Tell your creepy Forest Story

reply to post by BobM88


Maybe the lady in Vietcong dress and person dressed up as Peter Pan belonged to some group whose members dress up in costumes. That's the only thing I can think of.

reply to post by Yuriko


It could have been a ricochet, I have heard them a few times before and they do not sound like they make them out to be in the movies. It is more like a buzzing or whirring sound.

reply to post by misskat1

I've had a lot of bizarre experiences throughout my life, i think everyone has at least one weird story they can tell.
I'd like to add a few strange experiences that took place in the nature reserve Wilderness Lodge, Branscomb, Ca.
These happened years ago, when i was a kid. It's a very rural, downright creepy kind of place to begin with. The stories i'm going to share aren't really that scary, but i think they belong in this thread.

This happened when i was around 5, at the time i was staying with my mom, who was renting a small cabin up Wilderness Lodge. ( I grew up poor, so i wound up moving around ALOT- but for awhile stayed in a few places in this area with my mom, and my grandparents lived by the nature reserve as well). Anyway, it was raining outside and i really wanted to play in the rain. My mom was inside talking on the phone ,and i put on my raincoat and got my umbrella and went outside to play. After awhile i just started walking down the road, and up toward the nature reserve. I clearly remember not thinking about ANYTHING- just a weirdly intense desire to walk in that direction. So i'm walking with my umbrella going further and further up the road and a man pulls up in a truck and asks me where i'm walking and i say "i don't know" he offers me a ride and asks if im ok and i say yes and just keep walking. 4 hours later i'm walking towards my grandparents house ( they lived about 5 miles away). I don't really recall the walk up, but when i got to my granparents i no longer had my umbrella. They called my mom and they put me in the bath and asked why why i walked all the way there, and i told them i didnt know. I remember being very confused about the whole thing.

Next story. This takes place around the same age, maybe before/after? This time me and my mom are staying in another relatives house while they are away. There was a second story room above the garage connected with the main house that we stayed in. It had one little window, and we had a bed and a tv and a heater and clock- and that was it ( yup we were poor) anyway. My mom wanted me to go to sleep because it was midnight, and the movie i was watching (swan princess) was almost over. I told her i'd turn off the tv when it ended, and she said ok and went to bed. Then i just remember looking out the window at a glowing green object right outside the window, in the trees. It looked metallic with 3 glowing green lights around the middle. I remember gasping and saying "so that's what a ufo is" and it shooting off towards the left, it was gone in a split second. I looked at the clock it was 1:30 and the tv was off, i thought i'd just got up to look out the window and didn't remember turning off the tv at all. I tried to tell my mom, and she said something like "that's cool, sweetie" so i just went to bed. That's one of my clearest early memories, just looking at the green lights and thinking "wow".

Ok last one. This takes place when i'm around 11 or 12. This was the most bizarre of all. Me and my mom are visiting the area for old times sake, going to the river and enjoying the afternoon. She wanted to leave because it was getting shady and the water was way too shallow and cold to swim. But i convinced her to stay an hour longer because i wanted to get in the water even if it was cold. So i walked up stream looking for deeper water and i notice that there's a TON of salamanders in the water, only they're not the black/orange bellied ones i'm use to. They had thick light blue bodies with darker blue specks and flared blue collars with washed out whitish eyes. At the time i'd never seen the Axolotls salamanders, so i had no idea this weird kind of salamander existed. Then i noticed that none of them were moving. Grossed out, and now wanting to leave, i walked back down river and saw about 20 MORE of them in the little pool below where my mom was. I told her there were a bunch of dead ones up stream, and we looked at the ones in the pool and they were all dead,too. I picked one up to show her how weird they looked, she'd never seen salamanders like these either. We both got really creeped out and got our stuff and left. So here's the thing, i never bothered to look up this type of salamander until tonight- wanting to get some info on it before i shared this story on ATS. I CANNOT find the type of salamander/newt/axolotls that i saw that day anywhere on the internet. The only thing that looks similar to what i saw is the axolotls,but they are only found in mexico, they only come in pink/white/brown/yellow collors not like the light blue with dark blue speckles i saw. And the ones i saw had thinner tails. I have no idea what those were in the river that day, or why they were ALL dead (perhaps pollution run off from the mill? perhaps) i had never seen them before or after that day- neither had my mom, and she'd swam in the river growing up so it beats me. Those are my only creepy forrest stories, feels good getting them off my chest, and also kinda weird at the same time haha.

This has got to be one of the best threads on this entire site! There is a forum dedicated to outdoorsmen of the PNW area that has a thread going on this same topic, that thread has been active for over five years, with 30+ pages of stories just like this. Great reading.

My story isn't really creepy as much as it was scary at the time. I grew up in Ohio, in the city. Even though my family would go camping (in campgrounds), I didn't grow up hunting or stuff like that. It wasn't till I moved away from the Buckeye state and into the south that I started being active in the outdoors. In any case, I was living in south Mississippi at the time. My FIL and I had gone out to the property of a lady he had done some work for, and we were casing it as possible land for squirrel hunting. He and I had separated, and I was walking along a game trail. All of a sudden, I heard a very loud "woosh", like if you hold your lips in an O and blow with all your might, except louder. I thought possibly it was a deer blowing, but I didn't hear any sounds of an animal that had winded me fleeing, or anything like that. The only weapon I had was a .410 bolt-action shotgun, and I stood stone still for a couple minutes listening, but I didn't hear anything else. Still don't know what it was.

I'm not much of a hunter, but I enjoy exploring and walking trails and creekbeds. This time I was walking a dry creekbed in the Homochitto National Forest in SW MS; it was in the late fall of 2011, during bow season, and there was the sign of a deer having been harvested and drug out sometime earlier, so I was following the sign back to where it had been shot. I walked probably a third of a mile through the winding pine/hardwood forest till i found where it had been shot, and then I headed back out. Almost all the way out to the forest service road where I'd parked my truck I noticed that some type of animal had crossed my trail, and had relieved itself in one of my boot prints. The scat was very fresh, almost literally still steaming. I took pictures of it, and as close as I can tell it was black bear. Not really creepy, but interesting nonetheless.

With living in Oklahoma now, and there being mountain lions and bears in the mountains here, I hardly ever go into the woods without my shepherd. She will alert me to the presence of a predator long before I see it.

Gotta bookmark this thread for further reading before I forget. Im only about 6 pages into this thread, and Im loving these stories. When you're out in the bush, anything can happen. (like when you're walking back towards your vehicle and see rather large paw prints on top of your own footprints.....not a good feeling)

No really scary stories in the bush for me, but I ran across another thread from another similar forum that I frequent (survivalist boards) that's over 100 pages long. Only a few pages into that one and some of their stories are hair-raising to say the least. Scariest post there (from the first couple pages Ive read) was from a guy who woke up with that extreme feeling of fear while also with his dogs barking while in a tent while camping. Long story short, it's dark as heck in the morning/night, he wakes up, notices things are bad, grabs his gun and then turns on his flashlight to see a bear standing a few feet infront of him and his dogs.

Here's a link if anyone wants to read their stories.

www.survivalistboards.com...

Okay, not technically a forest, but it was in a small touristy town in MI a ways north of Traverse City. My family had a cabin up there for many years, and there were alot of back roads and hidden trails that I would explore with my Dad form time to time. I was about 15 when this happened...

My Dad and my friend who was with me were exploring some back roads and we found what looked like a hidden trail. We almost missed it because it was very narrow and there was a tree growing in front of it, so he had to maneuver the car around it. Once on the hidden trail, you could only drive forward or reverse because it was so narrow. We follow the road until it dead ends in a fence but we can see a driveway beyond it and a white abandoned looking house so we get out of the car and investigate.

Now, here's where it starts to get a little creepy. After the fence, all of the trees got closer together on either side. They were so close that you couldn't even fit through them if you tried to escape through the woods. When we got to the house, we saw it was locked and we looked inside the windows. There were all these old TIME magazines from the 1950s and 1960s scattered around the place, no furniture, and a little broken children's doll. There were stairs leading up to the second floor, but they were barred and padlocked preventing anyone from going up there. It was very creepy. We got creeped out but decided to go back at night and check it out again.

When we went back later that night, it was still eerie, but when we pulled out of the driveway to leave to get back on the back road, we noticed a car come up behind us. It pulled into the hidden trail, stopped for a minute, and then proceeded to chase us. At first it was just following us, but it started to speed up when we sped up a little. We were going 70 then 90 on these back roads trying to lose whoever it was. We finally lost them, but it gave us a real scare and we always wondered what was in that house.

The next summer when we went back up there to see the house again, it had been torn down.

I guess I'll share mine. (Sheridan, OR. 1989 or so) When I was about to be a junior in high school, I moved to a new town about 50 miles away (Cloverdale). I had a best friend at the old school, and would occasionally go back to the old town and catch a ball game or visit my old friends during my junior and senior years. One of these weekends, I was staying over in Sheridan with my buddy and we decided to cruise some back roads like we used to. It must have been 9 or 10 at night. Anyway it was dark.

We start driving around and he says "Hey, did you hear about the foot?". For some reason I could only think he was talking about some snow they must gotten, but was a little confused. I say "No, whats that". He kind of gets a weird look and say "I'll show you". So we cruise down one of the back roads and head up a side road to this smallish water tower (It was a long time ago... might have just been power transfer station... anyway, utility stuff behind a chain link fence) . The road kind of curves around until you are pointing at the structure. Nothing but tall oaks and empty fields all around.

So as he is pulling around, his headlights shine on the chain link fence surrounding the structure and as he gets about ten feet away, I finally see it. I suddenly get this massive sinking feeling in my gut as I look up and see this shoe with about six inches of ankle sticking out of it. It is a high-top basketball shoe and the leg looks like it was just kind of tore off.

At this point, I say something like "Oh man, what the f..?". It was more just freaky than immediately scary or anything. He says something about how a couple of our friends had found it and the cops haven't found any more of the person. Finally after a couple of minutes, he starts to get out, ans says "Hah, it's not real". We proceed to get out and inspect it, as he is telling me the whole story.

Somebody (nobody knows who) had apparently been to Dairy Queen and had a to go bag. I don't know if it it still that way, byt they used to serve fries in these trays that had a red and whitish checkered bottom. Well, when wrapped up just right in a greasy brown bag, it looks remarkably like a human leg part. Stuff it in a shoe and put a little ketchup on it and you have a severed foot. Even from a few feet away it was very realistic.

So the original guys that found it were up there getting high. They were so scared that they tore into town and went straight to the police station. The cops followed them back up and and with the other guys too afraid to get out, the cop gets out, shines his light on it and finally, a few steps away says ," Man, that looks real" and discloses that it is in fact not a real foot.

Pretty entertaining...

So the funny thing is, as we are looking at it, I say, "Hey, that's my shoe!". I used to have some custom speaker boxes in my pickup and behind the seat the center of the boxes sat on a hump, and the outside would tilt if I didn't have something under them. So anyway, I had long ago put an old nasty pair of high tops one under each side. Some months before, I had lost one of the shoes rummaging behind the seat at a basketball game when I was visiting. This was the shoe, no doubt about it.

Of course I left my shoe to keep the "foot" gag going.

originally posted by: Bedlam
Well, I've told the ball-lightning one, that happened in the woods.

Mostly I LIKE the woods. Rarely get lost for long, and there's nothing really there that will hurt you.

I did once see what looked like human figures coalescing out of fog in an old graveyard in the woods. There was a place near the house when I was a kid that people used to swear they saw odd things, have seen them myself, although they didn't match what the others saw - namely, I saw (with two other people) what looked like a big luminous green cats-eye open up about 30 feet over the ground and turn to follow us as we ran, another time I saw with one other person what looked like oddly misshapen chimps running through the brush. Oh, and driving through there over the bridge one night there were what looked like a dozen black dogs, half on one side of the road and half on the other. It wouldn't have been unusual, except the dogs were sitting facing the road in ranks and didn't move as I drove by. Six dogs on one side of the road sitting motionless, facing the road, spaced out regularly. Six on the other, across from each other, like little Anubis dogs. Didn't turn to follow the car. Just frozen there.

Never saw that sort of thing anywhere else.

Not far from there my eldest bro was out hunting alone one day, didn't come home on time. When he got back, he made up some bs story for the folks. That night he told us that he had seen a huge owl in a tree - REALLY large, maybe four feet tall. He had pointed the rifle at it, there was a flash of light and he woke up on his ass in the dark, with the dew falling on him. Could have been another bs story. Was certainly original.

I don't think that story he told you was bs, I have seen this owl and have researched it myself. I personally live in Canada and while hiking in tobermory, I came across it for a couple of seconds. I don't know if your brother could see it in the dark but did the one he saw have a woman's face? Because the one I saw did.

After about 4 months of looking in the wrong place for it ( I thought it may have been some sort of heavenly or demonish sign of some sort) I finally came across La Lachuza, its a human sized owl that I think you should look up.

This is nothing special really but it still makes me wonder sometimes.

This was maybe 6 years ago,
I was walking in the woods with my 2 big dogs. They are not afraid of wild animals, they are dogs, they chase any animals they see. But this time...

I decided to be adventurus and take a hike in the wild forest (going off the trail) We went very far in.
We came to a crooked area, turns almost like a snake in shape and many trees so I coldn't see anything that came after each turn.

My dogs ran a head of me doing their thing.
I couldn't see them anymore but I heard them stopping.
It went dead silent.
Then I see the first dog run as fast as she can with her tail between her legs, just running right past me, after her came my other dog.
I was to frightened to look what it could be so I bolted after them.

I have never run that fast and the dogs had run all the way out to the trail. 10-15 minutes ot from where we were.

When I caught up to them I decided to walk back to the car, and they didn't move an inch, they walked on the trail and didn't do anyhting else.

That's not a typical behavior from my dogs.
Even a moose they don't react that way to. And if it was another person they would have barked.

I don't know what they saw, but something frightened them.

(No, in my country we do not have bears or any large predator, moose is the biggest animal.)

One of the best paranormal threads (if not the best) ever!

Bookmarking and I want to later add a story too!

Thanks for the thrills and chills. S&F

a reply to: Missmissie173

You might enjoy the original thread too. www.abovetopsecret.com...

In North Georgia, theres a place with a lot of
big boulders. Its kind of a park,more like just a
natural area, very isolated, several miles off the paved road.

On weekends climbers go out there to play around, but
the rest of the time hardly anyone is there.
In the rocks there are caves. They aren't really caves in the
normal sense but spaces between the boulders. There is one
that is quite extensive, it really gets dark as you go deeper it.
If anyone went into, it at a certain
point, it turned a corner where you couldn't see the end of
it. Nobody went past that point, as a loud growling commenced
when you got close to it. There was a lot of speculation as to what
it could be. Most thought it was probably a Lynx. Though, coyotes
are in the area. It was too loud to be a coon or opossum. This same
thing occured more than one trip out there.

Finally I decided I would have to go past that point around the corner and
see what it was. I was really afraid, what if I had it cornered and it attacked me?
I was in for a surprise, something totally unexpected!

see below



































It was a young vulture. (there was another entrance
high on the rocks where the parents came and went.)

a reply to: UMayBRite!

That's a good story but I just had to comment about interpreting animal sounds. You mention that it was too loud to be a coon or opossum, but once about 30 years ago my dog had a coon treed in the back yard and the sounds that thing made had me afraid to go outside. I thought at first that it must be a large bear up in the tree until I finally got brave enough to go shine a flashlight on it. Snarling raccoon, one of the loudest wild animal sounds I've ever heard...

My buddy and I went hunting last year and heard a really weird sound in the woods. I asked my buddy what it was and he had no clue. We tried going toward it and it was suddenly behind us like whatever was making the noise was circling us. We're in a hollar in West Virginia. Mountains are all around. Woods are really thick here. We were far away from any technology that could have made that noise. I haven't been back there since. It's too weird for me. The following is close to what the sound was like:



I don't think it was a radio. The leaves were gone from the trees and we had pretty much a clean line of sight. I mean there were trees but the trunks aren't big enough to hide behind. We saw nobody there with us. What do you think of it?

Starred and flagged!

Posted just to bump this AMAZING thread.Great bedtime reading!

a reply to: Yuriko

It may have been a bullet. A .22 bullet can go for about a mile. They're small and you wouldn't see it when it's going by but it might make a sound as it's cutting though the air.

a reply to: guanyu

The forest in the Appalachian region is often kind of ignored, it's kinda believed that that area has been populated for so long (by the white man, I should say ) that nothing could remain undiscovered. I personally think Ohio, PA, WV, Kentucky all hold more than enough forest to hide some unusual critters.

I agree. I'm in WV and the woods here are dense. Anything can be hiding in them.

originally posted by: Ivar_Karlsen
Not personal experience, happend to my youngest daughter as she visited a friend in the southern part of the country.
Just after midnight the 4 girls and 2 parents was in the living room.
Suddenly the father calls out for the others to come to the window and have a look at some animal out on the field.
This is farmland with lots of open fields surrounded by forest, it was clear weather and nearly full moon, so they could see the animal very well at a distance.
It looked like a big dog or a wolf.
Then a car approached on a nearby road, as it came closer the animal got up on its hind legs and ran off at an impossible speed into the woods.
Nobody in the area had ever heard of any animal that could do that, and it was definitely not a human being.
Creepy as hell even if you're safe inside a house.

There are some books by Linda Godfrey on what's called dogmen that have similar accounts. Here is her site. There is a lot of weird stuff on there. She's been on Coast to Coast AM a few times.

a reply to: ecapsretuo

Mt. Shasta is the most powerful place around here, and I have explored the mountain and surrounding area a lot. An absolutely magical place where the veil is thin, Shasta, and the energetic dynamic I described is nowhere more blatant than here. Many people are repulsed up there, I have often seen company become physically ill or mentally unsettled there; conversely, when one can be open up there, there are super high vibrations to immerse oneself in. I understand Natives did not camp on the mountain proper; due to the intensity in the air I am sure they saw it as some Spirit Realm. So I think we need to be careful and mindful on Shasta.

Mt. Shasta is considered to be sacred land by some Native nations. They only go there for ceremonies.

a reply to: misskat1

I've spent the past few hours reading through this thread. It's great.

This one isn't spooky, more like funny and it's not really in a forest but there were a lot of trees. Anywho, I dance at powwows. One I used to go to was at a state park in South Bend, Indiana. There is a forest of deciduous trees around the camping area. Inside the camping area are row upon row of pine trees. The dancing was done for an hour or so because it was dinner time. I was sitting on my camp chair near the edge of the pines. All of a sudden this red tailed hawk comes flying past me hell bent for leather in a panic. It was so close that its feathers actually brushed my arm. It startled the crap out of me, let me tell you. Here's the funny thing: a little tiny bird was chasing it. That really cracked me up seeing that tiny bird chasing the much bigger hawk that could have eaten it for a meal.

This one did take place in some woods and is creepy as hell. My friends and I were driving around one night, looking for a supposedly haunted place. Two friends were up in front of my friend's pick up truck and the rest of us were in the back. We were going along a back road that went through some woods. We happened to look off into the woods and saw several people walking single file-each carrying a torch. We couldn't really see them or anything because it was dark but we saw the fire on the torches.They lined both sides of the road. That really freaked us out and we started yelling at my one friend to get the hell out of there. I swear there must have been twenty people out in those woods. Maybe more. I have no idea what they were doing there but we were all scared.