Creepy experiences in the backcountry

Blowdowner

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
Jun 21, 2022
Messages
175
I got one for you guys. Been lurking these forums for a few months now I figure I should contribute.

This story takes place during a rafting trip on the deschutes river in central Oregon. My girlfriend and I had decided to drive down from the Seattle area for the famous salmonfly hatch.
With that being said, due to the timing of the year there’s a ton of people on the water. Guides doing day trips, as well as other folks like my girlfriend and I spending a couple days fishing, floating, and camping.
Our first day of the trip goes by pretty poorly. I had a crappy boat and no idea what I was doing. Dry bags leaked, I hit a rock and got us a sizeable leak and then had forgotten the bucket so I spent the rest of the trip bailing out the boat with a water bottle non stop. So needless to say, we’re both pretty frustrated and tired and as the day turns to dusk we’re scouting out any possible spot to throw our tent up for the evening and get out of that crappy boat.
Finally things are looking up for us - we come up on this beautiful stretch of water with a small island diverting the river into two flows, with the main flow going along the deep left channel at a pretty good clip. On the right side bank a big clearing surrounded by tall grasses. This is where we chose to make camp for the night.
We do some fishing, cook, and decide to lay down for bed and read until it’s time to really go to sleep at full dark. Going out to take a leak nobody as far as I could see or hear had decided to camp anywhere near us, and prior to a few boats floating on by while we set up camp as far as we knew, we were alone.
That’s when the music started. At first it sounded almost faintly like someone was throwing a rave, with dance music and the like. My girlfriend and I looked at each other like “what the hell?” but we chocked it up to the wind carrying sound from far away because at this point the music was still intermittent.
It gets louder. and louder. And now we can make out the music except it’s not. You know that feeling when someone is blasting the bass out of their car subwoofers and you can feel it in your chest, and in your head? We’re feeling their, whoever they are, music through the ground as we’re trying to sleep. and all we can hear is this unworldly, jarring, collection of disjointed bass / drum notes coming through the ground. It doesn’t resemble any music I’ve ever heard, or even any sort of “beat” you could dance to.
By midnight or 1am we’re starting to getting really damn pissed off. It has been since around 10pm since they started and so that’s when I finally decide to go find whoever the hell they are and shut down that damn noise. I have one of those really powerful headlights that lets you output like 1500 lumens for a short burst and it really just lights up the whole damned countryside for hundreds of feet.
So all pissed off I jump out of the tent and turn up my headlight of doom and I’m just furiously scanning everywhere I can see. Up and down the river, behind us as far as I can on our own bank, across clear to the other bank, and the little island in the middle. And there’s not a single thing in sight. Complete pitch darkness. I turn off my headlight to see if I was washing out any light and I stand there for about 10 minutes to see if my eyes adjust and see anything. Absolutely nothing at all and this maddening noise is going on endlessly.
At this point I realize it’s the same three disjointed “songs” playing over and over endlessly. My girlfriend starts crying because she’s exhausted from the bass rattling our skulls while our heads on laying down on our pillows. We’re unable to sleep for hours as this thing continues on through the night.
Finally, sometime around 4:30- 5am it must have stopped and we both drifted off to sleep. I have a hard time sleeping in so I woke up by myself at around 6:30-7 and I roll out of bed furious, once more just going out to go see if I can find whatever bastards were making that noise all night long.
We never saw or found any sign of those people. we waited until about 9am slowly breaking camp after eating breakfast before we rowed out in the main current and back rowed to try to get a good look at the other side of the small island, and we saw no signs of people.
The only reasonable theory we have is that sometime after we went to bed, some folks floated down to the far side of the little island and threw some sort of… party? Ritual? All through the night and somehow slipped out between 4:30 and 6:30 AM. If I wasn’t with my girlfriend and she hadn’t corroborated as well I would’ve thought i was going insane. Just one long maddening sleepless night full of the same noise over and over, with no evidence before, during, or after that it ever happened.

I was eyeing every boat we passed or passed us for the remainder of the trip looking for anyone who was packing serious audio equipment and we saw nothing.
Send me map coordinates or post an image of the map.
 

bigbassin

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
Oct 18, 2022
Messages
105
Tried spot and stalking some hogs this weekend. Pretty sure I was within 20 yards, just on the other side of a palmetto thicket.

Took a step hunched over down a trail leading into the palmettos and about stepped on some birds that flushed straight up into my face. That got the blood flowing
 

505Wapiti

WKR
Joined
May 11, 2020
Messages
450
Tried spot and stalking some hogs this weekend. Pretty sure I was within 20 yards, just on the other side of a palmetto thicket.

Took a step hunched over down a trail leading into the palmettos and about stepped on some birds that flushed straight up into my face. That got the blood flowing
That has potential to create a need for sacrificing a sock.
 

BBob

WKR
Joined
Jun 29, 2020
Messages
3,587
Location
Southern AZ
We’re all worried about bears, wolves, and lions. It’s the friggin owls we gotta watch out for!
You got that right. I killed a buck back in the 90's up high in the Ruby's and overnighted up on a ridge under a juniper. I woke up and needed to roll over off my hip that was killing me and something seemed to be fluttering above my head. Grabbed my headlamp and flipped it on only to about have a heart attack with a giant owl hovering over my head at arms reach. I scrunched deeper under that little tree after that!
 

Macro

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
Apr 3, 2021
Messages
116
Location
WV
My brother once saw a giant wolf, So big you'll think it was a black bear. It looked at him and walked pass. He has never been in the woods alone since then.
 

Sturgeon

WKR
Joined
Dec 11, 2017
Messages
495
Location
WI
About 12 years ago my sister and I were camping outside of Moab. Hanging out by the fire all of a sudden we start seeing these lights floating across the sky. No roads back there so they are not cars lights. Just keep seeing one every half hour for the rest of the night. A couple years later I watch Hangover 2 and realize people were setting off floating lanterns and they weren’t some type of alien spacecrafts.
 
Joined
Jan 28, 2023
Messages
11
The only thing worse than hearing banjos in the woods is hearing electronic music lol.

Hog hunting a WMA I went back in there DEEP (for Florida standards) and was about 1.5 miles back. Crossed a swamp, went across a 100’ wide knee deep, grassy, black water river (think prime gator habitat), crossed some more swamp.

Find a tree dropping persimmons with sign all around, find a comfortable tree to sit against, and think how I probably have the place all to myself considering everything I had to cross to get there.

Then the EDM music starts blaring, had to be within 100 yards of me. I’m pissed, but also impressed because of the logistics and dedication it would have taken to get it out there. Sounded louder than double 15 subs, no clue how they dragged it that far back and across the river.

Music gets closer, until I can hear people screaming over it. Music turns off and sounds like about 3 people are moving pretty close to me but not talking.

Music turns on again after about 10 seconds, I hightailed it out of there circling way around.

Very weird deal, most likely just some weird folks throwing a weird party. And if that is the case, while I didn’t appreciate it, there’s a chance they didn’t see me and they have just as much right to be on public land.

But my gut was really leaning towards something was off. I didn’t see any reason to argue it.
Ive also pushed myself to the backside of some remote WMA's in Florida just to find a bunch of bubbas partying in their airboats....... I need an airboat :)
 
Joined
Apr 29, 2020
Messages
640
Location
MI
About a decade ago, I went looking for deer sheds in a new place here in NE Oregon. I had a pretty good day and picked up a few buck horns. As a chronic sufferer from next-ridge-itis, I was still a few miles from my truck as it was getting dark. I had stupidly left my headlight in the truck, so I knew it was going to be a long evening fumbling in the snow and deadfall timber.

Right at dark, I heard a wolf howl in the bottom of the canyon maybe 3/4 mile directly downhill (big country). I thought to myself “well that’s pretty cool,” then heard another respond a few hundred yards closer. I was really enjoying the experience until another responded ~100yd behind me in the pitch black timber with a much deeper, gut-wrenching howl.

After a moment of silence, the surrounding area ignited with howls in every which direction. No longer really enjoying the experience, I unstrapped a 4pt shed to protect myself, and began the trek towards my truck—which was right in line with the source of the deep, commanding howl.

So off I go, in the pitch black timber, in a remote area I had never been before, with nothing but a 60” shed to protect myself. Meanwhile the wolves were communicating back and forth, until the alpha would howl and shut them up momentarily with the eeriest howl you can imagine. This continues as I make my way through the woods, however every time the alpha would howl it was still ~100yd behind me. After this happens a few times, I get a solid idea of what is taking place—it’s following me. All I can do is keep hiking.

After a while, I make it back to a trail, and scoot pretty quickly back to my truck. Upon reviewing google Earth later that night and identifying landmarks, I determined that the wolf stayed right behind me for ~2.5 miles as I fumbled my way in a V-shaped line back to my truck. The next day and subsequent weekends, I went back (properly armed) and counted at least 10 wolves in that pack, and was able to identify the alpha based on his howl—a big old gray colored one.

I’ve had cats creep up on me at night, had my share of supernatural experiences (none backcountry related, thankfully), but nothing will make a guy feel more vulnerable than walking through the pitch black woods, without a headlight, without a side-arm, not really knowing where he’s going (pre OnX or GPS for me), and being followed by the alpha wolf. Needless to say, I now always carry a headlight, batteries, and some form of protection on me at all times.
Sounds like he was escorting you out of his territory
 
Joined
Jul 1, 2015
Messages
1,093
Location
Colo Spgs
Spill it! Can't just leave us hanging like that!;)

I think it was the summer of 1999. Rode horses back into the wilderness on the NE corner of Yellowstone Ntl Park to fish Crandall Creek (sunlight basin area) with my dad’s buddy that lived in Cody. It was bad enough I was scared to death of grizzlies in the area and lying wide awake next to the camp fire, but then next thing while gazing up at the stars, we spotted them.

Saw a couple shooting stars going straight across horizon. Occasional satellite moving too. But then we spotted I think 2 or 3 objects beyond the atmosphere traveling back and forth repeatedly and changing directions. It appeared like their route was like a box. They weren’t doing circles but were outlining a box with sharp corners when they traveled. All 2 or 3 of them did this for a few minutes.

And this wasn’t over a vast area of space. When looking up from the ground they only appeared to be moving within a few feet of where they originally were. You didn’t need to move your eyes much at all to watch the movement is what I’m saying. But you could tell it wasn’t airplanes because of how faint they were. They didn’t have blinking lights. They looked exactly like a star with faint light but they were moving. They blended in with the either stars except that they were moving. This went on for a few minutes and then they just either stopped moving or disappeared (can’t rem). But they definitely didn’t jet off across the horizon.

Every time my dad and I go hunting or fishing out west, he brings that up when we are star gazing at night.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Blowdowner

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
Jun 21, 2022
Messages
175
I think it was the summer of 1999. Rode horses back into the wilderness on the NE corner of Yellowstone Ntl Park to fish Crandall Creek (sunlight basin area) with my dad’s buddy that lived in Cody. It was bad enough I was scared to death of grizzlies in the area and lying wide awake next to the camp fire, but then next thing while gazing up at the stars, we spotted them.

Saw a couple shooting stars going straight across horizon. Occasional satellite moving too. But then we spotted I think 2 or 3 objects beyond the atmosphere traveling back and forth repeatedly and changing directions. It appeared like their route was like a box. They weren’t doing circles but were outlining a box with sharp corners when they traveled. All 2 or 3 of them did this for a few minutes.

And this wasn’t over a vast area of space. When looking up from the ground they only appeared to be moving within a few feet of where they originally were. You didn’t need to move your eyes much at all to watch the movement is what I’m saying. But you could tell it wasn’t airplanes because of how faint they were. They didn’t have blinking lights. They looked exactly like a star with faint light but they were moving. They blended in with the either stars except that they were moving. This went on for a few minutes and then they just either stopped moving or disappeared (can’t rem). But they definitely didn’t jet off across the horizon.

Every time my dad and I go hunting or fishing out west, he brings that up when we are star gazing at night.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Shooting star traveling AWAY from earth? Kind of corkscrewing as it goes? Or was it really square?
 
Top