[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Weird people in the woods (Page 2 of 5)
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Quoted: I haven’t. After watching Deliverance, I didn’t think anyone ever went out in the woods without being armed. I was 4-wheeling with wife and young offspring in the mtns. west of Anza Borrego, in socal. Lots of old mines up there, some of which are active. It was a designated Natl. Forest trail, very remote, and it passed through a mining area. Hand on a Bible, two guys who looked like they were straight outta Deliverance were standing there grinning when we drove by. Wearing wife beater t-shirts, they probably had three teeth...between them. They watched us as I watched them in my rear-view. We couldn't get out of there fast enough. It spooked the missus, I played it cool. But I gotta say, it creeped me out and I don't creep easily. |
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Quoted: Sounds like an acid or shroom tripper... Otoh... we came in a single vehicle. You park at a USFS gate and hike in several hours to get there. There was also no other vehicle at the gate when we got back to it. So we don't even know how the guy got there in the first place - like someone dropped him off, or he was there long term in some fashion The women were freaked out by the idea that maybe he was coming up to see if it was a couple hippie girls all alone, and wasn't expecting to find men in the group |
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I occasionally run into a deserted homeless camps up in the mountains. They always tend to be right where the National Forest land starts along the trail. Strangest encounter was at a trailhead coming back from a hike near Berthoud Pass. We get about 50 yards from the lot and we can hear but not see a guy yelling due to the trees. He's screaming "get out" and "get in" and a bunch of other incomprehensible nonsense. I told the rest of the group to wait and I went to get the car and to check things out. When I get to the lot I see a beat up sedan drive off assuming it was the guy. A few miles down the road we actually end up behind the dude coming down the pass and he's flailing his arms everywhere, probably hitting himself. Total complete schizo breakdown. |
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Quoted: A lot. It’s especially weird when they don’t see me up in a tree while hunting. Hikers and other weirdos Use to hunt close to a bike path. Nothing like trying to get the attention of a woman who about to squat under your stand and take a piss without making a lot of noise lol It happened multiple times a season. |
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Quoted: I do solo back country camping. Luckily this has never happened to me but is my ultimate fear and why I never go unarmed. Something so unwholesome, creepy about these types of encounters. Friend and his wife lived in West Vagina for a time. They were camping in an area with two remote sites near each other. The other site was occupied. In the middle of the night they get awakened by a scuffle happening at the other site. They run over to see what the problem was. Some drunk bum attacked the other campers. He was screaming something obscure like ‘get off my land’ and swinging an ax. The campers managed to subdue the guy and tie him up. My friend had to do almost a mile hike to get cell signal to call police. A cliche fat, lazy, Southern Sheriff showed up acting like he was annoying they woke him up for this. The Sheriff seemed like he knew the perp and the assault was no big deal because, “Yup.. Ol Crazy Bill will do that from time to time”. Pretty sure the Sheriff just gave the guy a ride home, no arrest or anything. First sugar chicken, now West Vagina. Thread itself is creepy AF |
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Trail riding with a buddy in the Cascades, many miles form any sort of civilization. We roll up to a guy on foot, with a few Rubbermaid totes and 5gal jug of water. He would pull one forward about 20', then go pull the rest up to that point, then start the process over again. We had stopped to make sure he was ok, he just ignored us. Asked where he was going. He just pointed down the trail and said 'that way'. Not terribly creepy, but unusual for sure. |
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Quoted: Years back wife and I along with her cousin and a friend hiked up to Olympic hot springs, a set of natural fed hot spring rock pools. Takes a couple hours to get to. We went back down in the dark. Was a full moon and cold, snow still on the ground. As we're going down we spot someone coming up the trail. It was a dude in his 20s, by himself, wearing only jeans and a T shirt. No pack, no flashlight, nothing else. We said hello, he said hello in the most plain way possible, and he continued up the trail without saying another word. Haven't been back there in years, especially after a body was discovered partially dissolved in one of the pools. I think most of these stories are just nervous people who don’t spend much time in the outdoors, but (in my experience)public lands hot springs do attract scary weirdos. There’s also now migratory people squatting on public land with vans and campers, and some of those folks are extremely dangerous. |
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Quoted: The real question is how many of you have been "the weird person in the woods" who made the panicky neophyte feel scared and nervous? Was on the return loop, a dusty desert road. Blem green PVS14, poorly adjusted, and a dark night. My brain sees a shape in the ditch that says "ALIEN" An alien would not be chilling in the ditch, a half mile from my shop. Brain disagrees, "ALIEN!" So up goes the PVS14, out comes the surefire, and from about 15' feet away I light the alien up with pure incandescent glow. The Alien "OWW! Where the HELL did you come from?!" Me, with my heart rate finally coming down and realizing what is going on, "Howdy, saw you in the ditch and figured I'd better check to see if you were alive" Long story long, old guy with a bum leg and cane got sick of his overbearing family. He decided to hike the four miles to Petro for cigarettes. Fell short by about a mile, and didn't have a light, or phone, so he figured he'd nap in the ditch until dawn. He was just settling in when some asshole snuck up out of nowhere and blinded him with some gawdawful flashlight. He grudgingly let me walk him to Petro, and assured me he'd call his family for a ride from there. ALIENS! |
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Quoted: I think most of these stories are just nervous people who don’t spend much time in the outdoors, but (in my experience)public lands hot springs do attract scary weirdos. There’s also now migratory people squatting on public land with vans and campers, and some of those folks are extremely dangerous. There has been a big surge of vagabonds in the outback IMO. Partly due to lax drug enforcement. Those people will kill to protect their grow operations, or meth labs. Wide berth. |
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Seen a lot of weird people while hiking but the one that stands out is this guy. Once hiking I look off the trail is there is this guy walking through the woods towards me that's wearing a blanket that he cut a hole through for his head . I stop walking and as he getting closer the guy is fucking huge . Probably 6 ' 8" or 6' 9" tall probably 300 pounds or better . It was still pretty cold out that day around 34 degrees and there were still patches of snow on the ground and I can see he's wearing sandals . As he gets closer he waves and smiles and asks me for a cigarette . I say no man I don't have any . He says maybe next time...what ever the fuck that meant  and turns around and walks back in the woods |
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I was in Ocala National Forest at Big Scrub on an ATV adventure and about a mile from camp past the whoops where the power lines are I see this chick come walking out of the woods in a bikini top, short shorts and flip flops. This is pretty unusual gear for hiking so I stopped to ask her if she was ok. Her reply was to ask me "Do you party?" which is a pretty weird answer. I realized then and there that I was talking to a tweeker. I keep talking to her and eventually she climbs on the back of my ATV and we head to her camp in the woods. It was about 10 people living together in this encampment with about 5 tents. Apparently the women were prostitutes who whore themselves out to campers at the local campground a mile away in Big Scrub to feed their drug addiction. I hung out with tweeker girl for a little while at the makeshift camp. She was pretty attractive but had the look of someone who spent too much time in the sun. You know, permanent tan, crows feet at a young age, twitchy behavior. Got some sweet sweet pictures of her doing "things" on my flip phone. That phone has long sense been lost unfortunately. Couldn't post pics anyways because of COC. Ahhhh, memories. |
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Quoted: Trail riding with a buddy in the Cascades, many miles form any sort of civilization. We roll up to a guy on foot, with a few Rubbermaid totes and 5gal jug of water. He would pull one forward about 20', then go pull the rest up to that point, then start the process over again. We had stopped to make sure he was ok, he just ignored us. Asked where he was going. He just pointed down the trail and said 'that way'. Not terribly creepy, but unusual for sure. |
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Quoted: I don't have a sat phone, and in an emergency it would be hard to communicate that info anyway. Serious Q: how does one get lat/long data from a cell phone? My plan is to exfil RFN, hopefully BEFORE any shots are fired. There's an app for this called "what3words." There's mixed feelings about it in the emergency response community for a variety of reasons, but it does indeed work assuming you can read and speak english. Someone mentioned inreach, I carry one of those as well, worst case is you put it into emergency mode (a switch and a couple buttons) and leave it. It does take about 15 minutes to get a signal out, though. I've run into strange people in the woods, desert, and everywhere in between. Not my story but I knew a couple people that had run-ins with a shadowy but known group of crazies around Amboy CA (west of Lake Havasu and not far off from the I-40.) There are tons of creepy stories from around that area. My own experiences have always been with either homeless or illegals. My old house wasn't far from national forest (Tonto) and one creepy experience I had was when I found a tiny bivouac hidden inside some desert broom brush on my property; there was a stash bag with a tiny bit of food, a bunch of empty food wrappers and a gay porn mag in spanish... with every single nude picture in the magazine having the cock cut out precisely, like with an exacto knife, which had to have taken hours. Maybe it was an illegal with a meth habit killing time. I now live in the forest and have only had a couple contacts, I'm fairly sure one was just a crazy homeless person who conned a do-gooder into giving him a ride here to squat in an unoccupied cabin in the winter, and the other were probably methheads looking for a place to burgle and unexpectedly found an occupied home (mine.) |
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Quoted: If you see me wandering through the woods with a machete, pay no mind. I am at work. Seen tons of weirdos out in the wild. Quoted: Quoted: no machete? Seen tons of weirdos out in the wild. I know I freaked out one dude. He was wandering around (I think trying to find areas to ride his ATV, as there are some trails I've seen him on before) in a white t-shirt and gym shorts. Kinda stalked him for a bit (wtf is this guy doing in MY woods? Lol, they're not mine, they're the county's) to see what he was up to. A deer ran away somewhere and he turned to investigate the noise. Saw me, stared for a moment, then did an about face straight out. That's right mother fucker, don't come in here looking to molest virgin woods with your machine! 
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I Quoted: There's an app for this called "what3words." There's mixed feelings about it in the emergency response community for a variety of reasons, but it does indeed work assuming you can read and speak english. Someone mentioned inreach, I carry one of those as well, worst case is you put it into emergency mode (a switch and a couple buttons) and leave it. It does take about 15 minutes to get a signal out, though. I've run into strange people in the woods, desert, and everywhere in between. Not my story but I knew a couple people that had run-ins with a shadowy but known group of crazies around Amboy CA (west of Lake Havasu and not far off from the I-40.) There are tons of creepy stories from around that area. My own experiences have always been with either homeless or illegals. My old house wasn't far from national forest (Tonto) and one creepy experience I had was when I found a tiny bivouac hidden inside some desert broom brush on my property; there was a stash bag with a tiny bit of food, a bunch of empty food wrappers and a gay porn mag in spanish... with every single nude picture in the magazine having the cock cut out precisely, like with an exacto knife, which had to have taken hours. Maybe it was an illegal with a meth habit killing time. I now live in the forest and have only had a couple contacts, I'm fairly sure one was just a crazy homeless person who conned a do-gooder into giving him a ride here to squat in an unoccupied cabin in the winter, and the other were probably methheads looking for a place to burgle and unexpectedly found an occupied home (mine.) will look at this app, thanks. If there is no cell signal, how does it work? I am often in no-cell-signal places. |
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There was a guy in Switzerland who used to walk around with a mil surp gas mask and poncho in the woods. Some woman who was understandably frightened took a photo and went to the cops. I guess he had been at it for awhile. The police chief said "we'd like to have a word" not long after he left a note saying he wouldn't do it again |
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Quoted: I will look at this app, thanks. If there is no cell signal, how does it work? I am often in no-cell-signal places. The app will still give you a location (it uses GPS, not cell) but with no signal you're not going to to be telling anyone. But it is a pretty easy way to describe a location for people not used to reading conventional coordinates. |
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Quoted: The app will still give you a location (it uses GPS, not cell) but with no signal you're not going to to be telling anyone. But it is a pretty easy way to describe a location for people not used to reading conventional coordinates. Is every cell phone GPS capable? Mine's kinda old. |
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Quoted: The real question is how many of you have been “the weird person in the woods” who made the panicky neophyte feel scared and nervous? At least once that I know of, as stated sbove. Then once I saw a group of 3 children, 2 boys and a girl, maybe 8 or 9. Saw them from a distance before they saw me. "Ok, I don't want to be ANYWHERE near these kids." For obvious reasons. So I changed direction and headed down a different deer trail. A few minutes later they come heading down the path I was on going the other way. "HI!!!" And waved with all that childish innocence. Not the least bit freaked out AT AN ADULT STRANGER IN THE WOODS with a gaiter over his face. I said hello back and gave them a wide berth. Like, do your parents know where you are? I can't imagine they'd be ok with that if they knew other people go in there too. Guess it was nice to see kids exploring nature instead of being on electronic opium at home. Guessing they came from the subdivision that flanks the east side of the woods, as there are a couple trail heads there. |
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Quoted: There has been a big surge of vagabonds in the outback IMO. Partly due to lax drug enforcement. Those people will kill to protect their grow operations, or meth labs. Wide berth. The current thing is just shitbirds in broken or barely running vans or POS RVs who are barely subsisting on disability and government checks and “camp” in some USFS or BLM area, well past the 14 day limit, until they get rousted by tree cops or sheriffs deputies and then drag ass to a different Federal area and do it again. Some areas feature significant congregated masses of them. Many are petty criminals and some are out right dangerous sociopaths. |
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Quoted: I think most of these stories are just nervous people who don't spend much time in the outdoors, but (in my experience)public lands hot springs do attract scary weirdos. There's also now migratory people squatting on public land with vans and campers, and some of those folks are extremely dangerous. Dylan Rounds was killed by a "drifter"/criminal. A lady and her male neighbor were attacked by a guy with a warrant out of Oklahoma when she yelled at him to put out his campfire while she was out walking her dog. The drifter attacked them with a hand held stun gun and tried to stab them. The man was able to hit him with a stick. The drifter was chasing the man when town police drove by and saved the dog walkers. Some nut killed two lesbian women in Utah. He fled out of state and died of natural causes. There's people living in campers scattered around the Arizona Strip and in the deserts and mountains of Utah. I assume the people close to town are illegals working construction. Further out I assume they're either cooking meth or crazy psychos. I've come across the trailers out in desolate and kind of out of eye sight places. I've never seen or heard anyone near them and steer clear. I've never seen it but there are caches of stolen property, ATVs, trailers, shop lifted merchandise hidden around. Not sure what the point of having a pile of that stuff around is. If you aren't fencing it what good is it? |
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Quoted: The current thing is just shitbirds in broken or barely running vans or POS RVs who are barely subsisting on disability and government checks and “camp” in some USFS or BLM area, well past the 14 day limit, until they get rousted by tree cops or sheriffs deputies and then drag ass to a different Federal area and do it again. Some areas feature significant congregated masses of them. Many are petty criminals and some are out right dangerous sociopaths. "Always be polite, but have a plan to kill everyone in the room." Or, in the countryside. It's impossible to tell the socios from the petty criminals until it's too late. So, have a plan. |
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Quoted: The current thing is just shitbirds in broken or barely running vans or POS RVs who are barely subsisting on disability and government checks and "camp" in some USFS or BLM area, well past the 14 day limit, until they get rousted by tree cops or sheriffs deputies and then drag ass to a different Federal area and do it again. Some areas feature significant congregated masses of them. Many are petty criminals and some are out right dangerous sociopaths. |
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Quoted: There's an app for this called "what3words." There's mixed feelings about it in the emergency response community for a variety of reasons, but it does indeed work assuming you can read and speak english. Someone mentioned inreach, I carry one of those as well, worst case is you put it into emergency mode (a switch and a couple buttons) and leave it. It does take about 15 minutes to get a signal out, though. I've run into strange people in the woods, desert, and everywhere in between. Not my story but I knew a couple people that had run-ins with a shadowy but known group of crazies around Amboy CA (west of Lake Havasu and not Quoted: There's an app for this called "what3words." There's mixed feelings about it in the emergency response community for a variety of reasons, but it does indeed work assuming you can read and speak english. Someone mentioned inreach, I carry one of those as well, worst case is you put it into emergency mode (a switch and a couple buttons) and leave it. It does take about 15 minutes to get a signal out, though. I've run into strange people in the woods, desert, and everywhere in between. Not my story but I knew a couple people that had run-ins with a shadowy but known group of crazies around Amboy CA (west of Lake Havasu and not far off from the I-40.) There are tons of creepy stories from around that area. My own experiences have always been with either homeless or illegals. My old house wasn't far from national forest (Tonto) and one creepy experience I had was when I found a tiny bivouac hidden inside some desert broom brush on my property; there was a stash bag with a tiny bit of food, a bunch of empty food wrappers and a gay porn mag in spanish... with every single nude picture in the magazine having the cock cut out precisely, like with an exacto knife, which had to have taken hours. Maybe it was an illegal with a meth habit killing time. I now live in the forest and have only had a couple contacts, I'm fairly sure one was just a crazy homeless person who conned a do-gooder into giving him a ride here to squat in an unoccupied cabin in the winter, and the other were probably methheads looking for a place to burgle and unexpectedly found an occupied home (mine.) and then kept flipping through? |
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Quoted: The real question is how many of you have been “the weird person in the woods” who made the panicky neophyte feel scared and nervous? I am sure I have made people nervous although not intentionally. All I know is that things can happen fast when you encounter someone with possible bad intentions. Numerous times over the years I have been sized up as a potential mugging victim. Recently while walking on a wooded gravel trail something told me to turn around and right behind me within arms length was a man wearing a hoody. This startled me as I had been walking a couple of miles without seeing anyone and I said - Woah, how's it going? I didn't hear you. I have good hearing and always hear the footsteps in the gravel. Also recently I had three late teenage-early 20's mountain bike riders stop in front of me on an isolated trail blocking my way causing me to walk around them at less than an arms length distance. They had been banging on a fence as if to break it so they were up to no good. They rode past me and stopped again further up the trail to wait for me. Another hiker approached from the opposite direction and they left. |
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Quoted: There were tent encampments in the woods in NY that I knew about. A Wal mart with a nearby wooded area was popular. It wasn't uncommon for even serious asshole felons to get beat up and robbed by a group of vagrants in the camp. The Ithaca "Jungle" encampment is finally being dealt with because the trash accumulation and the leachate into the flood control channel ( and from there into the lake ) finally got the attention of DEC. The city and the railroad whose property the encampment is on are each being fined https://www.facebook.com/IthacaCrime/posts/pfbid0JKR96ysnpcysFwagmgNARHfNwn2EtxN2U5UcD2h1dWfSeY3AcPTW6EDE83qig3B4l |
| There are lots of meth freaks and drunks that seem to like going camping or just hanging around in the woods. I think many of those folks go there specifically to get away from police and/or the supervision of other more "normal" folks. Carrying a firearm while out in the woods is simply good sense. |
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Quoted: Wait you opened the magazine? and then kept flipping through? Yep, I did. The cutouts started on the cover, and it was so bizarre I used my toe to turn pages to see if there was anything else going on. Mentioned it to a neighbor and they looked at it as well with the requisite "this is pretty fucking creepy shit" comment. |
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Not the woods, but I was driving along a two lane rural highway in KS a few miles from a no stop light town. Some dude was laying in a large concrete culvert with his hands behind his head like he was taking in the sun. No vehicles, no pack, nothing. Some seriously weird people out there. I do remember an old guy in Zuerich, he would sit on a bench and throw bread out for pidgeons. When they got close, he would smack them with a bat. |
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Quoted: I have been outdoors a lot. On several occasions encountered very strange people. It's why I never go unarmed. When seconds count, police are only hours or days away. Furthermore, even if I could manage a phone call, how am I going to describe my location? Take the third dirt road you see, hang a left at the dead possum, and then a right at the deer standing there? I've read that cell phones will automatically engage GPS circuitry during a 911 call. |
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Quoted: At least once that I know of, as stated sbove. Then once I saw a group of 3 children, 2 boys and a girl, maybe 8 or 9. Saw them from a distance before they saw me. "Ok, I don't want to be ANYWHERE near these kids." For obvious reasons. So I changed direction and headed down a different deer trail. A few minutes later they come heading down the path I was on going the other way. "HI!!!" And waved with all that childish innocence. Not the least bit freaked out AT AN ADULT STRANGER IN THE WOODS with a gaiter over his face. I said hello back and gave them a wide berth. Like, do your parents know where you are? I can't imagine they'd be ok with that if they knew other people go in there too. Guess it was nice to see kids exploring nature instead of being on electronic opium at home. Guessing they came from the subdivision that flanks the east side of the woods, as there are a couple trail heads there. Younger kids like to be around older teenagers they think might be cool. Honestly, the picture you posted earlier with the clean, new, recently store bought looking hat, gaiter, backpack, and sunglasses made you look like a teenager doing fun stuff in the woods and not a threat. Those kids probably thought you were the cool older brother they never had. |
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Quoted: Android, Motorola Moto G7. It's maybe 6-7 years old. Quoted: Quoted: What kind of phone do you have? On the iPhone, it is under the Compass app. Android, Motorola Moto G7. It's maybe 6-7 years old. Your phone can likely display GPS location just with a photo. Go outside, unlock phone to see your main home screen, swipe down from the top to open the screen that shows WIFI, Bluetooth, etc. One icon is "Location" (GPS). Turn it on if not already running. Take a photo. Open photo. Swipe up to see meta data for photo. You should be able to see GPS coordinates listed for that photo. |
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Quoted: "Always be polite, but have a plan to kill everyone in the room." Or, in the countryside. It's impossible to tell the socios from the petty criminals until it's too late. So, have a plan. Concur. Always carry. Be polite but be ready to defend yourself. Good to have a dog too (but mine looked to me as a protector and not vice versa). |
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In the time I worked for the US Forest Service I saw one other person in the woods and not someone on the road. I was sitting down for lunch after having been cruising timber all morning. Sitting on a stump on a small incline. This guy was walking right toward me and I figured he saw me. Guy probably close to retirement age. He got about 20 feet away and I said "how's it going". He fall backwards and took off running. He called the office later. Turns out he was a surveyor checking some stuff before a larger crew came in. I'm sure he nearly had a heart attack. Loping alone in the woods not paying the least attention to what was around him. Guy with a bright cruiser vest on eating lunch and taking a drink and he never saw me till I spoke. Kept my eyes open for a guy that had gone missing. He was never found even with all the Forest Service people searching shoulder to shoulder after the space shuttle fell. Pretty sure he wound up at the bottom of the nearby large lake and not by accident. |
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Quoted: Your phone can likely display GPS location just with a photo. Go outside, unlock phone to see your main home screen, swipe down from the top to open the screen that shows WIFI, Bluetooth, etc. One icon is "Location" (GPS). Turn it on if not already running. Take a photo. Open photo. Swipe up to see meta data for photo. You should be able to see GPS coordinates listed for that photo. Thank you, good to know. |
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A group of us, all very well armed, ran in to a pair on a local ATV trail waaaay out in the middle of nowhere. They were a backwoods no teeth pair that eye screwed us as they drove by. I remember thinking that I’ll keep a long gun close the next time I take my family on that trail, especially if there’s not 8 other people with us. They spooked some of the ladies with us, my wife included. |
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Quoted: The current thing is just shitbirds in broken or barely running vans or POS RVs who are barely subsisting on disability and government checks and “camp” in some USFS or BLM area, well past the 14 day limit, until they get rousted by tree cops or sheriffs deputies and then drag ass to a different Federal area and do it again. Some areas feature significant congregated masses of them. Many are petty criminals and some are out right dangerous sociopaths. We have a member here that ran into a legitimate serial killer while was out hunting . If I'm not mistaken he is a Connecticut member and he posted the story in a thread once . He realized after a few weeks when he saw the photo of the guy arrested . Something like it was getting dark and he was making his way out of the woods and some guy approaches him and they start talking . He said nothing happened but he just got a bad vibe off the guy. I think he had just buried a body crazy shit |
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Last time I ran into a scary guy in the woods it was pot farmers in the woods a few miles up a creek from the Kanawha River near Smithers, WV. We used to go up the creek over there and shoot at an old trash pile. One day I parked, walked across the creek with my stuff, sat my bag down to dig out my stapler and when I looked up there's a big guy with long beard, wearing bib overalls with a shovel in one hand standing in the road about 35 yds. from me. I waved at him, put my stapler back in the bag, picked it up and went back across the creek to my car and left. Had someone try to kill one of our bird dogs in the woods one foggy morning. He came back to us bleeding like crazy from a big deep slice across his chest. Dad grabbed him up, put him int the truck and took him straight to the vet. The vet sewed him up and told dad that it was no accident, that was a knife cut. By then it was later in the day and no use going back up on the mountain trying to find the A hole. |