[ARCHIVED THREAD] - What Is The Strangest / Most Unexplainable Thing You've Seen or Heard In The Woods? (Page 3 of 6)
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Snowshoed in to a yurt up on the Continental divide. The rest of the group went off to do a small night home and explore the area while I melted snow for water and started food prep. I stepped out down the front path a bit and looked around with a flashlight, only to see to glowing eyes reflected back at me. This isn't too uncommon..but having the eyes suddenly, silently, and very quickly start coming TOWARD me made me head back in pretty quickly. I kept an eye out for the rest of the group in case they had any trouble, but no one else had seen anything. I came across one REAL close out in the woods (a couple times), never even heard it trot off. (it was at night too) |
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Quoted: I went to UVA Wise, we had legitimate spotting of a Mountain Lion on campus back by the fishing pond behind the football fields in 2010 during my 4th year there. Outdoor Rec club also found tracks while hiking the path between the old High Knob shelter before that doctor's kid burned it down and Little Stoney Falls. From your experience I'd go with a Mountain Lion roaming around campus. This thing out it to shame..... Again..... I'm a guy that will chase a bear in my pajamas.... This was not a bear. |
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Which college or town was it? My weirdo woods stories are near Clinch too. Your account sounds to me like my account of an earthquake when I was a kid. We were sitting in the living room. Heard a low build up of a rumble. Then it got BIG, everything in the living room shook for a few seconds and then it calmed back down. You could hear it again shortly after just further away. |
| About 30 years ago my brother and I were hunting rabbits about 1/8 mile from some railroad tracks. There was a county road that paralleled the track. A freight train stopped in the middle of nowhere and the engineer got out and stood there watching us. He didn't wave or acknowledgeus at all, he just stood there staring at us. A few minutes later a Volkswagen bug pulled up and the driver got out and handed the engineer a briefcase. Both of them looked at us and got back in there vehicles and left. My brother and I were thinking what did we just witness? |
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Quoted: Not sure where that is, but this is along the Missouri River in Boone County. No problem, the "Spook Light" is along the MO, OK border closer to Joplin. It's worth a read in this thread. The Spook Light Joplin, MO |
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Company sent me to Tucson for work. I like to work out so at the hotel I ask them where is a nice place to run. They said there is a trail on the golf course next door with a trail made for running/walking. Told me to be careful as its right up against a wildlife area. Its about 6:30am and I am running down the trail. I hear a noise and see something move near the trail. No more than 15 feet in front of me. I freeze and stay frozen from probably 5 minutes - all the while I am thinking I should turn around and run. But remember the stuff that I cant outrun bears and not much else. Next thing you know a freaking mountain lion gets up, looks at me for about 5 seconds, than ignores me and walks across the trail to the golf course. I nearly shit myself as I was completely unarmed. That was the last time I went running on that trail. |
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i grew up in far ne ok. i've seen the spooklight a lot. once through a telescope, once just off my front bumper. that one was weird because i'd been watching it for a couple of hours. i've seen it as far as 2 miles south of cave springs ranch by peoria. lots of strange stuff in the woods around peoria ok. Thanks for the input, that's fascinating all by it self. |
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Almost stepped on a ptarmigan deer hunting. Damned things make a lot of racket, and don't move until you are right on top of them. I could feel the wind it generated flying away on my face. Nearly peed myself.
Not scary, but really cool. Camping with the wife and kids, just sitting around the fire cooking dinner and a muley doe comes within 20 feet of us on a dead run downhill......like she was running for her life. Sure enough, about 3 seconds later, 2 coyotes come barreling down after her right in her footsteps. Neither the doe nor coyotes acted like they even saw us. If she would have run in a straight line downhill, she would have nearly run over the firepit. Heard a wolf at night near Gould, CO while camping. No doubt about it, it sounded just like the movies/tv. Not really scary, because it was a ways off, but unnerving because I'd never heard of them being in CO. Prarie dog hunting near Medicine Bow, WY and found a memorial marker for a girl found frozen to death in the early 1930's. Middle of the prairie, miles from anything. Kid was 6 years old. (not the woods, I know.) |
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My story. 1989, I was 14 years old hunting rabbits. About 1/4 mile from my house when I heard what sounded like a stick break about 100 feet behind me. I turned around and immediately saw what looked like someone throwing a bucket of water in the air, much like you would do to put out a fire, without the bucket. I walked over to where I saw it happen and the ground was indeed wet. No water or person aroun. There are others, let's hear yours. @jdessell |
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huge rusted old 12 cylinder engine block in the middle of the woods. This was back in the 90s in some state game lands in or near Berks county. It was probably a mile away from the nearest road or trail. No clue why it was there or how it got there. Never found it again afterwards. |
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mountain lions move incredibly quiet. I came across one REAL close out in the woods (a couple times), never even heard it trot off. (it was at night too) Quoted:
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Snowshoed in to a yurt up on the Continental divide. The rest of the group went off to do a small night home and explore the area while I melted snow for water and started food prep. I stepped out down the front path a bit and looked around with a flashlight, only to see to glowing eyes reflected back at me. This isn't too uncommon..but having the eyes suddenly, silently, and very quickly start coming TOWARD me made me head back in pretty quickly. I kept an eye out for the rest of the group in case they had any trouble, but no one else had seen anything. I came across one REAL close out in the woods (a couple times), never even heard it trot off. (it was at night too) Best friend and I showed up for a deer hunt on a WMA owned by a paper company before light. the block we liked to hunt had been clear cut and scraped clean, ready for replanting. 4-500 acres of clean dirt. Not having a good plan B, we decided to walk across it and hunt the treeline on the far side that bordered a creek. My buddy stopped at the tree line and put his climber on a tree, I crossed the creek. On the way out, on the sandy road we had walked, clear as could be were hand sized cat tracks on top of ours, and 50 yards from my buddy’s tree we could see where the cat had actually sat in the sand and watched him go up the tree. It was getting light by the time he got up, but he never turned around, staying focused on the creek bed. Sneaky devils. |
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About 20 years ago I went camping alone up in the Cohutta Wilderness area something I used to do quite often.
At the time of the release of the Blair Witch Project, people (me included) weren't 100% sure if it was fake until after the credits rolled after the movie ended. Still, it was good enough to make you not want to go camping for a while but I took this fear as an invitation. I put on my pack and head about 7 miles in from the parking area. I find a nice clearing and set up camp All I have for protection is a 10 round .22 revolver and a Buck knife. The first evening comes and goes like all the others but with that something extra, thinking there's going to be a few stacks of piled up rocks next to my tent. No such thing happened of course. Night 2. Everything is cool until about 0300. I get woken up by this noise that sounded just like 20-30 grade school kids milling around. No screaming, just taking but some with excitement in their voices. It wasn't adult voices, the range was too high. It sounded like they were no more than 60 feet from my camp but I couldn't see anything at all, just voices. It was dark out of course and my heart is going 90 miles to nothing. I don't remember picking up the pistol but I realized it was in my hand. "Who's there goddammit? Show your self!" Nothing, the talking continues. "I'm going to start shooting now because it's 3AM and aint nobody should be out here talking" Dumped 6 rounds in the direction of the talking keeping 4 just in case. It was as if I interrupted several conversation and the talking wound down completely after 10 minutes. I could have sworn I heard "what an asshole" from somebody but I didn't care. Yep, no more sleeping that night. I reloaded, made a fire, and drank the bourbon I brought. Won't be forgetting that in this lifetime I can assure you. |
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We found a crashed plane in the middle of our hunting woods. A little Cesna that had remarkably little damage (tail was damaged, wings werent) for as thick as the woods were. It looked like it came straight down on the wheels. Nothing in the cabin or tail compartment. We took down the tail number and called the FAA but the tail number was not registered. We went back out two weeks later and it was gone. No tracks or anything.
This was Kansas in the late 80s or early 90s. If it happened today I would think drugs. |
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Not so much weird or unexplained but there’s a blue VW Beetle in the woods with a tree growing through the hood that used to be visible on the east side of Route 77 in rural Ohio. I saw it driving by and pulled over to take pictures once.
A neat thing I saw while camping with my son one time was what looked like a glowing animal eye about four feet off the ground at night. We investigated and it turned out to be a spider on a tree. Turns out spider eyes reflect light just like cats eyes. That was a cool discovery; something I didn’t know about. |
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Me and a few other guys were doing land nav at Fort Knox during basic training in 07. The course area was pretty large, but not large enough to really get lost in. We came across a guy with a scruffy beard and goatee wearing a baseball cap, shorts, T-shirt, and backpack walking through the woods...He said something like "what's up" or "how's it going"; I can't remember. I guess it was just some dude trespassing on Fort Knox to hike? Weird nonetheless. |
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I normally hunt ducks in huge Tupelo Gum swamps and cattail flatts. We are near enough to houses that you can hear shooting but not voices. I can actually say that I have video proof that mountain lions have climbed the Cypress and Tupelo trees in our swamp (Kentucky Lake area) because of the huge scratch marks up dead trees. Basically, I know that stuff that people say shouldn't be in our swamp is in fact there. Nothing supernatural, just spectacularly natural.
Anyways, I don't know exactly what it was the first couple of times, but I eventually saw a pair of coyotes eat a wood duck in flooded timber about 80 yards from me in near pitch black except for the moon barely reflecting on the water (slight overcast morning). I can say if you didn't visually see it like I did, you would have likely been in panic mode because the screeching squeal of a dying wood duck and growling of a pair of coyotes, coupled with violent thrashing in calm water...shit, it was something else. Especially if you think your brothers are getting mauled to death because they just happened to lean against the wrong tree in the swamp (the dead one the mountain lion was up). So, not horror movie scary, but duck hunting isn't exactly safe either. |
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Ironically (see Avatar), found a safe in the woods, a real safe, nor a RSC, it was probably 1000 lbs steel plate type, about 2 -3 feet square, walls about 5 - 6" thick. Not surprisingly, it had no door, the safe was strangely on its "back" open and full of water and muck from the rain and however long it had been there.
I dug through the water & muck and it was just full of debris and dirt. This was in the 1960's. |
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I went camping with my gf at a time a couple years ago. To a secluded place as far away from people as possible. It was a really nice evening but really cold. It got dark fast maybe at around 5pm the sun was setting. She wakes me up at around 2-3 in the morning saying she hears kids screaming. I tell her she’s dreaming and I’m about to turn the other way when I hear them too. Sounds like school kids around a classroom full of them. They weren’t screaming in pain almost like in joy. I sit straight up and we hear them screaming for around 10-15 minutes. By the time is subsides she’s in tears wanting to go home and I’m in shock holding onto my 12 gauge loaded with slugs. I peak out and it’s pitch black, no signs of life not even the critters were making noises because of how cold it was. Musta been around 20-30 degrees. She falls asleep while I stay up watch all night. The next day we decided to figure out to see if a class of kids was camping out close to us the way we heard the noise and all we found was an old burned down cabin/building. She never wanted to go camping again. |
| Does this count....reforger, outside of Mannheim FRG, I escorted a female MP on a desolate traffic control point into the woods, in the dead of a winter night so she could take a dump, I stepped away to give her some privacy and I swear I thought it was my dad taking a bad beer shit, of course these were the days when the army still issued c-rations |
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On the gravel road going to one of my granddad's remote farms near the Tennessee River, there is a old graveyard right off the road. Probably 20 headstones. Most are around 100 to 150 years old. Used to be a booming place but that was many moons ago. My uncle passed there one time after lunch and said he saw about a dozen people sitting around a headstone, holding hands, legs crossed. He said you could hear them speaking in "tongues" over the sound of his loud ass Cummins flatbed. He is probably the most serious guy I've ever met and he said he was concerned.
Not unexplained but weird all the same. |
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Stories about the noises at night got me thinking of a funny story.
My wife is about 5 mo pregnant and we go to our cabin in the Idaho mountains. Except due to snow on the roads (in July) we couldn't get in and ended up sleeping on the side of the mountain for a couple of days. It is in the low 30's to upper 20s at night. It is cold and just crystal clear skies. My wife wakes me up at 2am and tells me she needs to go to the bathroom. We had a small seat setup over a hole about 15 yards from camp near a small stand of trees. After a little protesting I put on my pants, jacket and gun and walk her out to the spot. After she is done I walk her back to the tent I figure I might as well use the seat while it is defrosted. While sitting there it occurs to me what an odd place this is, I mean it is so dark you literally can't see your hand. About halfway through I can hear something big moving around in the woods about 10 yds away. I had my hand on my DW CBOB the whole time, but no idea what I could have done. By the time I saw anything it would have been too late. Dark woods are a crazy place. |
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I went camping with my gf at a time a couple years ago. To a secluded place as far away from people as possible. It was a really nice evening but really cold. It got dark fast maybe at around 5pm the sun was setting. She wakes me up at around 2-3 in the morning saying she hears kids screaming. I tell her she’s dreaming and I’m about to turn the other way when I hear them too. Sounds like school kids around a classroom full of them. They weren’t screaming in pain almost like in joy. I sit straight up and we hear them screaming for around 10-15 minutes. By the time is subsides she’s in tears wanting to go home and I’m in shock holding onto my 12 gauge loaded with slugs. I peak out and it’s pitch black, no signs of life not even the critters were making noises because of how cold it was. Musta been around 20-30 degrees. She falls asleep while I stay up watch all night. The next day we decided to figure out to see if a class of kids was camping out close to us the way we heard the noise and all we found was an old burned down cabin/building. She never wanted to go camping again. |
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I have never seen one, but they have seen me. Best friend and I showed up for a deer hunt on a WMA owned by a paper company before light. the block we liked to hunt had been clear cut and scraped clean, ready for replanting. 4-500 acres of clean dirt. Not having a good plan B, we decided to walk across it and hunt the treeline on the far side that bordered a creek. My buddy stopped at the tree line and put his climber on a tree, I crossed the creek. On the way out, on the sandy road we had walked, clear as could be were hand sized cat tracks on top of ours, and 50 yards from my buddy’s tree we could see where the cat had actually sat in the sand and watched him go up the tree. It was getting light by the time he got up, but he never turned around, staying focused on the creek bed. Sneaky devils. Quoted:
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Snowshoed in to a yurt up on the Continental divide. The rest of the group went off to do a small night home and explore the area while I melted snow for water and started food prep. I stepped out down the front path a bit and looked around with a flashlight, only to see to glowing eyes reflected back at me. This isn't too uncommon..but having the eyes suddenly, silently, and very quickly start coming TOWARD me made me head back in pretty quickly. I kept an eye out for the rest of the group in case they had any trouble, but no one else had seen anything. I came across one REAL close out in the woods (a couple times), never even heard it trot off. (it was at night too) Best friend and I showed up for a deer hunt on a WMA owned by a paper company before light. the block we liked to hunt had been clear cut and scraped clean, ready for replanting. 4-500 acres of clean dirt. Not having a good plan B, we decided to walk across it and hunt the treeline on the far side that bordered a creek. My buddy stopped at the tree line and put his climber on a tree, I crossed the creek. On the way out, on the sandy road we had walked, clear as could be were hand sized cat tracks on top of ours, and 50 yards from my buddy’s tree we could see where the cat had actually sat in the sand and watched him go up the tree. It was getting light by the time he got up, but he never turned around, staying focused on the creek bed. Sneaky devils. |
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It took me two years to discover that the noise I heard was a vixen scream.
An hour after sunset as I was walking out of the woods, it howled at me and set my hair on end. Goto 1:37, and imagine that clear as a bell, ten feet off the trail and pointed at you in the black of night: |
| I own a ranch that has Mountain Lion on it and because of that I have had numerous close encounters with them. They are spooky quiet for how big a predator they are but at the same time they are absolutely beautiful. I have also hunted elk in WY many times with encounters with them where it seems they stalk you. They make some of the most horrendous calls as well. Really an interesting animal. |
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Quoted: Many years ago, being into camping, hiking, ets, and stuck in the big city, I actually ALMOST decided to start hanging out on Turkey Mountain. Until I discovered what it was being used for.  As to weird stuff, there is a spot my dad found in the woods behind my parent's house, where it looks like the ground slow motion erupted, about a 5 foot diameter, 3 foot deep hole in the side of a hill, about 6 feet up from the base, all the dirt from the hole sort of piled up around below it. We never could figure out what caused it. The ground is generally hard pack red clay, not easy to dig in, even with a backhoe. And trees around it, so no chance a backhoe could get to it. Weird Geologic activity? Gas pocket explosion? Meteorite? Small bear digging a hole to curl up in? Bigfoot? |
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Camping in a field near some woods this spring in an area known for being a "Bigfoot hotbed", it was for a big off road event so probably 100 or so tents and vehicles and such all around. My tent is off to the side right on the wood line.
I get woken up sometime like 2-3am by bloodcurdling non-human screams that sounded like they were 30 feet away (but my dog in the tent with me didn't even wake up). Freaked me out. I slept with the gun the rest of the night. Next morning a guy a few sites over said he had walked his wife over to a nearby portapotty that was also back against the tree line, and as she closed the door she must have scared the animal, which screamed and crashed off through the woods. They didn't see what it was but they were both terrified. I'm pretty sure it was a coyote but we spread the "Bigfoot" stuff around camp for the heck of it  Second semi-creepyness, about 10 years back we were staying at some remote cabins in the mountains. I was walking around and heard a terrified animal scream and loud ruckus. Hit the trees with my surefire and saw five or six pairs of eyes look back at me and scatter. The shapes moved quick enough that I really only saw the eyes reflecting and some blurs. Next morning we heard that the landowners cat showed up on their door that night all torn up. Think I interrupted some coyotes trying to eat their cat and it got away when I hit them with the light. Emergency vet managed to save the cat. Otherwise, nothing else really creepy so far. I've spent a bunch of time in the woods. Surprised a black bear that ran away as fast as it could, and have seen a black panther about the size of a large lab (which isn't supposed to exist here). Never any bigfoots though. |
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About 30 years ago my brother and I were hunting rabbits about 1/8 mile from some railroad tracks. There was a county road that paralleled the track. A freight train stopped in the middle of nowhere and the engineer got out and stood there watching us. He didn't wave or acknowledgeus at all, he just stood there staring at us. A few minutes later a Volkswagen bug pulled up and the driver got out and handed the engineer a briefcase. Both of them looked at us and got back in there vehicles and left. My brother and I were thinking what did we just witness?
Were the Clintons anywhere near there? 
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| Not really weird or unexplainable but it was probably a few most terrifying few seconds of my life. A few years ago 2 buddies and I were hiking in Olympic National Park and were wiped having climbed over a mountain that day. We set up camp, eat and hit the hay early. We all slept in one tent, I'm on the outside. I wake up to nostrils huffing and actually pressing into my face from outside the tent. I swear I about had a heart attack. As I came to, whatever it was had stepped back from my movement but was still close by breathing. I yelled to my other sleeping buddy who I knew was armed. He woke up and could hear it too. We both ready our pistols, turn on our lights then up zip the tent ready to rock and roll. About 10 ft away a fucking deer is just standing there staring at us. What a sigh of relief lol. It just moseyed off then, not a care in the world. |
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huge rusted old 12 cylinder engine block in the middle of the woods. This was back in the 90s in some state game lands in or near Berks county. It was probably a mile away from the nearest road or trail. No clue why it was there or how it got there. Never found it again afterwards. |
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Quoted: So did your step brother find the man of his dreams?
I used to ride Turkey Mountain back in the late 90's when the effort was underway to clean it up. Some odd folks out there that seemed pretty pissed people were taking over "their place". IIRC there was a pretty decent sized homeless camp down by the tracks/river. I was there in the early to mid 90s. I've not been there since it has been cleaned up. I have a buddy that rides there all the time and tells me about the races they do. Sounds fun...if I had any cardio. |
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Me and a few other guys were doing land nav at Fort Knox during basic training in 07. The course area was pretty large, but not large enough to really get lost in. We came across a guy with a scruffy beard and goatee wearing a baseball cap, shorts, T-shirt, and backpack walking through the woods...He said something like "what's up" or "how's it going"; I can't remember. I guess it was just some dude trespassing on Fort Knox to hike? Weird nonetheless. Or It could have been SF doing some training. Did he look like this? without the gun and camo? 
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I went camping with my gf at a time a couple years ago. To a secluded place as far away from people as possible. It was a really nice evening but really cold. It got dark fast maybe at around 5pm the sun was setting. She wakes me up at around 2-3 in the morning saying she hears kids screaming. I tell her she’s dreaming and I’m about to turn the other way when I hear them too. Sounds like school kids around a classroom full of them. They weren’t screaming in pain almost like in joy. I sit straight up and we hear them screaming for around 10-15 minutes. By the time is subsides she’s in tears wanting to go home and I’m in shock holding onto my 12 gauge loaded with slugs. I peak out and it’s pitch black, no signs of life not even the critters were making noises because of how cold it was. Musta been around 20-30 degrees. She falls asleep while I stay up watch all night. The next day we decided to figure out to see if a class of kids was camping out close to us the way we heard the noise and all we found was an old burned down cabin/building. She never wanted to go camping again. Not really a scary story but scared the shit out of myself. I was up camping with some coworkers and had a Springfield XD Tactical in my shoulder rig. We are sitting around the campfire early in the evening bullshitting and sucking down some beers. One of the guys brought his dog and all of a sudden she alerts, starts barking in one direction. We lit the woods up with every light available but saw nothing. We go back to sitting around the fire until pretty late, I had a pretty good beer buzz and head back to my tent. I set the Springy up by my head outside of my sleeping bag. A while later I was dead asleep and woken by something crunching and crashing in the trees. I roll over and my heart stops, just inches from my face are two bright green, glowing eyes. My heart rate hits about 10,000, my mouth goes dry and I am sure I'm going to die. For a moment I'm frozen in fear. Then I realize it's the rear night sights on my XD. Fuuuuuuuuck! In the morning we all had a good laugh at my expense. The crunching and crashing I heard in the middle of the night? A cow (we were on open rangeland) managed to slip and fall on the hill just outside of our camp. Probably what the dog had alerted on, funny thing though when it crashed down the hill the dog never made a sound. |
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I thought the Peoria lights had been attributed to headlights? But yeah, some odd stuff in the woods around there. Quoted:
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@thorshammerblow Just read your account of the glow in the woods. I'm wondering if you are any near where the "Hornet Spook Light" appears? lots of strange stuff in the woods around peoria ok. |
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My wife and I were out hunting several years ago and it had rained all night, so the fall colors were sparkling when the sun come up, we were heading to our hunting area and I looked over and swore I saw a 1958 Ford pickup sitting about a hundred yards off the road in the trees and my wife confirmed she saw it as well, so we parked, grabbed our guns and headed into the woods to see what this old rusty truck with that infamous yellow Ford paint was doing back in the trees.
We could not find it, we both saw it, but when we got back in the trees it was gone, looked for the sucker for a couple of hours and never did find it. All we could figure, we saw a mirage due to the reflections on the wet fall colored leaves on the trees and the mist coming up and off the ground. |
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@rwilkins01 Thanks for the input, that's fascinating all by it self. Quoted:
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i grew up in far ne ok. i've seen the spooklight a lot. once through a telescope, once just off my front bumper. that one was weird because i'd been watching it for a couple of hours. i've seen it as far as 2 miles south of cave springs ranch by peoria. lots of strange stuff in the woods around peoria ok. Thanks for the input, that's fascinating all by it self. as for the spooklight, we were out there one night probably 45 years ago and some people had a telescope set up by their car. we got to visiting with them and they let us look through it. saw saturn's rings, couple of other things. they said they'd looked at the spook light with it and determined it wasn't just one light, but several lights arranged around a center, usually 5-7 total and they were balls that didn't give off a glow, but were just a light. we visited for a while and someone said they saw it off to the southeast, back toward the state line. we pointed the telescope at it and sure enough, it was as they said, just tiny balls of light arranged in a sphere. it was weird. when i saw it up close, i didn't notice this as much, but it was probably because i was busy shitting my pants. generally people see it just bouncing along in the trees or across their pasture. hornet is just across the state line from peoria, separated by a few miles. @robmkivseries70 @brokenreticle |
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Not THAT difficult to explain, but I am still really curious about it. Mountain biking (at night, illegally) in Washington's Crossing State Park around 2004. We were pretty deep in the park, surrounded by trees that were 25-35' tall. Relatively close to us the very tops of the trees were illuminated by a green laser shining horizontally through the leaves. Because of the thickness of the trees and the angle that the laser was coming from, it had to have been shined from a good distance away. It was NOT shining up from the ground, or even at a 45° angle or anything... It was nearly horizontal. And it was bright. Brighter than targeting lasers that I've seen. It was holding relatively still, not sweeping back and forth like I would expect if someone was waving it around in their hand, but it WAS moving maybe on a loose tripod. I would estimate it moved no more than 10' in any direction. I was curious, and I had faith in my ability to outrun almost anyone in the woods at night on my bicycle. But the rest of my group were freaked out and wanted to move away quickly, so I went along with the group. I still wonder where it was coming from and what the purpose was.
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After 40 years of hunting, scouting and hiking.......I have none.  . I’m a loser in this thread.weird. Something like that happens when people spend a sizable amount of time in the woods tho. |
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Posted this one before but it's by far the creepiest experience I've had in the woods.
From time to time my dad would tell a story about when he was out bowhunting on the public land that borders our land. We have 40acres but the public land next to us is 10k+ acres of county and federal land. You hardly ever see another soul up there, especially during bow season. Some areas immediately off the road get a little hunting pressure gun season but that's it. He was way, WAY back along the river creeping through the woods before daylight hours to find a spot to sit. As the sun started to come up he saw movement ahead. At the time he thought it was a deer moving its head back and forth. He sat still for quite some time watching it and quickly realized it couldn't be a deer as it was swaying back and forth for 15+ minutes. When it was finally light enough to see he realized it was something hanging from the tree. He walked over and found a black cat strung up in a perfect hangmans noose by it's neck. Touching it revealed the joints to still be somewhat limp. Needless to say he unassed the area immediately, completely bewildered as to what the fuck he just encountered as the nearest road or house was miles away though pretty thick woods and swamp. Many years later(15+) we were up bowhunting in the same area. Not having any luck all week long I decided I was going to try a new spot. I packed my little pack-n-stack ladder stand on my back and headed out along the river. After walking for quite some time I found a nice swampy clearing. Didn't see much for sign but I figured with how soggy the area was that wasn't much of a surprise, that and deer numbers by us were pretty low. After getting set up I settled in for the evening. One odd thing that stuck out was an old light blue colored chest freezer laying in the middle of the swamp. When I saw that I figured maybe I'd get lucky and bump into a trail nearby on my way out to make it easier to get back to camp. As it drew closer to dusk I realized that not only had I not seen any deer, I hadn't seen a single living creature all night. Our area is usually overrun with squirrels and other small game but I hadn't so much as heard one scurrying around the trees, or even watched a bird fly by for that matter. I realized that right around the same time a very eerie feeling started to creep in to the back of my brain. I tried to shake it off but as it grew darker it became more difficult to ignore. It quickly became overwhelming, this feeling, almost as if I was being physically pushed out of the woods by something. It almost seems silly and ridiculous even to articulate but I was completely overcome with dread, that something out in the woods was watching me and absolutely did not want me there. Now I'm no stranger to being alone in an unknown part of the woods in the dark. Hunting has been my biggest passion since I was 14-15 years old and our usual hunts back then involved walking in any given direction in uncharted forest until we found a good spot, then sitting tight till pitch dark, then making your way back to the closest road in the middle of the night. Not once have I ever felt nervous about it, even when my phone(which doubled as my only compass at the time) and only flashlight died 3 miles in in pitch black. Even the time I realized a young wolf was following behind me after an evening hunt and all I had was a bow and a knife. Nothing compared to this. I'll hunt through anything, freezing rain, blistering cold, unbearable mosquitos. Not this though. Before legal shooting time ended I decided it was time to leave. I half considered just abandoning my treestand and getting the fuck out but I figured I'd never live that down and I at least had to make some attempt to pack it up and bring it with. Never before or since then have I ever felt such a feeling of panic, as if everything around me was evil. I know I sound like a lunatic right now but I honest to god felt like the devil himself was standing beside me tapping his foot, as if at any moment I was going to run out of time. I didn't even break the treestand down and pack it out, I unhooked it from the tree and dragged it behind me, fully assembled, at a damn near sprint until I was well and far away from that swamp. Then I hastily broke it down and cinched it all together with the ratchet strap, didn't even bother to tie up the ropes or anything, just left them dragging behind me. After quite some time I finally bumped into my dad on a fire trail that leads back to the highway. His first comments were "Dude what the fuck happened to your treestand" seeing the tangled up mess behind me. Then he saw my face and asked what the fuck happened to me. I told him the whole story, prefacing it with "This is going to sound insane but..." I finished the story and he definitely had a look on his face that implied he thought I was insane until I said "And one more really weird thing, way back in that swamp, which best I can figure is way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere, there's a damn full size light blue chest freezer that looks like it got dumped back there years ago" His look of humor quickly faded to a look of concern, even fear. Took him a minute to get the words out but his only comment after that was "remember that story about the cat hung from the tree? Well unless there are two identical chest freezers dumped in the middle of the swamp back there, that spot you were in tonight is exactly the same spot where that cat was hung." |
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When I was in college a friend and I would hike, explore, and camp. Our girlfriends at the time were rather adventurous and went with us regularly. One weekend, we go to a place he sort of knew that would be way, away from everything and give us several good miles of hiking. We hiked in and discovered an old farm house that was abandoned and mostly fallen in. It was surrounded by several hardwood trees. It was obvious that no one had lived in the house or worked the land for many years. We walked around it a couple of times looked and looked inside. Much of the old floor had rotted away from roof leaks. We decided to make camp about 50 yards from the farm house in a clearing. We pitched tents, made a fire, ate, talked some and then and went to sleep. I wake up several times during the night and I hear he and his girlfriend talking in their tent. I can't hear what they are saying, just a low indistinct conversation between a man and a woman Next morning, I ask him did he get any sleep because he was talking all night. He gave me the wide-eyed WTF? look and said he thought it was me and my girlfriend talking all night. We looked around the campsite and could find no evidence of anyone else and no tracks other than our own. We didn't say anything to the girls, but packed up and left quickly. |