Scariest moment alone in the woods?

My scariest day in the woods wasnt to long ago about 2-3 months ago
We were c ampign pretty deep in the woods beside a trail and at the end of the trail was a ruined delapadated church and broken headstones ,

There was about 20 of us there , then one of the lads feel down a steep hill so a few of my friends went to help about 4 or 5 they all came back screaming and shouting there heads off about seeing something

Now of course we didn't believe them at first, but after a minute i realized I've never seen such terror in my friends faces, one just went into shock and kept repeating over and over on the brink of tears "things like that aren't meant to be seen" , that kinda freaked me out ,They said as they were walking up the the church they saw a person standing on top of the wall of the church ..but kind of "floating" in a sense ,so after a few beers me and a few of the people who didn't see anything felt brave enough to walk up to the church

The trail went up to the front of the church then there was about waist high grass at the side and back of it, At the time even tho my friends were in absolute terror the fact that we didn't see anything kind of made us feel a bit more brave , so we went into the church

Now the church had no roof and was just basically 3 and a half walls with a rusted iron gate at the front , we went into this church only about...9 ft x 5 ft
and so we saw nothing in there so we were going to leave

There was a small opening in the iron gate so we crawled through that and as i was getting up the other side of the church when i was looking up i saw the blurred image of a women in rags, as my eyes focus there was nothing there i assumed my mind was just playing tricks on me

As we got back on trail we herd a stick cracking, we looked back and there was a mist ( there was no mist or fog that night) and in the mist/fog we saw the impression of a women , ts hard to describe what we saw, it was like someone got a cardboard cutout of a women and put her in really heavy fog

And right before we ran like hell the "women" and the mist/fog disappear into bushes, Then we ran like hell!

And that my friends was the scariest moment in the woods

PS: I'm going camping in the same place tonight lol

reply to post by Disgustipated


Take a video / camera and an audio recorder please, and post a follow up if anything does happen.
Happy Halloween.

reply to post by MrDead


Well , I'm home,I Left the campsite

We didn't see anything mostly because we stayed in the tents because of the gale force winds and sideways rain

I almost got caught making a dookie in a celebrities backyard

I was a pool guy, 17 years old. I was behing the tennis courts, and he came out looking for me to tell me about a problem with the pool

by the grace of god, I finished with 30 seonds to spare

reply to post by syrinx high priest


I'm going to assume "dookie" means piss. You never know with these Hollywood types, maybe it would have been right up his alley.

I am pretty sure that by "dookie" he means takin a dump, a crap. etc, etc. Anywho, more stories please!

I had a little experience like that, well, I was camping and was going to the "outdoor plumbing" bathroom. Then, I saw a really wierd thing in a bush. I started to walk over there, then a red-eyed chimpmunk slash squirrel bolted off. Really creepy.

This is an awesome thread Bigsteam, and if it were a contest, i'd have to say that Syrinx high priest would win.
Anyways, here's my story. Back in the day, when i was about 15 or 16, i went up to Port Austin in Michigan to my uncle's awesome house right off the lake. The front yard had a dirt road leading to other houses and on the other side were some woods. One day, at about 5 o'clock, i went into these woods. About 30 yards in i found a little pond, and by this pond were these large rocks arranged in a Stonehenge like pattern. Each rock had to weigh about 200 pounds. I thought this was really cool and just wanted to share ;-D. Anyway, i heard a noise and saw a group of deer up ahead, so i started to follow them. They went through some thick woods and found a trail. I continued to follow them when they suddenly bolted. At this time, it was about 6:30 pm, a couple hours away from sundown. I continued the trail to see where it led. I made it passed this fallen tree. I suddenly got this fearful feeling swarm me, like i was being watched or something. Up ahead on the trail about 100 yards away, looked like what was this picture of the jersey devil i saw.

z.about.com...

I stared for a bit and saw it move slightly. I knew it was just my eyes screwing with me and i turned around to walk back. I suddenly blacked out. I have NEVER in my life blacked out from anything (even to this day, and even after some heavy drinking =D) I woke up about 50 yards from where i was standing an hour later, just before sundown. I ran the long trail in about 10 minutes and got home (LONGest run of my life). i made it home before sundown and had a story for everyone. I haven't been to the place since, but if i go again, i'm definitely bringing a camera

I've got two, neither are anything special though.

When I was about..14 I was bear hunting in Northern Maine, the Moosehead Lake region. Anyways it was about 730 at night which is when it starts getting too dark to see through your scope, so my dad and I were about to get out of our tree stands when a bigggg bruin comes strolling down the trail. Seeing as I didn't have much time left before it was too dark to safely shoot, i shot the first oppurtunity he gave me and ended up hitting him low in the brisket.

After about 15 minutes we got out of the stands and starting to mark the trail. We noticed the blood on the ground was frothy and bright red which generall indicates a lung shot which is fatal as you'd assume. So by now it's pitch black and we've both got these little mag lights following a wounded black bear through the woods. Occasionally we'd hear branches snapping and crashing sounds through the brush which was enough to scare the hell out of me.

That's sort of it for that story, just imagine how scary it is being 14 years old going through pitch black woods in the middle of nowhere tracking a wounded bear.


Secondly this happened a few years after the previous story in the same area. I was coyote hunting and was walking down an old logging road that led to the clearcut I was going to call from. When I got to the end of the road on the edge of where the clearcut meets the woods I just felt overwhelmed by fear with no way to justify it. I stood there holding my rifle, the hair on my neck stood up and i knew something was watching me. After freezing in my tracks and standing there for about a minute trying to decide what to do I decided to slowly back out of there and head back to the truck. I really have no idea what happened or what was watching me but it took me weeks to get the nerve to head back out there.

i have two stories to tell.
when i was four my family lived in the mountains surrounded by woods. i was outside playing by myself(this was back when the world was a little safer) when a scraggly bearded old man approached me screaming, and covered in blood. i was only 20 feet from the house and ran inside shaking and terrified. When i told my mother she hadnt heard the screaming or seen the man. My dad took his shot gun with my uncles and went hunting for it but never found anything.

When i described what he looked like to them they all gasped and said i saw a man that was murdered in the wood ssome 20 yrs before i was even thought of.

The second happened when i was 16 my mother had entered a health nut phase and made my 2 lil brothers and i go on walks with her. We were walking in the woods with her friends and her daughter when i freaked. i felt in danger like something was watching me and ready to tear me to pieces. i shook like a leaf and started babbling liek a child about going home before i died. noone else felt anything but my display freaked them out. I was 6' 300lbs than and if i was scared they were too.

abotu a year ago i was reading up on local ghost stories and saw that the area we were in is heavily haunted by a pack of dogs viciously murdered by their master in the 1800's. Theyve never hurt anyone but im glad i wasnt the first.

i have two stories to tell.
when i was four my family lived in the mountains surrounded by woods. i was outside playing by myself(this was back when the world was a little safer) when a scraggly bearded old man approached me screaming, and covered in blood. i was only 20 feet from the house and ran inside shaking and terrified. When i told my mother she hadnt heard the screaming or seen the man. My dad took his shot gun with my uncles and went hunting for it but never found anything.

When i described what he looked like to them they all gasped and said i saw a man that was murdered in the wood ssome 20 yrs before i was even thought of.

The second happened when i was 16 my mother had entered a health nut phase and made my 2 lil brothers and i go on walks with her. We were walking in the woods with her friends and her daughter when i freaked. i felt in danger like something was watching me and ready to tear me to pieces. i shook like a leaf and started babbling liek a child about going home before i died. noone else felt anything but my display freaked them out. I was 6' 300lbs than and if i was scared they were too.

abotu a year ago i was reading up on local ghost stories and saw that the area we were in is heavily haunted by a pack of dogs viciously murdered by their master in the 1800's. Theyve never hurt anyone but im glad i wasnt the first.

3 stories come to mind for me...

One I've related elsewhere on ATS. About the scary something in the backyard that scared the whey out of me and my sister (gallopinghordes) when we were much younger.

The other two incidents took place about 10 years and several hundred miles apart.

One summer, I was 17, my brother, my dad, an uncle, and myself were up near Mt. Adams in south-central Washington picking mass amounts of huckleberries, you know one for the bucket, two for me, etc... Anyhow, I got a bit separated from the others. I found a little glen with a pond, some cattails, etc... just a cute little place surrounded by Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. When I stepped out of the treeline into that glen, it was like I stepped into a dangerous neighborhood. Instantly, I felt unwelcome, not in danger mind you, but very unwelcome. I left, quietly, and very politely...

Ten years later...

A friend and I were backpacking in Denali National Park in Alaska. We were north of the mountain. We came across a little opening in the trees and darned if the same thing didn't happen. A feeling of unwelcomeness, and possible danger. I instantly twigged back to that Mt. Adams incident years before...we left...quietly and politely.

There are places in the world where man and all his rules do not apply, and are not welcome...

Scary? Not really, but it was uncanny to the point of being scary.

It was 4am.... I was quietly slipping down a overgrown dirt road on my way to my treestand for a little deerhunting...

I kept hearing something off to my right that sounded like someone was shadowing me,,, it kinda spooked me.

I walked into a covey of quail and they did what they do best.... they waited til I was right smack dab in the middle of em when about 20 of the little buggers took flight.... made a sound like a small squadron of Apache Helicopters.

I screamed like a little schoolgirl, dropped my flashlight and ran.


The deer were safe that morning.

I do not want to get into this story, right at this moment.
I have had a few scary moments because of all the time I spent alone in the woods. I lived in the woods.
I can not tell you what the scariest moment was, because I am still scared, after twenty five years.
I stay out of the woods any more. I lived twnety five miles from the nearest paved road, and you can just dissapear, without anyone ever knowing what happened. I have had several instances where I had as much chance of dying, as living.
I can talk about things that had to do with animals, instead of people.
I had two BigFoot chase me down a road that went through the woods. I will have to put the story together and post it later. It is a little involved.

reply to post by jmdewey60


So, you just spent a couple of paragraphs worth of words to tell us that you couldn't tell your stories right now?

Come on Dude! Spill it!

reply to post by jbondo


Any one who does not believe in maneaters should watch "the Ghost and the Darkness" with Val Kilmer. It is based on facts where the British were building a railroad bridge across the Tzsavo river in Kenya and their workers kept beeing eaten by lions. My sister went to school in 1976 at Monterey Bay Academy at Watsonville. She was told that she should not ever sleep on the beach because people were being drug off inside their sleeping bags and only their heads and hands would be found. It sounds a lot like tigers eating villagers in India, to me. Before I had heard that story, I had my episode in Big Sir with two B F. I was walking down the Pacific Coast Highway as it was getting dark and I heard what I thought was two people alternatly walking and sliding down the steep hill towards the road. I kept going and I later heard bare feet slapping on the asphalt running around the corner, coming for me. They left the road before the headlights from a line of cars coming up the road could shine on them. They stepped over a four stranded barbed wire fence without breaking stride and crossed a river by stepping on rocks that a human would have to take one by one, with all they could do to leap to. They kept up with me untill the cars were gone, then came back on the road. A real long line of cars came and they had to go up the hill this time. It was too steep to follow above so they had to stop and wait. That gave me time to go around the corner and cut across the river and find a place to hide. I heard them pass, looking for me but I was farther from the water than they expected me to be. I did not move untill the next day.
The B F were not outwitted by me. Hiway 1 is a very narrow, whindy road where it is almost imposible to pass on, so what happens is that the cars bunch up into long lines. I was just lucky that an especialy long bunch came by at just the right time.
I think those B F in Big Sur are very much the exception. I think that most just want to be left alone. But those two actualy came lookin for me. I was just walking down the highway, I had never been there before and was trying to get out of there. This was back in 1972 and I was hitch hiking. I got picked up by a hippy couple in Ventura. I was trying to get to San francisco. They had a van and went to a private campground right at what you might call the "town" of Big Sir. I should have stayed with them because it was getting late. I did not realise it was going to get dark so soon and I went walking and sticking out my thumb to passing cars. It may just be that these two that came down the hill were the "criminaly insane" of the B F community. But I felt that I would deffinatly be dead if they caught me.

I've never experienced anything woods related out of the ordinary, and I've been camping/hiking quite a bit.

However, on the spooked side of things, I have had a few close encounters with predators. When I was about 2 Years Old I was with my family out in Yosemite National Park. I was on horseback following a trail, with my pops holding the rope which lead the reigns. All of the sudden out of nowhere a HUGE Black Bear just comes lumbering out of the forest and right in front of us. My old man just stayed calm watching the bear, meanwhile he put his hands around me just in case the horse bolted he would still have me safely in hand. The largest surprise!? The bear just continued in front of us waddling down along the path like he was out for a nice Sunday stroll. The horses also remained extremely calm never once even agitating. My father is Military (as most of my fam is), and has plenty of woods experience as well, so he knew how to handle it. The Bear was estimated to be a 500 + pounder.

Another time I was in Upstate NY with my family overlooking the Adirondacks. We were near a field looking at a lake, when I thought I saw a big dog. I was young and thought maybe it was a lost dog, and wanted to see it. Turns out that in reality it was a HUGE Eastern Timber Wolf. It was like a really big version of a German Shepherd, so most likely in the 90-120 lb. range easily. It really did look majestic though as it trotted, stopped, turned its head in a pose to look at us, and then continued on his/her way.

Now aside from the woods, I've had sharks swipe by me, and a 6 foot long Great Barracuda stare me down as I waited to board my craft a mile out from shore. I was the last one in the water, and I was headed towards the ladder when out of nowhere it just cruised in front of me, and we had a stare down with eachother. I never panicked with either encounter, even though others around me screamed or swung their limbs around as if repelling a giant mosquito attack (in the case of the shark).

I must say I feel very fortunate to have experienced nature in so many ways.

Now another family member of mine did experience something very freaky many years ago. She was a Girl Scout back in the 60's, out in California. They used to do some real hardcore stuff in those days, really not your average cookie selling. They took one camping trip into the Great Redwood Forest, and used no tents or shelters of anykind, simply sleeping bags under the wide open sky. I don't remember every detail, but more or less she was awoken by something. She couldn't remember what exactly woke her up, but something did. Then, when she layed there listening she heard a heavy thump. She says that it sounded like something very, VERY big walking around. Everytime it made a step, it thumped the ground. She just pulled the sleeping bag back over her head and listened as everyone else in camp was still sleeping. She said they had set up a table strung between the trees, and on it was a mirror, and other items. Whatever it was, it walked with purpose, and didn't make any uncecessary racket, but she did hear it stop near the table and move some of the stuff around. After listening for a while she finally fell back asleep.

Now, of course I thought it could have been a bear. Mind you this person never assumed it was anything other than a bear. However, when I really began to think about it, the way she described it moving and going through the items without a racket, it sounded less and less like a bear. The first possibility that came to MY mind (again, not the witnesses), was Sasquatch. In all seriousness, bears throw items around and thrash. Heavy, moving with purpose, but being very careful just does not sound like a bear. I'm definitely not a person to jump to conclusions, I enjoy analysing and finding reasonable explanations. It's just that this incident does not sound like a typical bear intrusion.


BTW, jmdewey60, you are not kidding about those Tsavo Lions. I have some friends from Kenya, and when they saw that movie it gave them nightmares for days on end. They were right in the area where those attacks occured. They weren't alive then, but nonetheless, talk about looking over your shoulder afterwards.

[edit on 2-3-2008 by TheAgentNineteen]

a reply to: makeitso

Do you think he's maybe 3 dimensional, like maybe he can manifest in the physical at will, and dissappear at will? That's why they find tracks, hair, but never an actual creature.