Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[longrangelead]

Probably 25 years ago now, I found a spur road off a seldom traveled forest service road. The spur was ditched at about ¼ mile but continued quite a ways across the mountain. Being new to me, I was exploring the area when I had time.

One afternoon on a week day, I went to the spur for some reason. When I got there, there was a POS Datsun car parked in the wide spot where people turn around at the ditch.
It was raining and cool so I was surprised to see a vehicle since most people avoid the rain and this spot was pretty brushy.
I noticed the windows were fogged up good and saw someone move inside. The hood was wet so the engine had not been running in a while but the car didn't appear stuck either.
I pulled up next to the car a rolled down my window. A middle aged guy in a T-shirt rolled down the window of the car.
He was alone but looked like he had been crying. I asked if he was alright, he just said "ya". The look in his eyes said different though. I said "ok, I'll be here a while if you need help".
I didnt see any gear or anything to indicate he was car camping. I didnt see much of anything in the car, he looked unprepared for a cold wet night in the woods.
I don't know why, I got the feeling he was there to take his own life.

I was young enough I didn't know what to do beyond that. When I got back to my truck, he was gone. Out of curiosity and concern, I checked a couple other similar spots nearby but didn't find him. I even drove all the way up there the next evening to see if he came back. I never saw him again.
I've always wondered what he was up to...

 

[Easydoesit87]

I was working on a Forest between CA & OR when I got a visitor one day telling a trippy story. It was early summer. They had purchased a firewood permit and went out gathering dead & down in a fairly remote portion of the District. They saw a Toyota Tacoma with all four doors open. They didn't think much about it first time but thought it weird the "occupants" had left their belongings strewn about as seen from a distance.

Second day, they returned to gather more firewood and saw the same rig with the doors still open and things thrown about. They got their wood for the day and left.

Third day, same thing; except this time - they made their way towards the rig to attempt contact and ascertain if they needed help or whatever. They approached the truck and saw several opened prescriptions bottles, men's/women's clothes that had clearly weathered over some time, pint bottles of Jack Daniels, and to their horror - bones! They beelined it down the mountain to the District Office.

We put together a small group of people to check it out. We made our way to the site. Upon arrival, we could immediately smell a sweet stench. We made our way to the truck and found Rx bottles opened (but empty), clothes thrown all over the place, and as described above - a few bottles of JD. We started walking away from the truck and began seeing bones with clothes still attached (but filthy). A skeleton hand was found with a woman's watch still around the wrist. Walking further away from the scene - another JD bottle was found and some men's clothes. Then we started noticing piles of scat and began to realize what may have happened! Lots of black bears in the area ... and perhaps a few found the site and dined on whomever they were upon waking from hibernation. We took lots of pictures, noted the license plate, and returned to the office; whereupon, the authorities were contacted.

It took a day or so, but I received a call telling the likely story about who the people were and how they made their way to their demise.

Based on the license plate, the truck was registered to a guy from San Diego who was known to be part of an extremist group called Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Apparently, the owner and his mother had been "liberating" research animals in the area and the FBI was looking for them. They had been in contact with the law via cell phone along I-5 negotiating turning themselves in. They were using cell towers to track them as they made their way north to Grants Pass, OR when they suddenly went south into the Siskiyou Mtns where the cell phone signal was lost.

This was in the fall and in the Siskiyou's - snow falls early and deep at times. They had apparently made their way over the only pass in the area before going offroad and stuck. According to the agent, they were using drugs (hence the Rx bottles) and likely came to park in the area where the truck was found. They then started drinking (or were already drinking) and along with the drugs - one of them (most likely the mother) took her life. Then the son drank more JD and went down a hill and took his. The bears found the bodies and consumed them. The firewood gatherer found the scene.

The Forest Service had to spend a bunch of money to "clean" the area. The sweet smell was rendered fat from the bodies that had permeated the soil. It was removed. The area was then sanitized by a company from Sacramento which "specialized" in things like this ...

I still have dreams about it.

 

[Pharmseller]

Good deal for the bears.




P

 

[rookieforever33]

I bet the bears felt "liberated" maybe they got a buzz from what they ate

 

[ScreamingPotato]

I bet the bears felt "liberated" maybe they got a buzz from what they ate

I think I saw that movie.

 

[BUCKELK]

This one isn’t mine but in 99 my dad was up in the Yukon hunting sheep with his best friend, they had both killed their rams by day 6 out of 10, anyway they were only a few miles from the NWT border so extremely remote country on both sides of the border and were waiting for the float plane to come pick them up and the guides would lead the horses back to base.
It was the end of August and getting dark enough they would watch the northern lights. That first night after they had both killed their rams they were down at a lake that had an old trapper cabin that they were told hadn’t been inhabited since at least the 30s my dad had found a cast iron pan in there and cleaned it up and used it to cook some tender loin. That night the pan disappeared. Then the next day 3 potatoes and a small propane bottle were gone from the pack horse panniers. The second to last night before the plane was due in the northern lights we’re going intense and as my dad, his friend & the guides were drinking whiskey around the fire he said they could hear a woman screaming something down the canyon away from them. My dad swears that all 4 of them had heard the same thing and no one in the group had messed with the spuds, pan or propane and both guides had acknowledged that there was far too much wilderness in any direction for anyone else to get in there with out horses or a plane.
My dad is not the superstitious type & still jokes that the ghost stole his favorite trophy from that hunt.

My favorite kind of story. I have one similar to it that I posted a while back where I found a ghost camp! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Pharmseller]

When the Bad Things come out at night they know they have to return by dawn, so they have a lot more time to do evil.

Conversely, in the morning they know they must seek shelter by sunup, so they’re less focused on you.





P

 

[wh0cansay]

Maybe not necessarily 'creepy', but certainly beyond anything I can explain.

Watched this black cigar-shaped object for half a minute or so over Utah back in 2010 (?). Thought it was a piece of dirt on the window until I moved my head back and forth a few times and realized it was keeping up with us. Managed to take a few pictures, kept looking at it and all of a sudden it just shot off, split second and it was gone. Very surreal experience.

The sensor on my DSLR was quite dirty at the time (old 5D had a knack for pulling in dust), that accounts for all the dots and smudges you see around the edges of the image.

Wish I'd had my 200mm lens on me at the time but of course I had left it in my checked luggage.

 

[wh0cansay]

Zoomed in a bit:

 

[DiabeticKripple]

not really a crazy story, but elk hunting we came into a meadow where we had tons of elk and feral horse sign scouted out. We cow called the whole way in on the trail to sound like a small harem of cows going to feed, hoping to pull a bull in from somewhere. we got to the meadow and nothing, sat with the wind in our faces for about 30 mins and still nothing so we pulled out lunch out of our packs. I had just started eating when my buddy elbowed my ribs and nodded up. I looked up and there was 3 wolves within 10-15yds of us just staring. There was a giant black one about 50yds behind them too. They kept checking us out while I tried to knock an arrow, but when i turned a bit to draw back they ran off. My buddy picked a bad day to leave the shotgun at camp (he was just calling for me) and since its Canuckistan we cannot carry pistols.

It was crazy how silent the wolves came in and left. Literally no sound around and didnt hear them once.

 

[wh0cansay]

That UFO photo up there reminds me of another picture I took back in 2003 or so. Unfortunately it's been lost to a few hard drive crashes over the years which pains me greatly.

My uncle has a cabin in the woods in Eastern Europe and I ended up staying at it for a week back when I was 17 or 18. It was just me and my buddy there and we spent most of our time drinking and playing Starcraft and walking around in the woods. I was already fairly passionate about photography so I always had my camera on me. A few days in we ended up befriending a younger, local kid. He was excited to meet some new people and took us to an abandoned house deep in the woods.

I loved this stuff and started taking pictures as soon as we got there - the first one I took was of the exterior of the house as we stood in front of the porch. We ended up going inside through the window as the door was boarded shut, and the atmosphere was pretty grim from the get go. The place had obviously been empty for a long time, yet we found a bucket full of still-liquid blood in the kitchen. A bit creepy but explainable I guess, maybe someone came back and slaughtered some chickens here.

We moved through the house, checked out the attic, came back down into the kitchen and opened the door into the living room. The entire room was empty except for an old white wedding dress hanging in the middle of the room. I nearly had a heart attack and we were thoroughly creeped out at this point. We started exiting the place through that same window and I was the last person to leave - I'll never forget the feeling of dread I experienced during those 5 seconds that I was the only one still in the house. There were tons of nettle bushes right outside the window and I remember thinking that if I see or hear anything right now I'm launching myself out of that window and into those nettles in 0.2 seconds flat, I was absolutely shitting myself.

We went back to the cabin later that afternoon and I downloaded the pictures from my camera onto my laptop. As I browsed them with my buddy we took a closer look at the first photo I took that day, of the exterior of the house. There was a woman's face behind the porch window - hard to see any detail but a face nonetheless. There wasn't anyone to be seen within two miles of that place, we combed the whole thing.

I still think about that photo every now and then, and wonder if maybe somewhere, somehow, there's still an old hard drive in my mom's house that I've forgotten about that holds it.

 

[Clinicus22]

Not a hunt but my buddy and I got to a sign where it said no trespassers so we turned around and then this guy followed us in his truck for like 15 minutes until we figured we should just stop to talk. Thankfully nothing weird happened in fact the guy said people had robbed him before so he was paranoid


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[wh0cansay]

Not my story but I found it fascinating so I'll share.

Friends of a friend of a friend went camping deep in the Sinai desert in Egypt with a local guide. Towards the end of the day they noticed a soldier with a rifle pop up from behind a dune in the distance. He would take aim at something, get shot, fall down behind the dune. Pop up, take aim, get shot. Pop up... this went on. They said to the guide, jesus man do you see that?

He goes oh yeah, he's here all the time, he's stuck.

Lot of fighting back in the day in that area, apparently.

 

[Jamie930]

I’ve very much enjoyed reading this thread. I’ll chime in with an creepy and scary as hell experience from 32 years ago. Let me set the stage: So at the time I’m 14 years old and love to turkey hunt. My Dad, while a knowledgeable deer and small game hunter, doesn’t turkey hunt so everything I knew at that point was self taught and I’m always hunting solo. I had permission to turkey hunt a small tract about a half mile from my house. As always the birds were on the neighbor’s place and I’d hear them gobbling over there routinely. (I’ve always said you could have a hunting area the size of GA and the birds would roost on the line and fly down into SC!) Man I would have done anything to get over there and hunt! I just knew I’d kill one if I could just hunt that place.
Now this was in the days before ATV’s, and I was too young to drive, so if I went hunting over there it was with good ole boot leather alone. So I called the neighboring landowner one day (very old man) and asked for permission. He was a family friend and we went to church with him…ain’t no way he’d say “no!” Well, he said “no” and it pissed me off so bad, and I was so geared and geeked up to kill my first turkey, that I was like, “hell, I’m going anyway! What’s the chance of me getting caught or something bad happening? I mean no 14 year old is going to jail for that, right?!” (Que the awfully dumb 14 year old decision music here)
So I set out on foot, wearing my dad’s oversized snake boots, on an afternoon turkey hunt in May in GA. No water and it’s 85*. So I’m walking the edge of this huge field and calling every so often. I’m sweating with every step from the GA heat and from thinking I’m headed straight to a long and significant prison term if I get caught! Not to mention I’m wearing full camo and a headnet to help make my identification hard for anybody! The field edge is kind of grown up with waist high grass and weeds but at the woodline the grass isn’t high at all. All of a sudden I look at the edge of the woods in a sandy little shaded area and I see a pack of 6 mean looking wild dogs (definitely no collars) laying there. 4 pit bulls and 2 other cross breeds.
So my 14 year old mind immediately processed the situation and determined that a fellow poacher must have killed them in the past couple hours and dumped them there. So I think “damn this place is full of poachers (including me!) I’ve got to get out of here!” So I decide to leave but first I’m gonna give one last series of yelps and see if any of those wild dogs move. So I cut loose with a cackle and some cutts….
All of a sudden the “dead” dogs come to life, see me, and immediately charge! I yell at them but they’re barking, growling and running straight for me! I turn to run and actually do for 20-30 yards and then think, “dammit son, you’re armed with a 12 GA!” So I stop and the grass is so high I can’t see them but I see the grass moving and they’re headed right for me. I stop and holler at them. I fire a warning shot…nothing will stop the charge. The lead dog is a big pitbull and he pops out with teeth bared and lunges for me! I roll him up and at about 2 feet he skids to a stop right at my feet. 3 other mean bastards pop out of the grass and immediately circle me while growling and barking. One lunges at me and I get 2 of them. The remaining ones run to the woodline and stop and stare at me while growling.
My poaching days done, I immediately turn and start fast walking headed for home. As I’m leaving one of the growlers makes a charge while my back is turned but I hear him rustling in the grass and turn and shoot him at about 10 steps (I had the shotgun’s plug out because of 14 year old me reasoned that if you’re going to be an outlaw you might as well go whole hog!)
I get home and am white as a sheet and shaking. My parents ask what’s wrong and what happened and of course I can’t tell them because they’ll turn me in to the authorities because they’re good Christian folks that couldn’t stand to have an outlaw as a son. I still get chills thinking about it. And trust me, y’all, I have turned from my outlaw ways and now only hunt on property that I either own or have complete permission to be on. I certainly don’t condone my actions that day but if I hadn’t done what I had to do I would not be here today. They would have torn me to pieces. Scariest day of my life in the woods.

I wonder if the old man that own the property knew that the wild dogs were there and that is why he said no.

Should have asked again, after you fixed the wild dog problem

 

[Steve300xcw]

I wonder if the old man that own the property knew that the wild dogs were there and that is why he said no.

Should have asked again, after you fixed the wild dog problem

Sometimes folks just dont want some dumbass runnin around on their property....

Seems to be a hard thing for folks on here to understand.

 

[dan33]

I was on a high country deer hunt labor day weekend so of course I saw a couple lights in the woods which were obviously headlamps/fires/lanterns. The next morning I saw a light easily 8 miles away from my glassing point. Not dull either. Clear as a laser pointer. A couple days later I was hunting a fresh burn and I can't even explain it good but I got the feeling of not supposed to be here. When the wind blew it sounded like women and children screaming. After shooting light it just got worse. Honestly half expected to walk into a destroyed Indian village like in the revenant. The next morning I was set up on some beds I bumped deer from the day before and dead calm at sunrise then I hear a flute like sound and was thinking oh god I'm gonna get scalped then from the same place the worst excuse of an elk calling sequence i have ever heard erupted from the same are.

 

[gobblinglawyer]

Sometimes folks just dont want some dumbass runnin around on their property....

Seems to be a hard thing for folks on here to understand.

Whoa now…I’m a lot of things but a dumbass ain’t one. I thought this thread was for “Creepy experiences in the back country” and not a place to opine about property rights? Maybe I missed the memo.

 

[griebel303]

I've got two encounters that happened during Archery season in Colorado on separate years. They are less creepy and more get the adrenaline pumping and keep you on edge for the day.

The first was hunting archery black bear. I had found a wallow that was the only water source on top of a mountain, without dropping down into some steep canyons. I hung up a trail camera on it during the Spring and checked it late summer. It was the bear's cool down spot. Almost daily a different bear was hitting that wallow from midmorning to midday. There were a couple of big boars and sows, including a sow with twin cubs that seemed to frequent it. Come archery season I went up solo and sat the wallow most of the day. After not seeing anything, I decided to loop up the mountain through some super dense lodge poles and see if I could get to a good glassing spot to see some other drainages. I've made it probably a 1/2 mile in the lodgepoles when I see the silhouette of a big bear walking parallel to me. I knock an arrow and start closing the distance to try and find a shooting lane. At about 30 yds or so I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and sure enough it's the twin cubs I had seen on the camera and I am now in between the sow and the cubs. Fortunately for me I had good wind, and the sow and cubs had no idea I was there. I slowly started backing up and putting some distance between us without turning my back. I still had to get out of the lodgepoles and it seemed every little ridge I crested there was a dark burnt out log resembling a bear shadow on the other side. After that I decided I didn't need to stick around with the sow and cubs out and about.



The next encounter was 2 years later, the last day of archery Elk. I was hiking in solo at first light to a meadow I had some good encounters a few days before. I had just started making my way up a game trail when not 50 yards away there are 4 mountain lions sitting, looking over the small hillside. About the same time it registered in my head what they were they saw me and scattered up the mountain. The only sound they made as they took off were chirps. They were all decent sized so my guess is it was a mother with some yearling kittens. They took off the direction of the meadow I planned to hunt so I didn't expect the elk were going to be hanging around with 4 of them running around. I hunted an adjacent ridge instead that day and every bird chirp had me thinking the 4 of them were coming back to stalk me. I didn't encounter them the rest of the day, but it definitely screwed with my focus. A few days later I caught them on a trail camera a few drainages away.

 

[eddielasvegas]

Not trying to steal your story @griebel303 but your text is lightened so much it's hard to read so I copied to a text editor. Here's your text that should be easier to read for viers of this awesome thread.

Good stories btw and certainly each has some pucker factor IMHO.


Eddie



"The first was hunting archery black bear. I had found a wallow that was the only water source on top of a mountain, without dropping down into some steep canyons. I hung up a trail camera on it during the Spring and checked it late summer. It was the bear's cool down spot. Almost daily a different bear was hitting that wallow from midmorning to midday. There were a couple of big boars and sows, including a sow with twin cubs that seemed to frequent it. Come archery season I went up solo and sat the wallow most of the day. After not seeing anything, I decided to loop up the mountain through some super dense lodge poles and see if I could get to a good glassing spot to see some other drainages. I've made it probably a 1/2 mile in the lodgepoles when I see the silhouette of a big bear walking parallel to me. I knock an arrow and start closing the distance to try and find a shooting lane. At about 30 yds or so I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and sure enough it's the twin cubs I had seen on the camera and I am now in between the sow and the cubs. Fortunately for me I had good wind, and the sow and cubs had no idea I was there. I slowly started backing up and putting some distance between us without turning my back. I still had to get out of the lodgepoles and it seemed every little ridge I crested there was a dark burnt out log resembling a bear shadow on the other side. After that I decided I didn't need to stick around with the sow and cubs out and about.







The next encounter was 2 years later, the last day of archery Elk. I was hiking in solo at first light to a meadow I had some good encounters a few days before. I had just started making my way up a game trail when not 50 yards away there are 4 mountain lions sitting, looking over the small hillside. About the same time it registered in my head what they were they saw me and scattered up the mountain. The only sound they made as they took off were chirps. They were all decent sized so my guess is it was a mother with some yearling kittens. They took off the direction of the meadow I planned to hunt so I didn't expect the elk were going to be hanging around with 4 of them running around. I hunted an adjacent ridge instead that day and every bird chirp had me thinking the 4 of them were coming back to stalk me. I didn't encounter them the rest of the day, but it definitely screwed with my focus. A few days later I caught them on a trail camera a few drainages away."

 

[Pochuck]

More of a confusing story than spooky

My family has owned a small farm in rural PA for 30 years. Being from NJ/NY my dad and I have gone almost every other weekend since I was born to do some hunting and fishing. I'm very comfortable there and have never had a weird experience except for this one time during covid, when we were there a lot-much more than normal since school/work was shutdown. There's two houses on the property - one built in the 1970s and one in the mid-late 1800s. The 1970s house is more modern so that's where we spend most of the time and use the 1800s house as a guest house. The 1800s house has been remodeled several times and is not really old or spooky - it just has had a lot of additions and changes so it's not very open and there's a lot of turns/hallways and smaller rooms which can give you an uneasy feeling if you're not used to staying in a house like that out in the country. I got Covid in 2021 so I was staying in the 1800s house to isolate. I got groceries for the 2 weeks I'd be staying there and got a dozen eggs with my groceries - obviously checking to see if any were damaged in the store. I filled up the empty fridge with my groceries and the next day when going to make breakfast 6 of the twelve eggs were gone from the right half of the carton. I would've felt the weight difference if I hadn't even checked them at the store, which I did. There was nobody else was staying in the house and I talked with my family members and none had been in the house. There were no eggshells in the trash either and no sign of them anywhere.

I just hope the ghost of the previous owners of the house enjoyed their eggs.