Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[rayporter]

remember this one. in my old stomping grounds -he hunted hunters

Thomas Lee Dillon (July 9, 1950[1][2] – October 21, 2011) was an American serial killer who shot and killed five men in southeastern Ohio, beginning April 1, 1989 and continuing until April 1992.[3]

Between the period of April 1, 1989 to April 5, 1992, Dillon shot and killed five people in Ohio. His fourth victim, Claude Hawkins, was shot on federal property and was the reason the FBI stepped in to join the investigation along with officers from the other three counties and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. It was after this that the death of Kevin Loring was changed from an accident to a homicide.[citation needed]

Ten days after the task force meeting, Dillon would shoot his fifth victim, Gary Bradley, in Noble County, Ohio. Dillon was placed under surveillance in 1992 when a friend reported him after hearing the task force's initial press release concerning the murders. Larry Oller of Barnhill, Ohio was later shot at by Dillon while out hunting in Tuscarawas County, but he escaped uninjured

 

[lyle_destroys]

remember this one. in my old stomping grounds -he hunted hunters

Thomas Lee Dillon (July 9, 1950[1][2] – October 21, 2011) was an American serial killer who shot and killed five men in southeastern Ohio, beginning April 1, 1989 and continuing until April 1992.[3]

Between the period of April 1, 1989 to April 5, 1992, Dillon shot and killed five people in Ohio. His fourth victim, Claude Hawkins, was shot on federal property and was the reason the FBI stepped in to join the investigation along with officers from the other three counties and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. It was after this that the death of Kevin Loring was changed from an accident to a homicide.[citation needed]

Ten days after the task force meeting, Dillon would shoot his fifth victim, Gary Bradley, in Noble County, Ohio. Dillon was placed under surveillance in 1992 when a friend reported him after hearing the task force's initial press release concerning the murders. Larry Oller of Barnhill, Ohio was later shot at by Dillon while out hunting in Tuscarawas County, but he escaped uninjured

I'm willing to bet he's not the only one that's ever done this. Seems like an easy one to cover up. "Hunter fatally shot in hunting accident."

 

[EastHumboldt]

This isn't all that creepy, but more like weird and certainly, unexplainable, at least to me. Kinda follows Brancher's post above about a light.

This was just last week Wednesday during deer season at my farm in NE Missouri. It was around 5:30am, it was a super clear, cloudless sky with virtually no moon, just tons of stars. We had just pulled into a pasture area off an unlit gravel road a quarter mile or so from the ground blind we were going to hunt out of. We were at the back of my SUV with the hatchback closed, no lights on, and we were gathering our gear getting ready to start walking. All of a sudden there was this instant, gigantic flash of light right on us and around us, maybe literally only a fraction of a second in duration. It wasn't lightning, wasn't on the horizon or anything, just right ON us. As if an enormous camera flash was triggered on us. I'm not sure I've ever seen a light as bright and as quickly on and off as that was. We both looked at each other and said what the heck was that? Neither of us had or has any idea what that was. But I'm glad my buddy was there as a witness because I don't think anyone would believe it if I told them about it.

Any thoughts on what that could have been?

I had something very similar happen to me about 40 years ago on the banks of the Yaak River in MT. Huge FLASH !! lit up an entire mountainside like lightning, but it was a dead calm night no clouds and not a sound. Kinda freaked me out for awhile. All I had for defense was a 4” buck knife! I’ve heard the DOD has plane mounted strobe lights for night spy photography that can do that but I dunno.

 

[EastHumboldt]

Send me the coords I will take one for the team in the name of science..unless it's a 60 year old hippie granny

Hey... I’m 62 and 60 is young stuff to me!!

 

[Mikido]

Me and a buddy were out in his boat fishing on a sunny spring day several years ago, and we both heard this blood curdling roar echo from somewhere in the mountains. I mean, it was LOUD. It sounded like something angry and in pain at the same time.

We looked at each other for a little while like “did we seriously just hear that?” The only conclusion we could come to was someone shot a bear (it was bear season). My friend has since become an avid hound hunter and we’ve both taken some bears, and we’ve never heard that nose ever come from a bear before, so I have no clue what that was.

Woah

 

[bcv]

I'm glad a read all this and other people have seen the lights flying in the sky that beats the technology we have.
For 25 years I fished for a living out of Islamorada, Florida Keys. Charter out of Bud n Mary's marina then drove private sportfish boats out of Ocean Reef and basically traveled all over chasing billfish.
I've seen those lights, just a solo light but 3-5 separate lights.
The fist time was 15 miles off Cay Sal, Bahamas around 5:30pm. Cay Sal is nothing but an abandoned light house on some rock about 45 miles south of Islamorada. I watch 3 separate lights w my deck hand up in the tower of the boat for over 30 minutes. They would meet up then shoot off at angles your mind can't comprehend. I've never seen anything move like that in the sky. It got to the point that we wouldn't look up at them anymore because it didn't make sense.
Second time was coming home from Bermuda to Charleston. Nothing between there.. For over a day you don't see a tanker during the 50 hour boat ride. Nothing.
We saw 5 jolting all over the sky but this time it was around 2am about mid trip home and in the middle of the ocean. They do 90 degree angles and sometimes circles and they appear to be very far away but you can clearly make out a white light.
It almost seemed like they were playing w each other... Or, a game.
I have no clue but the speed and acrobatics defy any jet or drone of this world.

 

[Antarctica]

Years ago, I did a bareboat charter in the Grenadines with some friends. On the last night, we were anchored in a small bay next to some island. We ate some lobster and started drinking all the remaining alcohol. We were pretty loaded. As darkness's came, I noticed, with several others, what appeared to be the headlights of a car or a motorcycle coming down the side of the steep mountain - it was cutting back and forth like it was coming down short switchbacks. But after a while, it seemed that it never made progress getting down the mountain. I think we were on the foredeck and yelled to the others sitting in the cockpit. One walked over to see exactly what we we were looking at, and once he saw it said "That's the masthead on that boat anchored over there swinging back and forth you drunk dumbasses!"

We laugh about it to this day...

 

[AustinR]

This is good stuff, just spent hours reading every page. Especially when planing your first backpack hunting trip..

 

[EastHumboldt]

This happened to my son. To start with he’s ex-military combat veteran, 82nd Airborne, scout sniper, Ranger School. (He had to tap out of Ranger School because his static line hung up on a jump and slammed him against the plane. He woke up on the ground with a broken collarbone and still carried his 70 lb ruck for three days before the pain made him nearly delirious). He does’nt act like a badass or pretend to be one he just is. I’m relating his tough badass bonafides just to say that he ain’t afraid of much. Doesn’t panic easily And he’s the most skilled woodsman I know. And yet...

On a backpacking trip with some friends in the Sierras they all took a short walk out of camp on the last morning of their trip. The others went back to camp and he said he’d follow shortly. When he did head back to camp he had barely gotten started when a full grown cougar appeared about 100 yards off, on the trail between him and camp. At first it just stood there and then advanced on him. He yelled and threw some rocks in the big cat’s direction, but the cat just paced sideways and switched its tail, unafraid. Normally he carries a .45 or 9mm auto, but he’d left it in camp. I’m somewhat convinced that predators will read your body language, and if you approach them with a sincere deadly gleam in your eye, and the swagger of a killer, you may have a chance to back them down. OTOH they may just accept this invitation to fight. At any rate it’s hard to pull off when your only weapon is a rock.

He tried to walk around it but the cat just blocked him and the landscape offered few options, so he started walking away from camp, hoping it would lose interest. No dice... it followed him for three hours. Never attacking or bluff charging, but also not backing off. Finally he came to a near vertical cliff band about 60 feet high, and nearly 1/2 a mile long. Being a fairly skilled rock climber, he figured the cat would not be able to follow. And he was right. The cat started to go along the base of the cliff in one direction and he watched until he felt the cat was committed then hightailed it in the other. He managed to put a large distance between himself and the cat. It was then, his attention no longer focused on the large predator, that he noticed three things. 1) Three or so hours had passed. 2) He had no water or food, and just his clothes and a large pocket knife. 3) He was lost.

Not seriously lost... he just didn’t know where he was!! This is pretty open country with lots of Jeffry Pine and alpine scrub growing in rolling rocky basins flanked by ridges. One basin looks very much like the rest and it’s pretty easy to get disoriented, especially when you are distracted by being hunted. He new he was south of CA 88 by a few miles and all he had to do was walk north. Once he found the highway he’d know where he was and be able to hitch a ride to his car. Well anyone who has ever traveled in real mountains knows this. “Just walk north” is easy on the map, often hard to near impossible on the ground. He walked north (and various other directions as needed) until nearly sundown. He ended up drinking a little water out of a tiny rock pothole and did not get back to camp until the next morning. He got out in time to stop his friends who were in the process of organizing a search.

 

[TonySkyline]

Wow.^^^^. After watching that video of the cougar following that hiker, I cant imagine what he went through! This had to be much much worse.

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk

 

[Yukon_Jack]

2021 bump

 

[Warmsy]

Some light reading...

 

[505Wapiti]

As they say, “all good things must come to an end”. Please say it isn’t so for this thread.

 

[Gen273]

As they say, “all good things must come to an end”. Please say it isn’t so for this thread.

I agree; this thread can not die. It has been one of my all-time favorites!!

 

[1woolie89]

Well I have one, not really crazy or anything. One morning back in 2018, I was getting ready to go sit a spot by a creek near 7 oaks CA for the AO D14 opener. It was about 5am still dark, owls still going off here and there. I was loading my gear up and strapping my back on checking my head lamp exc exc. The night sky was moonless and stars were still out, really a beautiful morning coming, but as I started out on my walk off the trail to my Sit. I felt somthing weird hit the back of my neck like chills you get when you go on a roller coaster.

I noticed this instantly and felt fear, next I know I hear LOUD loud stomping like heavy foot steps at least 50 feet from me in the pitch black dark. I try to hit it with my head lamp and can’t see anything as the sounds getting faster and closer. It sounded almost like boots slamming the dirt. I freaked and hauled ass back to my truck which was only about 40 yards away At this point. I jumped in pack on and all started it turn the high beams on and reversed the lights to were I came running. Nothing, not a damn thing was moving. I sat there until sunrise on edge with only my bow and 10 inch blade on me.

To this day I Tell my wife this story from time to time. She thinks it was just a bear, I agree to a point, but then you think about how silent a bear really is, and it makes you wonder.

 

[stoneramhunter]

I've posted this here before, but we ran into this super strange little...structure? Gave me the creeps the first time we found it last year.

View attachment 113226 View attachment 113227
View attachment 113228

View attachment 113229

thats much like backcountry shelters we build when caught in nasty weather.. with no tent watch my friends video " Epic 39 day stone sheep hunt" its on youtube. they had to build a shelter to spend the night on the side of a mountain

 

[lyle_destroys]

So I had something weird happen to me and my best friend this deer season and I didn't realize how odd it was until later on.

We have been backpack hunting a section of the allegheny national forest the last couple years. We camp against a huge boulder with a small overhang to shelter us from the december weather. Now we have been to this spot multiple times and spent a lot of time pre season cutting firewood, setting up stands, camping, ect. Right beside where we camp is a small crevice under another boulder that we planned to keep gear or wood in to stay dry when we weren't there, and have examined this space several times.

This season after I had been up there for 3 days and he had been there for 2, we ran into another hunter and bs'd for a while. My friend stated that we needed to bring a shovel up for cat holes after the other hunter walked off. I shit you not, I turned around and something yellow caught my attention in that crevice. I reached in and grabbed a full size fiberglass handled shovel. There were no signs of anyone camping there before. We never took a shovel up. Had cleaned leaves and debris out of that crevice multiple times before and there it lay. It literally appeared out of thin air, I don't have any way of explaining how it happened or how we could have missed it before. Probably the most bizarre thing that's happened to me in the woods.

This red arrow points to a moss covered rock, the crevice is just behind it.

 

[Nickofthewoods]

2021 bump

Here you go Creepers. Had to reach way back into the memory bank for these.

Routt National Forest, Summer 2004.

I was a teenager and myself and two friends went camping up a 4x4 road and set up camp near the dead end. We hadn't seen any other people or camps for several miles while driving in. Looking back at where we were now, that spot is fairly isolated by Colorado standards, as far as camping from a vehicle goes anyway. So we are sitting around the fire not being quiet when around midnight or so we hear some animals in the woods behind us in the distance. It sounded like there were a few of them. It's hard to describe the sounds but they were soft and sort of high pitched. Imagine the quieter vocalizations that a chimp makes and that is almost an exact match. At the time we were sitting at the fire we thought they were maybe Turkeys. Obviously we didn't know back then that Turkeys roosted at night or we would have ruled that out. The noises were very slowly getting closer and started to make us uncomfortable to the point that we all went into the big 8 person tent we had setup. The truck was a bit farther away or I think we would have all jumped inside it. Whatever they were came right through camp with a big fire going. I remember we were all too terrified to unzip the tent and look because the door wasn't facing the fire so someone would have to stick their head around the side. It seems so ridiculous now, i wish I'd have just looked. The animals eventually kept going in the direction of a lake past our camp.
Before you go thinking that this is a Bigfoot story, I'll just say that from memory I don't recall thinking that these were particularly large animals and I don't really remember hearing footsteps, just the vocalizations. What animals would walk right by a campfire though? I guess we'll never know. . .

Arapahoe Basin Parking Lot, December 2005

Back when they let you camp in the upper lot across the highway from the Ski Area my buddies and I would drive up and sleep in the car to avoid the I-70 traffic in the mornings. One clear night with a big moon, a friend and I had just turned in. I was sleeping in the backseat of the SUV and my friend was in the front Passenger seat reclined back, sound comfy? I had just dozed off when I felt the vehicle move just slightly and my buddy shot awake and goes "Whoa"! I sat up just in time to see a furry white creature on the hood of the car stretching up to the roof. At the sound of our commotion inside it dropped back down on all fours and jumped off the hood. Afterwards my buddy realized that he left a bag of food on top of the roof and the animal was clearly trying to get it. What the heck is about the size of a large dog, stealthy, and pure white? I'll never forget that it was as white as the snow all over. I don't think it had a tail. When its back legs were on the hood and it was stretched up over the windshield you couldn't see it's front legs or head. When it jumped down though I remember it moved more like a cat. Large Albino Raccoon with no tail? New species? Lol.

 

[Voyageur]

So I had something weird happen to me and my best friend this deer season and I didn't realize how odd it was until later on.

We have been backpack hunting a section of the allegheny national forest the last couple years. We camp against a huge boulder with a small overhang to shelter us from the december weather. Now we have been to this spot multiple times and spent a lot of time pre season cutting firewood, setting up stands, camping, ect. Right beside where we camp is a small crevice under another boulder that we planned to keep gear or wood in to stay dry when we weren't there, and have examined this space several times.

This season after I had been up there for 3 days and he had been there for 2, we ran into another hunter and bs'd for a while. My friend stated that we needed to bring a shovel up for cat holes after the other hunter walked off. I shit you not, I turned around and something yellow caught my attention in that crevice. I reached in and grabbed a full size fiberglass handled shovel. There were no signs of anyone camping there before. We never took a shovel up. Had cleaned leaves and debris out of that crevice multiple times before and there it lay. It literally appeared out of thin air, I don't have any way of explaining how it happened or how we could have missed it before. Probably the most bizarre thing that's happened to me in the woods.

This red arrow points to a moss covered rock, the crevice is just behind it.View attachment 253567

Looks like a beautiful spot to camp.

 

[def90]

Here you go Creepers. Had to reach way back into the memory bank for these.

Routt National Forest, Summer 2004.

I was a teenager and myself and two friends went camping up a 4x4 road and set up camp near the dead end. We hadn't seen any other people or camps for several miles while driving in. Looking back at where we were now, that spot is fairly isolated by Colorado standards, as far as camping from a vehicle goes anyway. So we are sitting around the fire not being quiet when around midnight or so we hear some animals in the woods behind us in the distance. It sounded like there were a few of them. It's hard to describe the sounds but they were soft and sort of high pitched. Imagine the quieter vocalizations that a chimp makes and that is almost an exact match. At the time we were sitting at the fire we thought they were maybe Turkeys. Obviously we didn't know back then that Turkeys roosted at night or we would have ruled that out. The noises were very slowly getting closer and started to make us uncomfortable to the point that we all went into the big 8 person tent we had setup. The truck was a bit farther away or I think we would have all jumped inside it. Whatever they were came right through camp with a big fire going. I remember we were all too terrified to unzip the tent and look because the door wasn't facing the fire so someone would have to stick their head around the side. It seems so ridiculous now, i wish I'd have just looked. The animals eventually kept going in the direction of a lake past our camp.
Before you go thinking that this is a Bigfoot story, I'll just say that from memory I don't recall thinking that these were particularly large animals and I don't really remember hearing footsteps, just the vocalizations. What animals would walk right by a campfire though? I guess we'll never know. . .

Arapahoe Basin Parking Lot, December 2005

Back when they let you camp in the upper lot across the highway from the Ski Area my buddies and I would drive up and sleep in the car to avoid the I-70 traffic in the mornings. One clear night with a big moon, a friend and I had just turned in. I was sleeping in the backseat of the SUV and my friend was in the front Passenger seat reclined back, sound comfy? I had just dozed off when I felt the vehicle move just slightly and my buddy shot awake and goes "Whoa"! I sat up just in time to see a furry white creature on the hood of the car stretching up to the roof. At the sound of our commotion inside it dropped back down on all fours and jumped off the hood. Afterwards my buddy realized that he left a bag of food on top of the roof and the animal was clearly trying to get it. What the heck is about the size of a large dog, stealthy, and pure white? I'll never forget that it was as white as the snow all over. I don't think it had a tail. When its back legs were on the hood and it was stretched up over the windshield you couldn't see it's front legs or head. When it jumped down though I remember it moved more like a cat. Large Albino Raccoon with no tail? New species? Lol.

Both Lynx and Bobcats have an all white under belly and can have a light gray coat, neither have tails. You probably had a bobcat or lynx on your hood.

As far as the animals coming through camp.. could be almost anything, I’ve heard elk make weird noises and they can be silent movers, blue grouse come to mind as well.