Hunters share the CREEPIEST Thing that made them not want to go back into the woods (r/AskReddit)

our slash asked reddit posted by user CB nomads hunters of reddit what did you see out there that made you not want to go back into the woods my father and I were following a trail for a while so we decided to take a break and catch our breaths i sat on a log off the trail and my dad stood on the edge of the trail waiting for me to get up I hear some movement and scan around and I see a man dressed casually walking quickly down the trail with a Glock in his hand he is not really following the trail he is just walking toward my dad with haste before he comes up to my dad he asks if he's seen anything pretty normal I keep an eye on him because I don't believe he was there to hunt I think he was there to make sure my dad hadn't seen anything he wasn't supposed to he wasn't dressed like a hunter he didn't walk like a hunter and it was deer season and he decided he would take his Glock out to get a deer I wasn't buying so I put a round in the chamber and watched them talk he seemed to be confident until my dad mentioned that he was here with me and gestured in my direction I nodded and made a half-assed wave and he seemed to lose interest in us and ended the conversation shortly after and turned around and walked back the way he came just about as fast as he walked up to us it worried us a bit but we continued on we haven't been back to that area in a while my dad told me that there have been drug busts near that area in the past this isn't a supernatural tale just an experience that made me not want to go back to that area a long time ago my grandparents bought a small cabin in the woods in Pennsylvania my dad uncle and aunt are all small children my father told me this story they're all sitting around outside with a small fire going when they hear branches breaking and footsteps coming from the darkness they think it's a black bear because it's close but they can't see it it seems to be going straight for my uncle the littlest of the children he starts panicking while everyone tells him not to move now this big black beast is within arm's reach of him and he's shaking like a leaf with his eyes closed all of a sudden it opens its jaws and starts licking his face turns out that the next property over is owned by a couple who raised Newfoundland dogs and one got out my family owns a couple hundred acres of forest in eastern NC no one lives on the property anymore and hasn't for the last six or seven years we went down there to do some target shooting in October of 2017 and I decided to go walk through the outskirts of the woods to locate a good limb for our range marker as I'm walking literally and proverbially kicking rocks I come across a fairly nice but practically brand-new looking suitcase full of clothes and other personal effects no ID nothing with any sort of identifying markers on them but seemed to be closed for four people two kids and two adults one male and one female had some food coloring books etc there was a makeshift lean-to about 100 yards farther into the woods set up a trail camera and left it there for three weeks never saw anyone for reference this is 35 miles from any sizeable town or city I've got one good one I have a hunting spot that I frequent not crazy far off the grid or anything like that terrain is a pain in the ass but it's a pretty hidden spot that is close to my house anyway I hunt a lot of small game there and see a ton of mule deer any time I go out one morning I get there about 5:30 a.m. and have some time to kill before I start my hike in I have an odd feeling in the parking lot but just chalk it up to too much coffee on an empty stomach giving me anxiety so I decide to start hiking in about 300 yards into my hike I noticed this pile of down three slash branches slash general debris that I hadn't seen before it was my first time hunting this particular place this particular season so I figure some folks came out and did some fire mitigation work I don't pay too much attention to it until I noticed there's an odd amount of movement coming from it pretty small movements but it sticks out when a brush pile is wiggling on a still day it was also about 545 m and the wilderness just sort of has this stillness to it at that time that any movement is noticeable so I stopped and start examining the pile to figure out what's going on I figure there's a rabbit in there maybe some squirrels I figure I've hit the jackpot and I'm definitely about to bag something I start deciding the best way to flush whatever is going on in there and still have my shotgun up in time to take a good shot I realize I'm standing by a decent-sized branch and my best move is to just stomp on the branch if all goes according to plan everything will freeze then whatever is in there will dart out I try to figure out where the rabbit will come out of get ready and bam I stomp on the branch and snap it in half the pile goes still and that stillness and quiet is back then a mountain lion with a bloody nose and mouth pops up out of the pile at this point I'm about ten yards from the pile I have my shotgun but really don't want to shoot the lion I also don't wanted to fire a shot off in the air to scare it because all in all this was a pretty cool experience that very few people get to have it frozen was looking at me very quizzically then in one quick motion it hopped out of the brush pile ran uphill got about 40 yards from me and disappeared into the trees I've never seen something cover 40 yards uphill in such a fast graceful way one of the cooler things I've ever gotten to experience I went to check out the brush pile when it left and sure enough it was feasting on a meal deer still my favorite out in the woods story I ever tell I work in the woods for a living and I've seen a fair amount of odd things carvings and trees old beat-up cars random wood trash scattered through the woods and a fair amount of animal carcasses I've had instances where I've gotten spooked stuff like jumping big critters is always quite jolting but I can recall one rather but puckering experience I was working with a few other people at the time spaced out of sight but not out of earshot I crossed over a little Ridge ATL East two miles from the closest road in the middle of the woods and I saw what looked like a full skeleton of a cow tied together with twigs and a little bit of dwelling whoever made it had fashioned it to be sitting on a log they left a very neat pile of bones in front of the thing and nothing anywhere else I saw it and about fainted definitely really ducking odd considering how far we were off the road and how thick and steep it was I ended up getting the folks I was with to come check it out really just for craps and giggles I took note of it and we moved on to the next plots I have a picture but I'm new to this whole reddit thing so I'll try to figure out how to upload it when I was a kid a poacher must have thought I was a deer or something and shot around at me it impacted on a tree above my head I immediately fired three shots as fast as I could not at the shooter but in the air in my hunting group immediate three shots means help basically my dad and our hunting club immediately came out to find out what the duck happened by honking the horns of their trucks letting me know they were coming I basically laid on the ground until I could tell they were near the dirt road told them what happened and guessed it was probably a road poacher trying to get a deer as it came from the same road they didn't see him it was private property and we were always very aware of who was at what location and who was hunting where nobody was supposed to be in the part I was at scared the crap out of me this was mid-90s reason why I don't like hunting on public property is cause of that and I don't know the people out there not a hunter but a fly fisherman who spends every weekend out hiking remote rivers and streams in search of brown trout I live in Montreal my normal routine is to drive down to a river that starts in upstate NY fish a couple kilometers of the river where no one really lives or goes then had crossed the border and head back down to the river on the Canadian side so I'm out there on morning by myself I had been out there over a hundred times so it wasn't new territory by any means that said I was getting close to the area where other anglers had warned me about angry landowners and threats from dudes with shotguns so I was pretty alert I come down to the section of river there it kind of splits around a little island 50 ' X 100 Conda Island before it reconnects and the who river veers off to the left most days I stay left of the island there are a few holes this day I went right so my view up the river was obscured until I came around the corner of the island I get to the point look up and about 250 feet in front of me I'm standing there looking at a beige golden animal that's crossing the river first thought someone's dog hmm no homes too remote of an area I'm standing there looking at this thing crossing the river and the things are just racing through my head because what I'm looking at doesn't make sense for where I'm standing this thing still hasn't seen me it's just gingerly making its way through about one to two of water trying to cross across at a determined walk that's when I noticed the tail I know a lot of dogs but I've never seen a tail like - hair on the back of my neck goes up duck and crap I'm looking at a mountain lion in upstate NY about a kilometer from the Canadian border I take a step back behind the tree I stood there for another few seconds watching this thing cross when it got to the other side had bound up a washout Bank up about 20 in a couple bounds there was no doubt about what I saw I decide I've gone far enough for the day start making my way back to the truck which with the way the river bends is pretty much in the same direction that cat was headed ah duck me get back in the truck make my way home in contact and why Fish and Game I provided some data they say sure we'll look into it most buddies who I fish without there think I'm nuts obviously about a month later my parents send me a local news clip camping alone in the middle of Missouri the night before turkey hunting the place I found was a fairly well used campsite but no one was there about to go to sleep when I hear a truck come up I find a reason to come out use the restroom so I can get a look and maybe even ask for some good places to spot Turkey it's a dude and his girlfriend drinking beers and going for a ride they are super nice but they mentioned after our chat and before leaving watch yourself out here lots of meth heads and they won't stop for birdshot what a slug I probably have a few in my toolkit I did not sleep at all that night I walked up on a meth lab not sure if that is the right term while scouting for a hunting spot I nope the hell out of there immediately I had never encountered such a thing before and in hindsight the smell should have been a dead giveaway it wasn't until I was standing there looking at what looked like a bunch of garbage under camo tarps and such that I realized what I was looking at edit I walked back to where I had cell service called the sheriff and showed him on a map where it was bunch of them went in found nobody and made me wait with another officer for over an hour by the cruisers I'm not a hunter but I do a lot of hiking and mountain biking in the woods nothing has ever made me not want to go back but there has been some weird crap first there's just a lot of weird stuff in the woods teepees altars lean twos shrines etc some of its pretty creepy but I think most of it is just built by bored people who are trying to make something creepy so that makes it a bit less scary among the strangest of these things that I've seen are a large clearing of trees with all but one entrance blocked off by webs of red strings and a giant stone pentagram stretched across the clearing tilde 30 feet diameter a wooden tunnel leading to a small room containing defaced religious icons Buddha statues crucifixes Stars of David etc and doesn't slash hundreds of creepy polaroid pictures hanging from the ceiling ones I remember include a close-up face shot of a girl sleeping a dude brushing his teeth taken from outside of the window and a photobooth strip of two girls wear one of their faces are crossed out and I'm glad you're dead written with one word on each picture and a number of weird little shrines with creepy scriptures printed or scrawled into them but what's a lot scarier to me as stuff that isn't meant to be creepy like the aforementioned things hopefully are I once heard a distant panicked scream followed by a crashing slash thudding sound I couldn't tell from which direction it came from and I didn't hear anything else so I have no idea what it was I think the creepiest thing I've experienced was one time while walking home from school through the woods I heard people talking in the distance and I couldn't hear what they were saying but they seemed to be arguing they were quiet for a minute and then I heard them again really close now the forest was really dense here so although they sounded maybe 15 to 20 feet away I couldn't see them or pinpoint exactly where they were this time I could hear what they said guy 1 it's tucked up you guys always make me guy 2 in a hushed voice someone's coming guy 1 now also hushed cramp guy 3 from a bit further to my left than the other guys who sounded to be mostly right in front of me hurry rustling noise guy 1 duck guy 2 s HH I came around a corner and expected to see them but I couldn't see anyone I kept walking cautious and trying to be aware of my surroundings about ten feet past the corner I saw something to the left of the trail close to where the voices were coming from that caught my eye it was a bunch of stuff wrapped up in a big tarp it wasn't completely wrapped up and you could kind of see into it all I could see was something glass and I wanted to see what it was I scanned the forest behind the tarp to make sure nobody was watching and then stepped towards it suddenly one of them says keep walking very calmly I looked back into the forest but still couldn't see anyone they said go still come I looked for another second still unable to see a soul and then turned and kept walking like nothing happened I don't know what was going on but the whole thing gave me the creepiest vibe I've ever gotten went on a camping trip maybe 10 years ago and in the middle of the night we heard this incredibly loud smack way out on the water water carries sound really well so it woke us alright the duck up my first though was some drunk / deranged mother Duggar with a gun was shooting out over the lake and the sound was a bullet skimming off the surface turns out it was a beaver that smacked the crap out of the water before diving under it happened again in the early morning and we laughed it off but the notion of being out in the middle of nowhere with some homicidal prick taking potshots at you creeped me out pretty good not a hunter but here is my story I used to be a field appraiser you might call it Assessor where you live for a county in rural chaos I was at a parcel looking at a data collection some 20 foot shipping containers that had appeared in the last several months it was obvious they were being used as hunting cabins during hunting season as I was finishing up I turned around to walk back to my vehicle and standing right there were two hunters they were dressed head-to-toe like snipers with ghillie suits on with large caliber rifles pointed at me that scared the heck out of me of course they were mouthy and pissed off towards me then when they found out what I was doing that escalated things even more I don't blame them really they saw me walking around looking and measuring everything and taking photos of the place I spend a lot of time in the backcountry in the wintertime usually it's just me and a friend most trails we do are popular in the summer and totally dead once it starts to snow winter in 2014 we've hiked about two miles in and see the small black backpack in the middle of the trail we hadn't seen any other cars at the trailhead or any people around but this backpack hadn't been there long because there wasn't any snow on it it had snowed the night before it was a very odd sight we figured if it was still on the trail when we looped around we'd pick it up about four miles in and my friend and I are chatting away when I notice a large figure flailing in some trees up ahead we go quiet and can hear this man rambling while he's pacing at this point were pretty freaked out and decide to turn around when we hear Oh Hawaii there and this guy starts walking towards us and then out pops another guy with a very pricey looking video camera it turned out this flailing guy was actually a rapper and they were filming a music video for one of his new songs out in the forest they had parked before the trailhead so we didn't notice their car they ended up being super friendly and gave us a card and we figured out it was their backpack we had seen on the trail the few miles before we said our goodbyes and walked out but hot damn I was sure we were about to be killed in the woods I missed this trip with my dad and his hunting buddy they were in a remote section of southeastern Wyoming hunting for elk like any good elk hunter they were up at 3:30 to stake out their spot and watch the herd patterns before daylight as they were driving up to the spot a figure appeared in their head and by their silhouette it wasn't a hunter what was a person doing walking down the road in complete darkness with no hunting gear my dad was driving so he slowed to a crawl in his truck and his buddy prepared his sidearm as this had foul-play written all over it when they could distinguish the figure in the headlights they saw it was a girl in a tank top and underwear wearing no shoes on they stopped and verbally checked her status out the window as there could have easily been somebody staked out in the sagebrush ready to ambush when it was clear she was severely hypothermic and bleeding from her feet they got out and let her in the truck cab from there it had to have been a terrifying experience for that girl I sure wouldn't want to middle-aged rednecks picking me up 40 miles from any town they cranked up the heat full blast and drove her to a nearby country gas station where they were regular customers and friends with the owner and his wife who was a retired nurse when the girl could finally articulate her words she told them that she and her boyfriend drove out there to drink and have sex when she started having a seizure during sex he lost his temper grabbed her shoes and threw them into the sage when she got out of the car to find them he peeled off leaving her near freezing temperatures in her skivvies she has to made it she walked about four miles on a dirt road before my dad found her it's a good thing hunter start early because she easily could have died Edit thanks for the awesome response my dad is a real great guy in a true Wyoming man he seriously was more upset about getting to the elk spot late than anything else ha and to anybody doubting the veracity of the story or thinking I derived it from Wind River we'll have to see it now thanks for the recommendation that is totally fair my dad could have made it up maybe to cover up his disappointment in not getting the elk but I doubt he would do that my old man is a crap magnet and has all of the weirdest stories about bad crap happening around him and I've seen some of it totally par for the course my dad's story not mine I had been walking for a couple hours and I decided to sit under a tree for a while just see what would happen as I was relaxing I noticed this light that kept flashing past my eyes I looked over to where it was coming from but I couldn't see what was there then I looked down and there was a red dot on my chest some [ __ ] was using a laser sight and aiming at me I yelled at him and started walking towards him but he ran off I went back to camp for the rest of the day he didn't think someone was actually trying to shoot him but if people aren't going to be safe with their rifles he didn't want to be out there when I was younger I used her horse pack around Northern California for weeks at a time this was during the late seventies early eighties I rarely used a compass but I always had a map of my area I'm pretty good at dead reckoning by landmarks and I've never been lost in my life except once I was in the Six Rivers National Forest heading south towards Trinity County this is very rough terrain lots of high ridges steep hills rocks everywhere and nasty brush to tangle you I was riding the ridges heading generally south and trying to find easy places to cross to the next ridge when it became convenient the skies were partly cloudy and it was cool 60 F cold for that time of year since it was early August and the temps were normally 90 plus F during the day I found a reasonable spot to cross over to the next ridge south of me and started down when I got into the ravine it turned out that what looked easy from above was actually a rocky nightmare I started walking up the ravine to find an easier place to get out of there a wind picked up and it started drizzling I walked for a mile or so couldn't find anything that I wanted to risk my neck on and more importantly my horse's hooves and decided to start up the side I had come down originally I got to the top took a look around to orient myself and froze and shocked the landscape was completely different I don't mean that it was lower or easier or less rocky I mean that all of my landmarks were gone some of them were Peaks that were 30 to 40 miles away others were a lot closer it was completely different I had no idea where I was and I was completely disoriented I dug out my map and started to review where I was the angles on the hills I had been navigating by earlier etc I couldn't find anything that matched the only thing that I could positively identify was the route up from the ravine that I had just come up since it was cloudy I couldn't navigate by the Sun all I had were the landmarks that I used for dead reckoning and those were gone the wind was picking up and it was getting very very cold I almost expected snow I had no idea where I was so I decided to backtrack to my last-known position and see if I could pick up where I left off I started down the hill got to the bottom of the ravine and started the opposite direction of the ravine this time I was very careful watching for signs of my passage before and the hill I came down in the first place it stopped raining the wind died down and the day started to warm up I found my original trail down the hill started back up and got to the top all the landmarks were there now I was totally confused I kept going on the ridge watching carefully to find where I had come up before when I got to the spot where I thought it should be there was no sign of it I cast back and forth for a while trying to find my trail with no success all of my landmarks were there to see eventually I gave up and continued on the ridge a bit later I found an easy trail down and an easy trail back up the other side and continued on my way to this day I have no idea what happened even though it was drizzling I should have been able to see the closer landmarks and honestly the further landmarks were big enough to see to that point thinking back on it there was no sign that it was drizzling when I continued on to where I had ascended the first time and the temperature swings were wild that day easily 30 40 F not uncommon in the mountains but really odd for that time of year in that place another thing originally I had chosen to descend it at that point because there was nothing to prevent me from going up the other side I could see easily from the ridge top but when I arrived there were tons of boulders blocking me that I should have been able to see from top eerie and creepy at the time sure but I was more focused on trying to orient myself but thinking back on it even or so now

Channel: Reddit Aliens

Views: 462,096

Rating: 4.8239803 out of 5

Keywords: #Reddit, #R/askreddit, #31, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, reddit, reddit stories, r/ askreddit, people share, relationship advice, creepiest things found, brainydude, reddit cringe, r/, updoot, reddit mysteries, askreddit scary, creepy stories, scary stories, rslash, creepypasta, creepy, scary, reddit stories 2019, people of reddit, comment awards, creepy strangers, just ask reddit, horror stories, subreddit, true stories, true horror, true horror stories, reddit compilation

Id: Uj3GjjEO8wk

Length: 23min 2sec (1382 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 31 2019