Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[Teodoro]

It's honestly not much to look at, just some old field stones set out as headstones. After seeing a couple that were officially identified, I've stumbled on a few over the years. This one has a low wall to mark it and a little pillar. Otherwise I might not even have been sure that I was looking at a graveyard.

 

[loganwayne]

I'm going to need pictures of this.

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If it's like the one on my buddies property it's just stones sticking up (leaned over) only reason he knew they were there is they were disclosed on his property deed

 

[gabenzeke]

It's honestly not much to look at, just some old field stones set out as headstones. After seeing a couple that were officially identified, I've stumbled on a few over the years. This one has a low wall to mark it and a little pillar. Otherwise I might not even have been sure that I was looking at a graveyard.
View attachment 766741

Pretty interesting even if it isn't a lot to look at.

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[bigbassin]

To get to one of my spots, I walk past a slave cemetery.

I’ve been hunting behind an old overgrown cemetery this bow season. Coyotes must be bedding in it and they lose their mind yipping at sunrise.

If you’d never heard the sounds they can make, and you heard them coming out of the cemetery I could see that resulting in a story or two.

 

[loganwayne]

I've hunted on the edge of a small family grave yard from the 1920s. It was kinda creepy but also thr perfect spot to shot a buck that was walking the bench right below the graveyard. But I shot a buck there and so did another buddy.


There are a ton of family grave yards in Central NC. Alot of public land use to be some family's farm. The only thing that still kinda freaks me out is old wells that aren't capped. Nearly fell into one and you'd never have thought that the area had a house there at one point.

 

[wyogoat]

I’ll add to this since I just got back and this is toward the top. Elk hunted the past few days 2 miles up an established trail with zero human activity. No tracks other than mine anywhere on the trail. I religiously kick sticks off of trails. Always have. For one, I don’t want to trip in the dark and two don’t want to make any noise. I cleared this trail in and out twice a day, just habit. Every trip in and out there were MANY sticks only in the trail, perfectly perpendicular to the trail so they were across it. One or two in two miles, ok, limbs fall. Literally 20 a trip…probably seems insignificant but when you start noticing seems very Blair Witchy…which I don’t care what anyone says, that’s the scariest movie a solo backcountry hunter can watch. Don’t do it.

 

[BUCKELK]

I've got one more weird one from southwest NM. It took place in 2017 in a roadless wilderness study area. I'm with a group of 4 guys, all good friends in mid 30's. We have 2 bull elk tags between the 4 of us and are 5 miles into this roadless area and set up a spike camp. No horses, just on foot. Before sunrise the next am, we take off and split up into pairs and we are each going to climb to two peaks that are approximately 2 miles apart and glass the morning, as we have not been here before.

Well, the guy I'm paired with and I make it to the edge of the last drainage we need to cross before climbing to our peak, and we see a camp. We are immediately pissed that someone else made it into here before us. We can see the tent clear as day across this drainage and it has an obvious lantern hanging from the tent pole with two guys milling about this tent looking like they are getting boots on, etc. before the day. It is still an hour before sunup. We made sure to turn headlamps off to not give away our position. We can see our other pair of friends red headlamps a mile away as they are climbing the other peak. Well, we just start following them, pissed off that this camp is right below our peak that we were going to glass. We figured our buddies saw this camp as well, as it was lit up and in a relatively high, open spot.

When we finally peaked out on our buddies mountain, they were like, "why the hell aren't you glassing from the other peak"? We said, because of those other guys camp. They got there first and there is no way elk are moving there anyway with their camp overlooking that drainage. The other two guys never saw this camp. They thought we were crazy. Anyway, that afternoon we all 4 made our way down and back to spike camp together, but we were going to introduce ourselves to that other camp on the way back. All that was there were the remains of an old shredded canvas wall tent with a rusty lantern laying half buried in the dirt and a few old steel pots and pans. This camp was at least 50 years old. No boot prints, nothing. I never had an uneasy feeling this entire time. I don't read about or believe in hauntings or ghost stories, but I cannot explain this any other way than we were witnessing two buddies trapped for eternity in their last hunting camp for some reason. We still refer to that drainage as ghost camp, and have been back several times since and never had any hair raising feelings. I like to think those two guys are good old boys from a previous time that would rather give us a cup of coffee than spook us in some way.

 

[wyogoat]

I've got one more weird one from southwest NM. It took place in 2017 in a roadless wilderness study area. I'm with a group of 4 guys, all good friends in mid 30's. We have 2 bull elk tags between the 4 of us and are 5 miles into this roadless area and set up a spike camp. No horses, just on foot. Before sunrise the next am, we take off and split up into pairs and we are each going to climb to two peaks that are approximately 2 miles apart and glass the morning, as we have not been here before.

Well, the guy I'm paired with and I make it to the edge of the last drainage we need to cross before climbing to our peak, and we see a camp. We are immediately pissed that someone else made it into here before us. We can see the tent clear as day across this drainage and it has an obvious lantern hanging from the tent pole with two guys milling about this tent looking like they are getting boots on, etc. before the day. It is still an hour before sunup. We made sure to turn headlamps off to not give away our position. We can see our other pair of friends red headlamps a mile away as they are climbing the other peak. Well, we just start following them, pissed off that this camp is right below our peak that we were going to glass. We figured our buddies saw this camp as well, as it was lit up and in a relatively high, open spot.

When we finally peaked out on our buddies mountain, they were like, "why the hell aren't you glassing from the other peak"? We said, because of those other guys camp. They got there first and there is no way elk are moving there anyway with their camp overlooking that drainage. The other two guys never saw this camp. They thought we were crazy. Anyway, that afternoon we all 4 made our way down and back to spike camp together, but we were going to introduce ourselves to that other camp on the way back. All that was there were the remains of an old shredded canvas wall tent with a rusty lantern laying half buried in the dirt and a few old steel pots and pans. This camp was at least 50 years old. No boot prints, nothing. I never had an uneasy feeling this entire time. I don't read about or believe in hauntings or ghost stories, but I cannot explain this any other way than we were witnessing two buddies trapped for eternity in their last hunting camp for some reason. We still refer to that drainage as ghost camp, and have been back several times since and never had any hair raising feelings. I like to think those two guys are good old boys from a previous time that would rather give us a cup of coffee than spook us in some way.

I got cold chills reading that one in my living room…
I have a buddy that has a story I don’t like to even think about. I don’t remember all the details so I won’t butcher it on here but I think I’ll go back to happier threads.

 

[lyle_destroys]

I got cold chills reading that one in my living room…
I have a buddy that has a story I don’t like to even think about. I don’t remember all the details so I won’t butcher it on here but I think I’ll go back to happier threads.

You should ask him about it, have him text it to you and post it here!

 

[pertnear]

You should ask him about it, have him text it to you and post it here!

+1 ^^^ Yes, this!

 

[rookieforever33]

Here's a two-parter from when I was probably around 10 years old or so. This was on a South Texas ranch my dad had leased on the Nueces river. Dad wanted to sit in a pretty tight spot up in a skinny tripod and offered to let me sit in a big box blind alone. I was scared as it would be my first time but I knew the drill and was educated, he promised he wouldn't let it get dark. This was in the 80's so most people didn't have all the gadgets and headlamps and stuff. He dropped me off with my Win 70 youth 243 and headed out in the truck. Pace was 6,000 acres and his spot was a ways away. I still remember watching the truck go as far as I could see them watching the dust trail rise. I guess about an hour goes by and I see this giant body round the corner, it was Bubba the old mean Brahma bull. This place has tons of cattle but Bubba had a reputation. I'm way up high in a blind so no big deal, until Bubba decided he needed a back scratch and came up and started scraping on the blind legs. I thought for sure the blind was gonna fall over, almost shot that bull but I kept thinking about the trouble I'd be in. He finally quit and walked off.

So fast forward to roughly sunset, dad packs up and heads my way. Along the drive he spots a very large mature doe alone without a fawn and she trots off into a thicket where she thinks she's covered, dad creeps up to the fence line and shoots and she drops. He can hear her bleeting over and over non-stop. There's nonroad over there and he'd have to hop the fence and walk, but it's quickly getting dark and he's worried about me in the blind. He figures the doe is spined and likely going to expire and decides to haul butt to pick me up and then come back. He comes flying up to the blind telling me to hurry up we've gotta go out a doe down. We get over to the fence line and dad, myself, and stepmother hop out of the truck and go walking in. Dad has two knives and a mag light, stepmother and I only have some latex gloves and such. We all walk in there to where the doe was and she's not there. We can see some drag marks and blood trail so dad figures she's dragging herself with her front legs and feels terrible about it so we take off following these drag marks. He's the only one with a flashlight so we're close behind him. Walking through this thick stuff with sort of a trail corridor we start seeing eyes flash at the edge of the brush, flash on our right then a couple seconds later flash on the left. Eyes are sort of paralleling us as we walk. We come around a bend in this trail and there's the doe, sitting quietly with her head up and eyes glassed over like she's mentally checked out. I remember her neck was really shiny in the light, shiny from chin to shoulders and thought it looked really strange. Dad hands me the light and tells me he's gonna go cut her throat and stresses the importance of keeping the light on this deer and not moving it while he's trying to put her down, the eyes were still around so he knew I'd be moving the light around. So I hold the light and dad walks up to this deer, got the knife ready and reaches for her head. Right as he reaches for the head the most blood curdling scream rips out right next to us in the brunch, freaking mountain lion scream so close it was like it was screaming directly into my ears. Stepmother is running in place and making weird noises, I'm holding the light on the deer's head with the willpower stronger than an oak tree, Dad's got the knife in fighting position yelling at me to shine the light on the lion, it was chaotic and somewhat comical. Dad pulls us in and says keep our backs together so we're standing in formation, slowly backing out back down the trail with our backs all together. Once we get out of the thicket we turn and walk rapidly back to the truck. We get to the truck and stepmother loses it and starts crying and I'm silent sort of in shock. Dad puts us in the truck, grabs his freaking 380 pistol and says y'all stay here I'll go get the deer. WHAT?!? Yep, that nut walked back in there by himself with a 380, slit the deer's throat with his knife and gutted that deer where it sat and said the whole time the eyes were circling around the edges of the brush. This little opening was maybe 10 yards across from thick wall of brush to thick wall of brush, wasn't much room to breath. After what seemed like eternity we finally see his flashlight slowly making it's way out of the thicket and into the opening.headed back to the truck dragging this deer, dragged that thing all the way to the truck and wouldn't let us out of the truck to help him load it. He got back in and nobody said a word all the way back to camp. I never even got to tell him about how Bubba almost killed me..

Your dad is a braver man than most. Including me!