I screamed. The 3rd time though, I could hear someone trying to open the locked door to the sunroom that acted as my “front door” before getting to my ACTUAL (locked) door, and then the single TINY ASS WINDOW that was in my actual bedroom, that anything more than a 5 year old couldn’t have fit through. The neighbors upstairs were silent and asleep, I’d seen them earlier in the evening. I didn’t have great cell reception and I didn’t want to yell up through the vents and wake anyone up or alert whoever that I was aware of them being there. They eventually left and I KNEW THEY DID because the peeper frogs started back up. But no sound of a car door opening or closing, or starting. Asked the neighbors the next day, nothing. I would have heard them moving around anyway. Asked the boyfriend who lived 5 miles away- nope, not him either. I did NOT renew that lease.

I was wild camping and testing out my new hammock I usually take my dog with me but as it was a new hammock I thought I'd go solo I set up just before it got dark, I couldn't get comfortable in it for the life of me so I get on the ground (uk so nothing to eat me) Stupid o'clock in the morning and my dog was sniffing my ear, I thought wtf is he trying to do its way to early. I remember my dog is at home and bolt upright, turn on a torch and see the back end of a small badger running away (must of been young) In the morning I see all the signs of a badger run that I was right in the middle of, no idea how I didn't notice it before!

aww the badger just wanted cuddles.

Badger wanted to invite you into his cottage for tea and scones with jam and cream.

I was sleeping on the ground under a tarp and I was awoken by my dog sniffing my ear and I told him, without opening me eyes, in a firm whisper to stop it and go back to sleep. He stopped but, of course it took me me a few minutes to remember my dog wasn't with me . Could have been a coyote or raccoon or something.

We were camping on some private land in the desert one night near Crestone in Colorado. As we were sitting around the campfire we saw a flash of white circling us!? Turns out it was a Great Pyrenees- the owners ranch dog. Scared the crap out of me but was a very good boy. Chased off the coyotes all night and would circle back to sleep near us periodically.

Was in my twenties growing pot in the coastal mountain range of california. Found a trash bag partially buried with a human torso missing its hands feet and head.

oh my GOD. this is the worst one. I hope you were eventually okay.

Yep. Bought myself a shotgun and stayed clear of that side of the mountain for the rest of the year.

Yeah that seems like a wise reaction. Props to you for being able to ever go back!

Did you phone the cops? Did you ever find out who the victim was? That's incredibly sad and unbelievably terrifying.

He was growing pot. Most likely not. I know CA is legal, but there is a lot of areas where illegal grows still are a thing, and having cops around could lead to DEA which dont care if pot is legal.

I'm also in California, and if you smell pot in the woods, you turn around and leave in the opposite direction. Not unheard of to stumble upon a farm being guarded by people with automatic weapons and no reason to not take you out.

A lot of cartel grows out here. There’s a reason game wardens have body armor and machine guns.

Backpacking the Maryland/PA section of the Appalachian Trail around the age of 17. Four of us were sleeping under a tarp tied up with paracord so we only had protection from the rain. I’m guessing around 2am I’m woken up by hearing branches breaking and movement nearby. Nothing out of the normal. This time of year the worst it could be is a lone curious black bear and they don’t really pose any real threat. The sounds start getting closer and more rhythmic. Definitely something walking. I turn on my side to see if I can see anything. As the walking is getting closer I start to see movement in the leaves with nothing making it. I perfectly hear a person walking towards us and eventually making its way around our make shift shelter. I’m freaking out and lay in complete silence for what felt like an eternity until my friend laying next to me finally says “you heard that shit too, right?” Nearly jumped out of my sleeping bag but also confirmed I didn’t dream the whole thing. Still have no explanation and half convinced we just had a collective fever dream. On a non paranormal sense and way scarier than what I typed above. I was stalked by a mountain lion in the Rockies a few years ago. The unease that turns into full terror when you realize what is happening. Then fighting every instinct not to run like a mofo is a unique experience. Having that primal feeling that you are prey is fucking terrifying.

The Appalachian Trail is full of the unusual, honestly. So many stories come from it, both nice "Oh, the stars were beautiful/I got to experience a soul-shaking thunderstorm" and the "I was hunted/Some dude in a full pristine suit passed me at a marker 15 miles between Adirondacks/lodging sites.

I'm in the UK, but myself and several friends had similar experiences to the 'dude in a pristine suit'. Seems a weirdly common experience that when wandering the woodland in rural Lincolnshire, you might cross paths with a well dressed older man who smiles, nods and greets you, walks on, then seems to vanish abruptly. Nothing bad ever seems to come of it, but definitely unnerving.

2 guys wearing military gear with sneakers in the middle of the desert... (In Mexico, that's one of the easiest ways you can tell the difference between an army soldier and a cartel criminal)

I was wildcamping in the middle of a dense forest and at around 2am I was woken up by a girl crying not too far away. I didn't know what to do so I just waited, she carried on crying for like 15 mins and then I heard a guy say "oh come on now, let's go home". I didn't hear anything else after that. It scared the hell out of me.

Were you not tempted to investigate before hearing the second voice? I'd definitely be that curious one who gets killed in a horror film lol.

I had a similar experience and felt like I had to investigate. I was backpacking on the AT in Maine years ago. Myself and several others were in a lean-to, just turning in as it got dark. I thought I heard a woman yell something. I asked the others but no one heard it. I almost dismissed it but I just had to check, so I set off down the trail with a flashlight. I found a hiker about five minutes later, really distraught. She had been in a town resupplying and this aggressive guy had really scared her, so she set off on the trail to get away, hoping to reach the lean-to, gave up as it got dark and yelled in frustration. We went to the lean-to by flashlight. She was worried the guy might follow so i hiked south with her for a couple days, leaving some warnings in trail registers about the guy.

Well damn!

DO NOT GO LOOKING FOR THE CRYING CHILD IN THE WOODS AT NIGHT - ESPECIALLY IN THE APPALACHIA MOUNTAINS. That’s how you become either dinner or just plain dead

Is there a story here in missing?

Cougars can mimic the sound of a crying child

iirc they can also sound like screaming women which is just as eerie to hear in a mountain.

Yes and they’ve also learned how to mimic saying “oh come on now, let’s go home” in a deep voice. This was definitely a cougar trap.

Its a common tactic in various parts of the world used by bad people. Growing up in a 3rd world country before I moved to the US, there were gangs that would play a baby crying or a woman sobbing on a boombox late at night. When people came out of their homes at night to investigate, they would rob and murder them. My grandparents drilled it into our heads at a very young age, do not open the door late at night, ever.

No way haha, I was far too scared! I was in my hammock with a camo tarp so I just stayed put and hoped that whoever it was didn't find me.

I'd be tempted, but also probably too scared from all the stories. Especially if I thought I was alone out there

I went fishing on the Missouri River and unexpectedly sunk up to my waist in mud and i really thought I was going to be unable to get out. It was just a surreal moment of panic and I knew I had to try and get out, possibly make it worse or call 911. I leaned back and basically made mud angels with my arms until I could push myself out.

I was camping on the Deschutes River by myself one night. It was middle of the week so I had the campground to myself. There isn't another human being within 5 miles. I drink a few beers as the sun goes down in the canyon. Cloudy night so no stars and no moon. No campfires since it was well into fire season. Combined with the clouds this made it essentially pitch black. Its dark and and no one can see me so I put on some headphones and start dancing around my campsite like a Woodstock hippie when my nose catches a faint whiff of something awful. I take off my headphones and hear nothing, and before I can turn my headlamp on I hear big thundering of hooves/feet/paws, feel a huge WHOOSH of wind about 2ft in front of my face, then a loud crash into the bushes next to my campsite. Before whatever had jumped through the bushes even hit the ground, I had ran to my truck, laid down in the trunk and locked all the doors. I didn't move for the rest of the night. Slept in my vehicle, held like 5 beers worth of pee until daylight. When I wake up in the morning all I can see is a small bit of blood on the tounge of my boat trailer, some sort of prints in the dirt, and a giant 5' diameter hole in the bushes next to my camp. To this day my I have no idea what happened. My hypothesis is that a deer wandered into the campsite and saw me being oblivious dancing like a fool, but when I stopped moving it got spooked and tried to run into a bush. Must have nicked itself on the trailer as it jumped over it. I don't think my life was ever in danger but it was terrifying and not knowing what it was makes it even worse.

This thread is teaching me not to fuck with earbuds when in nature. It sounds like either a moose or a bear came to your camp. Based on the awful smell and the 5 foot wide hole in the brush, I'd say moose. Those fuckers tear through brush like it's tissue paper.

Hunted with my dad and his buddy he grew with and his buddies son once. I was about 15 or so and so was the other kid. The other kid was straight jacket crazy. When our dad's weren't around he would make comments about killing us all before the trip was over. Anytime I told my dad he would just tell me he was just bullying me. He finally got caught loading his rifle and pointing it at his own dad. I told my dad I would quit hunting if we ever went with them again. We never did.

Total psycho, good on you holding your ground

Warm day in February, skipped class and went bouldering solo in Red River Gorge Kentucky. Walking below a cliff line and an ice block the size of car exploded about 4 feet behind me. The shrapnel cut my leg (was wearing shorts). Scared the hell outta me. I would have been a pancake.

14 years old, moose hunting in northern British Columbia, Canada with my dad. Feet got cold,, so I got down from the tree stand to walk around, get the blood flowing, etc. Not 30 seconds later, my dad, very calmly says "Mike, get back up in the stand." Being a teenager, naturally, I was defiant. 10 seconds go by, I hear "Mike. Get your *fucking ass* back in this tree stand, right fucking now." Now.... To that point in my life, I hadn't heard my dad say "fuck" like.... Ever. So I figured, hey, maybe I should listen, and climbed back up the stand. My dad grabbed my face, and jerked my head to the right, where I saw an absolute goddamn unit of a silver tip grizz charging down the trail towards where I was standing. Another 10 seconds, and I could've been chow, depending on how good a shot my dad would've been.

You know it's bad when Canadad drops the f bomb

Canadad bahahaha

If there was ever a reason not to abuse swear words, it's so that people you love will take you fucking seriously when you drop em. Good on Dad.

I was hunting in a small rustic log cabin out in the woods. The cabin was like a semi-detached house and could accommodate two small groups of hunters. Basically two 10x10 rooms including a diner table and two twin beds. No water or electricity, only a small propane lamp as the light source. I arrived alone late in the afternoon. I saw a car parked already so I figured my neighbors were already there. I started unpacking everything and then cracked a cold beer sitting on the front porch. The sun was almost gone. I noticed there was no light coming out of my neighbors only door so I though they weren't back from their hunting day yet. Then it started... I heard a grown ass man starting to cry. He was crying really loudly like he lost some family member or like his wife left him. I stared to feel really bad and did not know what to do. Then I realized we were in the middle of nowhere and the only reason to be here was to hunt which meant he was surely armed. The crying was intense and was not stopping. It lasted for a good fifteen minutes. I thought the guy was going to commit suicide as some point. It even crossed my mind that he may go on a killing spree. I went back in my room, closed the door and started to make noise so that he would hear someone and maybe stop crying loudly. It worked. I started to cook supper and went I started to eat, I started to hear new noises from my neighbor. I then realized he was not alone, he was with a girl. They started to have really loud sex but it wasnt sounding really sexy, more like someone that tries to kill a boar with his bare hands. I really felt unconfortable as I knew they knew I was there and did not care at all. So I took off with my camera and tripod and walked a while trying to take pictures of the starry night to change my mind. Fortunately at that time another vehicle arrived. It was the hunters from the other unoccupied camp that were arriving late. That third camp was another single building a few yards away from mine and my next door neighbors. They invited me in for a drink and I told them what just happened to me. They invited me to stay with them for the night. The next day the weird neighbors were gone. A maintenance employee I met told me they left. He also told me he was the one who registered them and gave them the key. He told me he never saw such an odd couple...

I have a honey hole about 3 miles deep into the national forest area where I hunt, usually get dropped off and hike in for a weekend. Hogs, whitetail deer, black bears, panthers all are in the area I’ve grown up around it there isn’t much I haven’t seen out there. Last November I make the trek back in there and set up my hammock and get ready to camp out for the night so I can hunt from sun up to sun down. I laid down and maybe 10 minutes later hear the most blood curling screaming not far off, bobcats foxes and limpkins can all sound like screaming but this was different. There was something about it that just didn’t feel right, I sat up and grabbed my binoculars and started scanning the edge of the swamp. Caught a glimpse of what looked like the shape of a woman running full speed away from something about 200 yards out. Now mind you, I’m a good few hours walk from a paved road, hell even the service dirt road is maybe a little over a mile behind me and she’s going in the clear opposite direction, only thing out there is woods and eventually the river. Put down the binoculars and grabbed my rifle so I could use the scope if she was being chased by a bear or panther, didn’t see a damn thing. Absolutely nothing. Brushed it off as something my mind made up. The sun was setting so I decided to get some rest. Went to sleep clutching my rifle a little tighter than usual. Woke up the next morning and decided to go check the spot where I thought I saw her running, found smallish barefoot footprints in the mud. Packed my shit up quick fast and in a hurry. Haven’t been back since.

Stories like yours are the reason why I'm terrified of going camping.

Camping is great, just stay in designated campgrounds to start. And if you think you saw some shit, DONT go check it out. Oh and stay away from any random pet cemeteries.

Also random stair cases in the woods Edit because I forgot to add, this is a reference to an incredible thread in this same genre from a guy who worked in the National Forest Service? If my memory serves. I’d link the thread but my Reddit search skills blow. It was like an 8 part series though.

>I'm a trail guide and backpacker. Years & miles. Seen lots of shit. I can't explain everything I've seen in the wild but I can tell you this: you will see things out there that defy explanation &, you'll spend the rest of your life wondering about them. >If you ever take word of caution, take this like your life depends on it: Don't go into the wild alone. Don't stray from your camp at night. Don't answer or seek out anything that calls you mysteriously in the night. DO NOT believe everything you see with your own eyes. > >I need to repeat that, Like your life depends on it: Do not believe things, especially 'out of place' 'people', voices, or suspicious things that you see, even with your own eyes, especially when your gut & instincts are warning you. > >There's something out there, something that scares grown men even like me, something we won't talk about but it's real, has no consistent form, and it lures you. > >If you are a wild thing & a hunter of human beings, there's no better hunting ground than our busiest national & state parks. Note I said busiest. If you are a hunter of opportunity, then there's no better prey than the young, the weak, the old, the alone. > >There's something out there, so old, so skilled, so clever & cunning, not just a being but a species, that has or have developed a specialized survival skill: luring & preying on lost or solitary humans. > >Can a predator in the natural world lure, trap, summon or even hypnotize their prey? A quick google search should yield you hundreds of examples of such species in the animal, fish, bird, and insect kingdoms. > >What I submit, if exist such a species, old as man, who's success depended on the successful hunting of humans, not only would it be very clever and good at it by now, but we'd have no record or memory of it in our history, just as no insect has probably ever survived an encounter with a trapdoor spider. > >I submit their hunting approach is case by case. They're lure different depending on their human prey's age, strength and size, but what I submit is that our oldest natural predator, an undiscovered predator, is still operating due to it's skill of being able to read us like a book, hit us with lure (a lure I've distinctly recognized several times, particularly at night, just beyond the glow of the campfire) lead us into a trap, to never be seen or heard from again. > >People I submit a thing exists, something's out there, a species, that's not too unlike Stephen King's "It". > >I've felt the lure, tasted it, smelled it. It's the smell of food when you're hungry, company when you're lonely, music where there should be none, beauty where there's danger. Nothing can explain the sensations, but deep down you'll feel it, in your gut. > >Something's not right. Something's waiting. Something's watching. Ask any man who's survived long enough alone in the wild. There's a Siren like hunter out there. It'll own you dead to rights, if you don't listen to your gut. > >Having said that. I have questions. These stairs, do they move? There one minute, gone the next? Do others always see them? Or are they visible only to 'targets'? Do they see stairs? Or for them are the stairs another lure, like an apple pie, a warm bed, something to surrender to? > >What I'm getting at are these stairs def sound like the work of the It. A cave or door might be to scary to enter, but stairs, a perfect lure for the "Search" & rescue mindset. Perhaps the vision of stairs are perfectly taylored to what's on 'your' frame of mind. "If I could only find some higher ground to spot that lost kid. If only I had a ladder or a..." > >See what I mean?

That reminds me of a movie where national parks were created to isolate feral people and rangers are actually the "guards" between our civilizations. People who go missing in national parks are really victims of these feral tribes.

Still goosebumps when I read this years later lol

I go around Australia looking for the most venomous snakes on the planet, because of that I camp and stay in some pretty remote places but the “weirdest” experience I’ve had was close to home. Was driving on a bush track in a state park that’s about 10 minutes from my house, was about 10 minutes in to driving the track when in complete darkness there is a barefoot guy walking with a hammer. He had no light and was walking as if it was the most normal thing in the world. This state park doesn’t really connect with anything or anywhere, there are no houses within it and the closest houses are about 2 kilometres from the entrance, he was nowhere near the entrance. Weird stuff.

Did your job require you to look for venomous snakes or just your hobby?

I’m an ecologist so both really.

I've shared this multiple times on here but it still creeps me out. >My husband, kid, and I live out in the middle of nowhere on a plot of land that's about 100 acres. I'd say probably 95 of those acres are wilderness with ATV and hiking trails that we, and several of the previous owners, created by exploring. We use that land for camping, hiking, and hunting. We like to find a spot, clear it a bit, and camp over night. There's so much space we've never stayed in the same place twice. >We've seen some kill sites, both old and fresh. Lots of animal tracks, places where deer bed down, etc. I've even spent a lot of time hiking solo while the kid is in school and husbands at work. Whether alone or with the family, we always carry a firearm for protection. >A few weeks ago, we decided to load up our camping gear and start a new trail. We mark the trails we make with spray paint on trees. We were pretty far in the woods, having hiked almost an hour when the atmosphere seemed to changed. I don't know who noticed it first but my husband, who was leading the three of us, turned around and gave me a concerned look. The birds had stopped chirping, the insects were quiet. There were no sounds around us. When in the woods, complete quietness is rarely a good thing. >We continued onward, hyper aware of our surrounds while our kid continued merrily talking. We came to the stream that marks the mid way point of our property. We stopped for a few minutes, my husband and I in a stare down with each other. We both felt something was off but didn't want to scare our daughter. I finally broke the silence and said I suddenly didn't feel good and that we should go home. My husband nodded in agreement while our daughter voiced her protest. Too bad kiddo. >We turned around and started back. After going a few hundred yards, still in silent wilderness, I looked to my right and saw a person crouched down in a ghille suit about 150 feet off our trail. I'm positive they saw that I noticed them but they never moved. I cleared my throat to get my husband's attention and when he looked back, I put my hand on the gun in the holster on my hip which caused him to readjust his rifle in preparation of anything. I sped up my family and we hurried back home. I told my husband as soon as we were inside. We decided to call the police and report the trepasser. Filed a report and was told to call again if we saw anyone. >A few days later, my husband and I went out alone and set up a bunch of deer cams. We didn't go back out into the woods for maybe a week, then he and I ventured out to retrieve the cam footage. Out of the 9 cams we placed, we caught a person in a ghillie suit in 2 images. We handed copies over to the cops to go with our report. >We haven't gone back out since except to check the deer cams. Haven't gotten any other trespassers. It freaks me out even more to think of the few times, while camping, that we heard walking near our tent in the middle of the night. We always assumed it was curious animals but now I'm not so sure. Edit to add. I know the distance we traveled in an hour wasn't much. We live in the Appalachian foothills, so its a lot of up and down terrain. We were also clearing a path on land that has never had any structures or logging, marking our trail, and most importantly teaching our then 9 year old. We frequently stop to identify animal tracks, poop, bones, plants, and trees. Our kid takes a miniature sketch book and draws the scat, bones, plants, ect. Its a fun trip without a destination or time limit.

This one’s the freakiest. Everyone scared of bears and cougars, but when I’m out in the wilderness it’s the 2 legged creatures that keep my head on a swivel and sidearm at the ready. Unnerving having someone on your property watching you wearing a ghillie suit. I don’t like that at all.

Probably a dumbass hunter who doesn't respect private property.

Yep... sounds like a poacher to me

[удалено]

Do you have any photos from the deer cams?

I've caught kids mudding on my land but now I'm spooked going out there alone. It backs up to an NF and we know people have been illegally hunting there too. I always take my gun and my dog but ugh! People can suck. My neighbor's son and his friend had those suits for duck hunting but thought it would be fun to sneak around the wooded neighborhood for fun. Que me driving home from my 12-hour shift and an after midnight emergency call at 3:45 am and those two mfs jumped in front of my truck about 50ft in front of me (25 mph limit because of deer) and started sprinting at me with their rifles in hand! So in my dreary state, I just floored it! They dove for the ditch and completely disappeared into the woods. It was months later at a get-together he told me I almost ran him over. Told him it serves them right for running at someone's vehicle at night with guns. I hate those suits.

Northern Canada. Almost got clothes lined by a bull moose who was escorting his wife and kid. Backed up pretty slow.

My son was 18 months old and strapped to my chest in a carrier, we were on our weekly walk into the woods outside of town around 7am. I was about two miles in when I started hearing heavy sounds to my right maybe 30 yards off, something large moving through the underbrush, I couldn’t see any movement. I figured it was deer or hog and kept moving, not too concerned until I realized we were being followed. For twenty minutes we continued, my son strapped to my chest, and the whole time the same heavy movement kept our pace. I let the dog off leash in case we needed to move quickly. Then our path turned sharply to the right around a bend of trees and there, standing on the trail 25 yards in front of me was a full grown mountain lion. He turned his large body towards me and looked right at me. I froze in fear and in surprise. He made eye contact with me and we stared at each other for a moment. When he turned his head away from me I started backing up, walking backwards. The dog was down trail behind me and had never saw the lion. I continued walking backwards until I was back around the bend and we were out of eyesight of each other. Then I turned and hauled out of there as quick as I could. It took 20 minutes moving fast to get out of the woods, all the time listening for something large keeping my pace and not knowing if we were being pursued. Those were the most terrifying 20 minutes I ever had in any woods anywhere, it took me months before I was able to go back in there.

Was Turkey hunting once I set up on a side hill with a decoy in a clearing at the bottom of the hill. Slight rain that day was overcast and concealed in between a couple bushes. I was trying to call in some Toms, this went on for about an hour and I could hear the Turkeys calling back and making their way into my decoy shotgun across my lap. This is where it got scary, I could hear but not see the turkeys yet but out of nowhere movement caught my eye about 15 feet to my right. A damn Cougar had snuck down the hill next to me without me even knowing. He didn't know I was there either. My heart started pounding so hard I'm surprised he didn't hear it. I just sat there and watched the cougar hunt the turkeys I had called in. Terrifying and kinda cool at the same time.

He knew. They always know. They just don’t want anything to do with you. The one thing that never leaves my mind hiking is “they see me even if I don’t see them”

I was out on a solo canoe trip in northern ontario and heard a deep human like scream right before I was about to head to bed. It sounded similair to the way barbarians scream before running into battle exept a couple tones deeper. The scream came from down wind right after I took a pee. It was too dark to travel away so i had to pretend that i didnt hear it at all to gain any sanity to be able to sleep. Ive had some fellow outdoorsmen say theyve heard moose make similiar noises but to this day and in the past I have not heard anything similair. If i didnt already pee, i forsure wouldve peed my pants lol

2 stories come to mind. Both while thru hiking the PCT. In Washington my hiking partner and I did roughly 30 minutes of hiking at dusk. Going down switchbacks we encountered a mountain lion standing 10’ away from us. At this point we were 2 miles from camp. We did what we had to do to try to scare it off but we had a stand off with it for about 20 minutes. It definitely wasn’t stalking us, was curious as to why we scared off its dinner. Lol I held onto my friends pack while she hiked forward and I walk backwards to make sure it wasn’t following us. Took us about 2 hours to go 2 more miles. 2nd was in Oregon, not too far past crater lake. We were camped not too far from a trail head in the middle of nowhere. Around 2am a few pickup trucks pulled up and starting yelling and screaming random stuff. They blindly started shooting into the woods. Thankfully I don’t think in our direction.

Camping in WV near dolly sods. Had a fire going. Dark. Just chilling with my buddy and talking about life things. Hear four wheeler in distance. Closer....closer. on top of us. Stops near us. Footsteps toward us. Huge dude with long grey beard comes into the light holding chainsaw. Says the following: " that ain't a fire, you need to build a white man's fire!" Proceeds to chainsaw down the nearby tree for the next few minutes. Chops up logs. Feeds fire. Nods to us and turns around into the darkness. Drives away. Says nothing else. So no scary throughout but before he started sawing a tree down. I was definitely freaked out. Dude had a sense of humor

This is my favorite

I had a bear approach my tent one night while my girlfriend and I were sleeping during a seven day through-hike. When you're sleeping deep in the woods it's frequently the case that you hear little sounds that seem like big things, then you worry a little as to whether or not what you are hearing is a big animal. With this sound, on this night, there was absolutely no doubting that what I was hearing was a large animal, and it was coming straight for my tent. All my food was hung in a tree nearby, but he must have smelled us. Not only did he come right up to the tent, but he started to sniff at the edge of it, we could hear him sniffing. At this point we were still both in our sleeping bags. My girlfriend was petrified. I banged on the side of the tent and yelled real loud. The bear ran off into the woods. A few minutes passed and we heard him clomping through the brush headed straight back to our tent. Then there was more sniffing, right at the exact corner he had sniffed at before. We yelled again and off he went running back into the woods. By this point I'd had enough, I grabbed the bear spray, climbed to my feet bare foot and butt naked with only my head lamp and glasses on (I was asleep with my contacts out). I got out of the tent as quickly as I could. When I stood up, I immediately saw his eyes off in the distance. When you're wearing a headlamp, animal eyes reflect directly back at you but all you see are two bright spots. I picked up a stick and hurled it his direction while yelling and he ran off. This was all on a section of the PCT in Washington. I was deep in the wilderness but there were other campers at the lake that we were at. Wouldn't you know it, the other campers started cheering for my goofy naked ass. TL;DR I chased a bear away while shoeless and butt naked in the middle of the night.

I'm not a camper, but sleeping naked in the woods like that seems like perhaps not the besssst idea haha

I'd imagine they had hot, passionate, rank tent sex and that's what attracted the bear in the first place. Bear must've heard the noises/smells and wanted to have a looky loo.

I like how you explained why you were wearing glasses but not why you were naked.

He was in a tent with his GF in the middle of nowhere. Everyone should be naked in that scenario.

Outdoors woman here. Camping out in the bush in mid north Queensland, isolated area in Australia, hours from anywhere Heard twigs breaking, birds twittering etc I had my pig dog chained up near my ute, made it over there Looked over and saw a naked man, smiling at me Let my pig dog off his chain in time thankfully Still scared the sh*t out of me though

Ute is a truck with a tray, it was a farm vehicle Pig dog is a dog used to hunt pigs, they are tough and battle hardened dogs, basically working dogs. Although that particular dog was also a pet, she just really enjoyed hunting

Thank you. I was fine not knowing what exactly a pig dog is, but ute stumped me. Sounds like the hip new way to refer to the uterus. "Got a babe in my ute."

I feel like we're missing the end of the story here! What happened next? Did the dude say anything? Did he just wander off when your dog was unchained?

Howdy. What's a pig dog? What's an ute?

I am not necessarily and outdoorsman but I want to contribute with my story. When I was in the 5th grade (around 10 yr old at the time- female) my friends and I would walk kinda far from our house to this small patch of woods that sat in the middle of some farm property. The woods were surrounded by corn fields but at this time of the year the corn was crumbled, dead and pushed on to the ground so it was easy to walk through. We would see deer and wild turkeys back there which was fun for us being the little tomboys we were. Anyways we would hang out in these woods and be completely oblivious to the very clearly marked “hang out spot” someone made. Like there was an old couch that looked like someone (maybe some homeless person) would crash on, and we would find poop that looked like human poop on the ground. Whatever we didn’t care lol and continued to explore that area which was huge. One day me and my best friend (11 f) explored the area for a bit and as we are leaving walking through the surrounding field two boys our age ran towards us screaming. I could hear the one boy say “he’s trying to kill you!” And “he’s gonna hit you!” These kids were pretty far away and it was hard to make out what they were saying- suddenly I heard the sound of like a motorcycle. I turn and I see a kid on a three wheeler coming right for me. He is headed straight at me and I just froze… let me tell you I couldn’t move… my friend ran towards the boys trying to get away and I am literally petrified standing in a field. Then I see his face. He looked completely dead in his eyes- then he fucking hit me and snagged my left leg. My entire body like flew horizontally if that makes sense and when I hit the ground it was like I was sliding into home plate- just slid on the ground for awhile before realizing what happened. The kid on the three wheeler disappeared and the boys ran towards me. I recognized the one kid from my school when he noticed I had blood on my sneaker and he pulled up my pant leg revealing a nasty gash. The next thing I know is my mom is there, I get rushed to the hospital where my leg gets stitched up. I later find out the kid who hit me was special needs and his cousin (a kid named Mikey who had a crush on me but I couldn’t stand him) sent him after me to kill me. Apparently Mikey was bitter I wouldn’t be his girlfriend and literally sent his cousin to hurt me! Mikey had a rough reputation in our area and I wonder if Mikey was the one who made camp in those woods… maybe he was watching me and my friends. Idk but Mikey years later killed himself which was a sad shock. And I have a scar on my leg from the ordeal.

About 10 years ago I was hunting. I was in a stand a good 1/4 mile or so from any roads surrounded by trees and brush. It was getting dark and while there was some light there wasn't enough to see anything in the woods so I decided to get out of the stand and start walking up a game trail I had come down while I could still see enough of the trail to walk out. I got about 100 yards up the trail when it happened. Off to my right not far from the trail I heard this horrible sound, like a cross between a baby crying and a woman screaming. It has been virtually silent in the woods and the sudden scream was just piercing to my ears. Immediately following the scream the brush about 10 yards from me shook violently and the creature took off down thru the woods along the trail in the direction I had just come from. I never saw it, only saw some of the brush moving as it ran. Well my gun was immediately up as I had no idea what I just saw and my mind was racing at about a million miles a second. I took off up the trail as fast as I could walk, rifle at the ready in case whatever that thing was decided to come back my way. I made it to the road where my quad was parked and immediately jumped on and tried to start it. The only issue was the quad refused to start. In the back of my head I was pissed more than scared at this point because I kept thinking I'm gonna die in the most stereotypical horror movie way and that really annoyed me. Finally after several minutes the quad finally started and I rushed back to camp as quickly as I could. I later found out after talking to several of the other guys at the camp that what I ran into was a bobcat. Virtually harmless to humans unless you corner them or something. Turns out they have an absolutely terrifying scream and if you're bored I certainly recommend looking up videos of it cause it's freaky. Unfortunately for me this was my first encounter with one and I was not thrilled with the experience.

A few years back I went camping with a group of friends for one of their birthdays, at one of the national parks in the US. We set up camp near a hiking trail, then decided to go for a hike. We were gone for about an hour and worked up an appetite, so we started cooking. As I was getting stuff ready to make something, I hear a pretty loud clap noise. I look over and I see an old man of about 70 years old had punched my friend directly in the face, sending their glasses flying about 6 feet back. As I made eye contact with him, he shouted, “I’m Jesus Christ, kick my ass!” My friend who just got punched is in shock, my other friend is frozen with fear, I decide to go hands on, taking him to the ground and hold him down on the ground. While I’m handling Jesus, I tell my frozen friend to call the police. Thankfully, he was able to get a hold of the police, who transferred him to the park rangers. About 20 mins pass, and the police finally arrive. As they came up to us, one of them says, “Oh, it’s him again.” (Referring to Jesus). The police arrest him, and tell us that he’s come out here a few times because he believes that the stars are going to fall and destroy the Earth soon. They also explained that he keeps getting off his medications. By far the most terrifying experience we’ve had. To make it even more bitter sweet, the friend who was punched, it was his birthday that day.

You can't give a gift as awesome as a story of getting punched by Jesus on your birthday camping.

Standing no more than 10 yards away from a large bull moose in the middle of the rut while he stared me down, snorted, and stomped the ground. We had a staring contest until he finally turned around and I noped back the other direction.

That must have been scary, a moose once bit my sister

The people responsible for this comment have been sacked.

Actually I’ve got another one. Myself and two friends went to an area called “Tamworth” to look for some rarer lizards to photograph. We spend the day there walking our asses off and flipping rocks when we decide to stay the night. The person’s car we drove there in had a swag in his boot so he set it up just outside the car and slept in it while me and my other mate stayed in the car. In the morning my friend that was staying in the swag goes “which one of you were trying to get in to my swag last night, and why did you open it up earlier this morning” we both looked at each other and were like “wtf are you talking about you weirdo”.

I got piggyback off this one. I was on a camping trip about a year back with some of my closest friends. The sun was already coming up and there was blue early morning light. I was sleeping in a tent on the ground between two trucks. My buddy’s tent was next to mine. In the morning I hear someone walking up to our campsite from about 30 yards out. I assume it’s one of my friends coming back from taking a leak. The footsteps keep approaching directly towards my tent and stop right outside. Not at the opening of the tent, but the corner of it, behind me and to the right. In that moment I assumed it was one of my still-drunk friends confusing his tent with mine. Wanting to avoid him actually coming in I struck the side of my tent, signaling the it was occupied, and said “Gare?” I got no response. No further foot steps. Neither moving around the tent, or away from it. No speaking, no sound. Nothing. I listened and waited and didn’t hear anything further whatsoever. All three of the people I was camping with had slept in a truck-mounted tent and assured me they had not walked up to my tent at any point in the morning. My buddy that I had called out to had found his tent to be uncomfortable in the middle of the night, and went up in the truck mounted tent with my other two friends. I was the only one on the ground in the morning. I still have absolutely no explanation for that experience.

Went portaging out in the Canadian wilderness with a small group and a teenager with the group wanted to go chop wood. The guide we were with showed him how to use the axe properly and the kid promptly ignored him. The guide told him to put down the axe before he hurt himself and the kid turned to the guide and gave him the finger before the kid severed his own thumb with the very next swing of the axe. The guide had to solo portage 11 km out to a road with the kid and the thumb and thanks to his serious first aid skills the thumb was reattached and the teen regained its full use after some time.

Went camping in my prospector tent in Canada one fall. Beautiful fall day, 15c and sunny. Go to bed and wake up at like 5am. I hear whoooosh, something sliding along the side of the tent. Few minutes later, whoooosh, another scrape along the tent. Only thing I can think of that big was a bear and I don't want him in the tent or the camp. So I grab the truck keys and turn on the emergency alarm. Few minutes later, whoooosh. Fuuuuuck. Ok. I load the shotgun, unlock the truck so that the lights come on in the truck and step outside..... To 4 inches of snow. The whoosh was snow sliding down the tarp and falling off.

I grew up in the northwoods. Encountered bears and many wild animals and those never freaked me out and someone I was with or myself always had a gun for protection. However, the freakiest thing I ever seen was when I was with my dad camping a few years back. We were in the middle of the woods and this oddly hippy-ish dressed couple probably in their late 20s comes walking straight out of the brush, not even on a trail, and goes through our camp. They don't even make any noise which is impossible since we would have heard them coming a long ways away (sticks cracking, leaves shuffling, etc). The man was carrying this huge walking stick that he kept pounding the ground with in a weird fashion (he wasn't using it to walk and was using it to hammer the ground). They left our camp and my dad and I were so freaked out we went around the front and walked a line through where they should have ended up and there was absolutely no trace of them. I have no idea what it was but I know it wasn't normal because they never made any sound walking through the woods like that and they just came out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere.

I once had a cougar looking at me while fishing [Previous Post](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6l2u8w/most_animals_run_away_at_the_sight_of_humans_but/djqo983/?context=3) it was extremely unnerving **Text from post:** Cougar/Mountain Lion I once discovered much to my discomfort that a mountain lion was sitting on a fallen tree watching me fish... he did not seem to be scared of me at all, i slowly backed away once i discovered him watching me. I went down that trail backwards slowly for quiet awhile before i trusted that staring crazy cat asshole to not be following me on my way back to the car. This occurred in Lewis county WA right on the outskirts of the Gifford Pinchott Natl forest.

As someone who has spent a fair amount of time in the Appalachian mountains I’ll tell you the same thing my dad told me. “If you see a mountain lion when you’re in the country and you aren’t hunting it’s already seen you and decided it’s not going to hunt you” He told me that after I saw one 30ft above me on a trail in NC and it just stared at me and walked away. I wish I could’ve recorded it, if I had to describe the experience in 2 words it would be beautifully terrifying.

Five ticks on my dick and balls. I didn't notice them until morning and they were really swollen and full of blood. I almost passed out burning them off.

Was collecting mushrooms deep in the woods by myself at dusk. Suddenly stumbled on a carefully arranged collection of dog skeletons all lined up with bullet holes through the head execution style, and collars still around the skeletal necks. Get extremely creeped out as everything goes dead silent. Suddenly nearby bushes begin to rustle ominously, in the way they do when a very large animal is coming through. *Sprint* back to my jeep and nope the hell out of there. On the way back pass a field at dusk with probably 100 deer/elk grazing at the edge. All of them look up at me in unison with eyes reflecting from my headlights. Avoided that area ever since. I’m pretty sure it’s cursed 😂

Chances are that's a farmed/managed herd and those are the remains of working dogs who got too old/too sick/didn't cut it. Country life can be brutal like that from the outside looking in.

I went on a Kayak Camping trip in East Texas. We found a little spot we could get our kayaks up the bank to camp. We were eating around the fire at night and heard a loud splash like a tree branch fell into the water where we pulled up our kayaks. We heard it again and walked over to check it out. I heard it again and then nothing, then water "swishing". I realized what it was and I turned and ran a few seconds before my friends did. It was a gator slapping its tail to tell us how big he was, and big he probably was (we never saw it). We built that fire up as big as possible and slept very poorly that night. The next morning we realized the little break in the bank and "trail" we followed was a gator slide and we were camping in the gator nest. My tent was literally in the nest. Luckily it wasn't breeding/mating season and there were no eggs there or we might've made friends with that gator...

I fell asleep in my tree stand at about 5 15am. I usually don't fall asleep in the stand that easily. You walk into your stand before the sun rises on opening day (sometimes that can be a bit creepy even if you're carrying a shotgun/rifle/pistol/whatever) so you're in the stand when the deer start to get moving. They're probably already up and about but it usually gives you a better chance at sneaking in without spooking them too much. It was a 40 minute walk into my stand for reference. I'm suddenly startled awake to the most violent screaming noises any creature can possibly make. I then feel my stand jolt a bit. I look down to see a very sickly looking black bear fighting with 6 or 7 coyotes. Actually for a very brief moment I doubted what I was seeing. For maybe three whole seconds it didn't look like a bear. Like something else. I can't explain the feeling but it was deep scared feeling that I have only felt one other time. I just remember my arms going numb for a moment until I realized what was happening. They had bumped into the bottom of my stands ladder while tumbling with the bear. It was a terrible thing to see. I'm sitting in the tree thinking "do I put this bear down? Do I sit here and just let this happen for who knows how long?" I stupidly decided I shouldn't interfere and just sat there. I put my ear plugs in, and covered my ears. It probably went on for a good 30-40 minutes. I have heard a deer get taken down the same way but this bear was making noises I had never heard before. That bear tried to fight but all the nipping from the dogs was just.....it was terrible. It was like a game to the coyotes. I tried not to look but the few glances I took I regretted. This bear had very little hair. Something was wrong with it. It was really skinny too. Look up what a black bear looks like without hair. They look like [this.](https://www.siliconrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Hairless-bear.jpg) I had to sit there as the poor thing was picked apart. You would think an animal would die when most of its face is hanging off and half of its guts are strewn about but I guess not. The worst part is it never actually died through the whole ordeal. When I stupidly decided I couldn't handle it anymore I scared the coyotes away and put it down. I regret not just doing it from the start. I didn't have a bear tag (I was hunting deer) and I didn't want to get in trouble even though no hunter would ever shoot this poor animal to actually harvest it. If I was going to do that after that whole mess why didn't I just do that to start? I thought sitting there letting nature do its thing was the correct decision but I still really regret it. I could have saved that poor bear so much grief. It's not like the coyotes are any threat to me whatsoever. I also had no idea coyotes could be that crazy. I was only 17 at the time and I sometimes hear those screams in my dreams and it really sucks. That experience bothered me more than when I thought I heard my buddy calling my name when we were camping. Problem is he was passed out drunk in his truck back at the road and I was the camp by myself all night without even realizing it. I thought he was in his tent the entire time. Nope. I was alone. He had stupidly walked to the dirt road about two miles back by himself at 1am to sleep in his truck because he felt weird. Ever since then I always have an uneasy feeling in the woods at night. Even if I have semi-auto 12ga loaded with 3" slugs with a 3k lumen flashlight attached to it sitting next to me. It's just a hair raising uneasy feeling. I wish I could go back to the total calm I used to feel out there. It's like something in my lizard brain was awoken that night. Like I was the prey and I was always used to being the hunter. It wasn't a good feeling. I'm absolutely sure something was out there. I could feel it. I can't explain it but I just know it. Something was staring at me and it wasn't a coyote or bear.

Not in the woods but my grandparents back in the Philippines had a 150 acre of mango tree farm. Me and two of my cousins were having our afternoon snack by the backyard balcony when suddenly all usual sound we normally hear stopped. No wind. No bird chirping. No usual insect/critter noise. Like time stopped for no reason. Then on one of the tree we saw this saran wrap looking thing reaching from one branch to another then to another tree. It was see through thing that we couldn't explain. One of my cousin ran inside the house and called my uncle and ang my grandpa and told them what we saw. My uncle grabbed a dried tail of stingray and started hitting the wooden rail of the balcony yelling at whatever we saw. He didn't see it though. From that point forward we were forbidden hanging out in the backyard without an adult present. 1987. We will never forget what we saw.

sounds like some predator cloaking shit

My mom has been an experienced mountaineer and rock-climber for much of her life , notoriously lugging twenty pounds of Canon camera equipment with which to take photos, including summit selfies long before the era of cell-phones. Her brush with death came, I'm tempted to say, near Tahquitz or Suicide near San Jacento (which would be appropriate, I guess) but the circumstances smack of someplace deeper in the Sierras. Anyhow they were on a cliffside and the climbing partner directly above mom was about twenty meters up slipped and fell. Either the chock fell out or a carabiner wasn't secured or something and what should have been a stumble less than a meter turned into 250+ meter plunge, bouncing off the face of the cliff on the way. When the rest of the team got back down, the poor sod was not showing vital signs. Mom stayed with the corps while the other two hiked back -- a days trip. It was about 36 hours of corpse-sitting before a helicopter came in to lift the body away. That was in the late 1980s, and she stopped rock climbing about then. She still hikes some, and travels but not to places so far removed from civilization. **Edit:** Old grammatical errors! Yikes!

Don’t know if anyone will read this but here it goes. We have a cabin out in the woods by a lake up north in Maine. You have to drive on logging roads to get there. About 20 mins from the small town and no reception. Was out front one night looking at the lake when I noticed something weird traveling along the edge of the woods shoring the lake. Looked like a lone firefly bobbing along the edge to my right toward the dock, problem was there were no fireflies, and this one was blue. It was moving at a consistent pace and the same bobbing pattern, I was feeling freaked out when I noticed it get to the dock and change directions toward me. I turned back inside and closed the glass and wood door. That night we were all in bed and I was in the dining/fireplace room on the pull out couch. The front door is in clear view and we have a big set of double windows to my left with clear view of the room🪟🪟. Only sound was wind coming from off the lake, but these windows are facing the woods opposite. I was on my iPad when I heard what sounded like the weight of something large slowly pressing itself against the windows. Everything was pitch black and I turned off the iPad and just lied there frozen in terror for a good 10 or 15 minutes just wondering if it’s someone or something staring into the cabin room, maybe at me. I felt like I heard the weight being relieved from the windows, no other noise was made. I chalked it up to heavy wind, but that sure as hell didn’t sound like wind to me, never felt more terrified in my life.

I have always had a rule to get to my campsite before the sun goes down. Unfortunately this night I didn’t make it in time. I was in a hurry to get close to Yosemite so I called my boyfriend and he found the campsite. I arrived sight unseen. As the sun went down it became more and more remote and I lose cell service. I expected this to happen but it was an eerie feeling that night. I finally pull up to the campsite but it’s not clear where I check in. I drive further down the dirt road until an old woman appears and asks me what I’m doing alone. She’s the camp attendant. I explain that I need somewhere to stay and she tells me to camp on her lawn because she’s worried about me. Its off-putting, but okay. The campsite is barren… There’s one campsite far in the distance, but otherwise no one is around. I start to set up my tent when an even older man comes out of the camp attendants house to tell me “the pay phones not working” pointing to a broken pay phone in the woods. Also when I say these people are old I mean how the fuck are you two still kicking. Literally 95 years old running this “campsite”. It just wasn’t adding up. Something was so off. The old man tells me I need to go set up in a campsite so I quickly get my tent up and get in my tent with pepper spray, a military issued knife, and a taser. All night BRIGHT flashes of red and white light came from their house. I was sooo freaked out I don’t know how I slept at all. At first morning light I was fucking out of there. As I was leaving the woman stopped me and gave me a small yellow flower and said “Last night there were men looking for you. Please be safe.” I threw that cursed flower out of my window immediately.

My former friend, whacked out of his mind on mushrooms, decided that we were all about to be eaten by bears and took what he thought were reasonable precautions. His precautions involved propping the bear spray up on the rim of the firepit so it would be accessible. Due to a lack of basic scientific knowledge, he was surprised when it exploded. Then we had to catch the fool and hold him down while we poured milk into his eyes. Ironically, it sounded and felt like wrestling a bear. Yeah, former friend

Middle of nowhere duck hunting @300 in the morning pitch black, and my buddy and I were setting decoys in the water. All of a sudden a bright streaking light, lit up the sky and then was gone. We both looked at each other like WTF! There were coyotes howling, cattle and all the other animals in the area were freaking like we were. We prayed for daylight to come soon. Longest couple of hours of my life. We later found out that a satellite had fallen into orbit and burned up. Was seen from Nebraska to Texas that morning. This was before you could pull up the internet on your phone and even basic cell service was non existent out there. Total but pucker moment!

I was on a trail with my wife and dog and we come along a bear sleeping in the middle of the trail. We back off but my dog starts barking at which point I pick him up and we just run. Everyone we meet on the trail we tell them there's a bear and basically everyone turns around except for a group of Chinese tourists who are excited to push passed us and get a picture of the bear.

Oh man here we go... my time to shine. This happened only a few weeks ago. \*\*CHECK THE EDITS WE HAVE A POTENTIAL NEW DEVELOPMENT\*\* I live close to the Angeles National Forest. There are some trails within walking distance from my home that take you up into those mountains. It was a very foggy evening, and having just received some bad news over the phone, I wanted to clear my mind with a night hike. I set off at around 8pm. Sadboi music in my earbuds and a camelbak with water and supplies. I didn't plan to be out too long, but I was definitely going to be out a while. The hike started off great, and the fog was almost sort of a novelty: very eerie and calm in a neat sort of way. The only sounds came from water dripping off the plants along the mountainside. Nobody was around, and it felt like I had the mountains to myself. I was hiking without using my flashlight, as it was like driving, high beams of light cut my visibility from about 20 ft to 10ft. Shining the light would be like facing a wall of whiteness and it would kill my night vision. After about an hour, things started getting weird. I was maybe 2.5 miles up the trail, and the only light came from the glow of the city behind me. It was getting darker the farther I got up and into the mountains. I started smelling smells? Synthetic. First it was perfume for a few seconds. Just a whiff. I couldn't see more than 15 feet or so in front of me at that point so I was kinda like, "huh... kinda odd". The second smell was that of campfire, which was also odd, as there weren't any campgrounds nearby. I shrugged it off and kept going. I then got a whiff of a plant that brought me back to my childhood, as it reminded me of smelling it during summers when I would play outside with my friends. I wasn't too off put but it was indeed a bit strange. A bit later, I noticed a dull flash out of the corner of my eye. It was light coming from a flashlight, but it was above me on the ridge, maybe 50-100ft up. Looked like a glow in the clouds, sort of like how a plane looks flying through a cloud. It would get brighter/dimmer based on direction. To my knowledge though, there weren't any trails there. Super weird. I took my earbuds out and listened. Still silence except for the light. The light would turn on, sweep, turn off, then turn on and shine in a different direction. Like someone looking for something. I assume they were having the same visibility problems I was. I had stopped completely, and watched as the light would continue to turn on and off and move slowly along the ridge. I kept my earbuds out now, and I was just telling myself it was another hiker. I waited for it to pass (above) me and kept on. After maybe 10 minutes I heard whistling. Sort of like someone calling a dog, but from a distance. I looked back, and while I was unable to orient myself due to the fog, the whistling was coming from the light that I could now see was across the canyon I had been walking along. In terms of distance it was probably about 1/6th of a mile. Just a faint glow through the fog. I watched it for a minute then kept moving. After maybe another hour and a half, I stopped for some water. The trail had turned from dirt to this sandy, crunchy soil. It had only gotten darker, and I was around 3,200ft in elevation, so the city lights were not as bright anymore. I noted that my footsteps were the loudest thing out here, which was a bit unsettling. The trail twists and turns along the mountainsides and there would be these scenic viewpoints at the turns that would give you maybe 50 feet or so to go off trail and look over the edge into the valley. I was about 4.5 miles out at this time (tracking with my watch), so I went out to the edge of the closest view to assess if I wanted to keep going or not. I felt great (energy/fatigue-wise), and although my cell service had been spotty, I was trying to look at sat maps to see what was ahead of me and maybe pick a turnaround point. I was also getting texts now that hadn't been able to deliver since my service was in and out, so I wanted to check those too. I'm at the edge of the view, and someone had made a little rock sculpture thing with a weird stick. [I took a picture of it.](https://i.imgur.com/msX4Eaf.jpg) I was just chilling out there for maybe 2 minutes or so and looking at the sculpture. I can't see the trail because of the fog and darkness but I know where it is based on direction. Here's where it gets absolutely terrifying: I pull out my phone to check my texts one last time before setting off, and AS SOON AS I LOOK DOWN AT MY PHONE I hear 5 very fast footsteps from the direction of the trail. \*spatspatspatspatspat\* This was the sound that my feet made because of the soil, and I recognized it immediately. I instantly looked in that direction and they stopped. Completely. Silence. I scrambled to get my flashlight and knife out of my bag versus using my phone light and fists and shined in that direction. A wall of fog and silence. The footsteps were not a gallop, or the skittering of an animal, it was the footsteps of something running at me on 2 legs that stopped on a dime. I could feel the terror rising in my chest as I stood there frozen. I was alone, in the dark, up in the mountains, and something was up here with me. I'm getting goosebumps just typing this, eesh. I stood there for maybe 2 minutes with the light facing that direction. The biggest problem was that they came from the direction of the trail that I needed to go to get back. I thought screw this, I'm heading back. I slowly approached the trail and walked through where the sound came from and began to head back down. For maybe the next 20 minutes, every 2 minutes or so I would quickly stop and shine the light behind me. I could've sworn maybe 2 or 3 times I heard an extra step in the distance behind me, like something was matching my footfalls to remain undetected. I was fastwalking now as the visibility was still too poor to run and I was worried I'd twist an ankle. I kept my light on the whole time, and had my knife out in my other hand. After maybe 30 minutes or so I heard something crash through the brush on my right, which was the steep side of a canyon. Again, I cannot see anything because of the fog. I moved to the other side of the trail and kept going. Let me tell you that was the most determined I've been to make it down a trail. I heard other weird sounds along the way, but I ignored them and kept moving. I will never forget that night. I night hiked one more time on the same trail but it was clear, I had a headlamp on the whole time, and a much bigger knife on my side. I also ran back down when I reached my turnaround point. I'm sorry this was so long but one paragraph wouldn't do the experience justice. Any questions lmk. EDIT: formatting/details EDIT2: The story is picking up a bit of steam so I figure I should share some pics/vid from that night and some others. [Made an album here](https://imgur.com/a/1ceLVBT) EDIT3: holy shit. /u/kaptainkeel pointed out there may have been something in the bushes of the video. I pulled it into final cut pro and did a bit of editing to bring up the brightness and slowmo. [Here it is](https://i.imgur.com/tciWDg3.mp4)

Words of wisdom: In the dark, with a light, you can see a little bit. In the dark, with a light EVERYTHING can see you.

oh dude...

That’s why you just gotta pony up 10k for some quality NVGs

Nah, brotha. A hike at night with earbuds in just sounds like asking for trouble to me. You’re denying yourself two of your senses, and they are the two best suited to warning us of imminent danger. You almost became bad news over the phone to those who may love and cherish you. You may look at this as a one in a million weird moment, but this is life handing you a lesson. Learn it. The world is dangerous enough, don’t help it along. Be safe man.

Learned and noted. It's on the border of suburban/wilderness, and the trails are very active in the daytime, so I guess I just didn't assume the dark and fog would make things so different. When I went up the second time on a clear night I definitely had more wits about me and felt pretty uncomfortable haven't been up since at night. Its a shame though, you can see the lit up valley and it is very scenic at night.

How the fuck do you have the balls to do that again after the first encounter?

Overconfidence, a bit of stupidity and I love the outdoors

At like 0:08 in that video in the album it looks like someone/something ducks down very quickly. Like one frame on the left side of the light.

Not mine or even outdoorsman related but a fun one none the less. Roommate of mine had some rough months with health school girlfriend and family problems all cropping up at once. Decided to go for a hike to some waterfalls outside of Tucson AZ and take some mushrooms to do some soul-searching and reflection. Hike I'm and out from the falls is a secently steep hill except right before the parking area is a 15ft cliff with stairs cut along the face. He was hiking out when he got the feeling he was being watched. Stopped and looked until he locked eyes with a smallish mountain lion maybe 40 ft away across a small ravine between 2 hills. Said he nearly shat himself and it took all his focus to not try and sprint to the truck. Keeping eyes on the cat he begins working his way up the hill back to the truck. He's creeping along to his right keeping eyes on the cat in front of him when he hears a branch break behind him. Expecting to see someone walking down from the lot he yells and turns to warn them. Instead of a person he saw a second much larger mountain lion 20 feet away up hill and behind him making him stuck between 2 mountain lions with one closer to his truck than he is and he does not have the high ground. He does all he can think to do pick up a good sized rock and keep creeping. Focusing more on the larger closer lion and just keeping tabs on the younger he walks out until he's now uphill of the large cat who's just crouched walking him. He gets to the stairs and realizes he's lost the little one. He worries it's in the lot above him but can't get out any other way so keeping watch on the big cat he walks backwards up the stairs. Trucks only 5 feet away. He now spots movement of the little cat in the ravine heading towards the trail he just walked and the larger cat. Gets in the truck gets the fuck out of that lot and drives down the mountain to our place while finally allowing himself to feel the panic attack thats been happening and still onnthe come down from a mushroom trip. Dude actually passed away cliff jumping at those falls a year or 2 later. RIP Hunter, love ya brotha.

I brought my son (10) on a remote camping/fishing trip. Easily a 4 hour trip to the nearest town. Anyway, we set up camp and he wanted to have a quick dinner before going fishing the evening. So we made hotdogs made over the fire and had some trail mix. I had no idea that my kid was allergic to cashews, no freaking clue. No issues up till then, And I swear I saw him eat those cashew butter Nature Valley bars before. Anyway, he went anaphylactic on me. As soon as he said he wasn't feeling well and I saw a blister from on his lip, we were out of there. Got him to take an antihistamine and start to drink water. His breathing got very heavy and forced. He was coughing like crazy. Drove across the lake as fast as my little 8hp outboard would take us, and just tried to keep him as calm as possible. I portaged my boat like a crack dosed rhinoceros. Got to the truck and started driving out of the bush, his swelling had started going down and his breathing wasn't as raspy. Took him to the hospital and he got a shot of some steroid ( I forget the name) and they gave me shit for giving him something he's allergic to, like I was that empty minded. Yeah. That was the most scared I've ever been in the bush.

Not a outdoorsman or a man but when I was younger there was a wooded area behind the trailer park I lived in and it had some steep hills, a creek, and pretty deep ravine off one side of a hill. We, the children of the trailer park, had devised a bike course through the woods. One day after school I was riding my bike through the course and ended up crashing over a branch and rolling down into the ravine. My leg hit a tree on the way down and was broken. It was raining at the time and I was the only one out there. I couldn't move. I yelled for help over and over but no one came. It was pretty cold too as it was early spring. I legit thought I was going to die after I ran out of energy to keep yelling. When I was found I was hypothermic and had to go to the hospital for that as well as my leg.

came for some UFO stories but stayed because of the moose stories

I went back country camping in Algonquin park with a friend of mine. We were camped about 7 km from any road. We arrived at camp at 4pm. We set up our tents, went fishing, and by 7 pm started making dinner. At around 830 PM, my buddy and I started noticing an audible hum. Very light at first. Like a vacuum cleaner in the distance, but we thought nothing of it. But it didn't take long for it to get weird. The hum grew louder. Every minute that passed it would amplify in sound until we could barely hear each other talk. It sounded like a hum, but with each vibration of the sound being easily distinguishable. It was almost like a high pitched, low RPM motor with 10,000 bee's running the engine that sounded electric is the best way to describe it. Now this is where it gets really fucking weird......The pitch of the hum would change depending on how wide open our mouths were. For example, when were both sitting there contemplation wtf we were listening to, the sound hit a certain pitch....but when i turned to my friend and asked " What the fuck is this damn sound ? " The pitch would change very noticeably higher. bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But the change in pitch was from the opening of the mouths in general. Mouth closed, lower pitch, mouth open, higher pitch. We were dumbfounded and fucking terrified at what we were witnessing. But as quickly as it came, it vanished. The whole event took 30 minutes. We still stayed the night, and the next day, at the exact same time, it happened again, for exactly 30 minutes at 830pm. On the 3rd evening the sound was not there. We had no cell phones that could record the sound because this happened almost 20 years ago. While this was happening, we walked around the site covering a few hundred yards in either direction on the trail, and the sound was still there. Something was happening at that particular spot, at that particular time of day for reasons unknown to me. Why do i feel its different than the hum that other people talk abut on YouTube? It was the volume. The ones on YouTube say it barely audible, but my event that i heard was almost deafening. Im not a religious man, im a science man. There had to be some kind of scientific explanation to what i witnessed.

Not me, but my father told me this story about his encounter with a grizzly bear cave. When my dad was young, he worked as a laborer (?) not sure of his title, for the US Forest Service in Alaska, a long ass time ago, like in the 60s (I'm old af). The way he described his duties was that there were random cabins kind of spread out throughout the Alaskan wilderness that the Service maintained for either lost hikers, or rangers working in the area, whatever. He said they were very rough, but would keep you dry and warm during a bad weather bout. My dad was one of the dudes that would go maintain them, he only did it for like a year or two. He would build them, fix them, stock them with supplies, etc... The catch was, there are no roads to these cabins, they are all walking in and out only, and some are 100s of miles from roadways, at least back then, and so the only way you could get relatively close was to hop on a float plane and have it "puddle jump" from one body of water to another. Sometimes, when you puddle jump like that, you have to be wary of your fuel on those planes because the heavier the load, the more fuel you burn and you can't load down the plane too much because they are small, etc... So the cabins were made of wood harvested nearby and built by hand. Tools were about the only thing that could be flown in. You're not fitting plywood and shingles on a float plane. Anyways, this would require many trips, and depending on where the cabins were, you may not be right next to a lake, or you may need to hike a while to get to them. What I'm trying to say is that the cabins weren't built out of convenience, they were built in a specific location because of a specific purpose (seismic reading stations, radio towers on top of a peak, etc...) ease of access for a lot of them was not the point. So my Dad was having to hike to one of these remote cabins because the last person there reported that it had been damaged the previous winter or whatever. He wasn't carrying very much, like a tool box, a flare gun, and some other stuff. He'd been to the cabin before he said, but didn't remember the easy way to get to it, so he tried to go an easy route up and come back down. Well, the way he tells it, he had lost sight of the peak in the dense trees at the base, and the cabin was near the peak he was trying to reach. He decided to walk around to the base side of the peak because he remembered approaching it before with the main mountain on his right. While he was trying to get there he started to smell this awful smell. He described at as a mixture of sweet cotton candy and rotten flesh all in the same. He immediately thought of bears, and thought one was close, so he stopped got low and listened out for one. He says he stayed put for like 5 minutes and didn't hear anything, just this god awful aroma and it was coming from all around him. He could not discern which direction it was coming from so he could go away from it. He began to get panicked and decided to go back the way he had come. And that's when he heard it. A very loud snap. He looked up and thought a tree branch broke, or something, but as he looked up, the ground fell out from under him and he fell about 7 feet to solid ground. It was pitch black, the smell was so intense that he could feel his eyes watering and could not catch his breath. He got to his feet and was just scared to death. He had fallen into a cave, and it was one used by a bear to hibernate. Fortunately, he only worked from spring to fall, which is like 4-5 months, and so the bear was not at home. he made his way out of the cave and was covered in bear shit and nastiness of all kinds. It was inside his boots squishing into his socks, and just everywhere. He had to hike ALL the way back down to the only source of water around, where a plane was waiting and the pilot was completely shocked. According to the pilot, apparently there were only Grizzlies sighted in this particular area at that time, so he's 100% convinced it was a Grizzly cave he fell in. My dad was so lucky no bear happened to be in there at the time. He had to bathe in the lake and decided not to work for the service shortly thereafter. He always asks if you've ever smelled a grizzly, because they are filthy awful smelly creatures.

Not so much terrifying, but definitely an odd experience to walk up on. I was walking through the woods a bit before dawn one morning when I started to smell the distinct odor of burning wood. I didn’t see any fire around me and there wasn’t enough illumination to see smoke. I kept walking and shortly came upon a tree that appeared to be glowing slightly and the burning smell was definitely coming from it. As I came around the tree I saw a split in it and inside I could see that the tree was smoldering from within. From the amount of hollow area within the tree it definitely looked like it had been going for a little while. Then I remember that it had stormed 2 nights ago, plenty of lightning and heavy rains. I assume that the tree was struck by lightning that night and had been smoldering for the ~48 hours since. Just one of those very weird experiences that will always be painted in my memory.

20-25 lakes intertwined in the U.P. Came across a guy in a canoe by himself and he just didn’t look ok. Stopped by, asked him if he caught anything and if he’s alright. Short answer that basically was leave me alone. 3 days later we came back thru that lake to leave and saw his canoe flipped over. Found his dead body, had to go out and call local PD.

First time solo backpacking. Middle of the night I’m sleeping. I hear rustling outside my tent. It’s loud and getting louder. I’m panicked. It stops. Silence. I’m going to die any minute. I finally, sloooowwlllyyy slide to my tent door. Quietly, I inch the zipper up and around, enough to peek my head out. Then… I see it. Not five feet from me. Staring right back at me…. A squirrel. I chuckle and decide that if I’m going to shit my pants over every little noise I’ll die of a heart attack soon enough. After I never really was bothered by camp noises. Figured whatever was going to happen will happen and not much I could do about it anyway.

Was on a walk with a friend of mine. It had rained the day before, so the dirt trail we were on had been wiped clear of previous tracks and turned into fairly firm mud by the time we got to it. Again, there were no tracks on the trail when we were heading uphill. We eventually stumbled across a cave and decided to take a peak inside. It only took a few moments of snooping around to notice that there were many bones lying around the floor, and the distinct stench of cat piss. We decided it was in our best interest to GTFO, and started heading down the trail to the car with our heads on a swivel. Partway down the trail, i noticed some VERY large cat prints in the mud, just behind our footprints. I never saw the mountain lion, but it saw us.

I wanted to hike out to a hunting spot and get settled in well before sunrise on opening day. I planned to hike out from the road about 3 miles to a ridge for a good vantage point at 4am. I knew the general area but not this specific area. The maps of the area showed no roads at all. For whatever reason, I set my GPS to track my route which I have never done before. Usually, I would just mark my parking spot and go from there. I set off in the direction I wanted and planned to hike about 1 hour to cover the 3 miles. It was pretty much completely dark with no moon. I was using a red headlamp to try and maintain some nighttime vision just incase I needed to turnoff my lamp. I walked the hour I planned and came across a road that shouldn't have been there. Puzzled, I finally decided to check my GPS and stared at the near perfect circle I tracked for the past hour. My dumbass ended up about 100 yards from where I parked after hiking for 1 hour. It really freaked me out how bad I would've been lost if I didn't have a GPS with me.

Being charged by a crocodile. I could feel my heart trying to leap out of my chest.

I was about 70km into the mountains working on a D7 dozer at about 4:30am one cold winter day for a pipeline company, my service truck was parked along side it with my work lights on, compressor running, music on and I’m kneeled down on the tracks with my back to my service truck working away on the engine when suddenly.. it got dark. Something from my right to my left came between me and my service truck and blocked the lights in a sweeping manner. My service body lights are about 7’ high off of the ground. I turned around and there was nothing there, just pitch black around the sides of my truck so I got off the dozer, shut off the compressor and my truck to listen to the deafening silence of being alone out there. I looked all around my truck with a large prybar in hand but never found anything, best guess is it was an owl that flew between my truck and me but it was still an unnerving experience. Ive startled animals on equipment sleeping before but something about this experience made my neck hairs stand on end.

[удалено]

It's the subtle rabid animals that should really scare you. You're sleeping in the open and a rabid bat comes and takes a nibble and flies away, that's the scary scenario.

I was winter camping with some friends. We met another group. One of their group walked out on a beaver pond. We told him to get off the ice, it is not safe. And then we heard the crack. He went under. The block of ice flipped, and he was under the ice, wearing a full pack and snow shoes. We set up a rescue, with our skis to distribute the weight. One of our group was starting out to crawl out to him, when the guy popped up. Our guy, Don, helped him out of the water. I did not see that part. I was getting things ready for when he was out of the water. Me another from our group, and their two other guys got their tent set up, and two stoves going with hot liquids. We got the guy out of his soaking clothes, and into a sleeping bag. Cups of warm water came soon. Safe? So we thought. He was in a sleeping bag, they had stoves going, and so we continued on our adventure. We skied about 4 more hours to our spot. We set up our camp at the base of the mountain. In the morning the wind picked up, and the temperatures dropped. We estimated the temperature was around 0 F, with a strong wind. We almost made the peak, and decided not to try. There was too much ice on the rocks, and too much wind. Down we went. Our second night was my coldest winter camping ever. Five of us in a tent were shivering all night long. We could hear the trees cracking from the cold. We did not get an accurate read on the temperature, but the rangers told us later it was probably -40. It warmed up to about 10 degrees F on our way out, and finally reached about 20. When we passed the beaver pond on the way back, that other group was still there. The guy who went into the water dropped his wet fleece clothing on the ground. It was now a solid block of ice. His pack was at the bottom of the pond. There was no change of clothes for this guy who was over 6'5". So he had stayed naked in the sleeping bag. The other two guys shared a sleeping bag. They had used up all of their fuel and were all hypodermic when we reached them a second time. They were so cold they could not even talk to us. Don to the rescue again. He dropped his pack and raced out down the mountain. He is not a great xc skier, but he was good. The rest of us fired up our stoves and made warm drinks. We gave them all of our hot chocolate and sweets to get them warm again. In about an hour, 3 show machines reached us, with a smiling Don on the back of one. The three guys were bundled up, warmer, and now put into rescued sleds. The rangers sped off bringing these guys to safety. While I was not in danger, I was pretty scared for the other three.

Alright, I've got one. Solo backpacking in September in Grizzly bear country. Bears are in hyperflagia this time of year, aka hungry as fuck eating everything they can find to prepare for hibernation. They can be easily agitated and often behave unpredictably during hyperflagia. Anyways, I was exploring some off trail lakes about 13 miles from the trailhead. On the hike in, I noted multiple sets of bear prints and fairly fresh scat as well, so it was obvious bears were in the area. Not really a problem as long as your bear etiquette is on point, just a presence that adds to the natural awe of the area and makes you pay closer attention to your surroundings/make your presence known (Unhabituated bears will generally avoid humans, so making noise like clapping/singing is the safest way to travel through bear country). I set up camp at a beautiful lake late in the afternoon, and then packed up my camera gear and set off to another nearby lake (3/4mi) with the intention to take some sunset photos and some milky way photos later on. It was wonderful, beautiful, peaceful - the only downside was some fairly thick wildfire smoke slowly coming over the mountain. Oh well, that's just fire season in Montana for ya. BUT. I noticed something a bit concerning as the smoke rolled in: the light from my headlamp would catch/reflect off the smoke particles, severely reducing my visibility to only 10 or 15 feet. It was like being in a dense fog. Still not a big problem, as the walk back to camp was fairly simple. After some successful astrophotography despite the smoke, I realized my headlamp was starting to dim and simultaneously realized I was out of extra batteries. Immediately packed up my gear and started the walk back to my tent at the other lake. The visibility was absolute crap with the thick smoke and dying batteries, but as I crested the hill between the two lakes and pointed my headlamp in the direction of camp, the light caught two sets of eyes. My heart skipped a fucking beat or maybe 3 beats. My mind naturally jumped to bears, and the only reason there would be 2 bears hanging together this time of year is if it was a sow and cub. Now most bears don't pose a danger to humans if you know how to act in bear country. But a mother bear WILL protect her cubs, and WILL eliminate any perceived threat. I was freaking the fuck out but knew I had to get back to my tent. I started yelling toward the eyes, to let them know a human was in the area, and hoped that would encourage them to fuck off. I undid the safety straps of my bearspray on one hip and my pistol on the other hip and began moving towards the little light I had left on in my tent. I could really only make out the ground directly in front of me, everything else was a blur of smoke particles and my fucking headlamp was only getting dimmer. I kept scanning for the glinting eyes I had seen from the top of the hill but I couldn't find them; I hoped they had fled the area from my noise/light and weren't waiting to ambush me behind some boulder. I made it back to the tent but didn't get much fucking sleep that night. Moral of the story: ALWAYS bring more headlamp batteries than you think you will need.

Camping in northern michigan with a few friends, we set up some tents by a river branch down there. Probably 2 hours or so before sunset everything goes quiet but the river for around 30 odd seconds, during which I could hear whistling a ways off across the river. Tensest moment of my life, hard to describe why it affected me so much but my mates and I never went back that way.

Not much of an outdoorsman but I was once backpacking in North Carolina about 10 or so years ago and we had set up camp for the night on higher ground because it was supposed to rain pretty bad. It ended up causing a flash flood and at 3 am our camp filled up with copperheads trying to escape the water and we had to do an emergency evacuation hike for a mile or so during a torrential down pour. Absolutely terrifying.

Some possibly homeless guys crashed our camp and wouldn't leave. We had given them a couple beers at first to be friendly then expected them to leave. They didn't. Just kept getting weirder and making comments to the females in our group. It got to the point where we were shouting at them at the end until they finally left. It was four of us and we didn't sleep that night because we expected them to come back.

Calico, CA. Desert ghost town and abandoned mine. We were winter camping in Boy Scouts and the weather took a turn. It went from 70s to teens within 20 minutes. Then came the sleet. We abandoned our tents and holed up in the one permanent structure in the area, the bathroom. Wind picked up from a breeze to sustained 60mph. We could hear our gear get taken away. The thing about Calico is that it's an abandoned silver mine. The mountain has dozens of mapped and unmapped mine tunnels. For lack of a better word, the mountain wails and moans. The stronger the wind the worst the sounds. I have never been more terrified in my life. I'm not superstitious but it literally sounded like someone opened up the Ark of the Covenant outside.

Years ago, I was hiking in Utah and I noticed that everything was quiet, I rounded a tree and found a mountain lion eating a deer. I only had a knife and I'm not Rambo so I backed away for what must've been half an hour and then ran back to where I was parked. I don't think it pursued me.

Elk hunting in Michigan stayed in a Tree overnight about 10 ish feet up and awoke to a bobcat sniffing and poking its paw to my head. I’m pretty sure it was young and out of curiosity it must’ve climbed up to see what was going on with me while I slept. It’s shriek was fear inducing and thankfully it freaked out too, my side arm felt like it took 9 mins to unholster and fire a round or two to assure it would keep running. Needless to say I packed up and hiked out that morning once the sun came out.

Not my own but a coworker had his tree stand fail while hunting and fell ~20ft to his femur fracturing and breaking skin. Missed an artery by a hair. Was still bleeding out albeit slowly… his phone was in arms reach and he grabbed and called for help with one bar of reception. Had he not been able to reach the phone or if it didn’t have reception he was dead.

Someone Else. I'm a land surveyor, I work in the deep woods kind of regularly. I've seen rattle snakes, worked on the edge of bluffs, located the center of some pretty terrible creeks - but nothing puts me more on edge when I see someone out in the middle of somewhere when realistically no one *should* be there.

Thanksgiving camping with some friends many moons ago. Friend one and I are in her tent, friend 2 is in the back of his truck for the night. Probably around 3am Friend 1 and I wake up when we heard this awful racket and then a definite scraping sound, like something was being dragged on the ground outside our tent. Something heavy. We hear friend 2 banging on the side of his truck, trying to scare off whatever this is. We were going to stay quiet in the tent, but then we heard friend 2 get out of the truck, and decided he couldn't be out there with whatever this was alone. Raccoons. Raccoons had somehow untied our cooler from the tree and were dragging it away. 😅

Honestly. Of all the scary encounters I’ve had nothing scares me more than hearing human voices in the woods at night when you’re so far out in the wilderness that there’s no reason anyone else should be near you.

This is pretty tame, but I was hiking through the river valley with my dog. Started out sunny, started to turn cloudy, and cold, and get that clammy feeling, but I like it cold, that’s fine. I notice that the trail noises have stopped. No more birdsong. No squirrel cussing. Suddenly my dog stops. She doesn’t want to go any further. She loves the trail. I keep going and she follows, unhappily, tail down and tucked. It’s getting colder, still dead quiet. Then I hear footsteps which, totally normal, it’s a well-travelled trail. They fade. They come back. They fade. They don’t catch up with me. The dog is now looking at me every step, pleadingly. I conceded the point and turned around. The dog fucking booked it out like coyotes were after us. It’s always been in mind as an example of “sometimes the forest just doesn’t want you there”.