[SERIOUS] Late night hikers what is the creepiest thing you have seen while hiking? (r/AskReddit)

[Music] serious late night hikers what is the creepiest thing you have seen while hiking not so much hiking is walking home after work one night a lot of years ago I normally got off around 7 p.m. and my walks home were uneventful however this night I covered a half shift for someone and worked until 11 p.m. there was a trail behind some train tracks I would take home to avoid walking beside traffic and whatnot I came to realize that night those trails were a lot different at 11 p.m. than they were at 7 p.m. I happened across a guy who was laying by his bike moaning in pain it didn't sound like real moaning more like a kid's fake I have a tummy ache and can't go to school alone I also noticed his bike was standing up on its kickstand it didn't make sense to me he would set his bike up properly only to fall to the ground in pain he saw me and called out to me for help but I kept walking and turned to make my way back up towards the street as I turn I suddenly hear some shuffling around in the previously heard gentleman yells at me I'm gonna kill you mother Ducker he hops on his bike and starts rushing towards me at this point on most of the way up the incline going towards the railroad tracks that ran parallel to the street I haul ass up there and as I get over the tracks my would-be assailant proceeds to hit the tracks with his front tire and flips over his handlebars hitting the ground heart he is now moaning in pain for real and makes genuine calls for help I used a pay phone at a gas station to call the cops and explain what happened they get there and the officer explains to me the sky's a village idiot who does this crap to rob people and it's not the first time they had to pick his ass up after he biffed on a bike trying to rob someone I told the officer he threatened to kill me and he laughed dude wasn't even armed and apparently has had his ass kicked more times than he can count using that little line of his when my now wife and I first started dating we would take long walks through our very small town after I got off work at 11 p.m. we would wander through the cemetery down little country roads everywhere but our favorite area was a large field where the stars were incredible one night we were watching a small meteor shower and heard all kinds of loud grunting and ruckus coming from a tree line we had nowhere to go and we're starting to get concerned large angry buck came out stared at us and then quietly walked away I don't think we breathe for several minutes I was convinced he was coming at us and there was no way to outrun him we didn't go back there for a few days my repost from a different R slash asked reddit post a while ago wasn't so much hiking but it was late at night I was walking around my neighborhood alone once enjoying the night air and watching the stars there was this little pond near my house with a wooded area that had trees a bench and a rope swing that went out over the water i sat down on the bench to look at the Stars and I heard some rustling off to my right towards the trees bears were not uncommon where I'm from so I took out my flashlight and shone it around over there I didn't see anything it freaked me out so I kept my flashlight on in my senses aware but I stayed on the bench to mull over my thoughts and watch the sky some more I don't know why I did that cause that's typical horror movie crap anyway a few minutes pass and I near nothing more so I leaned back into the bench and start to relax a bit I'm staring up at the sky with my flashlight pointed downwards so as not to create any light pollution when I noticed something in the tree in my peripheral vision I couldn't tell what it was but the branch was swaying slightly and the rustling noise was back too I immediately sat up and stared at it but hadn't shown my flashlight at it yet in case of pissing off some huge bird or something else I don't think I've ever been that scared I remember my heart was beating so fast and I could taste blood I stared at it for what seemed like forever and it slowly stopped moving but the shape was still there bears do climb trees sometimes so I was hesitant to run away in case that's what it was so I just kept staring at it after a while I mustered up the little raisin s cojones to shine my goddamned light at the tree it was a man a dunking man in the tree crouched in the tree like some silent naked monkey he had no expression on his face but his eyes were open really really wide when my light landed on him he started to move like he was going to come down but I didn't stick around to see if he did I jumped the bench and ran for the ducting hills I ran to my house and around to the back door and locked myself and without looking back once I around and made sure every window and door was locked I even checked the Attic I never go out alone anymore headed I did call the cops but they didn't find him and nothing came from it I was hella paranoid for months after that and started carrying pocket knives and her pepper spray whenever I went out at night even if I wasn't alone be safe my dudes edit to fixed opposing tenses added three thanks to all the lovely lads in the comments I've concluded that this was in fact a crackhead and I happened to just be in the wrong place at the wrong time still don't recommend going out alone or unarmed at night though be safe please it was in the summer around dusk and I was camping at a remote campground with my dad there was a lake right next to the grounds and my dad and I would trail blase through the forest right next to the lake because if you went far enough there was a really pretty waterfall a few strange things happened on this hike we found a slash pile that had a little kids shoe on top when we came to a small clearing my dad had to take a leak too he faced one side of the clearing and I faced the other and we both clearly heard a child say I'm over here my dad thought it was me and when he realized it wasn't we spent half an hour looking for someone but we found nobody after that we gave up on going to the waterfall and started to make our way back to camp but there were clear sounds of something following us twig snapping bushes shaking we haven't been camping there since years ago before we got married my wife and I went to a local state park with a picnic and a hammock we set the hammock up in the woods enjoyed our picnic then feel asleep together in the hammock I was abruptly awakened by my wife she motioned for me to be quiet the Sun had said there was still a hint of light in the sky but we couldn't see anything meaningful in the woods my wife beckoned me to listen complete silence then the snap of a branch in the distance more silence we were both suddenly very on edge we whispered to one another trying to figure out if someone was sneaking up on us the silence was broken again another branch same direction but closer from another direction a momentary crunch of leaves now we were terrified we both had pocket knives on us small but better than nothing we also had a flashlight we drew our knives and deliberated whether whatever was out there knew our location we decided to keep the light off lest we give away our exact location maybe we could run for the car more steps in rapid succession coming directly toward us then silence again my wife had enough we know you Duggars are out there she yelled silence for an eternity and then another crunch of leaves we had enough we prepared ourselves as best we could for a fight then shine the flashlight into the darkness toward the last noise we had heard three deer scampered away into the darkness we sheepishly gathered our things and left without incident not on a trail but walking my dog late at night it was about one o'clock in the morning my dog rang her Bell and IVA grudgingly got up to take her outside when she wants to pee in the middle of the night I don't take her very far just in our side yard I took a flashlight with me in case she decided to pose so I could pick it up I'm standing there waiting for her to do her thing she is doing the dougie walk in a circle thing then all of the sudden the dog gets spooked and whips around out of the corner of my eye I see this chick just standing there I didn't see her walk up I didn't hear her walk out I just see her standing there super still based on her position she had to have come from between my house and my neighbor's house which is odd because behind our houses back up to a Greenbelt it is probably 40 degrees outside on this lady about 20 is in super short shorts and a t-shirt I looked at her told her she scared me and she mumbled something like nice night what are you up to standing there holding the leash with my dog I said I'm walking my dog then she said cool cool do you know how to get into my house I locked myself out pointing to my neighbour's house now I'm a good American I know my neighbors and this wasn't my neighbor who is a single thirty year old female she hangs out with my wife so I know her really well so I asked her that house pointing directly at my neighbor's house she nodded I said you don't live there I know who lives there she'd just scoffed and wandered her way into my backyard I followed her said what the hell are you doing she then took off running scaled my fence which item of note it isn't an easy fence to scale it is a deer fence it is a see-through fence that goes up three feet with cattle gate then the top of the fence is stainless steel wire that runs horizontally it is the type of thing that if you weren't expecting it you'd easily trip over as it is extremely hard to see and not very common anyways she scales the fence and ran away into the green belt I always have a pocket knife on me and was fortunate enough to have my unfortunately useless dog so I looked around my house neighbor's house for other people shined my light in the Greenbelt and nothing I have no idea how she wound up back there what she was doing what she intended to do but she scared the ever living crap out of me at a Greenbelt unincorporated land zone to never have anything built on it II backing up to the edge of a forest cliff etc in my case it was a wooded area for about half a mile of nothing rattlesnakes deer mongooses etc live in that Greenbelt I go hiking in the woods that permeate my town sometimes so late that I get to see the Sun rise out there the strangest thing I ever saw was what I could only describe as a shanty town was built up seemingly overnight deep into the woods simple little hovels made of scrap metal and bed sheets and a small fire pit that someone had made out of an old tire with the fire still burning but that wasn't the weird part the weird part was that this was well past midnight when I found this place and it was quiet as a grave there was no one there someone made the trouble of getting a fire going and then left it from the look of it this place could hold about a dozen or so people and yet there was nothing there but the fire they abandoned and whatever possessions they had left in the shanties I go out for walks very late at night fairly often so I've seen a few things the creepiest though happened about two months ago I left the house around 1:30 a.m. and it started off as a normal walk I wandered around the town till about 2:00 a.m. when I decided to go home I was walking back the route I had came when I noticed a black van me and her down the street didn't really pay too much attention to it though at first I did pay attention though when I saw it slowly drive by me for a second time I wasn't entirely sure it was the same vendo so I just continued walking but this time I kept an eye out and low and ducking behold about 10 minutes later the same damn black van came down the street again this time I knew for sure because it didn't have license plates now I was fairly scared so I picked my pace up a little bit when the van came around again this time it stopped in the middle of the road a few houses in front of me I stopped turned around and booked it back in the other direction I made a few turns on two different roads and then ran right into someone's yard I waited behind their fence and the same ducking van came down the street I assumed that when they couldn't find me they finally decided to duck off but I waited in that yard for about 20 minutes before I ran back to my house and practically threw myself through my bedroom window a few friends and I went on an overnight hike in the Rockies behind our little town a few years back when I was in HS our camping site was pretty far up there and it was getting dark the spot we were it was nestled in a grove of trees secluded from the wind and elements so we decided to stop there for the night the four of us built a little fire and ate dinner then just talked for a few hours then all of the sudden my friend leaps forward and douses the fire with our emergency water plunging us into complete darkness needless to say the rest of us were pretty pissed as there was no reason for him to do this he quickly shushes us and we realize he is absolutely terrified like so scared he couldn't even speak or move the rest of us managed to get a few word out of him and he tells us to look up on the ridge where we should have been camping at it was pretty far up so it was kind of hard to see at first but that sight will haunt me for the rest of my life there was a fire a big one like a bonfire sort of thing around the fire were several figures moving in a slow circle they were humanoid but not quite and and they had arms and legs like people but something just seemed different about them that I can't really explain almost like the limbs were too long and skinny or something but maybe not anyway these figures just moved around the fire in a really slow circle over and over again my one friend claims he could hear them singing something but I don't remember anything importantly there was one standing off to the side a little ways leaning with his arm on a tree branch above his head it really creeped us out but we were able to sleep it off we figured it was a Scout Troop having a camp or something morning came and we finished off our hike to the peak and on our way down we passed the place we saw the figures and decided to check out the camp it was completely deserted it was obvious that there had been a fire and there were footprints everywhere inside the fire pit was a small mound of charred animal bones probably chipmunk and a pile of four or five rodent skulls that had been burned creepy right then we look over at where the one figure was standing blood not a lot but enough to be of concern or anything but enough to be creepy then we see the tree branch he was casually leaning against it was well over any of our heads and I'm over six-foot that would mean that in order for the figure to lean against it like he was he would need to be at least seven feet tall needless to say we got off that mountain very fast and I have never been up there again we called the Fish and Wildlife Rangers and told them what we saw they said it was probably just a bunch of kids messing around and not to worry about it it might have been just that and we let our imaginations run wild but all four of us swear to this day we all saw the same thing and it didn't look like a bunch of kids in the dark I don't believe in ghosts or the supernatural but those mountains still scare the crap out of me and I will never go back there again don't believe me if you don't want to but there is something out there ghosts or dumb kids I'm not going near it this wasn't on a hike and this is pretty tame compared to some of these stories but it's a bit similar back in our old place one night my girlfriend and I were walking our dogs around the neighborhood she's a lot smaller so I was walking two of the dogs and she was walking one who was a former service dog he was a real gentle dog albeit a bit older other than snatching the ball away from the others during fetch he'd never shown a bit of aggression I walk a bit ahead of my girlfriend because of the two dogs pulling pretty hard on me but not too far maybe ten or fifteen feet ahead but around a corner as I found out later she'd slowed down in part because she'd noticed someone nearby acting strangely scoping out a house I think when he spotted her he said hi and she responded in kind asked how he was before he could answer the dog she was walking started to growl and she apologized commenting that he was a guard dog the guy looked at her and said well he's doing a good job tonight she was pretty spooked and hurried to catch up to me we were more careful on nighttime walks from then on it was around midnight in a clearing for picnics in a large park that lots of people hike through pitch-black no one around I was with my boyfriend at the time we got pretty frisky at one of the picnic tables and I'm facing a river which is sort of illuminated from the moonlight he's facing the solid black tree line we're trying to have a good time and he becomes completely still and in a low voice says there's a man coming towards us I turn my head see only a white t-shirt approaching us at a brisk walking pace from the trees and that's all I needed to see I ran knowing my BF would catch up he did I was never down for midnight forest stuff again haha edit the man in the white shirt probably got within 25 feet of us by the time I had my crap together enough to bolt still freaks me out he said nothing just walked very fast towards us neither of us looked back probably too late for this threat but I loved telling this story so here we go when I was very little like five or six my dad used to take me on all sorts of adventures through nature especially when we owned a little cottage up in the Scottish Highlands now my dad is sort of a Yorkshire lad type and very spry despite as being about 55 at the time and on this particular occasion had decided we were going to go hiking way up into the cliffs I was quite happy with this development as it meant a piggyback ride for at least 90% of the difficult bits this was a proper proper Trek he wanted to get to one of the highest Bluffs so we could have an amazing 360-degree view of the gorgeous meadows and some sparkling sea but we reach the top plains where it's all short wind whipped grass and you can see for miles he suddenly turned very still and very quiet when you're small your parents are God so seeing your dad looked frightened is scarier than anything you own mind can come up with so I was pulling on his arm and going what what my mom is epileptic and I saw her fits when I was a kid so I thought I thought it was happening to him too or something similar and I wouldn't know what to do because we're up on this huge cliff and no one is around when just as fast as he started it he snapped out of it lifted me right up and just started walking away without saying anything over his shoulder I could see a big pale yellow object stuck into the ground like an obelisk I know now that it was a refrigerator when I was older and I asked my dad about it he stiffened up and told me that when he was a boy in the 50s he and his little friends had found an old-style fridge in the woods and being little boys they opened it well of course they had found a body another child who by whichever means had found themselves in the fridge and unable to get out my dad has never mentioned a gender which leads me to believe he either witnessed a very decomposed or skeletonized individual but I can't ask him remember that episode of The Simpsons where they unlock homers PTSD and it turns out he found a dead body when he was a teenager my dad grew increasingly uncomfortable the first time we saw that episode and had excused himself to the kitchen before the ending my dad has seen some gnarly crap but for wherever reason he will not discuss anything further about this dead child in the fridge only that it happened so when he explained I assumed it was the trauma and I said something like oh that's awful so when you saw the fridge up there it bring up the old memories and he honestly looked at me like I was an idiot I'll never forget it no Amy he said in a very low tone it's because it was the same fridge a bear it wasn't late night but the Sun was setting a bunch of friends went up to a cliff diving spot that we knew after a day of swimming and activities a park ranger saw us and told us to follow a certain trail back to the parking lot because it's faster this was a trail we haven't seen and we didn't take it up we say Duquette and decided it was okay after about 1.5 hours of hiking and being lost on the trail we come to a clearing in the forest with no more trail just what was left in a crap-ton of vegetation no problem turn around right now that was the first time I ever saw a bear full-on in person the first thing I thought about was how docked it would be if we had to run and even worse someone getting caught we just saw it backed up and decided Duquette better walked down the mountain than try to go around it this isn't creepy but it definitely spooked me I'm late to the party but years ago some friends and I were going to have a campfire in a lake late at night with copious amounts of alcohol when we got there we had to drive around a barricade and one of the cars got stuck in the mud while trying to get it unstuck I looked around and made a joke about how we were definitely in the beginning of the horror movie we all laugh about it we get the car out and continue to the lake get all set up fire is going music is playing drinks are flowing we are having a great time all of a sudden some random ducking guy comes walking out of the woods with a bear I get nervous everyone else tells me I'm being paranoid since I watch a lot of scary movies they invite him to join us he ends up sitting next to me but a few feet away I go to grab another beer from the cooler see the hatchet that someone brought and I decide I'm going to hold on to it I sit back down and this random guy makes some comment about he can see my jugular and once to bite it I'm ready to piece TF out but I of course didn't drive a little while later he makes a comment about he should have brought his chainsaw I'm completely alone in thinking this is going to end badly I move across the fire and closer to the cooler and one of my friends I set the hatchet next to me try to ignore the guy and enjoy my night fast forward a bit and the guy is making more weird comments so I reached for the hatchet it's gone I start glancing around discreetly at first when the guy smiles at me from across the fire and goes looking for this and holds up the hatchet I say duck all of this I'm leaving and managed to get one of my friends to leave the next day everyone said that nothing more happened but as someone who has seen a lot of movies I wasn't taking any chances I'm white but I'm not laughs off a crazy guy with a hatchet white I walk at night in my rural area regularly I've encountered black bears coyotes bobcats angry deer and everything on down with no real concern but the creepiest encounter was a little black pickup truck with rainbow and unicorn stickers bubblegum pop music blaring and it smelled like cotton candy when it passed me first time it passed me it swerved to hit me I jumped out of the way easily I thought nothing of it really just figured they were startled by seeing me at night with my reflective gear the truck circled back and comes at me again I saw it coming this time and grabbed my dog up just in time to jump into a ditch I heard little girl laughter high pitched in maniacal the tiny truck circled back for a third go at me but by then I was hiding in my neighbor's shrubbery I watched it slowly drive down the road hearing giggling as it passed me fortunately it kept on going and I made at home just fine not hiking so much as car camping but we were weighed the duck out there in the middle of nowhere on BLM land in Colorado we drove for an hour and a half down a forest service road and didn't see another soul you could see headlights and hear cars from miles away from our campsite it's not like somebody could have snuck up unnoticed we had three cars with us and eight people just got done eating dinner cleaned up it was getting dark so we went back to the cars real quick before hitting our tents for the night somebody had slashed the front right tire on each of the three cars with what appeared to be a box cutter everyone thought it was a prank but it become very apparent very quickly that it wasn't all of us were beyond spooked like panicking scary to watch spooked we all had spares and one dude had a gun so we threw on our doughnuts while that guy literally guarded us and got the hell out of there I still have nightmares about it sometimes just knowing there was some person probably watching us maybe wanting to harm us makes me feel physically ill to this day I had a group of friends who used to get together and play manhunt in a local park at night just a different way of saying a big game of hide-and-seek tag where three people start off it and everyone else goes and hides in the park as they find and tag people they become it as well until eventually there is only one to three people left and we start again and play into early morning well one night I was at with my friend and his younger brother we were heading to the middle of the park to a hot spot for hiding-places there is a long stairwell that leads up a huge hill to a pavilion and field we were slowly walking down those stairs maybe halfway down when we noticed two folks way below us thinking it was one of our friends we tell out hey WH shows that instead of the normal reaction which is to call out your name then sprint away trying to avoid getting tagged a strange voice responds to the duck are you we at first started sprinting down at them like we normally would but then we realized they too were sprinting at us we don't even hesitate we turn around and sprint up the stairs as fast as we can adrenaline kicking it hair sticking up on the back of my neck we make it up on top of the hill and pause when I look back and they are right behind us not more than 10 feet away which is absurdly fast because of how much distance we had had between us we lose our crap and start sprinting as fast as possible to the park trail that wraps around the entire park and leads to a road where one of our friends live in that we use as a meetup spot between games it's a two mile run back from where we are so we booked it sprinting as if our lives depended on it occasionally looking back and seeing the two people following behind as we get nearer our energy is spent but we push on and make it to the street looking back and there is no sign of the two strangers all of our group is back at the house lounging on the driveway having decided to prank us that night and while we were off in the park searching for them they would meet back at the house until we gave up we shared our story with them and some laughed in disbelief others wanted to search the park for those two randoms but we never discovered who they were all I know is that they were incredibly fast and shady as duck edited for spelling / missing words I'd like to preface this by saying I do not believe in ghosts I was walking through the woods after fishing for the better part of the day I decided to stay out real late and try on fish up some bull heads from a local watering hole I was only about 13 and stayed out way later than I normally would usually I would take a trail home but decided to cut through some thicker brush to get to my grandparents house so I could call my mom I knew she'd probably be freaking out a bit though this happened from time to time there was an abandoned graveyard on my route I don't remember what the story was about it but I knew it was there I had wandered past it before never really checked it out it's all overgrown and wild I knew that if I followed on the outskirts of the graveyard I'd hit the road and be home free the day had been pretty chilly overall for a late spring day but I swear in my teenage brain that it was getting colder I remember looking at my breath and thinking it was weird how cold it had gotten it was overall a pretty bright night near full moon but in the woods it was hard to see the graveyard was wide open no trees it was well lit as I was walking up I noticed that the ground was covered in a thin layer of fog and remember looking into the graveyard and not really registering what I saw at first it was a person which at first didn't seem odd so I kept quiet and walked into the woods a bit more so I didn't get spotted I didn't know who it was so I wanted to keep clear I stepped behind some trees and lost sight of them for a moment and when I came back around the tree they were gone weird because I was behind the tree for maybe a few seconds tops I didn't hear anything either I walked a bit further keeping an eye out I was a bit creeped out near the graveyard was a rundown barn I'm not really sure but as I got closer to it I could see that someone was inside I got a good look and it was a woman probably in her 50s the way the moonlight had her made her look incredibly pale she seemed to be digging but I didn't hear anything no sounds of a shovel or her making noise in any way I was maybe 30 feet away I could see she stopped and disappeared behind some debris I decided to get the heck out of there and quickly move to get out to the road I tried to keep track of her looking for where she went but I couldn't find her it was like she literally disappeared I kept trucking and came out to the road the fog was pretty much covering the road a small country road fields on one side woods on the other as I walked down the road she would randomly appear behind and in front of me and I started hiding and basically playing cat and mouse each time I saw her she was hard to see only in the moonlight and stuff to the remnants of some of the old houses nearby she always looked l never made any noise once I got past that part of the road which had a number of barn foundations and home remnants I never saw her again and instantly started getting warmer creeped me the heck out and I never went that way again I don't know who or what that was but I told my uncle about it and he went and checked it out thinking maybe someone was maybe trying to excavate the graves he said there wasn't anything messed with they thought I was lying still gives me the shakes just typing this out I know it was most likely someone wandering around looking for stuff we're checking the place out but what teenage me remembers didn't seem natural it was also weird that she never made noise she also seemed to be able to just appear and move around me at one point she was right behind me and I swear a moment later she was in front of me [Music]

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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: PKcXthZUHg8

Length: 29min 23sec (1763 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2019