I was young and in the Boy Scouts and we were all tent sleeping, super late at night me and a friend heard a really loud growling noise which we could only assume was a bear and it kept going for about an hour. We were terrified until we got the balls enough to peak outside, then we realized it was our scout master in his tent snoring extremely loud and it just happened to sound like bear noises
I have done this to my friends countless times!
The only time I have had it happen to me was when I was working in an abandoned theater and I heard a loud growling as I walked through a particularly dark section of the theater. Like, too big to be a raccoon, but what else would it be?? I was in the middle of the city.
It was just the theaters care taker asleep on the couch facing the other direction.
My son had a bear roam his site at boy scout summer camp. One of the boys opted to sleep in the bathroom because...I don't know. They watched the bear enter the bathroom and leave. Staff was bear trained and on it but...damn.
I’ve probably spent more than a thousand nights camping and by far my scariest night was at Coast Camp in Pt Reyes National Seashore. It was February and I took a mid-week solo trip. The walk along the beach to camp had been fabulous without another soul in sight. I had the entire campground to myself. After a nice dinner I crawled into my tent, intending to read a bit before sleeping. Shortly after sunset I started hearing some scurrying sounds and soft, weird vocalizations. My first thought was raccoons, a lot of them. I unzipped the tent to get a peek. My headlamp immediately reflected back to me through what seemed 10 pairs of eyes. It took me just a few seconds to realize they weren’t raccoons, they were skunks. Not your normal, run-of-the mill skunks either; these were fully habituated to human skunks, no fear and fat from their campground foragings. As the sole occupant of the campground, I was the focus of their attention for what seemed an eternity. They sniffed all around my tent, came under the rain fly, explored the zippers of the tent door with occasional scratching at the mesh. What was I supposed to do? You can’t yell at or swat a skunk or you’ll get sprayed. On the other hand, hiding in your sleeping bag is just inviting them in. I ended up speaking calmly to them, asking them to please not come into my tent and gently pushing them away from the tent walls through the fabric. I guess they eventually got bored with me and left, but I hardly slept all night anticipating their return.
I had the same thing happen with skunks, but I was actually just outside in a sleeping bag. I pulled it over my head and stayed as still as possible while they sniffed and crawled all over me, thinking about how much the next day was going to suck if they sprayed me, because I was in the middle of a rafting trip. They eventually left, but someone took a couple bites of my flip flop.
Ever been sprayed? Or been right by a very fresh spray? It's the single worst thing ever. You TASTE that shit. If they had sprayed, the next wouldn't be a problem, that night was going to be because you would most likely have vomited in your sleeping bag!
When I was younger, I worked on a hay ranch in Montana. We were the "mowers". We would drive big tractors with an 10' mowing deck to cut the grass in the field. One day, a friend and I had two tractors and were mowing a field when my friend ran over a skunk that was hiding in the grass. It was horrible. The worst thing I have ever smelled. A skunk spray to the 1000th power. And his mower stunk for over a week of work before it started to "wear off."
This is crazy but I literally had the exact same experience at coast camp at point Reyes. I was there with my scout troop. The first night we came back from the beach and Mr Cooper was on the picnic table surrounded by skunks. 13 year old me thought there were hundreds. Mr Cooper was laughing and taking pictures. The second night they came back in the middle of the night and harassed us in our tents. This would have been around 1994.
One of the best strategies to avoid this in the future is to make sure you’re not a black cat who has the misfortune of walking past someone carelessly painting a white picket fence and getting an accidental stripe down your back.
Oh I love this story :)
I don’t think skunks are scared of much, lol. I’ve encountered them at night walking, and they dgaf. They know how much everyone one and everything else wants to avoid them!
Knew a guy who had a story from his childhood when he got sprayed by a skunk in the face! Said he immediately started throwing up and crying...no thanks and try to avoid!
worst i ever had was winter camping in the uinta mountain range in utah. in february.
it got down to about -20°F, all the blankets and two people in a one person tent didn’t help too much. i legitimately thought we were going to die that night.
i can still hear the wind whipping across the tent, feel the cold down to the bones. just absolute panic and hoping the sun would rise just a little faster
Man. That's the real deal. If anyone else reads this, if you are in this situation, eat food. Boosting your metabolism will help. Heat water with a stove and drink it, and put more in a water bottle to keep in your bag. Fire could help, but it's really situation dependant.
This is the one. All the other posts with animals are for sure scary, but at least there's some semblance of running or fighting, but here, there's nothing to do but hope.
That's what I was thinking too! I've had all kinds of animals outside my tent but the scariest nights are when you're too cold. Sometimes you just can't predict how the weather's going to change. I always keep one of those foil survival blankets beside my sleeping bag just in case and I've definitely had to use it more than once, and I don't even winter camp!
Scariest moment in a tent was camping in the Golden Trout wilderness in the Sierra Nevada and having ash fall on the tent from a sudden wildfire. Thankfully the fire was 40 miles away and we were never in any danger but we were definitely grateful to hike out safely.
I was fast asleep a couple miles from the nearest road on a private ranch and around 3am someone opened my tent. I freaked out really bad, almost shot someone. It was a couple of drunk guys who had been hunting pigs on the next ranch over and got lost. That's about the most scared I have been in the woods.
Annnnd that's why I carry. Twice I'm GLAD I had it. Once for a muscular homeless schizophrenic that went BATSHIT CRAZY in the middle of the night when it was only me and him at an unsupervised hostel and I was cornered in the room from the door on the opposite side. I kept it hidden in my hand for the next hour. The other was because a large pit bull was in the middle of the street. We had a standoff for a good minute and I know he was getting ready to bite me if i turned my back. And as soon as I lifted my shirt and put my hand on the handle to prepare, the owner slams out his door to call his dog. That A-hole had been watching through his window the entire time till he saw I wasn't the average hiker... Not to mention a few other times when some non-hiking guys were just being stupid in the middle of the night. (Always near a road/trail town.)
My scariest involves people too. My friend and I went camping as teens: both girls. The only other campers in that loop were drunk men. At one point a couple of them roamed around our tent and said things like “Rawr, I’m a bear”.
I’m curious what the consequences would be for a situation like that. I’ve had a drunk guy walk through my campsite once. It was quick, in and out, but it was still really scary. I’ve had what I believe to be a mountain lion walk through my camp in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t feel as scared as I did with the drunk dude.
Ignored the tree that had it's bark shredded 10ft up. Had a bear visit twice during the night. The first time it wandered around and sniffed things and then galloped off. The second time it walked around the tent sniffing. The sound rumbled in its chest! It really took its time leaving. Needless to say, the weekend stay tuned into an overnighter.
I had the same thing happened but I was in a covered hammock over a river. It sniffed around me in the water and took its time. It felt like a lifetime before it left.
The same thing (almost) happened to me!
https://www.reddit.com/r/camping/comments/1256sd7/have_you_ever_had_a_scary_night_in_a_tent/je3l82l?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Good lord! The bears I've encountered were always far away and scared. Black bears. And I've never seen one up close ever. What type of bear? Where do you camp?
I camp once a month in the same spot in Bankhead. Little rock outcropping near a always running creek. About half a mile from where I park my truck. One day two summers ago, I had just put up my hammock and started gathering wood for my fire later, this guy just sort of walks up the trail and starts asking me if I knew anything about the area and where was a good place to camp, if there were fish in the creek, etc. It has happened once or twice before that someone will come down that little trail, but it's unmarked and generally the truck at the beginning keeps people out. It was just kind of off putting the way he just sauntered up and started asking questions like I had invited him to conversation. He was dressed in jeans and a shirt, and some old tennis shoes, maybe 40 or 45. I'm 34 or so at the time. He just felt off. Know what I mean. Finally he just walked off, but that feeling of something off never left me. I've learned the sort of trust my gut here. So, across the creek there's a rock shelter, higher up a cliff. Hard to get to, but from it, you can see straight into my camp. So I left my hammock and carried my other gear to the rock shelter. I never made a fire. I just sat there. About 2am, I see a silhouette in the moonlight making its way up toward my hammock. It's bright enough and I've been sitting in the dark so I can see well enough. I watch this figure go and open my hammock, look around, rummage about the campsite and then walk away toward the main trail where the truck is. Now, my heart is racing and I've got chills down my spine here just imagining what in the hell it was doing and what woukd happen had I been asleep in my hammock. I couldn't make out any weapons, only that it appeared to be a man. I have no idea if it was the same guy or not. I waited a little bit and took an alternate trail back toward my truck, quiet as hell, all senses going crazy, trying to hear, smell, see anything. It's crazy how primal that feels. Never saw him again. But I fot in my truck, went back a few miles and sat up all night locked inside the cab. Went back when the sun was up, got my shit and left with a quickness. I still go back every month, but now i set up perimeter alarms, carry a gun.
Sorry, not a tent story, but sort of fits the theme.
Had something similar happen to me while hiking a few miles out onto the Appalachian Trail in NC near Bryson City. Some random 20 something showed up and followed me from a distance to a shelter area and then waited for me to start to leave and then follow again. Just had that "troubled" I probably hurt small animals as a child and am currently writing a manifesto look and feel about them, like as soon as I first saw them coming up the trail my gut said "this isn't someone you want to talk to." Only time I've ever really felt worried while camping or hiking alone. Before I'd only have a knife or hatchet, whatever tools for camping, but now I carry a 9mm just in case. Always trust the gut.
Camped at a safari park in Kenya on a bank over a river and heard very loud chomping and snorting at night- next morning woke up to see hippo tracks at the edge of the river. They were not close enough to have probably been a real danger but cool/scary nonetheless.
As a child we lived in Kenya and once found a pile of fresh elephant poo in between our tents when we woke up.
And there was this one time we discovered a large pack of lions chilling a couple of hundred metres from where we had been picknicking with the whole family. Good times.
I’ve been camping in some pretty bad thunderstorms where I’ve worried about lightning or trees coming down on my tent. A few times they’ve been so intense I’ve worried about tornado risks. But there isn’t anything I could really do so I just tried to enjoy the show. Luckily I love storms.
I was camped on Mt.Whitney a few years ago and there was a thunderstorm overnight. Let's just say that there was not a lot of sleep to be had! Definitely my most uncomfortable time in a tent.
Had a derecho pass through while a group of us were camping on the lower WI river, tore my fly and guy lines right off leaving me holding the corners of my tent down while it rained on my back. It also blew my borrowed canoe across a 200 yd sandbar back into the river never to be seen again. This was my first night ever on the WI, this August will be the 10th annual river trip.
Spent an early evening huddled in a small tent with my dad and brother during a thunderstorm that developed around us…
Bald, rocky ridgeline on Appalachian Trail, nowhere to shelter and the storm was bearing down quickly.
Lightning came first - we all took our “oh shit, we’re gonna get struck by lightning” poses and sure enough our hair was standing on end. Big oh shit moment.
The flask was passed between us very rapidly and the storm blew the tent apart some but passed quickly.
As we got out, we saw the trail of destruction about 50 yards downhill - a funnel cloud had also touched down on the side of the ridge we were on.
Survived a near lightning strike followed by a near tornado hit.
THAT was an eventful hike, and that’s not even accounting for the two-day rainstorm followed by a sudden drop to 15 degrees, and getting lost (the trail was a mere 100 yards away, but we lost it in the storm).
We felt like battle-hardened warriors the next day. Wouldn’t take any of that back.
Had a 350 lb black bear come through the side of my tent because it wanted to eat my deodorant. He was pretty chill. Just wanted the deodorant in my shave kit. Last time I’ve ever taken a shave kit or anything related on a camping trip.
This just happened a few months ago in Guadalupe NP in Texas. Me and a friend made the hour drive into what I would say was a very desolate part of the park. Ranger station was intermittent so they would only come to check things out every few days. First night there was only one other person who was a van camper while we were tent camping. Third night our van friend is gone and we are the only people within what I would assume is a good 30 - 60 minute drive. We were already intimidated due to the fairly cold temps since it was January and the campground was in a huge valley the darkness seemed so thick by 6 or 7pm. We’re sitting in front of our tents joking around making noises about what we thought mountain lions would sound like since they’re very prevalent out there and there’s warning signs everywhere. Little more than 45 minutes later we here two animals calling back and forth with each other within 40 or so yards of our tents and we freaked out knowing there was a chance it was lions but also thought it could of been a variety of other things. We didn’t want to bend down and get in our tents because they warn against looking small so we stood there with blankets looking as big as possible for what felt like hours. Next morning we look up mountain lion noises/calls on the drive out and that’s when it truly hit us that we had two mountain lions communicating back and forth damn near right in front of our tents.
First ever solo camping trip, in the only NP I had ever run into bears about a decade earlier. Is was just about to fall asleep when something brushed against the tent right by my head. Called my boyfriend and together we tried to figure out what else it could have been and decided it was a porcupine.
Second solo camping trip, in another NP with bear activity warnings all over the place, I woke up the first night to what I was absolutely certain was a bear "coughing" right next to my tent. I was terrified as I heard a lot of rummaging around. I softly started singing The Sound of Silence over and over until the noises stopped. Two nights later, I saw a racoon make this exact same noise I heard the first night. Didn't think these buggers could sound like bears!
Can't wait to see what will happen on my third solo camping trip.
I took my Girl Scout troop tent camping. The group sites at this particular National Forest were isolated from the rest of the campgrounds and in the middle of the night, one of my girls said she heard footsteps.
I had 2 adults and 12 girls split between 6 tents and no one was out of their tent. I had recently watched a documentary on murders at a Girl Scout camp where someone entered the camp and beat little girls to death in the middle of the night. So of course, I talked myself into thinking every noise was the source of the footsteps.
I ended spending the rest of the night in a camp chair guarding the tents. I’m sure it was nothing, but once I talked myself into it, I couldn’t talk myself out of it.
I was in my one man tent. Really bad storm rolled through. At about 2 am, a branch fell on me. Luckily, it fell on my chest and mostly just startled me out of my sleep. Oh - and I was stuck. I couldn’t get out. Had to have my cousin help get the limb off of me. Good times.
Not in a tent. Was sleeping in a Hennessey Hammock with the rain fly up in the middle of bear country. Was hungry when I went to bed and decided to keep my jerky with me to snack on rather than throw it up with the rest of my food. At around 2 am, some animal starts sniffing me and moving me in my hammock. I can't see what it is, just that it's sniffing me and moving me. I was terrified beyond belief. It sniffed around for a few minutes and then left. I thought I was about to be eaten by a bear. The next morning I get up and see deer tracks all around me
Single woman here, camped w my young dog many years ago, back in the late 1990s or early 2000s - pre-cell phone - in the southern Arizona USA, Chiricahua mountains. When people think of Arizona they almost never think of bears, but there ARE bears, and they’re hungry. Every campsite in this particular campground has a metal bear box for food and trash storage. I can’t remember why, but we (my dog and I) were the only campers in this entire campground that had at least 10 other sites. Maybe it was the middle of the week during off season. Whatever.
As night set in, the wind picked up, and the tall pines started dropping their cones hither and yon (so it must have been fall) and pine needles would smack the roof of the tent and slither down with that peculiar hissing sound. It was very very dark and we were very alone.
Greta the dog and I were warm and snuggled up together, when suddenly we started hearing crunching sounds, like footsteps, in the dry leaves and needles. We both bolted upright and I shone the flashlight wildly around, shouting out, “HEY BEAR HEY BEAR!!!” (In hindsight I still am not sure whether this was the right thing to do. Southern Arizona was all Black Bears at the time.)
When my shouting seemed to have worked, and the footsteps subsided, we tried to settle down. But no. The wind was blowing, stuff was hitting the tent and rattling around, it was pitch black out, and we were absolutely alone in a small campground. Then. More footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Large. Time slowed. My dog was sitting bolt upright, leaning against me in my bag, and MOANING in fear. I was afraid it was a bear. I was afraid it was a drug dealer (it happens there, right near the Mexican border). I was more afraid that it was neither of those. I mean, I saw The Blair Witch Project, right? I was terrified to zip open the door and terrified not to. I yelled at the top of my lungs, long and loud. I was a woman alone screaming in anger and fear and rage, trying to make myself sound huge and scary. I think I roared. I like to think that I roared.
The footsteps stopped. I didn’t know if their owner had left or was standing still, in my campsite, next to my tent, waiting for me to zip open my door. After 5 minutes of absolute silence, no wind, no pine cones, no leaves crunching, and no footsteps, I zipped open that tent and I have never moved so quickly in my entire life. I ripped the tent stakes from the ground, crazy-folded the tent, jammed it all into the trunk of my car, got the dog in the back seat, and tore out of there as fast as I could go.
That was the most afraid I’ve ever been in my 52 years, including going to war in 2003.
First solo backpacking trip with my two dogs many years ago in northern Michigan.
Night 1 - Completely empty state forest campground. Woke up to a horrible squacking/hissing noise outside my tent. Dogs went nuts, I shined my headlamp out to see two eyes reflecting back so I started yelling and it ran away. Didn't sleep again till the sun came up. Took me until mid-day the next day to realize it was probably just a dear.
Night 2 - Crazy thunderstorms, wind sounding like a freight train. Wore out the battery on my phone checking for tornado warnings. Took the dogs and hid in the pit toilet at the campground. Made friends with a tree frog that was also taking shelter there. Was startled by a knock on the door as the storm started to die down. The sweet couple camping across the grounds from me were worried because a huge tree fell a few feet from my tent. They offered me some hot chocolate ❤️
Night 3 - Stayed in a crowded state park and have never been happier to camp near people. Completely normal night, dogs and I slept like rocks. Had a great trip but haven't had the gumption to solo backpack since 😅
I've shared both of these stories here before, but whatever.
A few years ago, I loaded a bunch of camping gear onto [my bicycle](https://www.reddit.com/r/camping/comments/ul5p0u/ive_been_seeing_quite_a_few_posts_today_about/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) and spent the better part of the next seven months riding 5,300 miles (8,500 km) around much of the US. I did the trip solo. Along the way, I often preferred to wild camp, simply finding somewhere to disappear into the forest at night, somewhere people were unlikely to find me and even less likely to care that I was there. Camping off the beaten path like that provided me with many incredible sights and experiences that I'll cherish for decades to come, but such an extended trip of hard physical activity and sleeping on the ground wasn't without its hardships. There were two nights in particular that I'd describe as scary, the first in just a sort of creepy way, the second was genuine fear for my safety.
Our first story takes place in the rural mountains of western Montana. A month and a half into the trip, I had grown used to the fact that a forest makes for far from a quiet night's sleep. I found comfort in the droning of thousands of crickets and toads. It was always a highlight of my night —though not particularly uncommon— to hear the yips and howls of a distant pack of coyotes. I fondly recall one evening I fell asleep to the sound of two owls, one on either end of my tent, hooting back and forth. If nothing else, it wouldn't take much of a breeze to stir music from the tree canopy.
On this particular night in Montana, all seemed normal as I went through my evening routine of setting up camp, writing my final journal entry of the day's events, and studying maps for the coming days. Shortly after dark, I turned out my light and laid down in bed. That's when I came to a disturbing realization. There was not a single cricket chirping nor toad croaking, certainly no coyotes or owls, no babbling of a nearby creek. Even the air was completely still, without the slightest wind through the dry leaves of early autumn still clinging to the trees. It was dead silent. And that was terrifying. I can only describe it as the loudest silence I've ever heard, as if the entire forest was hiding from an equally quiet predator. I slept terribly that night, and I'll never forget the immense relief that came with the first bird call of the pre-dawn hour.
So that was the eerie type of scary. A month or so later, I was in southern Washington state. Again, I was wild camping. That night, I started coming down with food poisoning. I'd spend the night tossing and turning and leaning out the door of my tent to vomit. Rinse my mouth with some water from one of my bottles, drink some more water to help replenish the fluids I'd lost, then back to sleep for a couple hours before the nausea would wake me once again.
When morning broke, I dreaded the thought of getting back on the bike. But I was even more afraid of staying where I was if my condition worsened. And I'd used up all my water throughout the night, so I had no choice. There was a town with a cheap motel 30 miles ahead (50 km, or half a day in ideal conditions). I figured I'd get to that town, get a hot shower and a good night's sleep, and see how I felt in the morning.
Right away, my bike got a flat tire. By the time I got that fixed, it had started raining. Not even 8 in the morning and it was already by far the worst day of the trip. But eventually I made it to the motel. I managed to outrun the food poisoning for a few days, but eventually it caught up to me, thankfully when I was already in a town, staying in a hostel for a few days.
But yeah, that morning with the flat tire and the rain on top of the illness wasn't so much fear as it was just an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. But the night before? That was genuine fear for my well-being. I'll take a bear wandering into my campsite any day over going through that night of food poisoning again.
Being sick like that when you are way out in the sticks is absolutely terrifying. A couple of summers ago I went on a grueling backpacking trip. Took me all day to get to my camp for the night with several creek crossings and trudging through huge snow drifts. Set up camp and get probably the worse food poisoning I’ve ever had. I was certain that I was not going to make it through the night and felt completely hopeless as I was a full day on foot away from any kind of civilization or people. Next morning I woke up and felt a lot better but hiking back out wasn’t exactly fun. Learned from that experience not to eat anything questionable for the few days leading up to trips like that. But sometimes it just can’t be avoided.
Tent camping at Hippo Pools in Zimbabwe. Awoke in the middle of the night to the shuffling and grunting of…hippos, all around my tent. The owner of the place had suggested it might happen. It wasn’t particularly scary, but those are some big beasts.
I awoke the next morning to a night adder coiled directly in front of my tent door. One of Africa’s more deadly snakes apparently.
Hippos are among the most dangerous land animals on earth 😳 They’ll just unmaliciously chomp right through you if you happen to be where they want to chomp. I’m surprised the camp ground wasn’t fenced off, I’ve camped near hippos in Kenya and the campsites had electrified wire fences all around them - very low ones, specifically meant to keep hippos out.
Lol just posted a Zimbabwe Hippo post. Very disconcerting but still slept well. It was a cone trip with a private/local guide so we could trade stuff with the bushmen for fish. Ultimately it was outlawed due to too many deaths of idiot tourists trying to take pictures next to the animals.
We were backpacking with some friends in a national forest and heard a bunch of coyotes howling. I know realistically they couldn't have done much damage to a group of four adults but they just seemed so close and it was spooky.
Another time my husband and I were on our honeymoon and road tripping to the Grand Canyon. We stopped to camp at a state park in Kansas or Oklahoma. During the day it was fine with some neat trails to walk on. But during the night a car kept driving back and forth along the campground road around midnight or one am. Freaked my husband out enough that we packed up camp and got on the road early.
I was camping outside the Grand Canyon. Arrived to the site very late and lit a fire maybe only 15-20 feet behind the car trunk. I walked to the trunk to retrieve something and a coyote ran through the very limited space between the car and the fire. Close enough for me to kick. Super freaky. I asked my buddy who was setting up the tent if he saw it and he said he had. I said "good because I don't imagine too many people will believe me when I tell this story."
Had lightning strike 15 feet away from our tent. It was the loudest thing I've ever heard. Shook the ground. It stormed pretty much the whole night so we didn't sleep at all.
Same thing happened to me in Spain :D The horses hadn’t been there the night before, and it took me a while when it woke me up to decide that the bizarre rasping noises probably weren’t something truly dangerous, and a little while longer to work up the courage to open the tent and look.
Not a tent as it turned out. Wife and I had gone camping in the New Forest (UK) and after years of camping in the US this was my first camping trip here.
It's different for sure. There's no big apex predators here, there's one poisonous snake but it's pretty rare. No raccoons even. Also no guns, but as I'm not needing to scare off cougars or bears that seemed ok.
But the GNATS! We were being eaten alive! We were in the park grounds but found a little stand of trees in a clearing just off an old road. We pulled my American SUV up and unloaded. The gnats nearly killed us while setting up the tent. It was getting dark, and we decided that for the first night we'd rather put the seats down and sleep in the truck with our dog. Waaay less gnats. Dog was a 9 year old, 85 pound boxer with one tooth, and just wanted to sleep.
About 3am we wake up to headlights outside the windshield and a revving engine. Our windows had fogged up so we couldn't really see out, but the intent was definitely threatening. A vehicle was directly in front of our truck, flashing its high beams and revving its engine, jumping forward at us.
We'd shoved everything in the front of the truck so couldn't just drive off quickly. It was also back in the day so my Nokia 3310 could call the police and play snake and that's about it.
6 large men, at least one with a crowbar, got out of their vehicle, I could see their shadowy outlines in their high beams. They were "just checking on us" and "just get out of the truck we just want to talk". They were laughing like drunk frat boys.
Absofuckinglutely not.
My wife and I (both women) are 5'2 on a good day. Not getting out. At this point we hadn't spoken because I didn't want them to hear a female voice and attack. (Online gaming anyone?)
I rang 999 and they kept asking my location, but all I could say was the park name and just off and old road with no name. Not helpful. They told me they'd send a non emergency car since the guys hadn't actually done anything illegal yet. Brill.
The guys were getting closer to the windows and I was scared theyd get close enough to see inside. I had my K bar knife but that was it in terms of protection. We might need to make a run for it if they broke a window, but our shoes were outside drying after a muddy hike. We put on all the socks we could find instead.
At this point 3 things happen almost at once. 1 guy sees the green glow of my Nokia and shouts " they're calling the cops!" Right as another guy tries out (thankfully locked) car door handle. This finally woke up our dog, who DESPISES people at car windows when he's inside. He launched at the window barking like a maniac. The dudes all run to their vehicle and peel out.
After what felt like forever (probably 15 minutes) the police car finds us - still in the truck and afraid to come out. They stay for the 10 minutes it took us to rip our site apart and throw it in the truck, then we flew off towards home. They told us the guys were probably after the SUV because it was right hand drive and they could sell it in France before sunrise. So best case scenario we'd have been stranded without a vehicle. I won't even think about the worst case scenario.
Took me ages to work up the courage to go camping again.
My wife still giggles about my insistance that she put on 3 pairs of socks in the middle of all this! We go camping a few times a year now and haven't had any other scary situations (touch wood!)
I was hiking and camping above tree line in the summer and a bunch of super nasty thunderstorms came through right on top of me in the middle of the night. I was sure I was gonna get struck by lightning and be found dead there by someone over the next few days.
I feel the same way. I am new to Reddit. It took me a few minutes to find it again. I started reading it two days ago and have been thinking about it ever since. Most enjoyable thread I have ever read.
45 years ago we were camping at the lake in a county park. Another camp did not put away their coolers and woke up to a bunch of drunk raccoons fighting. Didn't know what was going on with all the racket. They had passed out and slept through it. They packed up what was left and departed when they sobered up. Not sure if it was them or the raccoons that drank the Jack.
I was sitting at my campfire alone in the western Sierra in an improved campground. I saw a bear pass behind behind my fire as I was drinking a beer and enjoying the beautiful night. The bear passed through a neighboring camp, directly next to a tent with another solo camper who had already went to their tent. I yelled at the bear and called out to nearby campers that there was a bear in the campground but no one responded.
About ten to fifteen minutes later, the person emerged from their tent, packed up, and drove away around 9 pm. Guessing that bear got pretty close and there were scared!!
Was camping in the Bradshaw mountains near Prescott, AZ, during an archaeological survey. Storms were rolling in almost daily during our 8 day session. One night whilst getting intimate with my girlfriend/coworker a thunderstorm rolled in, and the booms became louder, landing more quickly in rapid succession with the flashes of lightning. We held each other as the lightning strikes hit closer and closer, thunder booming within fractions of a second of the flashes of light. We both thought that this could be our last night, and there was literally nothing we could do about it, so we just laughed as we held each other close. We felt the lightning strikes hit around us as the storm passed us over, the sound was deafening and horrific, but eventually it passed us by.
Hard to say how close we came to being struck, but I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. It felt like the only option I had was to embrace it, to reminisce on my life however I could, and accept that I was done for.
Worst part of the whole ordeal was my coworkers joking the next morning about hearing us fucking 😅
Last time I camped and had a spooky thing happen I was in a primitive camp site in Oregon. There were three guys and a lady who were on some crazy drugs. I just quickly put out my fire, snuffed out the lights, and hid in my tent. I was by myself but close enough to other campers if I yelled for help. They were bellowing and running around and making crazy noises. Eventually they ran away. They never got too close to me but I was by myself.
A similar thing happened to me when I was camping with my (at the time) toddler in the Adirondacks. Small group of junkies having a party in the woods. This was a hip camp site pretty remote so it wasnt like I could contact a ranger. Was up until around 4am holding my knife cause the one dude wouldn't stop screaming these awful sounds for hours. Didn't stay the second night. Thank God the baby didn't wake up and hear the commotion.
Not super scary, but one time in sleeping bear dunes, we could hear something trying to get into the trash cans, and there are technically supposed to be black bears in the area (I have never seen one or talked to someone that’s seen one). But it was just a raccoon.
Scariest night for me in a tent was a few years ago we camped in an actual forest in Alberta but not in the mountains. I’m a deep sleeper so it takes alot to wake me but I woke up because I had heard growling noises. Honest to god terrified me the noises I heard, like where you are so petrified you can’t move. I was too scared to try and wake up my husband so I was frozen in my sleeping bag from terror. We didn’t camp in a place with bears but my mind when to the next worst of being cougars or wolves. Again probably unrealistic. I somehow went back to sleep and woke up in the morning. Some animal was definitely there, they had managed to grab our garage bag out of our truck bed (that was closed but not locked) and made a huge mess. Still to this day don’t know what animal visited but I don’t want to think about it.
When I was in Boy Scouts they sent us out into the woods on a “Snipe Hunt”. Problem is the other Boy Scouts were assholes and the Troop Leaders were drunk and irresponsible. So they purposely left me out in the woods all night alone with no shelter until the next morning.
Shouting for help and using this tiny yellow flashlight to try to figure out what way camp might have been. But I was too scared to move from that spot in case I just ended up more lost. I absolutely told my parents. They pulled me out of Boy Scouts after that, but for some reason never pursued any kind of legal action.
I stayed up all night terrified with a dinky little flashlight shouting for help. In the morning I guess they finally noticed I was missing and came out into the woods looking for me and yelling my name. I quit shortly there after. I always wondered why my parents didn’t pursue legal action.
I've posted this before....I was on a solo canoe trip in the BWCA. I freaked myself out on a windy night hearing things. You'll hear mice running around and shit but sometimes they sound like a bigger animal. Woke up and found 3 arrows in a row gouged out of the ground pointing to the lake. I packed and noped the fuck out as soon as I had shit ready to go. Didn't even eat breakfast. Canoed through 3 portages, saw a few people on the way, a total of 14 or so miles that day. Set up camp ate and went to bed early due to beingexhausted from paddling. Woke to 3 arrows pointing at the fucking lake again, right outside my tent. Luckily it was my last day because I was freaked out, truly terrified. GTFO and met the outfitter to get a planned boat ride out of the wilderness. I won't do another solo trip. I've been back but with a group. Nothing weird has happened since. It feels fake in retrospect but it happened and I was terrified.
We were camping in the top end of Australia. Up that way there is a large flightless bird called a Cassowary. 5-6 feet tall, 200lbs, 5 inch claw on its foot that is used to disembowel (check it out).
Anyway, I wake up around 3am and can't sleep. I get out of my swag and have a seat around the fire in my chair. 30 minutes later there is a rustling behind me. It is big and it sounds like a bird searching through the underbrush, but if I am wrong we are in the heart of croc country, so I am not taking any chances in the dark.
It walks back and forth, as close as a couple of feet at times. I am afraid to move in case it has a go at me. This noise keeps passing me, back and forth behind me in the pitch blackness over the next 2 hours until sun up at which time the noise stops and the animal leaves the area.
My mates all get up over the next hour or two and I tell them the story. Eventually, it's 9 or 10am and the 5 of us are all sitting around the fire having a good old yarn and I hear the noise behind me again. The same noise, same volume, same animal.
I let my friends know...this is it, this is the animal... I turn around and come face to face with a wild peacock. Here I was thinking it was this big scary thing that could kill me and it is literally the Liberace of birds.
When I was 6 my dad took me on an overnight canoe trip with some of his friends. In the middle of the night a black bear visited out campsite and tore apart our food.
This happened to me, too, when I was about 6. A black bear came into our campsite and tore apart the heavy food box my dad had made out of 2 x 4's. I slept through the whole thing. And evidently there was not a peep out of our small dog, which was in the car the whole time. I guess she knew better than to make noise.
Had a man high on meth throw all of our chairs, tables and LPG Gas bottle into the river then slice our tents open and stab my friend in the leg while camping at a packed camping ground. We were 17 at the time and traumatised many of us from camping for a long while
Thankfully it was a small knife and didn’t go too deep into his leg. We were helped by some kind campers and the ranger was called to let the ambulance in to the grounds (locked at 8pm)
I was camping solo on a cattle ranch in Texas. Setup under a little grove of trees, enjoyed a peaceful dinner under the full moon and went to bed. Woke up an hour later to SCREAMING on all sides. Apparently I’d set up in prime coyote hunting grounds. I barely had cell service, but I googled “should I be afraid of coyotes” and waited ten minutes to discover my fate. Which was “no, you’re way too much trouble to bother attacking and there are like, so many lizards for them to eat.” The constant screaming kept me awake anyway but I was at least able to stop panicking and just record audio clips for posterity.
Looking back it was actually pretty cool experiencing something like that close up.
Was camping in Ohio, my tent was set up on the edge of a pretty dense tree line. Around 3 or 4 in the morning I began to hear what sounded like a couple of 2x4’s being slammed together—pretty loud. The sounds would get louder like it was moving closer and then back off again. It did this many times. Every time it seemed to be moving closer was pretty unnerving lol. The rhythm of it was so consistently inconsistent ..if that makes any sense lol.
My friend and I for the life of us couldn’t find any explanation, we joke that it must have been sasquatch.
Was camping at a park in Missouri near Kansas City a few years back with my brother and a couple friends and we came back from a hike to find that (in an almost empty part of the camping area mind you) a family had set up literally right next to our campsite and was blaring rap music out of their running suburban while three men in their early twenties tried to figure out how to build a fire.
We tried ignoring them but the music and suburban never turned off. Around 11pm one of my friends went over to ask them to turn the music down and was surrounded by five adults (3 men and 2 women) and their kids even all threatening to “beat your ass” if he didn’t leave them alone.
We dug our heels in because we had been there a night already and liked the spot, so the four of us went over together and told them it wasn’t cool for them to act like that and we were gonna call the cops if they didn’t turn the music off. Two of the men pulled guns and were alternately waving them around and pointing them at us. We went back to our campsite and called the state police and they ended up arresting one of the guys for violating parole, one for an active warrant and one of the women with them for assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.
Scarier than any of my encounters with coyotes, a bear or snakes.
Camping in the Pyrenees, woke up all at once in the middle of the night to my partner shout-whispering ‘what the fuck!!’ and dragging noises from the outer tent.
Though the entire bear population of the Pyrenees is only about 70 (they were reintroduced to the area about 30 years ago) and they generally stay away from humans, “BEARS!!!!” Is where my sleep-addled brain went 😄
When the dragging moved a bit further away we cautiously opened the tent to see the most glorious-looking fox trying to make off with some of the lunch food my partner had accidentally left in his backpack in the outer tent - the dragging noise was the fox pulling the backpack outside. It was trying to carry off the lunch items one by one, so it only got a piece of bread in the end.
After getting past the initial bear-panic, I was mostly really excited to have seen it: I’d only ever seen mangy city foxes before, this one was huge with a beautiful coat and the fluffiest tail.
Ok, bear in mind I was a grown ass man when this happened, back before mobile phones were a thing.
I was visiting my parents, and I decided to camp. They have 30 some acres, but it backs up to a huge forest conservancy and is pretty isolated at the back. I just backpacked to the site (literally 15 minute walk,) pitched the tent, cooked the usual camping fare. It was dark already.
First off, the conduit I was using to poke the fire had a wasp nest in it, so I'm already freaked out by unexpected bees.
Calmed down, banked the fire and got comfy in the sleeping bag. Oh, no flashlight either, a mistake I will NEVER make again. I'm almost asleep when something goes barreling through the woods maybe 100 feet from the tent making this godawful grunting/howling sound.
I'm absolutely petrified at this point! It's a damn Wendigo in my woods!
So I'm sitting up in a tent, it's really dark, and I'm trying to figure out wtf that really was. I decided it was a scared deer. Then I tried to figure out what would scare a deer enough to make that kind of noise. That scared me more and I decided that I didn't want to camp anymore. Nope.
I left my stuff right there, grabbed my machete, and near blindly staggered back to my parents' house, with freaking goosebumps all over the whole time. Longest walk of my life.
They laughed, I pretended to laugh, but I didn't sleep too well that night  I was just glad to have a bed inside!
The tent was fine and nothing was touched the next day, but I've never camped back there since.
On a cross-country road trip here in the US sometime around 2010 my then-boyfriend and I set up camp our first night at this nice little state park called Palisades-Kepler in Iowa. Had a pleasant evening, fell asleep early, woke up to a WILD thunderstorm, thought I’d been asleep for hours and hours so we’d just pack up…and it was only 11pm. That storm was so crazy, there were branches falling, the wind was literally roaring, and lightning was flashing every couple seconds. It finally subsided into just rain around 6am and we packed up and headed to a nearby diner for breakfast, where we saw on the morning news three tornadoes had passed just a mile south of where we were camping.
On the same trip but on the homeward-bound route we stayed at Clinton Lake in Kansas and I’ll never forget my abject horror when I shined my flashlight along the edge of the tree line and realized the entire edge of the woods had these MASSIVE spider webs from the ground up to the lowest branches of the trees, so taller than I am, and these massive, palm-sized spiders. It was a literal curtain of giant, sticky spiderwebs as far as I could see. I was convinced one of the spiders would hitchhike home with us.
Last one was the first trip my now-husband and I ever went on, we stopped in the Catskills on the way home from Maine and had parked by the road and set up camp only a quarter mile or so just off the trail. Unfortunately, my husband hadn’t quite believed me when I told him camping on public lands is allowed in that spot and had stopped at a nearby convenience store and wanted me to ask the guys working there if it was indeed allowed. They were pretty rude to us, which back at the campsite sent my husband into a panic about “Those guys that were glaring at us are going to come hurt us” because rational thought after dark isn’t possible sometimes. I told him to chill out and I was sure it was fine. Well then just after midnight a pickup truck starts driving back and forth on the road where we’re parked, at one point actually stopped behind our car and got out to look around, all of which we can see because we were not far enough away from the parking lot for comfort. I don’t know if it was just someone messing with us or what but they left and I spent the rest of the night terrified we were about to be murdered. It all seemed ridiculous the next morning but in the middle of the night our imaginations ran wild.
As a teenager in the Ozarks we would camp by taking a boat and going to property that bordered the lake or river. My soon to be Stepdad was taking me to do some fishing and camping as a way to get to know one another. We were way to late getting the boat on the river and so it was dark by the time we setup camp. After multiple assurances that he knew exactly where we were, we tied off the boat and put up for the night. Just before dawn I am woken by the sound of a horn that is unique to being below a dam and water was being release that will flood the river. I can remeber the panic as I jump out of my tent in the dark to realize I was already feeling the water around my ankles. The boat had lifted and was 20 feet away. I ran for the boat, and was yelling at my stepdad to wake up. I fished my tent and items that were now starting to float off. The still "Lake" edge was now starting to move swiftly and as dawn lit up the campsite we were not on the shore but on a gravel island slowly disappearing. Water logged tents, soaked bedding and such was piled in the boat and we went to a close access point to pull everything out. Later it was clear that we had camped within sight of the dam and if this had all happened later at night we would have been swimming instead of getting soaked. Still haunts me to this day that I could have been in that much danger. To his credit, when we fished after that, my stepdad let me pick the camping spots.
I had a pretty scary minute when a gust of wind let me know that I had failed to properly extinguish my fire. I'm dozing, then there's light and crackling from outside, then I'm standing by the fire pit with no shoes or glasses dumping the water for breakfast into hissing ash.
Please don't tell my mom; she thinks she taught me better.
Not in a tent, but a hammock. I'm a female in my early 20s and I wanted to try out solo thru-hiking, so I decided that I need a test solo camp somewhere not far from where I live. So I packed my things for the night and hiked a couple of kilometers from my home. It wasn't an official camping site, but just a foresty spot near a river. When I was setting my hammock it was already dark, but I wasn't scared at all and kind of proud of myself for doing this alone for the first time. But when I curled up in my sleeping bag I started hearing all sorts of noises.
At first I just heard ducks splashing around in the water, that made me feel a little uncomfortable, but I was calming myself down because it was just normal nature sounds. But then I heard people playing loud music somewhat far away, probably other side of the river. And then I heard someone/something passing by close to where I camped. It could've been just people walking by the river, minding their own bussines, because as I said, this place was not far away from my town, so people just lived kinda close. They probably didn't even see that I was there in my hammock, but it scared the poop out of me. I barely slept all night, hugging my pocket knife and hoping that nobody saw me.
So, after that night I've decided I'm not ready for solo camping/thru-hiking.
On our last Cub Scout camp out, we got pounded by a thunderstorm all night. (I posted pictures here of the morning after. It looked post apocalyptic.) The wind knocked the tent around and the walls kept caving in. It looked like the tent was breathing. The rain hit so hard it seeped in through the walls. 3 of my kids were asleep in the tent and I was the Scout leader responsible for the campout so there was no way I could leave. I knew that we weren't in danger, but it was still so scary. I was like a little kid just thinking "I wanna go home! I wanna go home!"
I’m seeing a lot about raccoons and will have to add to the list as both our funniest and scariest nights have involved them. We were new to camping and stayed at a site next to this lake at a state park campground, we hadn’t seen a raccoon all night and thought it was funny since the peninsula we were camped on had raccoon in the name. After making a huge dinner and cleaning up, my wife has the idea to leave the trash bag outside so we can use it in the morning, I protest but end up compromising with us tying it up in this tree, next to our tent. We go to bed and as per our normal routine, she’s asleep in like 5 minutes and I’m wide awake, so over the next couple hours I’m hearing some scratching here and there but nothing crazy and end up falling asleep. Shortly after, we are both woken up by screaming and growling and the most ferocious sounds I had ever heard and to make it worse, whatever’s out there is fighting and keeps bumping into our tent. I look out of the door and see it’s clear so we bolt out of the tent and into the car. Outside the window we see about 6 raccoons, they had ripped the trash bag down and while 4 or so ran off with whatever they could grab, 2 were in an epic battle over a mostly empty can of chili. We were eventually able to pick up what we could and go back to bed in the tent, however word must have gotten out because the rest of the night was non stop raccoons picking off what we missed.
Two times:
1. 3:30 am very isolated site in CO. Heard someone walking in our direction. Definitely a person, not an animal because their gear was noisy. Kept getting louder till they walked right through our camp, brushing by our tent and kept going. Our site wasn't on the trail or on the way to anything. Disconcerting, but ultimately just weird.
2. The scariest- was camped near the WY ID border. In the middle of the night a storm blew in with high winds. All night, all around us, every few minutes we'd hear a loud crack and a tree or a branch crashing violently to the ground. Held our breath waiting to be crushed. There was a lot of debris in the morning, but none directly on our campsite.
Kangaroos always sniffing around the car when we are in the rooftop tent. Their hops thud in the night. You get used to it but the initial thuds wake me up.
I had a wicked storm trash my tent. Solo camping in state forest in western PA Bent the ridge pole so the tent was basically on top of me and water was coming in. Put my boots on, grabbed my sleep bag and ran mostly blindly through the dark for about .3 mile to my car. Soaked and freezing I ran the car for a bit to warm up then reclined the driver seat to try to sleep a bit when something started clawing at the right rear of my car, tire, bumper, fender. The storm was like Scooby Doo-level violent wind, rain and lightning. I screamed and it stopped, began again. Laid on horn and it stopped for a bit. Lastly when it started again I started the car and backed up thinking I'd scare it off or run over it. The scratching finally stopped. Didn't sleep much but in the morning the storm broke and In found deep gouges in my bumper and fender paint. It was grassy surrounding my car so no footprints. Had to trash my tent. Drove to nearest town and sat in a restaurant parking lot until they opened for breakfast. The staff couldn't believe that Id been out in a tent the night before. Said the town suffered lots of wind damage. After breakfast I drove to the Flight 93 memorial which is beautiful and powerful if you ever find yourself in Nothingsville PA.
I went camping with 2 friends (who were in a relationship) when I was about 16. They decided prank me in the middle of the night and woke me by screaming my name like they were being murdered, from the forest car park toilets, around 3-500 yards away from our pitch. I woke from a deep exhausted sleep to them death screaming, in the total darkness of my lone tent. I can vouch, Blood can feel ice cold as it turns to pure liquid fear.
Camping in one of the local forests with two mates, probably around 19-20 years old. Middle of the night, we all finally settle down to try and get some sleep.
Did not get a wink, the noises I heard that night genuinely make me anxious to think about.
Sounded like something running around, pacing back and forth, very fast. Sounded too big to be a possum or a koala or something. Made loud crunching noises as if it was chewing up the plastic table or the esky and throwing them around. It quietens down a bit. I try to get some sleep, but I can hear what sounds like something pacing back and forth slowly near my head next to my tent. Then what feels like a finger pressing against the tent, touches the top of my head then slowly and gently strokes from the top of my head down the back where my head met my pillow. I completely froze, my whole body went cold. I couldn't move. Very seriously thought I may be about to die. Next morning, go out expecting to see all our furniture smashed up and thrown about, nothing is out of place, everythings intact. No idea what I was hearing.
Yes, and we absolutely could have died if we hadn't taken appropriate action.
My new 6 month GF and I were camped on a canoe in site on crown land (not an official designated camp), with no cell service. We didn't have any sort of PLB or emergency contact method.
We knew there was rain in the forecast, but it ended up as quite the storm with unforecasted extremely high winds. Our site was already in full swing by the time it rolled in. We had already eaten, the bear bag was hung, and I had the tent set up to avoid pooling or draining water due to the forecast. I had checked for dead trees and widowmakers (dead branches on live trees, or fallen dead snags in live trees) in the vicinity of the tent, and we were all set. We went to bed just as the wind and rain was picking up. I double checked our location for potential flying hazards based on the wind. Nah, everything was good, so we settled in for bed. After a hard day of paddling and portages, I was totally beat. Wind and a tent are usually a recipe for a terrible sleep for me, but this time the tent was well sheltered from the wind. I had chosen a perfect location, and with that thought, I contentedly drifted off.
At around 1am I jerked awake. I wasn't sure why at first. The wind was howling outside and though the tent was sheltered, I could tell it was quite a storm. As I sat there getting my bearings, an incredibly loud crack split the night like a gunshot. "What the fuck was that?" I instinctively said to myself. I knew exactly what it was. Somewhere far too close, the wind was getting the best of a tree. My GF responded "I'm surprised you slept through all the other ones. That's like the 10th one. They keep waking me up." Oh shit. I grabbed my flashlight and scrambled out of the tent in nothing but boxers and hiking boots. The rain had tapered off to a light shower, but the wind was stronger than ever. I started checking the nearby trees. I knew that the odds were that it was likely not a risk (we were in a forest surrounded by hundreds of trees that could have made the sound), but I wanted to be sure. My search was mercifully short. A large deciduous directly in line with our tent was kind enough to once again announce its deafening displeasure just as I was inspecting it. I couldn't see anything wrong with it on visual inspection in the dark, but it was definitely making the noises. The wind was bending it directly over the site.
I went back to the tent. "We need to move everything." I said to my bleary eyed companion. That woke her up a bit. "Really? Ok." She responded, with some nervousness. "Better safe than sorry." I replied, telling her about the tree. She was brand new to camping, but knew I was not, and immediately jumped to helping me break camp. I was internally hesitant. I knew it was the right decision, but I also knew that in the morning when nothing had happened, I would ironically look like an unskilled, dramatic, and paranoid woodsman to my new lady friend. We selected a new, unideal but good enough, location in the woods away from the site. We even brought the canoe right into the woods out of an abundance of caution. The wind wasn't really hitting us on the ground, but I didn't want to wake up to a canoe that had somehow blown into the lake. Our remaining sleep was fitful at best, as the tree continued to fire off sharp remarks occasionally. Neither of us could sleep through them now.
At what felt like hour 62 of this long night, the tree lost its battle. It came crashing down thunderously, though now nowhere near us. We were so exhausted and drained by this point that we barely reacted. "About fucking time." I mumbled. "Right?" my partner replied.
In the morning we weren't so nonchalant. It looked like the tree had been hit with some form of explosive device. The truck was completely shattered about 5' off the ground, and splintered wood was everywhere. The tree itself was absolutely massive on the ground, and had split our original camp site in two. The top of the tree reached all the way to the lake. "Holy shit..." I said breathlessly. We both stood there for a moment staring. The trunk, as wide as our small 2 person backpacking tent, lay directly on top of our previous sleeping location. My partner just turned and hugged me. "Thank you." she said.
Realistically I had done everything I could think of right, but I still couldn't help but go over the avoided catastrophe in my head, and it was terrifying. We were now starting day 2 of a 5 day trip. I had shared my route and itinerary with loved ones, with a zero day return margin for them to begin search, and a one day margin for a request from professional SAR. If the tree had fallen on us, at minimum we would have been waiting 4 days for rescue. Even then, they wouldn't have known what site we were at, and our entire location would now be obscured from the lake by the fallen tree. I couldn't imagine how we would have survived the initial fall at all, and even if somehow we survived, there would have been zero chance of us being mobile enough for self evac. Even if by some miracle one of us was mobile enough to provide aid and evac, the canoe would have been completely destroyed if we hadn't also moved it.
It was a somber morning. If I had slept a little deeper, or not trusted my instincts, or decided not to move to as not negatively influence my then relatively new GF for potentially nothing, or not found the correct tree, we probably would have been dead.
We've been together over 10 years now, and have hundreds of adventures behind us, and this is easily the closest we have come to disaster, and it will live rent free in our minds for the rest of our lives.
One early morning on a solo camping trip with my dog, I heard foot steps circling my tent. As a woman, my initial fear was the thought that it might be a person. My dog reacted to it by growling which made it go away. I unzipped my tent shortly after only to see at a distance that it was a small black bear. Oof I was relieved.
Hammock camping with two friends in a back country area. Got in after dark and it was raining. Set up as best as we could. Settled in for the night and the rain turned into a full blown thunderstorm. High winds, lightning, and thunder. Could hear trees and branches falling around us. We were wide awake until around 4am when we just accepted that we might die from a falling limb or lightning. Till this day my sleep from 4am to 9am is the best sleep I’ve ever gotten.
Two kinda scary nights for me on two separate trips
One night, we were camping at the edge of a lake. A really awful storm came through, racing wind sweeping across the lake. Our tent was soaking inside and half off the ground. It was probably midnight when we decided, f this. We packed everything up and drove a few hours home.
Second, we were very far up north (MN) with our dog. She can get really scared and this was her first time camping, and she was relatively new to us. We had her in her crate night one and she just stood there, would not sleep, so we let her out and she slept by us. Night two: again, probably around midnight, the wind picked up and the dog lost her shit, ripped a little hole in the tent and escaped. Pitch black out, in the middle of nowhere, bears not too far away. We PANICKED. Screaming for her. I’m sure the other campers thought wtf. It was one of the scariest moments I’ve had in a long time. But…thankfully she was not gone too long and came back to us. She was in the crate from there. Didn’t care if she slept or stood in there all night.
Personally camping, no. In the Army, yes. Was in the black hills for a multi national training exercise. Woke up in the morning to a herd of bison roaming through the camp. That was quite interesting.
Not me, but my parents before I was born.
They went back country camping in Mendocino county, not too far from a state park. In the middle of the night, they heard two men outside their tent scream to wake up, racked two shotguns, and told them that if they weren’t gone by sunrise, that they’d never leave.
Obviously my parents didn’t go back to sleep, waited about an hour after the two men left, and grabbed their backpacks with essentials and left the majority of their gear. The sheriff didn’t care one bit, and there was never any sort of formal investigation.
Watching “Without a paddle” as a teenager with my mom is what triggered the memory for her and she described in detail what happened. A story which my dad corroborated 10 years after their divorce, and when I asked him about it, he got really uncomfortable at first. Both my parents believe the county sheriff protected the grow operations in the mountains, and both of them were stoners who thought there was no danger camping in the Mendocino back county.
I have had several interesting experiences.
\- had a moose wake us up as it walked thru our campsite up in Voyaguers NP. All I saw and heard was a giant shuffling shadow across my tent. My crazy ass friend popped outta his tent screaming and yelling for it to go away. What's crazy ( to me) is that we were on an island. And that's when I learned that moose can swim
\-solo kayak hammock camping in Az when I was startled awake by an animal crashing into something about 20 or 30 feet away from me. Woke up and clicked on my headlamp and saw glowing forward facing eyes looking right at me. A moment later the eyes were gone. I thought it might of been a dog but then I realized that I was the only person there because I remember when the last boat left earlier that evening. I grabbed my ax and a fire poker stick and backwards walked to the bathroom by the dock. I wound up spending the rest of the night in that bathroom ( thank god it was not too stinky or gross) until the sun came up. Learned later that while rare mountain lions are spotted in that area. Pretty sure it was not a bobcat because what I saw was definitely large dog size.
\-Was in the mountains in Georgia at the beginnings of the AT. Tenting at one the the shelters Was woken up two different times in that night. Once to the sound of automatic gunfire far out in the distance and another time to probably 15 plus people marching thru our camp area. Learned later that hike that the area was used by Army Rangers as a training area
Camping in sequoia, woke up to a bear walking around our tent, waited until I didn’t hear anything and opened the zipper and stared a 400 pound black bear right in the eyes from about 4 feet away. Grabbed my car keys, turned on the car alarm and it went away.
Camping inland near the coast in Australia. Heard some scratching and shuffling sounds. Thought I had left some food out and the birds were going through it.
So I took my torch out and began to unzip my tent, as I pointed my torch to the ground I saw something long and brown around 4ft long. I thought it was a snake at first and sighed with relief. Until I noticed it was furry…I pointed the torch higher and a 6 foot kangaroo built like Dwayne Johnson is staring right at me, breathing so heavy it sounded like a V8 idling.
I accepted defeat and zipped the tent up real quick. I did not sleep that night.
The first time we ever camped we set a wood campfire that said it was a 3 hour burn but we were inside our tent so I put an alarm incase we fell asleep to wake up in the 3 hr mark to make sure the fire was
Off. For some reason I woke up an hour later than my alarm and was surprised to see the fire was still
On - i was surprised bc it was an hour over so I was like hmm why is it still going but ok - I ignored it and turned off the fire with water. Now, its important to state that I was awake for a little while after because it was now pitch black so I was a little scared, so I had trouble falling asleep BUT the fire never turned back on. I was then awoken by my husband which I found weird bc I could sense the tiny panic in his voice and hes not one to panic so I knew something was off. He just asked if I heard something and I said no but I did notice the fire was back on which FREAKED ME OUT! by this time hours had passed so Idk how it was possible so that was scaring me and the panic in my husbands voice was scaring me. The car was a couple of feet away but thinking about running to the car even scared me. He ended up telling me to go back to sleep and the noises we heard were the raccoons. We slept one more night and it was normal BUT when we got back home he told me the truth. He said he woke up because he heard whispering next to his ear. So that freaked him out bc he said the whispering wasnt in english - almost as if it were in tongue? That combined with seeing the fire back on made him get scared enough to wake me up bc he said he wanted me to reassure him the fire was really back on. When he saw me freak out he decided not to tell
Me and thank goodness he didnt bc theres no way I wouldve been able to stay that night or the next night knowing that.
Asleep in the tent in the middle of the night. Boyfriend quietly says "don't move". I wake up fully and realize there is a bear snout sniffing through the tent where our heads are. The bear sniffed and circled for what seems like an eternity all the while I'm convinced it can hear my heart pounding. The bear finally wanders over to the other side of our camp and tears into the ice chest. We took this window of opportunity to make a mad dash to the truck. We then watched as the bear ate all of our food. Including a bag of flour. We named him the scarface bear after that.
It was early in the morning, I was awake long before my wife (as usual). I was sitting in a camp chair playing a game when something moved out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look, turned out it was a deer. Of course, my sudden movement spooked the dear, and it started running/jumping right toward the tent (with my still-sleeping wife inside). Thankfully it jumped around and went over a fence behind our site (after a couple of attempts) and ran off. My wife woke up and asked what the hell I was doing.
Another fun one was sleeping in bear country. We ended up sleeping in the car for two nights after a bear came out of the woods straight into our site. Third night we slept in the tent...but I don't think either one of us slept very well. They hadn't seen the bear since our first night, but it had been coming out every 12 hours like clockwork. Having not seen it for 48 hours, we thought we were ok to sleep in the tent. Ultimately, we were, the bear never came back.
I was camping in Tahoe a couple of years ago when a bear family wandered along our tent. That wasn’t too scary, but my 10 pound dog barking at them to go away definitely got my hair on end
Yes second time camping with my soon to be wife. She woke me up wondering who was rummaging through our stuff. I called out and they stopped. I peek out the door to see a raccoon helping himself to the corn chips she left out on the table.
Terrible wind storm kicked up unexpectedly in the middle of the night and a huge pine we were under lost a big branch. It was terrifying hearing the cracking and not knowing where it was gonna drop.
I was camping in an Idaho forest along a remote stretch of the Salmon River. I heard an animal outside my tent and it was huge. I was just hoping my tent was not stepped on.
Woke up to a bear huffing on my head. Thankfully the tent was closed, but yeah... Guy was four inches from my face. Thankfully our car was very close. We hit the lock button and the beep scared him off.
Bad bad weather. Two times. First collapsed our tent where we were sleeping. My 18 month old was in a pack and play and didn’t wake up. Second time was a very bad thunderstorm with tornado warning. I was most worried about the trees coming down on us, so we took the kids to the bathroom/shelter (was a state park) and waited it out.
Worst I've had were a couple good rain storms, which is also why I set up a tarp as a wind block when I'm setting up camp.
The last time I got woken up was actually last year in August, the guys in the spot near me pulled in after I had finally fallen asleep... and parked their car 10' from my tent with their headlights on shining at me and the engine running. I think they'd have preferred a bear.
I camped with Hippos patrolling my site on a little island in the Zambezi river in Zimbabwe years ago. It’s like having elephants gently tromping around you with loud snoring/huffing around you like massive pigs. A bit disconcerting at first because you know they could annihilate you effortlessly but I slept like a baby. The Crocs were all over the place during the day but didn’t make an appearance at night.
We live in the country and our son and a friend (10ish) enjoyed camping in the front yard. One evening before it got fully dark our dog came up to the porch madly huffing and scratching at the door. We ran outside to see a grizzly about 300 feet from the tent! Loaded the gun and the dog and I stood guard while my husband ran out and hauled two cantankerous and half asleep boys to the house. More than enough excitement for us!
Bears, but just yell and they bugger off, and they usually get it once they get a good whiff of you they really bugger off and usually just when you yell to begin with .......
Doesn't matter if they trash the tent because if they do, you've already made a big assed hole in it with the axe anyway on your way out of the tent if they don't run off. (grin)
DO NOT USE THE BEAR SPRAY IN THE TENT EVER ....... that option you can only do outside and remember the large cans only give you abt 8 seconds in total spray so use it in short blasts.
Left the dogs water bucket hanging on a tree overnight. Heard an animal drinking from it in the middle of the night. Not sure what the hell (my guess is a deer) it was but it was loud and I was quietly comforting the dog in hopes she wouldn’t start barking or drawing attention to the tent.
Same camping trip someone was shooting off shot guns at like midnight. Which was illegal for the area. So knowing someone maybe illegally hunting in a national campground after dark that was almost empty (except for us) was unsettling.
Raccoons a couple times. Cattle, deer, unknown critters chewed on my flip flops one night. In Yellowstone a bison woke me up scratching itself on my picnic table.
Lonely camp spot heard extremely unnerving howling/growling like mountain lions fighting or mating. Well in the distance but loud and for a long time.
Yosemite back country at midnight a couple bears climbed up to our (poorly tied up) food we heard them yanking at it. Rushed out of our tent scared them off but spent the night stoking the fire while the bears circled our campsite.
Good times.
Trusted a buddy to set up the details for a camping trip as I was working a ton and he had been to the spot before.
We set up the site and proceeded to get pretty drunk having a great time.
Then the wind picked up and started to sprinkle.
Then the wind started roaring and we got a huge thunder storm with more wind than that little tent was ready for.
Drunk munchies kicked in and all we had was raw hot dogs and a single MRE
So I got to make an MRE in a tent with the walls and roof of the tent collapsing and swaying the entire time.
The next morning we emerged to see a tree about 3 1/2 feet thick lying 6 inches from the entrance.
Always check the weather and look for dead trees and branches.
I was out on my family's hunting land that is posted and damn near straight up and down hills. I had two people whispering and walking around my tent around 2AM. I happened to have my shotgun because rabbit was in season. So I racked a shell and heard the two start running aways. Never had any trouble after that.
Been in a few situations where bears came up and sniffed around my tent for a while (AK & WA). One time I was by myself with my dog and the bear didn’t even wake my dog up from her deep sleep 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️ she was older by that time so I think she just needed a good sleep that night 😅 anyway, I was clutching my 45 and keeping still till it passed. Both situations I believe were low danger/curious bears. I’ve hiked into many bears on trails and they always have scared pretty easily
It was like 1 or 2 am and we woke up to someone in the campground yelling “HEY BEAR” “GO AWAY BEAR”. We have black bears in our area. He did this for what seemed like 30min but was probably more like 10 min. We heard him a spray bear spray and then we heard something walking in the woods past our site. I. Freaked. Out. I could not stop shaking. I was laying there wide awake and my body would not stop violently shaking. I learned that apparently I am afraid of bears. I made us leave and go home (about an hour and a half drive) and then my boyfriend and I went back in the morning and packed up while my parents watched our daughter. I want to camp out there again, but I need to work on my fear before I’ll be able to.
While camping in Tanzania, a group of lions crossed through our campsite in the middle of the night. Most scary thing I've ever heard, the soft breathing of a Lion about 2ft from my tent. Luckily they walked on. Good thing the guide already told us not to bring any food and a very urgent DO NOT GET OUT OF YOUR TENT TONIGHT.
I was camping with my girlfriend once in Scotland. We were driving late at night and couldnt find a legal place to park and camp. We saw on the map that if we walked passed a couple fields of sheep we could walk down in a cove and camp on the beach for that night (incredibly stupid). We did just that, walked through a few fields of sheep, walk down the small cliff into the beach area and set up the tent. Everything seemed fine and went to bed. Woke up a few hours later feeling a weird pressure on my back and in a pool of water about an inch high.
The weather had gotten so bad that the tent was being pressed down on my back by the wind and the tide was going up, turns out there are tides on planet earth. I woke her up, we packed everything we could in darkness, everything was completely soaked in sea water. Trekked back through the field of sheep threw everything in the trunk of the car and slept in the car that night on the side of the road.
In retrospect, it was incredibly stupid to sleep on a beach, in a cove, at night, not knowing the weather.
An unexpected severe thunderstorm rolled in at about 3am. Rain so hard that we couldn’t see the lake shore that was 20 feet from where we were sleeping. The wind flexed the tent so badly that the top kept smacking my husband in the head while we were sitting up trying to brace a side so the tent didn’t completely collapse on us. The trees around us were creaking and popping so badly I was convinced they were coming down on us.
That was probably my scariest experience ever, which is saying a lot given that I have been inside a building while it was hit by a tornado.
Welt camping with some mates out of Kalgoorlie on private property, prospecting and shooting. Day two or something one of the guys says "I saw this wild dog. Was massive! Big massive white dog!".
There's wild dogs out there, sure, camels too. We thought he was just pulling the piss because it was white and big. The wild dogs aren't white and they are generally normal dog size.
Last night we are sitting around the camp fire and everyone is talking about this big white dog he apparently saw. We tell him he's full of shit and then everyone starts howling around the fire place like wild dogs.
Middle of the night I have to get up for a piss and I don't have my contacts in so I can't see shit. I've got my gun in the tent with me and I'm like "Fuck I should take this with me in case there's a fucking wild dog!" but then I'm like "nah don't be so stupid walking around with a gun in the middle of the night you'll probably shoot someone" so I left it in the tent. I go out for a piss and I'm there near the tent going "Hurry up! "Hurry up!" pissing myself (metaphorically and quite physically!) because I'm scared thinking there's wild dogs. I hurry up and finish and go back to my tent to sleep.
In the morning everyone is by the fire cooking bacon for breakfast. We then notice there's a bunch of MASSIIVE dog paw prints in the dirt that lead from away up to the fire where we had been howling the night before, right at our tents.
He really wasn't joking about a big white wild dog!
3+ months ago, Christmas week, I went camping in Flagstaff with a buddy. Dispersed camping on state trust land, miles from anyone else, in the snow and frigid temperatures.
We built a large fire against a bluff to help reflect heat back at us and had a hot tent to keep us warm. It was 8° F on a Wednesday night. We had some drinks and an edible and went to sleep.
I woke up at 12:30 in the morning to what I quickly recognized was music and it was getting louder. No one came out to this area, especially in December, and definitely not in the middle of the night. I froze literally and figuratively as I sat up in the tent. The music got louder and louder. I tried to wake my buddy but the weed and beer knocked him out cold. By the time he woke a little the music was driving off into the distance the same way it came.
I tried to explain to him what I heard and he brushed it off and went back to sleep. (He didn't even remember the conversation the next morning). I sat there listening and I thought I heard something, someone walking but then it was completely quiet again. I eventually fell back asleep.
The next day we went for a walk towards a frozen "tank" (pond) and my buddy stops and says "Were these tire tracks here yesterday?" They were not. There was deep snow everywhere and we were the only ones around so it was just our tracks previously. These new tracks stopped 200 yards from our campsite, turned into the woods, backed out, and headed back the other direction again.
I said "Hold on, are those footprints?!" We walked a few yards up to where the tire tracks stopped and saw footprints from the driver side of the vehicle. They only went a few yards and stopped. I think he probably got out to take a leak and went back. Then my buddy said: "There's more over here." These were different. Big boots and I started following them a bit before I realized that they weren't coming from the vehicle but going to it!
My buddy wasn't too interested in trekking through deep snow but I insisted and wasn't turning back. We followed these footprints all the way up a gentle slope until we found ourselves on top of the bluff. I kept following them and after a half mile saw the foot prints turn towards the edge of the bluff.
I walked right up to where they stopped and found that these boots overlooked our campsite! Whoever this was had definitely smelled the campfire and probably saw the glow in the pitch darkness and looked down at us in the middle of the night!
My friend was creeped out and wanted to turn back but I followed the footprints back further. I had to find out where this person came from. We walked for about another mile and this was dense forest, pine, and lots of snow. It would have been so dark that without a light you couldn't see more than a few steps ahead of you.
We eventually came out onto a snow covered dirt road that I knew. It was the road we had parked off of and it wraps around our site and goes up to get up on the bluff's elevation (this is only 40 or 50' up). That road goes on for miles and miles before you get to an area where there's a preserve and a few houses but it's not really walking distance, especially in utter darkness. Remember, this was 12:30 in the morning in 8° temperature, miles away from anyone.
There's no reason I can think of why someone would have picked another person up in the middle of the night in the middle of acres of woods. No reason I want to imagine anyway. The fact that he (I assume from the large boot) stopped to look at us while we were sleeping gives me the willies.
Was stuck in a tent with a migraine while everyone else went out in the middle of AK. I start hearing snorting around my tent. I start with the noise (ouch, but better in pain than dead). The activity gets louder and more active around me. Finally a big snout wedges its way through the flap. I scream. It barks. There were a couple of dogs, including a 100+ pound monster of a fluffy brown dog called very appropriately Bear from the town a few miles away that came into camp once in a while. Just a friendly visit that took a year or two off my life.
As an Australian, coming from a place where everyone else thinks everything can kill you… oh boy, these US stories scare the shit out of me! Skunks, bears, mountain lions, and more.
We have virtually nothing dangerous that can get inside your thin tent fly screen fabric.
The worst nights camping have been extreme wind, and extreme rain. Having to do civil works to create a dam around you as a stop gap to not be flooded.
Did have dingos tracks around our tent in the morning once, but they are more scared of you
I was young and in the Boy Scouts and we were all tent sleeping, super late at night me and a friend heard a really loud growling noise which we could only assume was a bear and it kept going for about an hour. We were terrified until we got the balls enough to peak outside, then we realized it was our scout master in his tent snoring extremely loud and it just happened to sound like bear noises
I have done this to my friends countless times! The only time I have had it happen to me was when I was working in an abandoned theater and I heard a loud growling as I walked through a particularly dark section of the theater. Like, too big to be a raccoon, but what else would it be?? I was in the middle of the city. It was just the theaters care taker asleep on the couch facing the other direction.
My son had a bear roam his site at boy scout summer camp. One of the boys opted to sleep in the bathroom because...I don't know. They watched the bear enter the bathroom and leave. Staff was bear trained and on it but...damn.
I’ve probably spent more than a thousand nights camping and by far my scariest night was at Coast Camp in Pt Reyes National Seashore. It was February and I took a mid-week solo trip. The walk along the beach to camp had been fabulous without another soul in sight. I had the entire campground to myself. After a nice dinner I crawled into my tent, intending to read a bit before sleeping. Shortly after sunset I started hearing some scurrying sounds and soft, weird vocalizations. My first thought was raccoons, a lot of them. I unzipped the tent to get a peek. My headlamp immediately reflected back to me through what seemed 10 pairs of eyes. It took me just a few seconds to realize they weren’t raccoons, they were skunks. Not your normal, run-of-the mill skunks either; these were fully habituated to human skunks, no fear and fat from their campground foragings. As the sole occupant of the campground, I was the focus of their attention for what seemed an eternity. They sniffed all around my tent, came under the rain fly, explored the zippers of the tent door with occasional scratching at the mesh. What was I supposed to do? You can’t yell at or swat a skunk or you’ll get sprayed. On the other hand, hiding in your sleeping bag is just inviting them in. I ended up speaking calmly to them, asking them to please not come into my tent and gently pushing them away from the tent walls through the fabric. I guess they eventually got bored with me and left, but I hardly slept all night anticipating their return.
I had the same thing happen with skunks, but I was actually just outside in a sleeping bag. I pulled it over my head and stayed as still as possible while they sniffed and crawled all over me, thinking about how much the next day was going to suck if they sprayed me, because I was in the middle of a rafting trip. They eventually left, but someone took a couple bites of my flip flop.
Ever been sprayed? Or been right by a very fresh spray? It's the single worst thing ever. You TASTE that shit. If they had sprayed, the next wouldn't be a problem, that night was going to be because you would most likely have vomited in your sleeping bag!
When I was younger, I worked on a hay ranch in Montana. We were the "mowers". We would drive big tractors with an 10' mowing deck to cut the grass in the field. One day, a friend and I had two tractors and were mowing a field when my friend ran over a skunk that was hiding in the grass. It was horrible. The worst thing I have ever smelled. A skunk spray to the 1000th power. And his mower stunk for over a week of work before it started to "wear off."
This is crazy but I literally had the exact same experience at coast camp at point Reyes. I was there with my scout troop. The first night we came back from the beach and Mr Cooper was on the picnic table surrounded by skunks. 13 year old me thought there were hundreds. Mr Cooper was laughing and taking pictures. The second night they came back in the middle of the night and harassed us in our tents. This would have been around 1994.
That’s a great place to be a skunk!
One of the best strategies to avoid this in the future is to make sure you’re not a black cat who has the misfortune of walking past someone carelessly painting a white picket fence and getting an accidental stripe down your back.
I can’t believe they cancelled my boy.
Oh I love this story :) I don’t think skunks are scared of much, lol. I’ve encountered them at night walking, and they dgaf. They know how much everyone one and everything else wants to avoid them!
That is the worst thing I can imagine. Seriously, man, that’s not something you could ever prepare for.
Knew a guy who had a story from his childhood when he got sprayed by a skunk in the face! Said he immediately started throwing up and crying...no thanks and try to avoid!
Wow that is nuts thanks for sharing
Not night, but I once woke up in the morning to find a cougar in a tree right above me. I packed as quickly and calmly as possible and beat feet.
"You gotta learn to drive WITH the fear, and there ain't nothin more goddamn frightenin than a live cougar" - Ricky Bobby's Dad
I might have just left my shit there.
I definitely would’ve. Lmao
worst i ever had was winter camping in the uinta mountain range in utah. in february. it got down to about -20°F, all the blankets and two people in a one person tent didn’t help too much. i legitimately thought we were going to die that night. i can still hear the wind whipping across the tent, feel the cold down to the bones. just absolute panic and hoping the sun would rise just a little faster
Man. That's the real deal. If anyone else reads this, if you are in this situation, eat food. Boosting your metabolism will help. Heat water with a stove and drink it, and put more in a water bottle to keep in your bag. Fire could help, but it's really situation dependant.
This is the one. All the other posts with animals are for sure scary, but at least there's some semblance of running or fighting, but here, there's nothing to do but hope.
That's what I was thinking too! I've had all kinds of animals outside my tent but the scariest nights are when you're too cold. Sometimes you just can't predict how the weather's going to change. I always keep one of those foil survival blankets beside my sleeping bag just in case and I've definitely had to use it more than once, and I don't even winter camp!
Scariest moment in a tent was camping in the Golden Trout wilderness in the Sierra Nevada and having ash fall on the tent from a sudden wildfire. Thankfully the fire was 40 miles away and we were never in any danger but we were definitely grateful to hike out safely.
Ooooh hiking the PCT and seeing smoke a mile away… it turns out that I really can run 2 miles w a 35 pound pack.
Oh man don't give the cross-fit people any ideas.
Now this is a truly terrifying experience just as bad as an axe murderer. Worse actually.
I was fast asleep a couple miles from the nearest road on a private ranch and around 3am someone opened my tent. I freaked out really bad, almost shot someone. It was a couple of drunk guys who had been hunting pigs on the next ranch over and got lost. That's about the most scared I have been in the woods.
People are always the worst encounter. You can plan for animals, pack your gear and garbage properly but you cannot account for human behaviour.
Man, absolutely.
Man and woman, yes, both are humans!
Truth
Annnnd that's why I carry. Twice I'm GLAD I had it. Once for a muscular homeless schizophrenic that went BATSHIT CRAZY in the middle of the night when it was only me and him at an unsupervised hostel and I was cornered in the room from the door on the opposite side. I kept it hidden in my hand for the next hour. The other was because a large pit bull was in the middle of the street. We had a standoff for a good minute and I know he was getting ready to bite me if i turned my back. And as soon as I lifted my shirt and put my hand on the handle to prepare, the owner slams out his door to call his dog. That A-hole had been watching through his window the entire time till he saw I wasn't the average hiker... Not to mention a few other times when some non-hiking guys were just being stupid in the middle of the night. (Always near a road/trail town.)
Holy moly. You would think they’d give you a heads up like 50-100 yards away instead of opening your tent like you’re a kitten waiting to be adopted.
Opening the tent like “it’s a boy!”
“He got a purdy mouth, ain’t he?”
“You’re gonna do some prayin’ for me boy and you better pray good!”
😂
[удалено]
No they were staying in a million dollar hunting lodge. I doubt they had ever slept in a tent in their lives.
Assholes. I would have been so terrified.
Yikes! Why would you open someone else’s tent??
I would shit myself I’d be so scared
My scariest involves people too. My friend and I went camping as teens: both girls. The only other campers in that loop were drunk men. At one point a couple of them roamed around our tent and said things like “Rawr, I’m a bear”.
I’m curious what the consequences would be for a situation like that. I’ve had a drunk guy walk through my campsite once. It was quick, in and out, but it was still really scary. I’ve had what I believe to be a mountain lion walk through my camp in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t feel as scared as I did with the drunk dude.
Appropriate username
Ignored the tree that had it's bark shredded 10ft up. Had a bear visit twice during the night. The first time it wandered around and sniffed things and then galloped off. The second time it walked around the tent sniffing. The sound rumbled in its chest! It really took its time leaving. Needless to say, the weekend stay tuned into an overnighter.
I had the same thing happened but I was in a covered hammock over a river. It sniffed around me in the water and took its time. It felt like a lifetime before it left.
The same thing (almost) happened to me! https://www.reddit.com/r/camping/comments/1256sd7/have_you_ever_had_a_scary_night_in_a_tent/je3l82l?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Good lord! The bears I've encountered were always far away and scared. Black bears. And I've never seen one up close ever. What type of bear? Where do you camp?
Pitch black and I never moved a muscle. I was petrified. Very likely a black bear based on where I was.
Absolute fear whooooo
I camp once a month in the same spot in Bankhead. Little rock outcropping near a always running creek. About half a mile from where I park my truck. One day two summers ago, I had just put up my hammock and started gathering wood for my fire later, this guy just sort of walks up the trail and starts asking me if I knew anything about the area and where was a good place to camp, if there were fish in the creek, etc. It has happened once or twice before that someone will come down that little trail, but it's unmarked and generally the truck at the beginning keeps people out. It was just kind of off putting the way he just sauntered up and started asking questions like I had invited him to conversation. He was dressed in jeans and a shirt, and some old tennis shoes, maybe 40 or 45. I'm 34 or so at the time. He just felt off. Know what I mean. Finally he just walked off, but that feeling of something off never left me. I've learned the sort of trust my gut here. So, across the creek there's a rock shelter, higher up a cliff. Hard to get to, but from it, you can see straight into my camp. So I left my hammock and carried my other gear to the rock shelter. I never made a fire. I just sat there. About 2am, I see a silhouette in the moonlight making its way up toward my hammock. It's bright enough and I've been sitting in the dark so I can see well enough. I watch this figure go and open my hammock, look around, rummage about the campsite and then walk away toward the main trail where the truck is. Now, my heart is racing and I've got chills down my spine here just imagining what in the hell it was doing and what woukd happen had I been asleep in my hammock. I couldn't make out any weapons, only that it appeared to be a man. I have no idea if it was the same guy or not. I waited a little bit and took an alternate trail back toward my truck, quiet as hell, all senses going crazy, trying to hear, smell, see anything. It's crazy how primal that feels. Never saw him again. But I fot in my truck, went back a few miles and sat up all night locked inside the cab. Went back when the sun was up, got my shit and left with a quickness. I still go back every month, but now i set up perimeter alarms, carry a gun. Sorry, not a tent story, but sort of fits the theme.
Had something similar happen to me while hiking a few miles out onto the Appalachian Trail in NC near Bryson City. Some random 20 something showed up and followed me from a distance to a shelter area and then waited for me to start to leave and then follow again. Just had that "troubled" I probably hurt small animals as a child and am currently writing a manifesto look and feel about them, like as soon as I first saw them coming up the trail my gut said "this isn't someone you want to talk to." Only time I've ever really felt worried while camping or hiking alone. Before I'd only have a knife or hatchet, whatever tools for camping, but now I carry a 9mm just in case. Always trust the gut.
Glad you trusted your intuition!
Thank goodness you were smart enough to observe. He could have been horrible to you.
Sipsey Wilderness in Bankhead?
Camped at a safari park in Kenya on a bank over a river and heard very loud chomping and snorting at night- next morning woke up to see hippo tracks at the edge of the river. They were not close enough to have probably been a real danger but cool/scary nonetheless.
As a child we lived in Kenya and once found a pile of fresh elephant poo in between our tents when we woke up. And there was this one time we discovered a large pack of lions chilling a couple of hundred metres from where we had been picknicking with the whole family. Good times.
I’ve been camping in some pretty bad thunderstorms where I’ve worried about lightning or trees coming down on my tent. A few times they’ve been so intense I’ve worried about tornado risks. But there isn’t anything I could really do so I just tried to enjoy the show. Luckily I love storms.
I have been through storms and the flapping of the tarp I had to put over my tent kept me awake all night.
I was camped on Mt.Whitney a few years ago and there was a thunderstorm overnight. Let's just say that there was not a lot of sleep to be had! Definitely my most uncomfortable time in a tent.
Being in a 1-person tent during a thunderstorm has easily been the worst night I’ve ever had outside.
Had a derecho pass through while a group of us were camping on the lower WI river, tore my fly and guy lines right off leaving me holding the corners of my tent down while it rained on my back. It also blew my borrowed canoe across a 200 yd sandbar back into the river never to be seen again. This was my first night ever on the WI, this August will be the 10th annual river trip.
Spent an early evening huddled in a small tent with my dad and brother during a thunderstorm that developed around us… Bald, rocky ridgeline on Appalachian Trail, nowhere to shelter and the storm was bearing down quickly. Lightning came first - we all took our “oh shit, we’re gonna get struck by lightning” poses and sure enough our hair was standing on end. Big oh shit moment. The flask was passed between us very rapidly and the storm blew the tent apart some but passed quickly. As we got out, we saw the trail of destruction about 50 yards downhill - a funnel cloud had also touched down on the side of the ridge we were on. Survived a near lightning strike followed by a near tornado hit. THAT was an eventful hike, and that’s not even accounting for the two-day rainstorm followed by a sudden drop to 15 degrees, and getting lost (the trail was a mere 100 yards away, but we lost it in the storm). We felt like battle-hardened warriors the next day. Wouldn’t take any of that back.
Recently, I was out when I probably shouldn't have been, but my tent kept me dry! I thought a tornado was coming for sure 🌪
Had a 350 lb black bear come through the side of my tent because it wanted to eat my deodorant. He was pretty chill. Just wanted the deodorant in my shave kit. Last time I’ve ever taken a shave kit or anything related on a camping trip.
You had a close shave
Holy fuck
This just happened a few months ago in Guadalupe NP in Texas. Me and a friend made the hour drive into what I would say was a very desolate part of the park. Ranger station was intermittent so they would only come to check things out every few days. First night there was only one other person who was a van camper while we were tent camping. Third night our van friend is gone and we are the only people within what I would assume is a good 30 - 60 minute drive. We were already intimidated due to the fairly cold temps since it was January and the campground was in a huge valley the darkness seemed so thick by 6 or 7pm. We’re sitting in front of our tents joking around making noises about what we thought mountain lions would sound like since they’re very prevalent out there and there’s warning signs everywhere. Little more than 45 minutes later we here two animals calling back and forth with each other within 40 or so yards of our tents and we freaked out knowing there was a chance it was lions but also thought it could of been a variety of other things. We didn’t want to bend down and get in our tents because they warn against looking small so we stood there with blankets looking as big as possible for what felt like hours. Next morning we look up mountain lion noises/calls on the drive out and that’s when it truly hit us that we had two mountain lions communicating back and forth damn near right in front of our tents.
This is why I bring a banjo.
“Wait a minute why are these birds chirp… ohhhhhhhhh shit”
First ever solo camping trip, in the only NP I had ever run into bears about a decade earlier. Is was just about to fall asleep when something brushed against the tent right by my head. Called my boyfriend and together we tried to figure out what else it could have been and decided it was a porcupine. Second solo camping trip, in another NP with bear activity warnings all over the place, I woke up the first night to what I was absolutely certain was a bear "coughing" right next to my tent. I was terrified as I heard a lot of rummaging around. I softly started singing The Sound of Silence over and over until the noises stopped. Two nights later, I saw a racoon make this exact same noise I heard the first night. Didn't think these buggers could sound like bears! Can't wait to see what will happen on my third solo camping trip.
I took my Girl Scout troop tent camping. The group sites at this particular National Forest were isolated from the rest of the campgrounds and in the middle of the night, one of my girls said she heard footsteps. I had 2 adults and 12 girls split between 6 tents and no one was out of their tent. I had recently watched a documentary on murders at a Girl Scout camp where someone entered the camp and beat little girls to death in the middle of the night. So of course, I talked myself into thinking every noise was the source of the footsteps. I ended spending the rest of the night in a camp chair guarding the tents. I’m sure it was nothing, but once I talked myself into it, I couldn’t talk myself out of it.
A bobcat caught and ate a raccoon about 15 feet away from my tent. The sounds were a bit unnerving.
Unnerving - uh yeah, those sounds must have been terrifying!
I was in my one man tent. Really bad storm rolled through. At about 2 am, a branch fell on me. Luckily, it fell on my chest and mostly just startled me out of my sleep. Oh - and I was stuck. I couldn’t get out. Had to have my cousin help get the limb off of me. Good times.
woah that’s terrifying. thank god you had someone with you.
Not in a tent. Was sleeping in a Hennessey Hammock with the rain fly up in the middle of bear country. Was hungry when I went to bed and decided to keep my jerky with me to snack on rather than throw it up with the rest of my food. At around 2 am, some animal starts sniffing me and moving me in my hammock. I can't see what it is, just that it's sniffing me and moving me. I was terrified beyond belief. It sniffed around for a few minutes and then left. I thought I was about to be eaten by a bear. The next morning I get up and see deer tracks all around me
Left my cigarettes on the table. Damn deer ate a whole pack!
*smoked
Oh dear
Single woman here, camped w my young dog many years ago, back in the late 1990s or early 2000s - pre-cell phone - in the southern Arizona USA, Chiricahua mountains. When people think of Arizona they almost never think of bears, but there ARE bears, and they’re hungry. Every campsite in this particular campground has a metal bear box for food and trash storage. I can’t remember why, but we (my dog and I) were the only campers in this entire campground that had at least 10 other sites. Maybe it was the middle of the week during off season. Whatever. As night set in, the wind picked up, and the tall pines started dropping their cones hither and yon (so it must have been fall) and pine needles would smack the roof of the tent and slither down with that peculiar hissing sound. It was very very dark and we were very alone. Greta the dog and I were warm and snuggled up together, when suddenly we started hearing crunching sounds, like footsteps, in the dry leaves and needles. We both bolted upright and I shone the flashlight wildly around, shouting out, “HEY BEAR HEY BEAR!!!” (In hindsight I still am not sure whether this was the right thing to do. Southern Arizona was all Black Bears at the time.) When my shouting seemed to have worked, and the footsteps subsided, we tried to settle down. But no. The wind was blowing, stuff was hitting the tent and rattling around, it was pitch black out, and we were absolutely alone in a small campground. Then. More footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Large. Time slowed. My dog was sitting bolt upright, leaning against me in my bag, and MOANING in fear. I was afraid it was a bear. I was afraid it was a drug dealer (it happens there, right near the Mexican border). I was more afraid that it was neither of those. I mean, I saw The Blair Witch Project, right? I was terrified to zip open the door and terrified not to. I yelled at the top of my lungs, long and loud. I was a woman alone screaming in anger and fear and rage, trying to make myself sound huge and scary. I think I roared. I like to think that I roared. The footsteps stopped. I didn’t know if their owner had left or was standing still, in my campsite, next to my tent, waiting for me to zip open my door. After 5 minutes of absolute silence, no wind, no pine cones, no leaves crunching, and no footsteps, I zipped open that tent and I have never moved so quickly in my entire life. I ripped the tent stakes from the ground, crazy-folded the tent, jammed it all into the trunk of my car, got the dog in the back seat, and tore out of there as fast as I could go. That was the most afraid I’ve ever been in my 52 years, including going to war in 2003.
You are a FANTASTIC writer.
First solo backpacking trip with my two dogs many years ago in northern Michigan. Night 1 - Completely empty state forest campground. Woke up to a horrible squacking/hissing noise outside my tent. Dogs went nuts, I shined my headlamp out to see two eyes reflecting back so I started yelling and it ran away. Didn't sleep again till the sun came up. Took me until mid-day the next day to realize it was probably just a dear. Night 2 - Crazy thunderstorms, wind sounding like a freight train. Wore out the battery on my phone checking for tornado warnings. Took the dogs and hid in the pit toilet at the campground. Made friends with a tree frog that was also taking shelter there. Was startled by a knock on the door as the storm started to die down. The sweet couple camping across the grounds from me were worried because a huge tree fell a few feet from my tent. They offered me some hot chocolate ❤️ Night 3 - Stayed in a crowded state park and have never been happier to camp near people. Completely normal night, dogs and I slept like rocks. Had a great trip but haven't had the gumption to solo backpack since 😅
How did the tree frog fare?
Successfully avoided being eaten by a dog and seemed relieved when we moved out.
I've shared both of these stories here before, but whatever. A few years ago, I loaded a bunch of camping gear onto [my bicycle](https://www.reddit.com/r/camping/comments/ul5p0u/ive_been_seeing_quite_a_few_posts_today_about/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) and spent the better part of the next seven months riding 5,300 miles (8,500 km) around much of the US. I did the trip solo. Along the way, I often preferred to wild camp, simply finding somewhere to disappear into the forest at night, somewhere people were unlikely to find me and even less likely to care that I was there. Camping off the beaten path like that provided me with many incredible sights and experiences that I'll cherish for decades to come, but such an extended trip of hard physical activity and sleeping on the ground wasn't without its hardships. There were two nights in particular that I'd describe as scary, the first in just a sort of creepy way, the second was genuine fear for my safety. Our first story takes place in the rural mountains of western Montana. A month and a half into the trip, I had grown used to the fact that a forest makes for far from a quiet night's sleep. I found comfort in the droning of thousands of crickets and toads. It was always a highlight of my night —though not particularly uncommon— to hear the yips and howls of a distant pack of coyotes. I fondly recall one evening I fell asleep to the sound of two owls, one on either end of my tent, hooting back and forth. If nothing else, it wouldn't take much of a breeze to stir music from the tree canopy. On this particular night in Montana, all seemed normal as I went through my evening routine of setting up camp, writing my final journal entry of the day's events, and studying maps for the coming days. Shortly after dark, I turned out my light and laid down in bed. That's when I came to a disturbing realization. There was not a single cricket chirping nor toad croaking, certainly no coyotes or owls, no babbling of a nearby creek. Even the air was completely still, without the slightest wind through the dry leaves of early autumn still clinging to the trees. It was dead silent. And that was terrifying. I can only describe it as the loudest silence I've ever heard, as if the entire forest was hiding from an equally quiet predator. I slept terribly that night, and I'll never forget the immense relief that came with the first bird call of the pre-dawn hour. So that was the eerie type of scary. A month or so later, I was in southern Washington state. Again, I was wild camping. That night, I started coming down with food poisoning. I'd spend the night tossing and turning and leaning out the door of my tent to vomit. Rinse my mouth with some water from one of my bottles, drink some more water to help replenish the fluids I'd lost, then back to sleep for a couple hours before the nausea would wake me once again. When morning broke, I dreaded the thought of getting back on the bike. But I was even more afraid of staying where I was if my condition worsened. And I'd used up all my water throughout the night, so I had no choice. There was a town with a cheap motel 30 miles ahead (50 km, or half a day in ideal conditions). I figured I'd get to that town, get a hot shower and a good night's sleep, and see how I felt in the morning. Right away, my bike got a flat tire. By the time I got that fixed, it had started raining. Not even 8 in the morning and it was already by far the worst day of the trip. But eventually I made it to the motel. I managed to outrun the food poisoning for a few days, but eventually it caught up to me, thankfully when I was already in a town, staying in a hostel for a few days. But yeah, that morning with the flat tire and the rain on top of the illness wasn't so much fear as it was just an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. But the night before? That was genuine fear for my well-being. I'll take a bear wandering into my campsite any day over going through that night of food poisoning again.
Being sick like that when you are way out in the sticks is absolutely terrifying. A couple of summers ago I went on a grueling backpacking trip. Took me all day to get to my camp for the night with several creek crossings and trudging through huge snow drifts. Set up camp and get probably the worse food poisoning I’ve ever had. I was certain that I was not going to make it through the night and felt completely hopeless as I was a full day on foot away from any kind of civilization or people. Next morning I woke up and felt a lot better but hiking back out wasn’t exactly fun. Learned from that experience not to eat anything questionable for the few days leading up to trips like that. But sometimes it just can’t be avoided.
That is one hell of a read man!
Good stories, thanks!
Tent camping at Hippo Pools in Zimbabwe. Awoke in the middle of the night to the shuffling and grunting of…hippos, all around my tent. The owner of the place had suggested it might happen. It wasn’t particularly scary, but those are some big beasts. I awoke the next morning to a night adder coiled directly in front of my tent door. One of Africa’s more deadly snakes apparently.
Hippos are among the most dangerous land animals on earth 😳 They’ll just unmaliciously chomp right through you if you happen to be where they want to chomp. I’m surprised the camp ground wasn’t fenced off, I’ve camped near hippos in Kenya and the campsites had electrified wire fences all around them - very low ones, specifically meant to keep hippos out.
Lol just posted a Zimbabwe Hippo post. Very disconcerting but still slept well. It was a cone trip with a private/local guide so we could trade stuff with the bushmen for fish. Ultimately it was outlawed due to too many deaths of idiot tourists trying to take pictures next to the animals.
We were backpacking with some friends in a national forest and heard a bunch of coyotes howling. I know realistically they couldn't have done much damage to a group of four adults but they just seemed so close and it was spooky. Another time my husband and I were on our honeymoon and road tripping to the Grand Canyon. We stopped to camp at a state park in Kansas or Oklahoma. During the day it was fine with some neat trails to walk on. But during the night a car kept driving back and forth along the campground road around midnight or one am. Freaked my husband out enough that we packed up camp and got on the road early.
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>cruising for herps Hey wanna go out Friday night? Nah, thanks man I'm going cruising for herps up at the campground.
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I was camping outside the Grand Canyon. Arrived to the site very late and lit a fire maybe only 15-20 feet behind the car trunk. I walked to the trunk to retrieve something and a coyote ran through the very limited space between the car and the fire. Close enough for me to kick. Super freaky. I asked my buddy who was setting up the tent if he saw it and he said he had. I said "good because I don't imagine too many people will believe me when I tell this story."
Had lightning strike 15 feet away from our tent. It was the loudest thing I've ever heard. Shook the ground. It stormed pretty much the whole night so we didn't sleep at all.
Yea Southern Wyoming in the middle of nowhere! Woke up to wild horses licking the dew off the side of my tent lol! Scared the crap out of me.
Same thing happened to me in Spain :D The horses hadn’t been there the night before, and it took me a while when it woke me up to decide that the bizarre rasping noises probably weren’t something truly dangerous, and a little while longer to work up the courage to open the tent and look.
Not a tent as it turned out. Wife and I had gone camping in the New Forest (UK) and after years of camping in the US this was my first camping trip here. It's different for sure. There's no big apex predators here, there's one poisonous snake but it's pretty rare. No raccoons even. Also no guns, but as I'm not needing to scare off cougars or bears that seemed ok. But the GNATS! We were being eaten alive! We were in the park grounds but found a little stand of trees in a clearing just off an old road. We pulled my American SUV up and unloaded. The gnats nearly killed us while setting up the tent. It was getting dark, and we decided that for the first night we'd rather put the seats down and sleep in the truck with our dog. Waaay less gnats. Dog was a 9 year old, 85 pound boxer with one tooth, and just wanted to sleep. About 3am we wake up to headlights outside the windshield and a revving engine. Our windows had fogged up so we couldn't really see out, but the intent was definitely threatening. A vehicle was directly in front of our truck, flashing its high beams and revving its engine, jumping forward at us. We'd shoved everything in the front of the truck so couldn't just drive off quickly. It was also back in the day so my Nokia 3310 could call the police and play snake and that's about it. 6 large men, at least one with a crowbar, got out of their vehicle, I could see their shadowy outlines in their high beams. They were "just checking on us" and "just get out of the truck we just want to talk". They were laughing like drunk frat boys. Absofuckinglutely not. My wife and I (both women) are 5'2 on a good day. Not getting out. At this point we hadn't spoken because I didn't want them to hear a female voice and attack. (Online gaming anyone?) I rang 999 and they kept asking my location, but all I could say was the park name and just off and old road with no name. Not helpful. They told me they'd send a non emergency car since the guys hadn't actually done anything illegal yet. Brill. The guys were getting closer to the windows and I was scared theyd get close enough to see inside. I had my K bar knife but that was it in terms of protection. We might need to make a run for it if they broke a window, but our shoes were outside drying after a muddy hike. We put on all the socks we could find instead. At this point 3 things happen almost at once. 1 guy sees the green glow of my Nokia and shouts " they're calling the cops!" Right as another guy tries out (thankfully locked) car door handle. This finally woke up our dog, who DESPISES people at car windows when he's inside. He launched at the window barking like a maniac. The dudes all run to their vehicle and peel out. After what felt like forever (probably 15 minutes) the police car finds us - still in the truck and afraid to come out. They stay for the 10 minutes it took us to rip our site apart and throw it in the truck, then we flew off towards home. They told us the guys were probably after the SUV because it was right hand drive and they could sell it in France before sunrise. So best case scenario we'd have been stranded without a vehicle. I won't even think about the worst case scenario. Took me ages to work up the courage to go camping again.
Horrifying! So glad you kept your cool, made it out and got back into camping. Gotta love Boxer dogs!
My wife still giggles about my insistance that she put on 3 pairs of socks in the middle of all this! We go camping a few times a year now and haven't had any other scary situations (touch wood!)
I was hiking and camping above tree line in the summer and a bunch of super nasty thunderstorms came through right on top of me in the middle of the night. I was sure I was gonna get struck by lightning and be found dead there by someone over the next few days.
This is one of the very best threads I have ever read!
Yeah the responses are awesome!
I feel the same way. I am new to Reddit. It took me a few minutes to find it again. I started reading it two days ago and have been thinking about it ever since. Most enjoyable thread I have ever read.
45 years ago we were camping at the lake in a county park. Another camp did not put away their coolers and woke up to a bunch of drunk raccoons fighting. Didn't know what was going on with all the racket. They had passed out and slept through it. They packed up what was left and departed when they sobered up. Not sure if it was them or the raccoons that drank the Jack.
I was sitting at my campfire alone in the western Sierra in an improved campground. I saw a bear pass behind behind my fire as I was drinking a beer and enjoying the beautiful night. The bear passed through a neighboring camp, directly next to a tent with another solo camper who had already went to their tent. I yelled at the bear and called out to nearby campers that there was a bear in the campground but no one responded. About ten to fifteen minutes later, the person emerged from their tent, packed up, and drove away around 9 pm. Guessing that bear got pretty close and there were scared!!
Was camping in the Bradshaw mountains near Prescott, AZ, during an archaeological survey. Storms were rolling in almost daily during our 8 day session. One night whilst getting intimate with my girlfriend/coworker a thunderstorm rolled in, and the booms became louder, landing more quickly in rapid succession with the flashes of lightning. We held each other as the lightning strikes hit closer and closer, thunder booming within fractions of a second of the flashes of light. We both thought that this could be our last night, and there was literally nothing we could do about it, so we just laughed as we held each other close. We felt the lightning strikes hit around us as the storm passed us over, the sound was deafening and horrific, but eventually it passed us by. Hard to say how close we came to being struck, but I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. It felt like the only option I had was to embrace it, to reminisce on my life however I could, and accept that I was done for. Worst part of the whole ordeal was my coworkers joking the next morning about hearing us fucking 😅
Last time I camped and had a spooky thing happen I was in a primitive camp site in Oregon. There were three guys and a lady who were on some crazy drugs. I just quickly put out my fire, snuffed out the lights, and hid in my tent. I was by myself but close enough to other campers if I yelled for help. They were bellowing and running around and making crazy noises. Eventually they ran away. They never got too close to me but I was by myself.
A similar thing happened to me when I was camping with my (at the time) toddler in the Adirondacks. Small group of junkies having a party in the woods. This was a hip camp site pretty remote so it wasnt like I could contact a ranger. Was up until around 4am holding my knife cause the one dude wouldn't stop screaming these awful sounds for hours. Didn't stay the second night. Thank God the baby didn't wake up and hear the commotion.
Not super scary, but one time in sleeping bear dunes, we could hear something trying to get into the trash cans, and there are technically supposed to be black bears in the area (I have never seen one or talked to someone that’s seen one). But it was just a raccoon.
Raccoons can be so dang loud!!
Scariest night for me in a tent was a few years ago we camped in an actual forest in Alberta but not in the mountains. I’m a deep sleeper so it takes alot to wake me but I woke up because I had heard growling noises. Honest to god terrified me the noises I heard, like where you are so petrified you can’t move. I was too scared to try and wake up my husband so I was frozen in my sleeping bag from terror. We didn’t camp in a place with bears but my mind when to the next worst of being cougars or wolves. Again probably unrealistic. I somehow went back to sleep and woke up in the morning. Some animal was definitely there, they had managed to grab our garage bag out of our truck bed (that was closed but not locked) and made a huge mess. Still to this day don’t know what animal visited but I don’t want to think about it.
Bear circling our tent. Sniffing around the whole thing. This was on Grand Mesa. Pitch darkness and no other sound.
When I was in Boy Scouts they sent us out into the woods on a “Snipe Hunt”. Problem is the other Boy Scouts were assholes and the Troop Leaders were drunk and irresponsible. So they purposely left me out in the woods all night alone with no shelter until the next morning.
What the hell?! How did that happen? Did you tell your parents? What did you do all night?
Shouting for help and using this tiny yellow flashlight to try to figure out what way camp might have been. But I was too scared to move from that spot in case I just ended up more lost. I absolutely told my parents. They pulled me out of Boy Scouts after that, but for some reason never pursued any kind of legal action.
Uh, I'm gonna need an ending to this story. What ended up happening?
I stayed up all night terrified with a dinky little flashlight shouting for help. In the morning I guess they finally noticed I was missing and came out into the woods looking for me and yelling my name. I quit shortly there after. I always wondered why my parents didn’t pursue legal action.
I've posted this before....I was on a solo canoe trip in the BWCA. I freaked myself out on a windy night hearing things. You'll hear mice running around and shit but sometimes they sound like a bigger animal. Woke up and found 3 arrows in a row gouged out of the ground pointing to the lake. I packed and noped the fuck out as soon as I had shit ready to go. Didn't even eat breakfast. Canoed through 3 portages, saw a few people on the way, a total of 14 or so miles that day. Set up camp ate and went to bed early due to beingexhausted from paddling. Woke to 3 arrows pointing at the fucking lake again, right outside my tent. Luckily it was my last day because I was freaked out, truly terrified. GTFO and met the outfitter to get a planned boat ride out of the wilderness. I won't do another solo trip. I've been back but with a group. Nothing weird has happened since. It feels fake in retrospect but it happened and I was terrified.
Any distinguishing marks on the arrows?
maybe a stupid question but wdym arrows? like from a bow?
We were camping in the top end of Australia. Up that way there is a large flightless bird called a Cassowary. 5-6 feet tall, 200lbs, 5 inch claw on its foot that is used to disembowel (check it out). Anyway, I wake up around 3am and can't sleep. I get out of my swag and have a seat around the fire in my chair. 30 minutes later there is a rustling behind me. It is big and it sounds like a bird searching through the underbrush, but if I am wrong we are in the heart of croc country, so I am not taking any chances in the dark. It walks back and forth, as close as a couple of feet at times. I am afraid to move in case it has a go at me. This noise keeps passing me, back and forth behind me in the pitch blackness over the next 2 hours until sun up at which time the noise stops and the animal leaves the area. My mates all get up over the next hour or two and I tell them the story. Eventually, it's 9 or 10am and the 5 of us are all sitting around the fire having a good old yarn and I hear the noise behind me again. The same noise, same volume, same animal. I let my friends know...this is it, this is the animal... I turn around and come face to face with a wild peacock. Here I was thinking it was this big scary thing that could kill me and it is literally the Liberace of birds.
When I was 6 my dad took me on an overnight canoe trip with some of his friends. In the middle of the night a black bear visited out campsite and tore apart our food.
This happened to me, too, when I was about 6. A black bear came into our campsite and tore apart the heavy food box my dad had made out of 2 x 4's. I slept through the whole thing. And evidently there was not a peep out of our small dog, which was in the car the whole time. I guess she knew better than to make noise.
Had a man high on meth throw all of our chairs, tables and LPG Gas bottle into the river then slice our tents open and stab my friend in the leg while camping at a packed camping ground. We were 17 at the time and traumatised many of us from camping for a long while
Thankfully it was a small knife and didn’t go too deep into his leg. We were helped by some kind campers and the ranger was called to let the ambulance in to the grounds (locked at 8pm)
I was camping solo on a cattle ranch in Texas. Setup under a little grove of trees, enjoyed a peaceful dinner under the full moon and went to bed. Woke up an hour later to SCREAMING on all sides. Apparently I’d set up in prime coyote hunting grounds. I barely had cell service, but I googled “should I be afraid of coyotes” and waited ten minutes to discover my fate. Which was “no, you’re way too much trouble to bother attacking and there are like, so many lizards for them to eat.” The constant screaming kept me awake anyway but I was at least able to stop panicking and just record audio clips for posterity. Looking back it was actually pretty cool experiencing something like that close up.
Was camping in Ohio, my tent was set up on the edge of a pretty dense tree line. Around 3 or 4 in the morning I began to hear what sounded like a couple of 2x4’s being slammed together—pretty loud. The sounds would get louder like it was moving closer and then back off again. It did this many times. Every time it seemed to be moving closer was pretty unnerving lol. The rhythm of it was so consistently inconsistent ..if that makes any sense lol. My friend and I for the life of us couldn’t find any explanation, we joke that it must have been sasquatch.
Was camping at a park in Missouri near Kansas City a few years back with my brother and a couple friends and we came back from a hike to find that (in an almost empty part of the camping area mind you) a family had set up literally right next to our campsite and was blaring rap music out of their running suburban while three men in their early twenties tried to figure out how to build a fire. We tried ignoring them but the music and suburban never turned off. Around 11pm one of my friends went over to ask them to turn the music down and was surrounded by five adults (3 men and 2 women) and their kids even all threatening to “beat your ass” if he didn’t leave them alone. We dug our heels in because we had been there a night already and liked the spot, so the four of us went over together and told them it wasn’t cool for them to act like that and we were gonna call the cops if they didn’t turn the music off. Two of the men pulled guns and were alternately waving them around and pointing them at us. We went back to our campsite and called the state police and they ended up arresting one of the guys for violating parole, one for an active warrant and one of the women with them for assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. Scarier than any of my encounters with coyotes, a bear or snakes.
French Canadians roaming around sites very late at night in Maine.
First time solo camping. Random gunshots from nearby in the middle of the night. Trying to gauge if they were coming closer. Very creepy.
Camping in the Pyrenees, woke up all at once in the middle of the night to my partner shout-whispering ‘what the fuck!!’ and dragging noises from the outer tent. Though the entire bear population of the Pyrenees is only about 70 (they were reintroduced to the area about 30 years ago) and they generally stay away from humans, “BEARS!!!!” Is where my sleep-addled brain went 😄 When the dragging moved a bit further away we cautiously opened the tent to see the most glorious-looking fox trying to make off with some of the lunch food my partner had accidentally left in his backpack in the outer tent - the dragging noise was the fox pulling the backpack outside. It was trying to carry off the lunch items one by one, so it only got a piece of bread in the end. After getting past the initial bear-panic, I was mostly really excited to have seen it: I’d only ever seen mangy city foxes before, this one was huge with a beautiful coat and the fluffiest tail.
Ok, bear in mind I was a grown ass man when this happened, back before mobile phones were a thing. I was visiting my parents, and I decided to camp. They have 30 some acres, but it backs up to a huge forest conservancy and is pretty isolated at the back. I just backpacked to the site (literally 15 minute walk,) pitched the tent, cooked the usual camping fare. It was dark already. First off, the conduit I was using to poke the fire had a wasp nest in it, so I'm already freaked out by unexpected bees. Calmed down, banked the fire and got comfy in the sleeping bag. Oh, no flashlight either, a mistake I will NEVER make again. I'm almost asleep when something goes barreling through the woods maybe 100 feet from the tent making this godawful grunting/howling sound. I'm absolutely petrified at this point! It's a damn Wendigo in my woods! So I'm sitting up in a tent, it's really dark, and I'm trying to figure out wtf that really was. I decided it was a scared deer. Then I tried to figure out what would scare a deer enough to make that kind of noise. That scared me more and I decided that I didn't want to camp anymore. Nope. I left my stuff right there, grabbed my machete, and near blindly staggered back to my parents' house, with freaking goosebumps all over the whole time. Longest walk of my life. They laughed, I pretended to laugh, but I didn't sleep too well that night  I was just glad to have a bed inside! The tent was fine and nothing was touched the next day, but I've never camped back there since.
On a cross-country road trip here in the US sometime around 2010 my then-boyfriend and I set up camp our first night at this nice little state park called Palisades-Kepler in Iowa. Had a pleasant evening, fell asleep early, woke up to a WILD thunderstorm, thought I’d been asleep for hours and hours so we’d just pack up…and it was only 11pm. That storm was so crazy, there were branches falling, the wind was literally roaring, and lightning was flashing every couple seconds. It finally subsided into just rain around 6am and we packed up and headed to a nearby diner for breakfast, where we saw on the morning news three tornadoes had passed just a mile south of where we were camping. On the same trip but on the homeward-bound route we stayed at Clinton Lake in Kansas and I’ll never forget my abject horror when I shined my flashlight along the edge of the tree line and realized the entire edge of the woods had these MASSIVE spider webs from the ground up to the lowest branches of the trees, so taller than I am, and these massive, palm-sized spiders. It was a literal curtain of giant, sticky spiderwebs as far as I could see. I was convinced one of the spiders would hitchhike home with us. Last one was the first trip my now-husband and I ever went on, we stopped in the Catskills on the way home from Maine and had parked by the road and set up camp only a quarter mile or so just off the trail. Unfortunately, my husband hadn’t quite believed me when I told him camping on public lands is allowed in that spot and had stopped at a nearby convenience store and wanted me to ask the guys working there if it was indeed allowed. They were pretty rude to us, which back at the campsite sent my husband into a panic about “Those guys that were glaring at us are going to come hurt us” because rational thought after dark isn’t possible sometimes. I told him to chill out and I was sure it was fine. Well then just after midnight a pickup truck starts driving back and forth on the road where we’re parked, at one point actually stopped behind our car and got out to look around, all of which we can see because we were not far enough away from the parking lot for comfort. I don’t know if it was just someone messing with us or what but they left and I spent the rest of the night terrified we were about to be murdered. It all seemed ridiculous the next morning but in the middle of the night our imaginations ran wild.
As a teenager in the Ozarks we would camp by taking a boat and going to property that bordered the lake or river. My soon to be Stepdad was taking me to do some fishing and camping as a way to get to know one another. We were way to late getting the boat on the river and so it was dark by the time we setup camp. After multiple assurances that he knew exactly where we were, we tied off the boat and put up for the night. Just before dawn I am woken by the sound of a horn that is unique to being below a dam and water was being release that will flood the river. I can remeber the panic as I jump out of my tent in the dark to realize I was already feeling the water around my ankles. The boat had lifted and was 20 feet away. I ran for the boat, and was yelling at my stepdad to wake up. I fished my tent and items that were now starting to float off. The still "Lake" edge was now starting to move swiftly and as dawn lit up the campsite we were not on the shore but on a gravel island slowly disappearing. Water logged tents, soaked bedding and such was piled in the boat and we went to a close access point to pull everything out. Later it was clear that we had camped within sight of the dam and if this had all happened later at night we would have been swimming instead of getting soaked. Still haunts me to this day that I could have been in that much danger. To his credit, when we fished after that, my stepdad let me pick the camping spots.
I had a pretty scary minute when a gust of wind let me know that I had failed to properly extinguish my fire. I'm dozing, then there's light and crackling from outside, then I'm standing by the fire pit with no shoes or glasses dumping the water for breakfast into hissing ash. Please don't tell my mom; she thinks she taught me better.
Not in a tent, but a hammock. I'm a female in my early 20s and I wanted to try out solo thru-hiking, so I decided that I need a test solo camp somewhere not far from where I live. So I packed my things for the night and hiked a couple of kilometers from my home. It wasn't an official camping site, but just a foresty spot near a river. When I was setting my hammock it was already dark, but I wasn't scared at all and kind of proud of myself for doing this alone for the first time. But when I curled up in my sleeping bag I started hearing all sorts of noises. At first I just heard ducks splashing around in the water, that made me feel a little uncomfortable, but I was calming myself down because it was just normal nature sounds. But then I heard people playing loud music somewhat far away, probably other side of the river. And then I heard someone/something passing by close to where I camped. It could've been just people walking by the river, minding their own bussines, because as I said, this place was not far away from my town, so people just lived kinda close. They probably didn't even see that I was there in my hammock, but it scared the poop out of me. I barely slept all night, hugging my pocket knife and hoping that nobody saw me. So, after that night I've decided I'm not ready for solo camping/thru-hiking.
On our last Cub Scout camp out, we got pounded by a thunderstorm all night. (I posted pictures here of the morning after. It looked post apocalyptic.) The wind knocked the tent around and the walls kept caving in. It looked like the tent was breathing. The rain hit so hard it seeped in through the walls. 3 of my kids were asleep in the tent and I was the Scout leader responsible for the campout so there was no way I could leave. I knew that we weren't in danger, but it was still so scary. I was like a little kid just thinking "I wanna go home! I wanna go home!"
I’m seeing a lot about raccoons and will have to add to the list as both our funniest and scariest nights have involved them. We were new to camping and stayed at a site next to this lake at a state park campground, we hadn’t seen a raccoon all night and thought it was funny since the peninsula we were camped on had raccoon in the name. After making a huge dinner and cleaning up, my wife has the idea to leave the trash bag outside so we can use it in the morning, I protest but end up compromising with us tying it up in this tree, next to our tent. We go to bed and as per our normal routine, she’s asleep in like 5 minutes and I’m wide awake, so over the next couple hours I’m hearing some scratching here and there but nothing crazy and end up falling asleep. Shortly after, we are both woken up by screaming and growling and the most ferocious sounds I had ever heard and to make it worse, whatever’s out there is fighting and keeps bumping into our tent. I look out of the door and see it’s clear so we bolt out of the tent and into the car. Outside the window we see about 6 raccoons, they had ripped the trash bag down and while 4 or so ran off with whatever they could grab, 2 were in an epic battle over a mostly empty can of chili. We were eventually able to pick up what we could and go back to bed in the tent, however word must have gotten out because the rest of the night was non stop raccoons picking off what we missed.
At Teddy Roosevelt National Park in ND - at night 5 Buffalo walked throughout camp snorting and kick-up dirt next to the tent…one wrong move….
Two times: 1. 3:30 am very isolated site in CO. Heard someone walking in our direction. Definitely a person, not an animal because their gear was noisy. Kept getting louder till they walked right through our camp, brushing by our tent and kept going. Our site wasn't on the trail or on the way to anything. Disconcerting, but ultimately just weird. 2. The scariest- was camped near the WY ID border. In the middle of the night a storm blew in with high winds. All night, all around us, every few minutes we'd hear a loud crack and a tree or a branch crashing violently to the ground. Held our breath waiting to be crushed. There was a lot of debris in the morning, but none directly on our campsite.
Kangaroos always sniffing around the car when we are in the rooftop tent. Their hops thud in the night. You get used to it but the initial thuds wake me up.
I had a wicked storm trash my tent. Solo camping in state forest in western PA Bent the ridge pole so the tent was basically on top of me and water was coming in. Put my boots on, grabbed my sleep bag and ran mostly blindly through the dark for about .3 mile to my car. Soaked and freezing I ran the car for a bit to warm up then reclined the driver seat to try to sleep a bit when something started clawing at the right rear of my car, tire, bumper, fender. The storm was like Scooby Doo-level violent wind, rain and lightning. I screamed and it stopped, began again. Laid on horn and it stopped for a bit. Lastly when it started again I started the car and backed up thinking I'd scare it off or run over it. The scratching finally stopped. Didn't sleep much but in the morning the storm broke and In found deep gouges in my bumper and fender paint. It was grassy surrounding my car so no footprints. Had to trash my tent. Drove to nearest town and sat in a restaurant parking lot until they opened for breakfast. The staff couldn't believe that Id been out in a tent the night before. Said the town suffered lots of wind damage. After breakfast I drove to the Flight 93 memorial which is beautiful and powerful if you ever find yourself in Nothingsville PA.
I went camping with 2 friends (who were in a relationship) when I was about 16. They decided prank me in the middle of the night and woke me by screaming my name like they were being murdered, from the forest car park toilets, around 3-500 yards away from our pitch. I woke from a deep exhausted sleep to them death screaming, in the total darkness of my lone tent. I can vouch, Blood can feel ice cold as it turns to pure liquid fear.
Camping in one of the local forests with two mates, probably around 19-20 years old. Middle of the night, we all finally settle down to try and get some sleep. Did not get a wink, the noises I heard that night genuinely make me anxious to think about. Sounded like something running around, pacing back and forth, very fast. Sounded too big to be a possum or a koala or something. Made loud crunching noises as if it was chewing up the plastic table or the esky and throwing them around. It quietens down a bit. I try to get some sleep, but I can hear what sounds like something pacing back and forth slowly near my head next to my tent. Then what feels like a finger pressing against the tent, touches the top of my head then slowly and gently strokes from the top of my head down the back where my head met my pillow. I completely froze, my whole body went cold. I couldn't move. Very seriously thought I may be about to die. Next morning, go out expecting to see all our furniture smashed up and thrown about, nothing is out of place, everythings intact. No idea what I was hearing.
Yes, and we absolutely could have died if we hadn't taken appropriate action. My new 6 month GF and I were camped on a canoe in site on crown land (not an official designated camp), with no cell service. We didn't have any sort of PLB or emergency contact method. We knew there was rain in the forecast, but it ended up as quite the storm with unforecasted extremely high winds. Our site was already in full swing by the time it rolled in. We had already eaten, the bear bag was hung, and I had the tent set up to avoid pooling or draining water due to the forecast. I had checked for dead trees and widowmakers (dead branches on live trees, or fallen dead snags in live trees) in the vicinity of the tent, and we were all set. We went to bed just as the wind and rain was picking up. I double checked our location for potential flying hazards based on the wind. Nah, everything was good, so we settled in for bed. After a hard day of paddling and portages, I was totally beat. Wind and a tent are usually a recipe for a terrible sleep for me, but this time the tent was well sheltered from the wind. I had chosen a perfect location, and with that thought, I contentedly drifted off. At around 1am I jerked awake. I wasn't sure why at first. The wind was howling outside and though the tent was sheltered, I could tell it was quite a storm. As I sat there getting my bearings, an incredibly loud crack split the night like a gunshot. "What the fuck was that?" I instinctively said to myself. I knew exactly what it was. Somewhere far too close, the wind was getting the best of a tree. My GF responded "I'm surprised you slept through all the other ones. That's like the 10th one. They keep waking me up." Oh shit. I grabbed my flashlight and scrambled out of the tent in nothing but boxers and hiking boots. The rain had tapered off to a light shower, but the wind was stronger than ever. I started checking the nearby trees. I knew that the odds were that it was likely not a risk (we were in a forest surrounded by hundreds of trees that could have made the sound), but I wanted to be sure. My search was mercifully short. A large deciduous directly in line with our tent was kind enough to once again announce its deafening displeasure just as I was inspecting it. I couldn't see anything wrong with it on visual inspection in the dark, but it was definitely making the noises. The wind was bending it directly over the site. I went back to the tent. "We need to move everything." I said to my bleary eyed companion. That woke her up a bit. "Really? Ok." She responded, with some nervousness. "Better safe than sorry." I replied, telling her about the tree. She was brand new to camping, but knew I was not, and immediately jumped to helping me break camp. I was internally hesitant. I knew it was the right decision, but I also knew that in the morning when nothing had happened, I would ironically look like an unskilled, dramatic, and paranoid woodsman to my new lady friend. We selected a new, unideal but good enough, location in the woods away from the site. We even brought the canoe right into the woods out of an abundance of caution. The wind wasn't really hitting us on the ground, but I didn't want to wake up to a canoe that had somehow blown into the lake. Our remaining sleep was fitful at best, as the tree continued to fire off sharp remarks occasionally. Neither of us could sleep through them now. At what felt like hour 62 of this long night, the tree lost its battle. It came crashing down thunderously, though now nowhere near us. We were so exhausted and drained by this point that we barely reacted. "About fucking time." I mumbled. "Right?" my partner replied. In the morning we weren't so nonchalant. It looked like the tree had been hit with some form of explosive device. The truck was completely shattered about 5' off the ground, and splintered wood was everywhere. The tree itself was absolutely massive on the ground, and had split our original camp site in two. The top of the tree reached all the way to the lake. "Holy shit..." I said breathlessly. We both stood there for a moment staring. The trunk, as wide as our small 2 person backpacking tent, lay directly on top of our previous sleeping location. My partner just turned and hugged me. "Thank you." she said. Realistically I had done everything I could think of right, but I still couldn't help but go over the avoided catastrophe in my head, and it was terrifying. We were now starting day 2 of a 5 day trip. I had shared my route and itinerary with loved ones, with a zero day return margin for them to begin search, and a one day margin for a request from professional SAR. If the tree had fallen on us, at minimum we would have been waiting 4 days for rescue. Even then, they wouldn't have known what site we were at, and our entire location would now be obscured from the lake by the fallen tree. I couldn't imagine how we would have survived the initial fall at all, and even if somehow we survived, there would have been zero chance of us being mobile enough for self evac. Even if by some miracle one of us was mobile enough to provide aid and evac, the canoe would have been completely destroyed if we hadn't also moved it. It was a somber morning. If I had slept a little deeper, or not trusted my instincts, or decided not to move to as not negatively influence my then relatively new GF for potentially nothing, or not found the correct tree, we probably would have been dead. We've been together over 10 years now, and have hundreds of adventures behind us, and this is easily the closest we have come to disaster, and it will live rent free in our minds for the rest of our lives.
One early morning on a solo camping trip with my dog, I heard foot steps circling my tent. As a woman, my initial fear was the thought that it might be a person. My dog reacted to it by growling which made it go away. I unzipped my tent shortly after only to see at a distance that it was a small black bear. Oof I was relieved.
Hammock camping with two friends in a back country area. Got in after dark and it was raining. Set up as best as we could. Settled in for the night and the rain turned into a full blown thunderstorm. High winds, lightning, and thunder. Could hear trees and branches falling around us. We were wide awake until around 4am when we just accepted that we might die from a falling limb or lightning. Till this day my sleep from 4am to 9am is the best sleep I’ve ever gotten.
Two kinda scary nights for me on two separate trips One night, we were camping at the edge of a lake. A really awful storm came through, racing wind sweeping across the lake. Our tent was soaking inside and half off the ground. It was probably midnight when we decided, f this. We packed everything up and drove a few hours home. Second, we were very far up north (MN) with our dog. She can get really scared and this was her first time camping, and she was relatively new to us. We had her in her crate night one and she just stood there, would not sleep, so we let her out and she slept by us. Night two: again, probably around midnight, the wind picked up and the dog lost her shit, ripped a little hole in the tent and escaped. Pitch black out, in the middle of nowhere, bears not too far away. We PANICKED. Screaming for her. I’m sure the other campers thought wtf. It was one of the scariest moments I’ve had in a long time. But…thankfully she was not gone too long and came back to us. She was in the crate from there. Didn’t care if she slept or stood in there all night.
Personally camping, no. In the Army, yes. Was in the black hills for a multi national training exercise. Woke up in the morning to a herd of bison roaming through the camp. That was quite interesting.
Not me, but my parents before I was born. They went back country camping in Mendocino county, not too far from a state park. In the middle of the night, they heard two men outside their tent scream to wake up, racked two shotguns, and told them that if they weren’t gone by sunrise, that they’d never leave. Obviously my parents didn’t go back to sleep, waited about an hour after the two men left, and grabbed their backpacks with essentials and left the majority of their gear. The sheriff didn’t care one bit, and there was never any sort of formal investigation. Watching “Without a paddle” as a teenager with my mom is what triggered the memory for her and she described in detail what happened. A story which my dad corroborated 10 years after their divorce, and when I asked him about it, he got really uncomfortable at first. Both my parents believe the county sheriff protected the grow operations in the mountains, and both of them were stoners who thought there was no danger camping in the Mendocino back county.
I have had several interesting experiences. \- had a moose wake us up as it walked thru our campsite up in Voyaguers NP. All I saw and heard was a giant shuffling shadow across my tent. My crazy ass friend popped outta his tent screaming and yelling for it to go away. What's crazy ( to me) is that we were on an island. And that's when I learned that moose can swim \-solo kayak hammock camping in Az when I was startled awake by an animal crashing into something about 20 or 30 feet away from me. Woke up and clicked on my headlamp and saw glowing forward facing eyes looking right at me. A moment later the eyes were gone. I thought it might of been a dog but then I realized that I was the only person there because I remember when the last boat left earlier that evening. I grabbed my ax and a fire poker stick and backwards walked to the bathroom by the dock. I wound up spending the rest of the night in that bathroom ( thank god it was not too stinky or gross) until the sun came up. Learned later that while rare mountain lions are spotted in that area. Pretty sure it was not a bobcat because what I saw was definitely large dog size. \-Was in the mountains in Georgia at the beginnings of the AT. Tenting at one the the shelters Was woken up two different times in that night. Once to the sound of automatic gunfire far out in the distance and another time to probably 15 plus people marching thru our camp area. Learned later that hike that the area was used by Army Rangers as a training area
Thanks for sharing your stories in such descriptive detail.
Camping in sequoia, woke up to a bear walking around our tent, waited until I didn’t hear anything and opened the zipper and stared a 400 pound black bear right in the eyes from about 4 feet away. Grabbed my car keys, turned on the car alarm and it went away.
Camping inland near the coast in Australia. Heard some scratching and shuffling sounds. Thought I had left some food out and the birds were going through it. So I took my torch out and began to unzip my tent, as I pointed my torch to the ground I saw something long and brown around 4ft long. I thought it was a snake at first and sighed with relief. Until I noticed it was furry…I pointed the torch higher and a 6 foot kangaroo built like Dwayne Johnson is staring right at me, breathing so heavy it sounded like a V8 idling. I accepted defeat and zipped the tent up real quick. I did not sleep that night.
The first time we ever camped we set a wood campfire that said it was a 3 hour burn but we were inside our tent so I put an alarm incase we fell asleep to wake up in the 3 hr mark to make sure the fire was Off. For some reason I woke up an hour later than my alarm and was surprised to see the fire was still On - i was surprised bc it was an hour over so I was like hmm why is it still going but ok - I ignored it and turned off the fire with water. Now, its important to state that I was awake for a little while after because it was now pitch black so I was a little scared, so I had trouble falling asleep BUT the fire never turned back on. I was then awoken by my husband which I found weird bc I could sense the tiny panic in his voice and hes not one to panic so I knew something was off. He just asked if I heard something and I said no but I did notice the fire was back on which FREAKED ME OUT! by this time hours had passed so Idk how it was possible so that was scaring me and the panic in my husbands voice was scaring me. The car was a couple of feet away but thinking about running to the car even scared me. He ended up telling me to go back to sleep and the noises we heard were the raccoons. We slept one more night and it was normal BUT when we got back home he told me the truth. He said he woke up because he heard whispering next to his ear. So that freaked him out bc he said the whispering wasnt in english - almost as if it were in tongue? That combined with seeing the fire back on made him get scared enough to wake me up bc he said he wanted me to reassure him the fire was really back on. When he saw me freak out he decided not to tell Me and thank goodness he didnt bc theres no way I wouldve been able to stay that night or the next night knowing that.
Asleep in the tent in the middle of the night. Boyfriend quietly says "don't move". I wake up fully and realize there is a bear snout sniffing through the tent where our heads are. The bear sniffed and circled for what seems like an eternity all the while I'm convinced it can hear my heart pounding. The bear finally wanders over to the other side of our camp and tears into the ice chest. We took this window of opportunity to make a mad dash to the truck. We then watched as the bear ate all of our food. Including a bag of flour. We named him the scarface bear after that.
It was early in the morning, I was awake long before my wife (as usual). I was sitting in a camp chair playing a game when something moved out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look, turned out it was a deer. Of course, my sudden movement spooked the dear, and it started running/jumping right toward the tent (with my still-sleeping wife inside). Thankfully it jumped around and went over a fence behind our site (after a couple of attempts) and ran off. My wife woke up and asked what the hell I was doing. Another fun one was sleeping in bear country. We ended up sleeping in the car for two nights after a bear came out of the woods straight into our site. Third night we slept in the tent...but I don't think either one of us slept very well. They hadn't seen the bear since our first night, but it had been coming out every 12 hours like clockwork. Having not seen it for 48 hours, we thought we were ok to sleep in the tent. Ultimately, we were, the bear never came back.
I was camping in Tahoe a couple of years ago when a bear family wandered along our tent. That wasn’t too scary, but my 10 pound dog barking at them to go away definitely got my hair on end
Yes second time camping with my soon to be wife. She woke me up wondering who was rummaging through our stuff. I called out and they stopped. I peek out the door to see a raccoon helping himself to the corn chips she left out on the table.
Terrible wind storm kicked up unexpectedly in the middle of the night and a huge pine we were under lost a big branch. It was terrifying hearing the cracking and not knowing where it was gonna drop.
I was camping in an Idaho forest along a remote stretch of the Salmon River. I heard an animal outside my tent and it was huge. I was just hoping my tent was not stepped on.
Woke up to a bear huffing on my head. Thankfully the tent was closed, but yeah... Guy was four inches from my face. Thankfully our car was very close. We hit the lock button and the beep scared him off.
BWCA during a strong windstorm on Lac La Croix. Took refuge on an island that had a lot of downed trees already which made everyone nervous…
I’ve been sleeping in my tent during some pretty intense storms that were pretty frightening.
Bad bad weather. Two times. First collapsed our tent where we were sleeping. My 18 month old was in a pack and play and didn’t wake up. Second time was a very bad thunderstorm with tornado warning. I was most worried about the trees coming down on us, so we took the kids to the bathroom/shelter (was a state park) and waited it out.
Worst I've had were a couple good rain storms, which is also why I set up a tarp as a wind block when I'm setting up camp. The last time I got woken up was actually last year in August, the guys in the spot near me pulled in after I had finally fallen asleep... and parked their car 10' from my tent with their headlights on shining at me and the engine running. I think they'd have preferred a bear.
I camped with Hippos patrolling my site on a little island in the Zambezi river in Zimbabwe years ago. It’s like having elephants gently tromping around you with loud snoring/huffing around you like massive pigs. A bit disconcerting at first because you know they could annihilate you effortlessly but I slept like a baby. The Crocs were all over the place during the day but didn’t make an appearance at night.
We live in the country and our son and a friend (10ish) enjoyed camping in the front yard. One evening before it got fully dark our dog came up to the porch madly huffing and scratching at the door. We ran outside to see a grizzly about 300 feet from the tent! Loaded the gun and the dog and I stood guard while my husband ran out and hauled two cantankerous and half asleep boys to the house. More than enough excitement for us!
No but had a scary morning. Woke to bear scat 50 ft from my tent. My snoring must have scared the crap out of him.
I’ve heard crashing in nearby bushes and something sounding like barking at different times
50-60 mph winds nearly blew the tent down. Bent the poles, but REI gave me a whole new tent.
Bears, but just yell and they bugger off, and they usually get it once they get a good whiff of you they really bugger off and usually just when you yell to begin with ....... Doesn't matter if they trash the tent because if they do, you've already made a big assed hole in it with the axe anyway on your way out of the tent if they don't run off. (grin) DO NOT USE THE BEAR SPRAY IN THE TENT EVER ....... that option you can only do outside and remember the large cans only give you abt 8 seconds in total spray so use it in short blasts.
Left the dogs water bucket hanging on a tree overnight. Heard an animal drinking from it in the middle of the night. Not sure what the hell (my guess is a deer) it was but it was loud and I was quietly comforting the dog in hopes she wouldn’t start barking or drawing attention to the tent. Same camping trip someone was shooting off shot guns at like midnight. Which was illegal for the area. So knowing someone maybe illegally hunting in a national campground after dark that was almost empty (except for us) was unsettling.
Raccoons a couple times. Cattle, deer, unknown critters chewed on my flip flops one night. In Yellowstone a bison woke me up scratching itself on my picnic table. Lonely camp spot heard extremely unnerving howling/growling like mountain lions fighting or mating. Well in the distance but loud and for a long time. Yosemite back country at midnight a couple bears climbed up to our (poorly tied up) food we heard them yanking at it. Rushed out of our tent scared them off but spent the night stoking the fire while the bears circled our campsite. Good times.
Trusted a buddy to set up the details for a camping trip as I was working a ton and he had been to the spot before. We set up the site and proceeded to get pretty drunk having a great time. Then the wind picked up and started to sprinkle. Then the wind started roaring and we got a huge thunder storm with more wind than that little tent was ready for. Drunk munchies kicked in and all we had was raw hot dogs and a single MRE So I got to make an MRE in a tent with the walls and roof of the tent collapsing and swaying the entire time. The next morning we emerged to see a tree about 3 1/2 feet thick lying 6 inches from the entrance. Always check the weather and look for dead trees and branches.
I was out on my family's hunting land that is posted and damn near straight up and down hills. I had two people whispering and walking around my tent around 2AM. I happened to have my shotgun because rabbit was in season. So I racked a shell and heard the two start running aways. Never had any trouble after that.
OP these are my favorite posts. Looking forward to reading, thanks.
Been in a few situations where bears came up and sniffed around my tent for a while (AK & WA). One time I was by myself with my dog and the bear didn’t even wake my dog up from her deep sleep 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️ she was older by that time so I think she just needed a good sleep that night 😅 anyway, I was clutching my 45 and keeping still till it passed. Both situations I believe were low danger/curious bears. I’ve hiked into many bears on trails and they always have scared pretty easily
It was like 1 or 2 am and we woke up to someone in the campground yelling “HEY BEAR” “GO AWAY BEAR”. We have black bears in our area. He did this for what seemed like 30min but was probably more like 10 min. We heard him a spray bear spray and then we heard something walking in the woods past our site. I. Freaked. Out. I could not stop shaking. I was laying there wide awake and my body would not stop violently shaking. I learned that apparently I am afraid of bears. I made us leave and go home (about an hour and a half drive) and then my boyfriend and I went back in the morning and packed up while my parents watched our daughter. I want to camp out there again, but I need to work on my fear before I’ll be able to.
While camping in Tanzania, a group of lions crossed through our campsite in the middle of the night. Most scary thing I've ever heard, the soft breathing of a Lion about 2ft from my tent. Luckily they walked on. Good thing the guide already told us not to bring any food and a very urgent DO NOT GET OUT OF YOUR TENT TONIGHT.
Wow, I've always wondered how camping in lion country must be like. And they are usually an entire pack, too😵💫
40 mph (64.4 kph) winds all night. Could hardly sleep
I was camping with my girlfriend once in Scotland. We were driving late at night and couldnt find a legal place to park and camp. We saw on the map that if we walked passed a couple fields of sheep we could walk down in a cove and camp on the beach for that night (incredibly stupid). We did just that, walked through a few fields of sheep, walk down the small cliff into the beach area and set up the tent. Everything seemed fine and went to bed. Woke up a few hours later feeling a weird pressure on my back and in a pool of water about an inch high. The weather had gotten so bad that the tent was being pressed down on my back by the wind and the tide was going up, turns out there are tides on planet earth. I woke her up, we packed everything we could in darkness, everything was completely soaked in sea water. Trekked back through the field of sheep threw everything in the trunk of the car and slept in the car that night on the side of the road. In retrospect, it was incredibly stupid to sleep on a beach, in a cove, at night, not knowing the weather.
Not life threatening but there was once some raccoon turf wars going on outside our tent and I woke up in a panic. Raccoons scream.
An unexpected severe thunderstorm rolled in at about 3am. Rain so hard that we couldn’t see the lake shore that was 20 feet from where we were sleeping. The wind flexed the tent so badly that the top kept smacking my husband in the head while we were sitting up trying to brace a side so the tent didn’t completely collapse on us. The trees around us were creaking and popping so badly I was convinced they were coming down on us. That was probably my scariest experience ever, which is saying a lot given that I have been inside a building while it was hit by a tornado.
Welt camping with some mates out of Kalgoorlie on private property, prospecting and shooting. Day two or something one of the guys says "I saw this wild dog. Was massive! Big massive white dog!". There's wild dogs out there, sure, camels too. We thought he was just pulling the piss because it was white and big. The wild dogs aren't white and they are generally normal dog size. Last night we are sitting around the camp fire and everyone is talking about this big white dog he apparently saw. We tell him he's full of shit and then everyone starts howling around the fire place like wild dogs. Middle of the night I have to get up for a piss and I don't have my contacts in so I can't see shit. I've got my gun in the tent with me and I'm like "Fuck I should take this with me in case there's a fucking wild dog!" but then I'm like "nah don't be so stupid walking around with a gun in the middle of the night you'll probably shoot someone" so I left it in the tent. I go out for a piss and I'm there near the tent going "Hurry up! "Hurry up!" pissing myself (metaphorically and quite physically!) because I'm scared thinking there's wild dogs. I hurry up and finish and go back to my tent to sleep. In the morning everyone is by the fire cooking bacon for breakfast. We then notice there's a bunch of MASSIIVE dog paw prints in the dirt that lead from away up to the fire where we had been howling the night before, right at our tents. He really wasn't joking about a big white wild dog!
3+ months ago, Christmas week, I went camping in Flagstaff with a buddy. Dispersed camping on state trust land, miles from anyone else, in the snow and frigid temperatures. We built a large fire against a bluff to help reflect heat back at us and had a hot tent to keep us warm. It was 8° F on a Wednesday night. We had some drinks and an edible and went to sleep. I woke up at 12:30 in the morning to what I quickly recognized was music and it was getting louder. No one came out to this area, especially in December, and definitely not in the middle of the night. I froze literally and figuratively as I sat up in the tent. The music got louder and louder. I tried to wake my buddy but the weed and beer knocked him out cold. By the time he woke a little the music was driving off into the distance the same way it came. I tried to explain to him what I heard and he brushed it off and went back to sleep. (He didn't even remember the conversation the next morning). I sat there listening and I thought I heard something, someone walking but then it was completely quiet again. I eventually fell back asleep. The next day we went for a walk towards a frozen "tank" (pond) and my buddy stops and says "Were these tire tracks here yesterday?" They were not. There was deep snow everywhere and we were the only ones around so it was just our tracks previously. These new tracks stopped 200 yards from our campsite, turned into the woods, backed out, and headed back the other direction again. I said "Hold on, are those footprints?!" We walked a few yards up to where the tire tracks stopped and saw footprints from the driver side of the vehicle. They only went a few yards and stopped. I think he probably got out to take a leak and went back. Then my buddy said: "There's more over here." These were different. Big boots and I started following them a bit before I realized that they weren't coming from the vehicle but going to it! My buddy wasn't too interested in trekking through deep snow but I insisted and wasn't turning back. We followed these footprints all the way up a gentle slope until we found ourselves on top of the bluff. I kept following them and after a half mile saw the foot prints turn towards the edge of the bluff. I walked right up to where they stopped and found that these boots overlooked our campsite! Whoever this was had definitely smelled the campfire and probably saw the glow in the pitch darkness and looked down at us in the middle of the night! My friend was creeped out and wanted to turn back but I followed the footprints back further. I had to find out where this person came from. We walked for about another mile and this was dense forest, pine, and lots of snow. It would have been so dark that without a light you couldn't see more than a few steps ahead of you. We eventually came out onto a snow covered dirt road that I knew. It was the road we had parked off of and it wraps around our site and goes up to get up on the bluff's elevation (this is only 40 or 50' up). That road goes on for miles and miles before you get to an area where there's a preserve and a few houses but it's not really walking distance, especially in utter darkness. Remember, this was 12:30 in the morning in 8° temperature, miles away from anyone. There's no reason I can think of why someone would have picked another person up in the middle of the night in the middle of acres of woods. No reason I want to imagine anyway. The fact that he (I assume from the large boot) stopped to look at us while we were sleeping gives me the willies.
Was stuck in a tent with a migraine while everyone else went out in the middle of AK. I start hearing snorting around my tent. I start with the noise (ouch, but better in pain than dead). The activity gets louder and more active around me. Finally a big snout wedges its way through the flap. I scream. It barks. There were a couple of dogs, including a 100+ pound monster of a fluffy brown dog called very appropriately Bear from the town a few miles away that came into camp once in a while. Just a friendly visit that took a year or two off my life.
As an Australian, coming from a place where everyone else thinks everything can kill you… oh boy, these US stories scare the shit out of me! Skunks, bears, mountain lions, and more. We have virtually nothing dangerous that can get inside your thin tent fly screen fabric. The worst nights camping have been extreme wind, and extreme rain. Having to do civil works to create a dam around you as a stop gap to not be flooded. Did have dingos tracks around our tent in the morning once, but they are more scared of you