Have been reading the Bigfoot thread and saw that several members had posted that they'd had unnerving experiences while in the woods--can you share any personal experiences while on a hike or hunt?

All at night, had a rabbit get killed ten feet from me, the scream is unnerving. Bobcat screaming about 50 feet away. Drunk ex wife screaming at me.

The sound of coyotes vs pigs at 3am. Took a minute to figure out wtf the sound was and what was going on. But for a minute the heart was racing

The sound of coyotes vs pigs at 3am. Took a minute to figure out wtf the sound was and what was going on. But for a minute the heart was racing

I started archery hunting about 10 years ago. There was a black bear and her two cubs in the area as well. I swear, every time I went in the woods in the dark I would somehow manage to walk right up on them and in one case I found myself between them. I bought my first handgun and got a concealed carry permit that year.

About 25 years ago, a buddy and I were fishing on the Snake River near the Tetons as the sun was going down. The two of us have camped extensively in the backcountry, including grizzly country. We were well-armed.

We had pulled off the road about 1/4 mile from the river and decided to camp in a meadow on the other side of the river for the night. As we were fishing, the water came up some from a thunderstorm we could see upstream. The rising water made the crossing with our gear tricky, but we got everything across OK.

Once we got in the meadow, a hawk started screaming at us incessantly. It would not leave or stop screaming. We scouted the area out a bit, and started setting up camp. After a little while, we looked at each other and asked if the other if he felt uneasy. We both did. We kept setting up camp. After a little while longer, we looked at each other again and asked if we should get out of there. We packed up double time and managed to get back across the river. We had no plan beyond returning to the vehicle.

We got back to our vehicle and made dinner on the side of the road. We were about done with our trip (we didn't travel on any real schedule then), so after dinner we started heading generally back east. We slept on the side of the road for a while that night outside of DuBois, Wyoming. We started driving again the next morning. We wound up driving 36 hours straight until we got home without even discussing what we were doing. We just kept driving.

Over a beer after we got home, we both realized that whatever spooked us scared us all the way back east, practically non-stop. I still get the chills whenever I tell the story or think about it. I don't believe in ghosts, aliens, bigfoot, or any of that. Neither of us has been spooked in the woods before or since. I have no idea what was going on there on the Snake that evening, but it scared the shit out of both of us. It was not anything that could be seen or heard, just felt.

Late one night after a storm ripped through the area, myself and a coworker had to walk out a line to see why the fuse blew.
So we're in knee to waist high grass and brush, he was in the lead.

All of a sudden a ruckus just feet in front of us.

He screamed like a little girl and jumped about 3 ft in the air when a rabbit broke fast across the trail.



Hahahaah. T9ok him a while to live that one down.

I need to get out more

Went to Outward Bound years back. We spent 24 hours alone spread out along the Chattooga River, maybe 100 yds apart. In the middle of the night I woke up and heard something walking towards me. It sounded bipedal and was heavy enough to break some sticks as it walked. It was too dark for a human to walk thru the thick underbrush without light, so I assume it was a bear but whatever it was it stopped a ways away and finally moved off. But I held breath for about 30 minutes.

I was once seriously scared by a whole passel of snakes at night too, but there were some ahem.... "chemicals" involved so I'm not sure the snakes were real.

We camped late one night along side a very narrow lake in the Boundary Waters.

A pack of wolves descended on the other side of that narrow lake.
All night long your could hear their snarling, yipping and other interactions.
All as if they were right in your tent.

Never been back there since without a firearm.

Lsd was great

My quad broke down way up the mountain on crown land. It wad around 10pm at night while my friend and I tried to fix it.

We heard people talking and then all of a sudden they started yelling in our direction to show our selves. They sounded extremely angry at us for some reason. They kept yelling and walking around looking for us. We kept still and they eventually walked by us after attempting to track us down.

I honestly don't know why they were that far up there at that time of night and even walking around with no lights. I'm glad we were not found that night because who knows what would have happened.

When they got a little ways away I was able to fire my quad up and we got the fuck outta there. I have never rode that hard in my life.

My dad once told me a story.  He was bowhunting deep in the woods behind our land.  He got out early early.  As he made his way back to where he wanted to hunt he heard some animals scurry off through the woods.  Thought he had jumped a couple deer.  As the light slowly started to break he saw movement in the trees ahead of him.  He thought it might be a deer off in the distance that had, perhaps, doubled back.  As it became lighter and lighter out he realized it wasn't a deer...it was something swinging in the trees.  A bit perplexed he quietly made his way over to it.  Sure as shit, black cat hanging from a perfect hangman's noose with a pentagram laid out in stones below it.  The best part, the cat was still limp so it had to have been strung up VERY recently.

Another story.  Many years later I was out hunting back behind our land again.  I found a beautiful little swampy area.  Picked out a nice tree and got my little pack-n-stack ladder stand up in it.  Sat around all evening and didn't see or hear shit.  Not just deer...  I didn't see a single living thing.  I was doing fine until about 30 minutes before sundown.  Now I've been hunting my entire life, camping alone, fishing, lost in unknown woods...you name it.  I've NEVER had an issue before, not when lost, not in the dark, not when I can hear coyotes, wolves, whatever all over the place.  For whatever reason on this particular night I was not doing fine.  Out of nowhere the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.  I got the strangest and most overpowering feeling that I just needed to leave.  It felt like something was telling me that I wasn't welcome there.  Kind of hard to explain but it was enough to convince me to cut my hunt short(something I never do) and get the fuck out of there.  I barely had it in me to take the time to take my ladder stand down and pack it up, I was half tempted to say fuck it, climb out and leave the stand.

I didn't take the time to get the should straps on right or secure the tie down ropes.  I came stumbling out of the woods looking like a bag of smashed assholes... ropes dragging everywhere behind me, my ladder stand barely clinging on to one shoulder.  My dad saw me and exclaimed "What the fuck happened to you, you look like you've seen a ghost..."

Well I reluctantly told him the whole story...  I figured he was going to laugh himself sick.  He didn't though, instead he had a very serious look on his face.  He asked "In that swamp...was there an old rusted out chest freezer randomly dumped there in the middle of the woods?"

Me:  "Yeah, you've been back there?  Fucking weird...how the hell did they get that thing back that far in the woods anyway?"

Dad: "Nevermind that...you remember that story about the cat?"

Me:  "Yeah..."

Dad:  "Yeah, that's the EXACT SAME SPOT I found that cat strung up in the tree, right on the little high spot just across from that freezer..."

Now I don't believe in supernatural shit or ghosts or anything like that but I can't explain this one.  I know what it's like to get a little unnerved in the woods.  Happens to everyone.  This wasn't that.  I dare say this was closer to sheer terror.  Sounds ridiculous, and it is, but it still makes me feel a little uneasy to this day.

Folks over in the NVG forum don't have this problem

One nearby farm has a roaming peacock, and I guess he roasts up in trees at night. He makes an awful ruckus but I have twice been unlucky enough to walk by his tree late at night only to have him drop down and scream at me, which very nearly caused me to shit my pants both times.

Go be rich somewhere else.

I made myself damn near shit myself.
We were up above Bailey Colorado camping, bear, mtn lion, elk etc are common in this area.
We are hanging around the campfire, knocking back a beer or two, you know - just hanging in the woods.
Suddenly my buddies dog goes bezerk, alerting  like crazy and got his hackles up. We see nothing but hear a horrendous crashing in the trees about 50 yards from us.
Spooked the crap out of us and took a while to settle down.
We called it a night and I went to my tent to crash and I had a Springfield XD Tactical with night sights on it with me, set it up close to my head where I could get to it quickly if need be.
Fast forward a couple hours and I wake to crashing in the woods again and the dog going nuts again.
I roll over (don't have my glasses on so everything is out of focus) and I see these two bright green glowing eyes looking right at me.
I can't see, I have half a beer buzz, half Spooked from the crashing in the woods and there they are, two bright green glowing eyes, sizing me up.
I'm fucking dead meat.
Then it dawned on me - the fucking night sights on the XD.
I felt like such a douchebag, the goddam night sights freaked the shit out of me.

The crashing we heard? An elk had slipped, lost its footing and slide about 15' down a small ravine.

No Hillary sightings yet? Oh wait, no press on site.

Had a fox scream at me once, scared the shit outta me till I figured out what it was.

After a hard day's work, we were exhausted.  After dinner, we were sitting by a campfire and relaxing when we heard an ungodly scream pierce the night air. WTF was that?  Finally someone said, some dog probably got killed by a cat (mountain lion).

I have a fox den in my back yard. The sounds that come out of that vixen in the middle of the night yikes!

Went looking for an abandoned lead mine in Perry County. Found it; it's almost completely intact and extremely impressive. We went at night because we felt like it; there was some possibility of getting underground, and time of day does not matter when shooting video underground. Some of these videos wind up on YouTube.

We check out the escape shaft and its headframe- it's a small headframe, but still very neat- there aren't many of them in Missouri. The shaft is fifteen hundred feet deep, but flooded with within sixty feet of the collar. My fiancee tosses a rock down- it's in free-fall for a second or two, then hits water and makes the craziest echo noise you've ever heard.

Well, the dry house had been ransacked by teenagers or copper thieves; all the drywall was ripped down and I could see every corner of the building while inside. While examining some electrical hardware, I hear a voice, like a middle-aged guy, over by the room that used to be the office. There were dogs barking at a nearby farm the whole time; I wondered if someone from there could be out doing something, so I call out a few times. I'm not exactly sure who owns the mine property- it may be USFS land, I don't really know, but it's not posted- may as well let the guy know I'm here and not meaning harm.

No response. My heart rate is going up, up, up.

"We should go," my fiancee says. She heard it too, although the camera did not. My back was turned to the source of the voice, which explains it.

"Yeah, I agree."

I start for the door, then hear footsteps and crunching- inside the building. In front of me. Near the office. I sweep it with my spotlight and cap lamp. Empty.

This is getting weird. Both of us heard it. It can be heard on the video recording.

I draw my 1911, thumb the safety off, and keep it at the low ready as I work my way towards the door. Missouri has an issue with meth and heroin junkies; I'll be damned if I let one get the drop on me.

Nothing.

What the fuck.

We take a while examining the production shaft and its headframe (a great hundred-foot-tall unit from 1967); nothing odd happens here other than some odd lights and shadows that I'd like to think were caused by having a spotlight and multiple cap lamps lighting in different directions. I'm having some difficulty illuminating the whole thing enough for the camera due to its sheer size, but it's not impossible.

After examining and videoing the production shaft to my satisfaction, I start towards the hoist house. There are actually two hoist rooms connected, one for the escape shaft, one for the production shaft. I step onto the threshold of the production hoist room- something is telling us not to go in all the way. The hoist is a massive double-drum Nordberg unit that's older than my father. I've seen bigger elsewhere, but it's the largest I've seen in Missouri.

Suddenly, I hear a thump above me. Probably a bat...bats love spacious abandoned buildings.

Then, the noise starts. It only lasts for a second or so, but it feels like an eternity.

I know what mine machinery sounds like.

That was damn well the sound of a hoist spooling up.

It is a completely still night, no wind to cause strange noises.

What the fuck.

We got out of there quickly. Whatever it was, it wasn't unfriendly, but it sure had my hair standing on end. Whatever it was, I got it on video, both the footsteps and hoist noise.

Walking out of the woods one evening during deer season, I was about 15.  Going down an old logging road through a stand of pines.  Pitch dark, I've no flashlight.  Owl screams about 20' from me.  I made it to the road (200 yds across a creek) in record time.

Too bad I didn't have any clean underwear.

Ran into a gaggle of rude, self righteous, mostly ugly, mostly out of shape Sierra Club EJW's on a trail once.

Some were so ugly, it struck terror in my eyes.  

I'm guessing my Glock ball cap and camo britches didn't bring any return greetings like you get from normal hikers.

Out snowshoeing alone around midnight one time I had a ruffed grouse bust out of his night time roosting spot about 5 feet from me.  My heart just about jumped out of my mouth.

Cross bow hunted until night this past deer season, about 3 miles from car and about 1/2 of it down in a valley.  Once it's getting to late for me to ethically take a shot, I start slowly walking out.  I get about 100 yards and the woods go completely dark, to the point I have to pull out the flash light.  Nothing but up hill now in front of me....I get about 1/2 way up and something makes a shit ton of noise behind me.  I stop and flash the light back down the trail and see nothing.....scan around to look for eyes...again nothing.  I stand there for a couple of seconds and listen.  Nothing......ok.....shit falls in the woods...that must have been it....back to attacking the hill in front of me.

Starting to really suck air...so much so, that anything that is in the woods, knows I'm out of shape and would be an easy meal, except for the fact that I have a 200 pound cross bow in my hand (seriously that fucker was getting heavy).  To be honest, I had my G27 on me as well....why you ask....because I was a boy scout and I'm always prepared.  

Anyway back to attacking this fucking hill, finally, I'm now at the top and about 1/4 of a mile from my car....mostly flat with just a little elevation.  As I'm walking back, something behind me and to the left makes noise.  I go into immediate WTF mode .  Now, I know where the noise came from is pretty shitty terrain, steep, not something that somebody would hunt...etc.  I again scan the area, standing still and listening.  This is where I get that feeling that something is watching me.  

(Back story) **The other day, same trail, I had walked down to end of the trail and on way back had found some bear scat.  So, I knew there were black bears in the area....and they cost my path and took a shit**  

Now, as I'm standing there...with this feeling of something is watching me, its dead quiet....I don't hear shit....felt like, if I was going to be attacked, now would be the time.  I'm like, fuck this....I'm not moving and going to prepare to be attacked.  

Slowly scanning the area...slight breeze...I'm still breathing pretty good.  I decided that I'm going to turn off the flash light and just listen for any movement.  Turned the light off and stood there...probably only 5 seconds or so.....just enough time to say fuck this.  Turned  the light on, turned safety off the cross bow (if you have one, you know this is pretty dangerous with hair trigger) and did double time back to the car.

I got back to the car and once I had the trunk open, didn't even unload my cross bow.....just throw it in the trunk (took arrow off) and took my camo off.  Then, I stood next to the car for about 10 minutes....trying to hear if there was anything out there.  Had the Glock in my hand at this time....didn't hear anything, so got in the car and took off.

Now was there something out there...not sure...but what ever was making that much noise...was fucking loud.  Loud enough that I stopped walking.  That's all I got.

very creepy!  listen to those feelings

I was sitting in my deer stand at 0-dark-30 one morning.  I had been there about 10 minutes, nice and settled in, when about 15 turkeys flew from their roost in the tree right next to me all at once.  Another good reason for a safety harness

That sir, is absolutely terrifying. 

could it of been a timeslip?

99% sure I kicked a human skull when looking for wood for a bonfire. I believe I was 9 or 10

I ran out to get my friends Dad but couldn't find the spot again.

Night land nav course at Ft. Benning. Damn near stepped on a hog. Luckily we each decided to go different directions.

At our old house we had about 13 Acres that were heavily wooded. Our chicken pens were set back into them a little ways. 

I went out to feed and water them a couple of times a day, usually morning and evening, no biggie. But just once, I went out there and when I entered the pens, I got the most overwhelming sense of dread I've ever felt before. It was incredible, as in I KNEW that I was about to die if I didn't get back to the house RFN. I bolted and I don't think I've ever run that fast before or since then, never even looked back. Still don't know what it was, but i don't believe it was just in my head. It was late evening but still light. Wandering those woods had never scared me before. 

But that whole central TX area near La Grange is a little creepy. 

A side note... we dug a pond in the front (mostly clear) side of that same property. For some reason when we dug it, there was a single bush left in the middle of one of the sections. Now and then I'd take our canoe out and paddle around, but that bush gave me the weirdest feeling, like it was haunted. I never turned my back on it. 

Then one day a friend visited, who had never been there. We were paddling around, and he laid back in his end of the boat. I gradually maneuvered to where I was facing it but his back was to it, then I casually asked "Hey, is there something weird about that bush?" 

Him: "Yeah, it feels like it's staring at me" 



Never did figure out what was up with that. 

Out of all that you left because of a hawk? Did I miss something?

I've been sniffed by something that was bipedal, able to make it up 20 feet of dry leaf covered hillside without making a sound to a depression that hid my little 24" tall tent from the stream below.  And oh yeah, whatever it was had the biggest set of lungs I've ever encountered from less than a foot away with only a thin nylon tent wall between me and it.  Also heard tree-knocking about five minutes later.

I've also heard a howl that I can only describe as air raid siren loud.  The closest thing I've been able to find is this:



Not drinking either time.  Same area, maybe two months apart.  Alone the first time, friend camping with me the second.

A couple summers ago me and 3 buddies were camping. We have some friends that have a large piece of property within walking distance of a river, so we set up on their property and head to the river to cat fish. (It's a state owned wildlife management area.) We'd been fishing a couple hours and were back at the tent. The fire had died down to just coals and we were just relaxing and winding down for bed. It was about 2-3am. I'm sitting so my back is to a large field behind us and facing the tent. One guy is directly in front of me facing the field, and the other two are on either side of the fire. The one directly in front of me suddenly goes holy shit do y'all see that. We all look and 100(ish) yards away roughly 5-8feet above the ground is a blue light. Close to a blue led color. We're all just staring at it and start to walk towards it. It starts to move rather slowly to the right across the field. When we had gotten with 75 yards of it, it proceeded to move incredibly quickly. I have never seen anything move so fast in my life. In moved in a rightish circular manner through the field into the woods. A distance of 500+ yards in well under 5 seconds. We all headed into the tent immediately after.

8 years ago I'd have laughed at myself now. Now I'm a solid believer in some sort of supernatural presence on this earth. I don't want to call them ghosts, but there's something else here besides just us. There is this one spot in the woods behind the house that I used to walk in all the time. It's a real nice creek and just a fun walk. 2 winters ago I was walking along and its like a hit a wall. A feeling of fear/dread/i don't belong here like I've never experienced washed over  me. Ever since then when I've tried to go back in the same spot the same feeling hits me. Every time. I planned on forcing myself to go this past winter but I just done have the balls to.

I'm sure my house is "haunted". I absolutely can not wait to move out. Everything from waking up in the morning 2-4am and, I shit you not, hearing someone cutting their fucking nails. I'm not the only person whos heard it either. It sounds exactly like someone cutting their finger or toenails. Hearing something walk the halls...even randomly waking up with just this feeling of something isn't right. It's absolutely terrifying. I guess you could mark the waking up scared to "night terrors" but I've never had them anywhere else. I hate my house.

I am, by far, the most dangerous thing in the woods. 

Everything else out there has to make contact with that which they want to kill, I can do it at distance.

We were just fucking off and making hog noises at groups that came near, we actually spooped a Drill sgt that way.

I make no claims as to what this was.  Just something I saw.

I worked in rural Maine for a little while.  One night, I was driving and looked up into the sky through my windshield because my eye caught movement.  It appeared to be a satellite, which was not uncommon to see in those parts.  As I think they are cool, I stopped and watched it slowly track across the sky, right to left.  As it disappeared behind the tops of trees along the road, I put the truck into drive to go on my way.  The moment I did that, the light streaked across the open swath of night sky created by the trees along the road, away from me from left to right and traveling very fast.

It unnerved me and still does to this day.

Never had anything scary happen to me, but two years ago I was in the mountains fishing at a small lake deep in the woods. When I came home later that day to post pics of my fish in a facebook fishing group, I saw someone else's photos of gray wolves spotted in the exact same spot I had been walking through earlier that day. I've since discovered that ALL of my favorite camping/fishing spots in that area have had either wolf or wolf track sightings. Since I go up there alone and unarmed, I've never gone back; I'm too big of a wuss.

This is a story that was told to me by my father.  It's been told many times over the years and the details have never changed.  I've been to the place where this incident happened and it does have a certain strangeness in the air there.

My father was bowhunting for whitetails back on an oak ridge one october morning in the late 70s.  It had been a beautiful, warm midwestern day with animal activity around him all day.  Setting is his treestand he had squirrels, birds, and deer all over the place but nothing in range for a shot.  As it became later and he was thinking about leaving he noticed a measurable drop in the temperature.  Almost out of nowhere a thick, soupy fog rolled in from the ridge top behind and completely engulfed him.

He said that just before the temperature dropped it got eerily quiet, as if all the animals that had been around all morning were running out ahead of this fog.  He said that the fog was so thick, he couldn't see but a couple feet in front of him.  

Now this was in the late 70s, so treestands aren't what they are today.  This particular stand was simply a perch on a limb in a leaning tree.  The base of the tree was about halfway down a large white oak ridge and the tree leaned over up the ridge.  It was at a shallow enough angle that he was able to just climb up the tree unassisted from the ground and was only 10 or so feet off the ground.  

So he is sitting there and can't see anything but milky white all around.   The leaning tree his is in just seems to disappear a couple feet below him.  He told me that at first he didn't think anything of it, but after a few minutes he started to get a very uneasy feeling.  Then as the fog hung around longer, the uneasiness turned into a feeling almost like dread, like there was something in the fog.

As he set there contemplating whether or not to get out the tree, he heard movement in the leaves behind him.  If you've ever been in oak leaves on a dry autumn day, you know how far away you can hear the leaves crunching.  Well, he's sitting there with zero visibility in this fog and this crunching is getting closer...working it's way along the ridge top behind him...but definitely getting closer.  He figured it was 50 yards or more away when he first heard it, but closer it came....50, 30, 20...slowly and deliberately until he could hear it directly behind him on the ridge.  

It passes by but then seems to turn and start heading down the ridge.  It passes by him on the side of the ridge continuing down, turns and begins to pass in front of him.  By this time, he's starting to get unnerved so he yells out "hey!"  Thinking it was a deer and the shout would scare it off.  Only this thing just stops for a few seconds and then continues on at the same slow deliberate pace.  By this time, it has now passed in front of him and is turning up the ridge again...circling.  It makes a complete pass around him and starts down the ridge again.  But this time when it gets almost in front of his tree again, it pauses turns and begins heading toward the leaning tree.  

He estimated the distance at maybe 30 yards.  It was moving toward the tree, but at a faster pace than it had been.  He said the pace quickened until it sounded like a trot and then like a run...heading directly for him.  He was scared shitless and all he could do was point a broadhead tipped arrow at the tree where it disappeared into the fog.  Just when it sounds like this thing is about to come up in the tree with him...the crunching in the leaves stops.  

There was several tense minutes of silence and then slow, deliberate steps turning and heading away from him.  Within a few minutes he couldn't hear it anymore, and a short time later the fog started to dissipate and the sun came back out.  As soon as he could pull himself together, he got down out of the tree and looked around.  There was a noticeable disturbance in the leaves around the area, but being so dry there were no tracks.  He didn't hang around long and beat feet back to his car.

All the times I heard the story, he never speculated what it was...just said it was the most scared he ever was in the woods.

There's really nothing scary in the woods around here. Besides a cougar (rare but they are around) or centipedes. I fucking hate centipedes

Black tail hunting on Shuyak isle in AK.

I got dropped off on the other side of the bay from the cabin, it was pouring about four hours later I got a deer and started to walk out, but my compass wasn't in my pocket. 

The jacket I had on was dripping wet, the topo in the pocket was drenched and useless so I got turned around.

It got dark so I decided to bed down, problem was all I had was a bic lighter, with horizontal wind and rain and not a dry stick in the area a fire was wishful thinking.

With a deer hanging 80 yards away in an area known for the largest bears in N. America wasn't what I'd call a restive evening.

My mom has a place up in the white mountains here in AZ.  We go up a lot in the summer.  Maybe not this summer, I don't want to go outside ever again .  Lol

Ever see the Blair Witch Project, know those creepy wooden figures/symbols that were hanging from the trees like this?



A bunch of us were out one night in the woods in the fall and came to a clearing in the woods with just one tree in the middle of it, with about 40 of those hanging off it. We got the fuck out of there in a most speedy fashion.

This was in 1991 or '92, so it wasn't someone copying the movie.

That fog story and the dead sacrificed cat story... have me freaking out right now and Im in a crowded house with like 20 people right now.

We called them partridge where I grew up.  Lived in a rural area and it was quicker(and probably safer) to cut through the woods instead of walking along the road to get home.  Every now and then I'd be walking on an old woods trail to go home and BABBABBABBABBABBAB.  Sure did get the blood going until you realized what it was.

@madmonkey have you mentioned the Bush before I swear to God I have red that exact story before.

Have you ever read "The Willows" by algernon Blackwood?