Creepy experiences in the backcountry

Beaveralum said:
About 15 years ago I was doing some early season elk scouting with my dad, brother, and brother’s girlfriend at the time. We were scouting area that we had hunted the year prior, but pushing further into areas of this timber property we did not access the year before. This timber company is bordered by a large well known state park and is somewhere in the ballpark of 30-40 thousand acres.

We worked up a ridge on an old overgrown logging road and at the top where the ground leveled out, came across a long thin pond on the west side of the gravel road. The pond was maybe 30-40 yards across, surrounded by thick scrub brush/blackberry’s immediately followed by thick timber.

We paused at the pond to check it for game sign, and take a quick rest before pressing further on our scouting trip. When we heard something big start crashing through the trees/brush on the other side of the pond from us. Because it was so thick we couldn’t see what it was, but I know this area has deer/elk/bears/cougars, basically everything you can buy a tag for.

At first we thought, kick ass! Animals must use this pond to access water, great spot to set up a tree stand. But the longer we stood there, we realized the crashing sounds we heard were moving side to side, not away from us like we would have expected. It sounded like a truck moving back and forth, and went on for at least five minutes while we stood there hoping to catch a glimpse of what was moving.

That’s when things got weird to a level we still haven’t fully figured out. Whatever was thrashing the trees started vocalizing. As Christ Jesus as my witness, it sounded like a monkey started screaming at us. Not like a cute little pocket monkey, but like a howler monkey or orangutan.

At about that point we all realized it was probably best is we got the hell out of there.

A couple months later during bow hunting season, I was hunting that same property but about a mile from the previously mentioned location. I was hunkered down in some deep old growth enjoying the afternoon, when the same vocalizations started screaming off again. I could tell it was much further away, so I sat and listened to it for 10-15 minutes before I decided my night was done and I made the couple mile walk out well before dark.
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Nope, just nope. There could have been a 350 bull in there and I'd have left him with Sasquatch
 
if I've already posted this sorry for the replay...

about 25 years ago I would take a week or two to hunt and fish by myself so i wasnt beholden to anyone else. I had a canopy/topper on my truck so I could sleep in it and go where the wind took me.

It was early or mid October and beautiful sunny weather.
One night I found myself on the plateau between Brewster and Waterville Wa. In those days, you rarely saw people during the day, none at night.

There have been a few violent encounters and and a few murders in isolated places like I was at so I had a pistol and slept with a shotgun too.

Some time after midnight I woke up instantly wide awake and alert to the point I consciously kept my eyes closed and just listened for a minute or two. The night was absolutely silent, no crickets, no nothing...

The weird thing was it was brighter than it should have been regarding the moon's position.

I finally sat up and looked around the truck, nothing to see. no movement, no vehicles, nothing.

so I stuck my head out the window and looked around.

That's when I saw the Aurora Borealis hanging across the entire northern sky in wavy sheets of pale white with a hint of green. Like giant curtains blowing in the wind, but in super slow motion.

To this day I don't know why I woke the way I did, maybe it was just the light through my eyelids that caused it.

It went from creepy to one of the coolest things I've seen.
 
Beaveralum said:
About 15 years ago I was doing some early season elk scouting with my dad, brother, and brother’s girlfriend at the time. We were scouting area that we had hunted the year prior, but pushing further into areas of this timber property we did not access the year before. This timber company is bordered by a large well known state park and is somewhere in the ballpark of 30-40 thousand acres.

We worked up a ridge on an old overgrown logging road and at the top where the ground leveled out, came across a long thin pond on the west side of the gravel road. The pond was maybe 30-40 yards across, surrounded by thick scrub brush/blackberry’s immediately followed by thick timber.

We paused at the pond to check it for game sign, and take a quick rest before pressing further on our scouting trip. When we heard something big start crashing through the trees/brush on the other side of the pond from us. Because it was so thick we couldn’t see what it was, but I know this area has deer/elk/bears/cougars, basically everything you can buy a tag for.

At first we thought, kick ass! Animals must use this pond to access water, great spot to set up a tree stand. But the longer we stood there, we realized the crashing sounds we heard were moving side to side, not away from us like we would have expected. It sounded like a truck moving back and forth, and went on for at least five minutes while we stood there hoping to catch a glimpse of what was moving.

That’s when things got weird to a level we still haven’t fully figured out. Whatever was thrashing the trees started vocalizing. As Christ Jesus as my witness, it sounded like a monkey started screaming at us. Not like a cute little pocket monkey, but like a howler monkey or orangutan.

At about that point we all realized it was probably best is we got the hell out of there.

A couple months later during bow hunting season, I was hunting that same property but about a mile from the previously mentioned location. I was hunkered down in some deep old growth enjoying the afternoon, when the same vocalizations started screaming off again. I could tell it was much further away, so I sat and listened to it for 10-15 minutes before I decided my night was done and I made the couple mile walk out well before dark.
Click to expand...
Now we are talking about a hunt!!! PM the OnX pin for that kind of action. I wanna walk in there and come eye to eye with a genuine Jerry Clower hunting monkey wearing a coon light and carrying a pistol!
 
My wife and I were tent camping a few years back. I woke up in the middle of the night to watch a mouse the size of a squirrel crawl into our tent. I am afraid of rats and mice. And spiders. I watched this mouse on steroids jump onto my pillow with his arms and legs all stretched out like he's in full killer mouse mode.

I come bolt upright and grab my RK signature model Maglite and light up the tent. I tell my wife that I been attacked by the biggest baddest mouse I've ever seen. My wife calmly asks me if I had been "smoking" before bed. I get a stupid kind of feel bad look and admit that I may be less than lucid. Sweet wife asks "did a mouse really jump on your pillow and attack you?" "Probably not" I replied, feeling pretty foolish.

Vindication!!!

Just as I admit the whole thing might have never happened, a normal size mouse runs along the inside edge of our tent! I freak out and start hitting at this mouse with the Maglite like a little girl. I want absolutely nothing to do with this rabies hanta-virus aids & ebola carrying rodent.

Wife takes a different approach all together. She goes full Mike Tyson on this thing. Chasing it around the tent unit she corners it punching the whole time. Bam Bam Bam! It collapses in the corner, bleeding from its ears. Crisis averted.

This is all true, I was there. I most definitely watched it craw into the tent and jump on my pillow. I may have overestimated the size a little.
 
I'll tell the best I've got.

- A friend and I jogged up a mountain in college, then turned around and decided to follow a game trail back. There started to be more and more bushes around us until we were bush whacking through head-tall bushes. Suddenly we came out into a clearing under a large tree, surrounded by bushes, bones everywhere. Pretty sure it was a lion den.

- I was getting ready to rappel down a little climbing route with a different friend so we could climb back up. A storm was coming in but we figured we were ok since we were pretty far down the mountain. All of a sudden, I came to lying on the ground and the soles of both feet hurt a lot. Lightning had struck nearby. The soles of my feet felt burned for 2 months after that.

- There's a golf course near here with a big lake, woods, and a trail through the woods. I was jogging at like 10pm through the deepest, darkest part of the woods. No shirt and no light cause that's how I roll. I suddenly came upon four teenagers standing together, blocking most of the trail, huddled up talking. They all had backpacks on. I think they were trading pokemon cards. I scared them and they scared me.
 
ME_Andy said:
I'll tell the best I've got.

- A friend and I jogged up a mountain in college, then turned around and decided to follow a game trail back. There started to be more and more bushes around us until we were bush whacking through head-tall bushes. Suddenly we came out into a clearing under a large tree, surrounded by bushes, bones everywhere. Pretty sure it was a lion den.
.
Click to expand...

Coulda been Cave Trolls. Read about them in a hobbit book. Pretty nasty.

The bones are a dead giveaway.
 
Pharmseller said:
Coulda been Cave Trolls. Read about them in a hobbit book. Pretty nasty.

The bones are a dead giveaway.
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I was gonna ask if they were people bones. Because a lot of serial killer cannibals will drag dead folks thru the woods to a clearing like described above for butchering and disposal. It only takes 3-5 bodies and suddenly the track you use starts to look like a game trail. That's my experience anyway.
 
gwtravis said:
I was gonna ask if they were people bones. Because a lot of serial killer cannibals will drag dead folks thru the woods to a clearing like described above for butchering and disposal. It only takes 3-5 bodies and suddenly the track you use starts to look like a game trail. That's my experience anyway.
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Uhh… Care to elaborate on your experience?
 
ME_Andy said:
I'll tell the best I've got.

- A friend and I jogged up a mountain in college, then turned around and decided to follow a game trail back. There started to be more and more bushes around us until we were bush whacking through head-tall bushes. Suddenly we came out into a clearing under a large tree, surrounded by bushes, bones everywhere. Pretty sure it was a lion den.

- I was getting ready to rappel down a little climbing route with a different friend so we could climb back up. A storm was coming in but we figured we were ok since we were pretty far down the mountain. All of a sudden, I came to lying on the ground and the soles of both feet hurt a lot. Lightning had struck nearby. The soles of my feet felt burned for 2 months after that.

- There's a golf course near here with a big lake, woods, and a trail through the woods. I was jogging at like 10pm through the deepest, darkest part of the woods. No shirt and no light cause that's how I roll. I suddenly came upon four teenagers standing together, blocking most of the trail, huddled up talking. They all had backpacks on. I think they were trading pokemon cards. I scared them and they scared me.
Click to expand...

This is an all-time great first Rokslide post.
 
ME_Andy said:
I'll tell the best I've got.

- A friend and I jogged up a mountain in college, then turned around and decided to follow a game trail back. There started to be more and more bushes around us until we were bush whacking through head-tall bushes. Suddenly we came out into a clearing under a large tree, surrounded by bushes, bones everywhere. Pretty sure it was a lion den.

- I was getting ready to rappel down a little climbing route with a different friend so we could climb back up. A storm was coming in but we figured we were ok since we were pretty far down the mountain. All of a sudden, I came to lying on the ground and the soles of both feet hurt a lot. Lightning had struck nearby. The soles of my feet felt burned for 2 months after that.

- There's a golf course near here with a big lake, woods, and a trail through the woods. I was jogging at like 10pm through the deepest, darkest part of the woods. No shirt and no light cause that's how I roll. I suddenly came upon four teenagers standing together, blocking most of the trail, huddled up talking. They all had backpacks on. I think they were trading pokemon cards. I scared them and they scared me.
Click to expand...

Hahaha Pokémon cards


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have several weird stories. This one still puzzles me. Me and my good friend are hunting in Indiana around French lick area driving some back roads to check out some chunks of public ground. We see this older car parked on the edge of a corn field I can't recall the make of it, kind of looked like a gran torino with a big 4 barrel blower sticking out of the hood, had a big pioneer seed symbol on the side of it and older guy with a straw hat getting into it. He pulled out in front of us and turned on a side road not 100 yards in front of us, when we pulled up to the side road he was gone, no dust, no trace, just gone. And it was dead straight as far as we could see, It was probably 5 seconds till we made it to that road. Weirdest shit ever.
 
Kcole1987 said:
I have several weird stories. This one still puzzles me. Me and my good friend are hunting in Indiana around French lick area driving some back roads to check out some chunks of public ground. We see this older car parked on the edge of a corn field I can't recall the make of it, kind of looked like a grand terino with a big 4 barrel blower sticking out of the hood, had a big pioneer seed symbol on the side of it and older guy with a straw hat getting into it. He pulled out in front of us and turned on a side road not 100 yards in front of us, when we pulled up to the side road he was gone, no dust, no trace, just gone. And it was dead straight as far as we could see, It was probably 5 seconds till we made it to that road. Weirdest shit ever.
Click to expand...
Ive heard stories about the "Old Farmer" appearing to guys out bailing hay or combining at night and how it's supposed to be an omen but over never heard one like that.
 
My dad tells this story all the time and I believe it, given his personality and everything. He's a typical engineer, not a horoscope believer or something. My family takes this as proof that some level of ESP is real.

Growing up, there was a spring fed garden 10 minutes from the house. He was working out there when he got a strong urge to call his parents. He walked back to the house and called home. His mom answered and said, "Stan, your father just passed away 10 minutes ago." That urge came upon him probably at the exact time of death!
 
longrangelead said:
if I've already posted this sorry for the replay...

about 25 years ago I would take a week or two to hunt and fish by myself so i wasnt beholden to anyone else. I had a canopy/topper on my truck so I could sleep in it and go where the wind took me.

It was early or mid October and beautiful sunny weather.
One night I found myself on the plateau between Brewster and Waterville Wa. In those days, you rarely saw people during the day, none at night.

There have been a few violent encounters and and a few murders in isolated places like I was at so I had a pistol and slept with a shotgun too.

Some time after midnight I woke up instantly wide awake and alert to the point I consciously kept my eyes closed and just listened for a minute or two. The night was absolutely silent, no crickets, no nothing...

The weird thing was it was brighter than it should have been regarding the moon's position.

I finally sat up and looked around the truck, nothing to see. no movement, no vehicles, nothing.

so I stuck my head out the window and looked around.

That's when I saw the Aurora Borealis hanging across the entire northern sky in wavy sheets of pale white with a hint of green. Like giant curtains blowing in the wind, but in super slow motion.

To this day I don't know why I woke the way I did, maybe it was just the light through my eyelids that caused it.

It went from creepy to one of the coolest things I've seen.
Click to expand...

That part about complete silence; no crickets or anything- now that's weird.
There's a cool outdoor youtuber named ReallyBigMonkey1 who told of a very, very similar experience in the backwoods of Georgia. Only he said it creeped him out to the point he packed up and went back home right then in the middle of the night.

And Luke from Outdoor Gear Review also told a story that was remarkably similar.
 
Wow. Spent almost a week reading this thread. How did I not find this before??? Cool, creepy stories. Thanks to all who contributed. I have a few I feel like I can post. I’ll start with this one:

Preface: I’m a Florida man, born and raised. Judge if you must, I hear we have a reputation, and I aim to keep it that way. Tell your friends about us. Haha. Moved to California for work and have been here long enough. But the Sierra Nevada range of mountains, hunting and fishing in them, is unbelievable. It takes my breath away. It’s the closest to God I’ve ever been. I absolutely love it in the high country. Once you get past the altitude sickness and such…

Now, I’ll post an abbreviated version of this story to keep the word content to a minimum.

I was hunting in the mountains south of Yosemite National Forest. Still new to hunting these Blacktail/Mule deer hybrids (if that’s really what they are), and just getting in the woods in the mountains in general. Pack went from like 80 pounds to 35 pounds in a couple years. Just needed experience. And to stop “packing my fears”.

I’m new to archery hunting back in 2022. But had practiced for 2 years before toting a bow in the woods. I finally felt confident enough in my form and such, so I’m doing it.

I find beds, a few days old. Now I know deer have at least been there. Drop in elevation and circle around. It’s pretty dense new growth surrounded by a burn scar. I’m easing my way side hill to hold my elevation. And I hear movement.

I range, check. Nock an arrow, check. Check grip, stance, all the foundational things. I had that much time to think, yes. A blessing AND a curse. I see the small undergrowth trees start moving as they’re being pushed. I draw, level, and hold.

I’ve got my pin exactly where the “deer” is popping out. 40 yards. Then, a sheriff’s deputy emerges. My pin on his chest. My finger on the trigger of my release.

I almost shit my own pants, and I wasn’t the one that was about to get poked by a Montec.

I let my bow down, return the arrow to my quiver. Then I PSST to him. Scared the shit out of him, too. I motion him over. Then he reads me into the scenario.

He, along with several other deputies were on a SAR task to find a lady named Sandra Hughes….or Sandra Hughes Johnson….can’t recall completely. She was an avid outdoorsman but went missing during COVID. They found her camp. Staked it out, but never saw her. Her camp was only half a mile or so from where we were talking.

Unfortunate, and I never told that deputy how close he came to being a kebob.

Attached is a write up of her disappearance.


Edit: I have a few more to post. Just not tonight.
 
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