Creepy experiences in the backcountry

Kind of a weird one scouting for turkeys this morning.

Started the morning out dark and early heading to a nearby WMA to go see if I could hear any turkeys gobbling. Unfortunately already raining by 5:15 AM rather than it holding out until noon like the forecast I saw yesterday predicted.

Started out driving through a clear cut towards a decent saddle connecting a drainage to a flat creek bottom. Parked the truck and as soon as I got out, a headlamp? started shining at me from right where I wanted to be. Kind of unusual in that it was flickering a bit and then looked like the guy started a small fire. Several trees were glowing orange but I couldn’t see the actual flame.

No clue what the guy was doing, but last time I was in the area I ran into a couple of tweakers. Not sure if that’s what I saw, or someone camping where they aren’t supposed to be and started a fire. Didn’t see any other vehicles out there.
 
WHALL said:
Heading back to camp solo backcountry, in the dark and 50 yds above me wide eyes glowing in the dark, ( in grizzly country) quick draw on the 40 and heard the unmistakable moooooo! Dumb cow🤬
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Had a similar experience. Was taking a buddy hunting who was on crutches after surgery one year and we had a short hike from the pickup to a small grove of trees where a blind was setup up. Area was great white tail country but also thick with grizzlies. We decided to walk down a dried up irrigation ditch in the dark to not spook anything that maybe grazing in the surrounding fields. Through the dark comes a big dark mass walking straight towards us down the ditch and we both bout sh!t our pants thinking we'd walked head on into a big sow. The beast saw us too and spooked and ran up the side of the ditch into the field, a big black angus cow.....
 
It wasn't hunting, but once during a really tough 24 hour backcountry mountain bike race, I got caught in a lighting/hail storm on top of a mountain in the middle of the night. I didn't get struck by lightning, but I did get hypothermic. There were a couple of young guys truck camping at a nearby pass. I had talked to them earlier in the evening prior to the storm, and, in my hypothermic stupor, decided to get in the cab of one of the trucks to try and warm up.
I fell asleep briefly, then woke up. It was still pitch black dark, and I could see headlamps flickering about 200 yards away. I thought it was someone involved with the race I was in coming up to look for me. Then the lights went away and re-appeared several more times in the same spot before stopping completely. Once the sun started to come up, I talked to the truck guy (who'd been asleep in the back) and went on my way. Never thought much about the lights I'd seen after that.
One year later, I returned to the same spot to spectate the race. It was dark, and I was hiking the same ridge. I saw a headlamp ahead of me in the dark. I went around a rocky rise in the ridge, and on the other side (where I'd seen the light)... nothing. Cliff faces on both sides- there's nowhere else a human could have gone.

Ghosts, man.
 
MountainFeral said:
It wasn't hunting, but once during a really tough 24 hour backcountry mountain bike race, I got caught in a lighting/hail storm on top of a mountain in the middle of the night. I didn't get struck by lightning, but I did get hypothermic. There were a couple of young guys truck camping at a nearby pass. I had talked to them earlier in the evening prior to the storm, and, in my hypothermic stupor, decided to get in the cab of one of the trucks to try and warm up.
I fell asleep briefly, then woke up. It was still pitch black dark, and I could see headlamps flickering about 200 yards away. I thought it was someone involved with the race I was in coming up to look for me. Then the lights went away and re-appeared several more times in the same spot before stopping completely. Once the sun started to come up, I talked to the truck guy (who'd been asleep in the back) and went on my way. Never thought much about the lights I'd seen after that.
One year later, I returned to the same spot to spectate the race. It was dark, and I was hiking the same ridge. I saw a headlamp ahead of me in the dark. I went around a rocky rise in the ridge, and on the other side (where I'd seen the light)... nothing. Cliff faces on both sides- there's nowhere else a human could have gone.

Ghosts, man.
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Forget the headlamp ghosts! The part where you get into some stranger's truck in the middle of the night while they were asleep in the back is the craziest part of your story. I can easily envision a less favorable outcome to that scenario. Glad it ended ok for you!
 
Nickofthewoods said:
Forget the headlamp ghosts! The part where you get into some stranger's truck in the middle of the night while they were asleep in the back is the craziest part of your story. I can easily envision a less favorable outcome to that scenario. Glad it ended ok for you!
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Well, I'd talked to the guys a couple of hours beforehand. It was a really unique mountain bike race, and I was leading, so I let them know that there'd be more people on mountain bikes coming over the pass during the night. If that hadn't been the case, I probably wouldn't have done it. I don't know, though. I wasn't in good shape. It was one of those times that you have to search for the voice of reason in your brain because the normal thinking part is telling you to do things that will get you killed... like lay down and take a nap on that rock because the hypothermia is making you drowsy.
I basically survived being literally inside a thunderstorm at 12,000ft, then had to figure out how to not die from hypothermia. I was ashamedly unprepared in the clothing department- all I'd been carrying was a light rain jacket. Some lessons you learn the hard way. I will never be that underprepared again, so there's that.

P.S. Still won the bike race
P.P.S. I'm trying to get a mountain goat tag in that unit. Will definitely go back and look for headlamp ghosts if I ever draw it.
 
These aren’t mine and aren’t hunting related but I’m perusing a football forum and they have a good spooky story thread. I’ll share a few:

“ About 15 years ago we rented a house boat on Lake of the Woods in Ontario. We trailer up our boats, launch them and then tie them off to the houseboat to tow out onto the lake. The trip out on to the lake is about 45 miles.

We have around 20 spots identified to anchor the houseboat based on weather and the wind. We check out a couple of spots and settled on a quiet bay on the leeward side of a good size island. Maybe 10-12 acres.

We cook dinner, have a couple of beers and tell some fish stories, then head off to bed.

Around 1:15am I wake up to the sound of a kid crying. Not scared crying, more sad. I’m laying there in my sleeping bag frozen… listening. I think I’m dreaming. The hair on my neck is standing up. One at a time the other three guys wake up. We are all whispering. The crying continues. It sounds like it’s coming from the island. We are 25 feet off shore, in about 12 feet of water.

We grab a couple of flashlights and shine them on shore. Crying stops. We see nothing. No movement. Nothing. We sit up for 1/2 hour with talking and lights on. Nothing. Lights back off. 5 minutes later, old music starts playing. Faintly. Sounded like it was coming from an old radio. 1930’s. A lady’s voice is singing.

By now we are all pretty freaked out. My buddy turns on the search lights, pulls the anchor and eases out of the bay. A seriously risky thing to do on Lake of the Woods. We were trying to talk his out of moving at night, but he wasn’t having it.

The next day we ended up moving a mile or 2 away from that spot. Nothing further happened during that week. We didn’t really talk about it for years and all kind of drifted apart.

A year ago I saw him at a work reunion thing and after some small talk I asked him if he’d been fishing lately. He says not too much. A little with the grandkids. Then I asked him if he’d been back up to Canada. It had been 15-20 been years. I ask if he remembered that night… and he’s says he still wakes up hearing that music or crying at least once a month. He’s dead serious and says he’d rather not talk about it.

I’ve always wondered what really happened that night. Don’t think I will ever truly know.”
 
“My ghost story

18 years old, did not believe in ghosts, 7pm at my parent’s newly built home on land owned by my grandma but was never lived on.

My room was in the basement. I was heading upstairs and as I walked toward the stairs I saw him. He was standing in front of the French doors that led outside. Long gray beard, definitely army, could see his rank of Major, medals, and he had his sword sheathed. I looked at him for probably 10 seconds completely still. He started to raise his left hand and I bolted upstairs.

Didn’t tell my parents what I saw, instead I went straight to my grandma and asked her about the land history. She said there was a plane crash during WW2. Small plane went down, everyone died and there were headstones in the woods behind the house of those that died.

I went back to the house and sure enough an Army Major was on that plane.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I talked to him. The very next day I went and joined the military. I had never thought about the military before, but I was 18, unsure of what I wanted to do and kind of directionless. I think he visited me to give some helpful guidance.”
 
“
When I was 12 (1990) I was at my parent’s condo at the lake of the ozarks. I would often go down to the docks and go fishing late at night after my folks went to bed. There was a rundown old house right next to the complex that had a nasty old dock that was barely floating at this point. If you stepped on it, hell, if you as much as shifter your weight while standing on it, it made all kinds of noise and rocked back and forth. But damn you could catch crappie on it like nowhere else.

So on this night I had gone down to fish and was there for a half hour and it was a dead quiet, beautiful, calm night to be fishing. When suddenly the calm silence is broken with my dad’s voice. He calmly, but chillingly tells me to turn around and come to him right now. He is up on the bank about 30 yards from me and I can tell something is wrong. As I turn around I see him over my left shoulder about 20’ behind me. There was a man, a dirty, massove hillbilly of a man just staring at me. He locked eyes with me and stared at me the whole way as I walked by him to my dad. When I got to my dad, my dad walked backwards while that guy started at me the whole way. My dad called the cops, but when they got there he was gone.

How that guy got on that dock without. me knowing it, I have no clue. That dock was falling apart and you could not move on it without it creaking and rocking. It was very clear he was there to do me harm. The crazy thing is that my old man NEVER came down to check on me when I was fishing before. I asked him what made him come down that night and he said he woke up and just had a terrible feeling that something was wrong. He said he got up in a panic and came down and as he approached he saw that guy behind me and was never so scared as he was in that moment. I still absolutely have nightmares of that guy staring at me as I walked by him. I will never forget how he smelled as I passed him. It was the strongest cigarette smoker smell I’ve ever smelled.”
 
I know this forum is really fond of Bigfoot stories:

“I’ve posted this before, but my wife and I saw a bigfoot a little over a year ago. We pulled into our driveway one night, and I looked down at the tree line in our backyard almost 100 yards from where we were. I could see an enormous figure walking away from us. It turned and stuck a long and very thick arm to grab a tree. It then proceeded to walk right into the woods and out of view. The next morning, my wife stood where we were in our car and I went down to the tree line to do a comparison. This thing was easily 2 feet taller than me and was way more massive. It also moved very quickly into the woods in the dark. I could not have moved anywhere near that fast in the daylight.”

The poster apparently lives in SE Oklahoma and stated that sitings in that part of the state by the river are common.
 
0-Dark-Thirty hiking into the depths of the Okanagan NF in North Central WA, we heard something, turned around to look up and seen a horizontal set of lights/ engines, maybe 10 wide and 2 deep in the sky. This thing took off up into the sky like nothing I had ever seen. I was in the aerospace business my entire 31 year career, working on some serious stuff and never new of such a craft.
 
Fever Buck said:
I know this forum is really fond of Bigfoot stories:

“I’ve posted this before, but my wife and I saw a bigfoot a little over a year ago. We pulled into our driveway one night, and I looked down at the tree line in our backyard almost 100 yards from where we were. I could see an enormous figure walking away from us. It turned and stuck a long and very thick arm to grab a tree. It then proceeded to walk right into the woods and out of view. The next morning, my wife stood where we were in our car and I went down to the tree line to do a comparison. This thing was easily 2 feet taller than me and was way more massive. It also moved very quickly into the woods in the dark. I could not have moved anywhere near that fast in the daylight.”

The poster apparently lives in SE Oklahoma and stated that sitings in that part of the state by the river are common.
Click to expand...
Shaquille O'Neal in the vicinity?
 
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