Forest Ranger's Share Their Creepy Stories. What's yours?

I came across an article listing strange things that forest rangers have come across on the job. I managed to save a few of the interesting ones but didn't think to save the link and I can't find it. Some of the stories are a long so this post will probably take up a few replies.

Anyways, some of the stories are pretty strange and I'm not sure what I would do in those situations. I tried to think back to anything creepy happening to me while in the woods.

I do remember as a kid (10-11 yrs old.) being creeped out by a certain section of forest where my dad and I would take ATVs with my uncles and cousins. It was in eastern Kentucky not far from Louisa. We would ride in an area that had miles and miles of service roads and trails that led up to gas lines/wells. There was one such gas well that was pretty close to the entrance of trails down from my uncle's house. A few years before, a worker for the gas company made the mistake of using his lighter to melt ice from a lock while on top of the gas well in the early morning. The explosion shook my uncle's house and woke everyone up. My cousin was first on the scene. He described several trees close buy on fire and notice pieces of clothing hanging from branches. The service truck was parked several yards away on the trail, still running. The well (think a big 30' round and 15' high steel tank) was about 20 yards from where it used to be and upside down. He spotted a man laying on the trail with most of his clothing blown off. All that was left were shreds of his pants. He was bleeding from his ears and had no pulse. Eventually the EMT's arrived but could not save him. This story scared the sh*t out of me. To make matters worse, we would always have to ride past the spot where this happened. Even after several years had passed, the well was still there, trees and the ground still blackened from the fire. Oddly, nature never returned in that area. Place always spooked me, especially when we would be returning from a ride late and have to pass by in the night.

There were other areas in those woods that were creepy. An old family cemetery plot with about 10-12 tombstones from the same family. All dated early 1800's. An old abandoned house in the middle of the woods several miles from any kind of road. There was an old foundation of what used to be church way back in the woods as well. In addition to the foundation, the front stairs was all that remained. That place gave off weird vibes.

I would like to hear of others strange and creepy experiences in the woods. Doesn't have to be paranormal. Just something that was odd or scared you. Here are some of the forest ranger's experiences:

Mysterious stranger stalks camp at night
"I once led a trip to the top of Mt. Sterling in North Carolina. It's a tough climb to get to the top, and about six miles from the nearest road. I was leading a group of eight middle school kids and had one co-instructor. We were camping out on top of the mountain, and it was a beautiful night with a full moon. The kids and the other co-instructor went to bed in their tents. I chose to spend the night in a hammock that night. I was really into a book I was reading so I stayed up and read until about 10:30 PM. I turned my headlamp off to settle in for the night. Everything around me was rather bright from the moon and from the position I was in. I could see down the trail we had hiked to get to the top. I laid there enjoying the scenery and noticed something moving on the trail. Bears are common in the area so I perked up. As it got closer, I could tell it was a person. We were in the middle of nowhere and there was someone hiking up the trail with no headlamp or any gear. I was just frozen, watching this person move closer to our camp. They arrived at the top of the mountain where we were and just stopped. I watched as what appeared to be a man surveyed our camp. I really could only see the outline of him. He stood there for what seemed like 30 minutes but may have been 10. He then turned and sat down under a tree facing our camp. He was sitting up in a way that I knew he wasn't trying to sleep. He just sat there staring at our camp. I had no idea what to do. I decided to wait it out. I waited, just staring at the man while he stared at my camp. This went on until about 3:30 AM. Then, he stood up, took a moment to survey my camp a few minutes longer and then went back down the trail he came up on. I, to this day have no idea what that was all about but it freaked me out. I was paranoid that we were being followed for the rest of the trip."

Perfectly severed deer head found on isolated trail in Yellowstone
"I'm a ranger at Yellowstone. Couple weeks ago I was exploring the Lamar Valley, about 11 miles from the nearest road and even further to the park boundary.There, in the middle of the trail, is a perfectly severed deer head. No blood, no raggedness at the severance. Perfectly in tact. This is weird because I have seen wolf and bear kills, and I used to find cougar kills in SD with radio tracking just after the cougar made them. This was not any of those things. The head was completely uneaten - eyes, tongue, everything intact. Even the ravens hadn't touched it yet. No caching, no scat. Right smack in the trail, but again, no blood.Even a human doing it made no conventional sense. It was a doe so it had no antlers, plus, why leave it in the trail? Whole thing, even in broad daylight, gave me chills. Just an ocean of waving grass, bison calmly grazing, and a perfectly clean deer head right on the path."

Park worker finds abandoned house with sinister shed
"A shed behind an abandoned house with a steel reinforced door broken off the hinges. The windows of the shed were boarded up from the outside. The only thing inside the shed was a queen size bed with shredded, partly singed white sheets."

Random gunshot fired in the middle of nowhere
"Camping 80+ miles from any thing resembling civilization. Lying in the tent talking before falling asleep when all of the sudden a gunshot rings out no more than 100 yards away. Then hearing the sound slowly travel away. Then quiet."

Ranger finds thumb nailed to tree
"[I saw] a human thumb nailed to a tree."

Search for teen hikers runs through creepy clearing filled with mutilated children's toys
"There was a group of teens that hadn't been heard from after their scheduled return time from a camping trip. [A coworker] and I head out in the general direction the teens had set off in. We'd been hiking for most of the day and seen nothing. We're about 35km into the woods at this point when we start noticing odd things. Sticks carved like spears stuck into the ground, weird carvings in the trees, a child's stuffed animal hanging from a noose up in a tree. This place was nowhere near any roads, it wasn't on the regular trails people would go on in the area. The really eerie thing was that everything was freshly-carved. Somebody had been there within a couple of hours of us and made these things. Mind you we're still looking for these teens. We kept on hiking and eventually made camp for the night still kind of on edge from what we had seen earlier but we settle down anyway and go to sleep. We get up with the sunrise hoping to cover more ground before it gets to hot. We pack up the gear and get ready to go when I notice a bit of shirt that had caught on a small tree and ripped along with some shoe prints. We were thinking: great maybe we're close by to the teens, when a radio call comes through. The teens had just been found 20 kilometers east of us, and they're calling everybody back. All those weird things we had seen from the day before came flooding back into my mind, and we wasted no time hiking out of those woods."

Suicide victim left hanging from tree for hours until medical examiner arrives
"I found a dead man in a tree... I am a seasonal ranger for my local forest district. The rest of the rangers say we find about one suicide a year, so here was the one for the year. When we go around opening parks each day, we drive through to make sure everything is OK. In this instance, I was driving through, and had just lost sight of the road when I saw a man hanging from a tree in a clearing. He had hung himself. I called the cops and the coroner... the coroner took an hour to show up, and he was the only one with a ladder long enough to cut the guy down.... so I stared at a dead guy in a tree for an hour."

Ranger followed by cougar for days
"The scariest experience I had as a back-country park ranger in Washington State was being stalked by a cougar for a day and a half. I was hiking up an unpopular trail up to an old shelter and had that creepy 'being watched' feeling. I had seen fairly fresh cougar scratches and scats along the trail but that's pretty common up here so I wasn't worried at all. That night I camped at the shelter, which only had three walls and a roof. I felt uneasy all night and hardly slept. At one point (chiding myself for being paranoid) I arranged my emergency foil tarp around my sleeping bag so at least I could hopefully hear something if it approached me as I slept. The next day I found FRESH scat and scratches on the trail I had hiked in on. About a mile past the shelter I found a mostly-eaten deer in some dense brush off the trail. Cougars often keep kills stashes throughout their territory for later snacking. Now a cougar won't usually tangle with a human, but here I am a five foot tall, 100 pound sack of flesh and bones at least 13 miles out from any other humans. I decided to cut short my three-day trip, and hot-footed it out of there. The last two hours of hiking through dusk in a dense forest was the most hair-raising hike I've ever had. I didn't know I was capable of being that hyper-vigilant."

Children visit park to see animals, find human molars instead
"Our park lets kids from school in so they can look for animals in the forest and the streams.
One day a kid finds molars. The teeth looked like human molars, but the teacher said they were a deer's. I dismissed it and completely forgot about it. Two days later, they found a corpse with a smashed skull and jaw in another part of the park. All its teeth were missing. A local news paper covered it, but all they had to say was thank the spooky skeletons for good bones and teeth."

Family pet shot and left to die in the forest
"US Forest Service here: dog skeleton, still leashed to a tree, bullet hole in skull."

Ranger stumbles onto a few-year-old plane crash
"[I saw] the remains of a plane that had crashed into a cliff. Found out later that it had crashed a few years before and there had just never been the proper resources to remove the wreckage, but finding a place you know people have died in is weird."

Ranger stumbles onto Furry orgy
"I have been a ranger in the southern Canadian Rockies for a few years. One Sunday morning, I was doing my daily patrols, saw some smoke from afar, and thought I would check it out. When I arrived on the scene, there was a group of people half-naked (only sexual parts exposed), dressed up as animals all curled up in a ball passed out on the ground. Probably one of the weirdest things I have come across."

Totaled (yet empty) truck found at the bottom of a cliff
"A pickup truck that had been driven off the 1200 road up in the Cascade Mountains above Washougal. It was totaled. I hiked down to it and checked it out. No signs of injury, so maybe it was just pushed down after being stolen. But behind the truck seat was a used pair of women's panties. I called the cops with its location, don't know what ever came of it."

Shirtless man runs around forest waving crowbar
"I was surveying a remote restoration site near an old trail and I heard someone walking up a nearby path. All the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, so I grabbed all my stuff and started casually walking down the trail like I belonged there. I turned the corner and there was a shirtless guy swinging a crowbar around in circles, and when he saw me he started yelling, 'I'VE GOT A CROWBAR! I'VE GOT A CROWBAR!' I think I nodded at him, squeaked something like, 'Nice crowbar,' and then ran the mile or so back to my truck."

Tent set up illegally is filled with food, cigarettes, even a teddy bear, but no occupant
"The oddest thing (that is, my unsolved mystery), was the abandoned camp next to the trail. Camping outside of designated campsites is a big no-no, and I was surprised as all get-out to walk around the corner one day and find a tent set up directly next to the trail. The trail ran along a nice stream, and was a very tranquil spot. Inside, I found a cloth sleeping bag, some dirty clothes, LOTS of food (big cans of Spaghetti-os, and what looked like some leftovers from a refried beans and rice dinner), and a teddy bear. Everything reeked of cigarette smoke. I was reticent to confiscate everything and leave the individual out there with nothing, but I did take all the food and pack it to a secure food storage box along the way back to my cabin. I left a note explaining where I had taken the food, and that they needed to move camp. I was unable to return to the tent for two weeks (way too long to leave it sitting there, next to the trail). It was basically untouched when I returned. Some trail crew folks had checked it out and let me know, but that was probably it. I packed up the rest and hauled it out. I spent some time poking around the area, but never saw any other signs of life. It was obviously someone who was not prepared for camping out in the back-country, judging by the food, equipment, and the teddy bear....I just don't know. Everything: clothing, gear, etc., indicated just one individual."

Nearly naked man found napping in the wilderness
"While out in full fog, my friend and I figured we were the only people silly enough to go for a hike in the cold rain and fog. There was one other truck in the parking lot when we arrived. Well... after a few miles in, near the top of the mountain we were climbing, we found the guy. He was in his underwear and had a pillow and a walking stick. That was it. I don't know if we interrupted his nap but he got up and left when we came upon him."

Wolves and bear slaughter moose feet away from men
"Were in the middle of nowhere, no other humans for at least 40 kilometers and were hearing this unearthly shrieking sound. We run out into the forest, heading down hill to the lowlands next to the river and watched as a group of maybe six wolves chased down a bull moose. The animal had a massive gash in its side. It had been gored by yet another predator which was following up from the rear: a full-grown male grizzly bear. I thought I was watching a movie, like one of those things you only see in nature documentaries. We followed from a distance of maybe 250 metres, while the bull moose desperately tried to cross the river, it didn't make it.The wolves descended on their prey, dragging it onto shore while it was still kicking and shrieking in agony. The wolves didn't get their prize for long as the grizzly was done watching and charged the pack of wolves, which broke up at the first charge, then attacked. The massive bear broke two of the pack against the ground, then the others slinked back into the woods. They didn't go far from the kill, knowing the bear would have its fill, and they would have theirs sooner or later. It was a battle that you only hear about from First Nations. That was the moment I realized why we were not the top of the food chain at that moment."

Appalachian meth lab explodes in the middle of the night
"I was out camping in the middle of nowhere, and just before dawn, I heard this huge boom that woke me out of my sleep. I packed up for a hike and set out towards the sound. After about a five kilometer hike, I found the smoldering remains of a what I think was a moonshine still. It could have been a meth lab. There was at least one very mutilated body, but it looked like one guy got out in one piece."

Was it this?
www.reddit.com...

a reply to: Neysa

Not exactly though I do remember running across that thread. I fell down the rabbit hole of strange stories in the woods and came across several threads and webpages. That's why I wanted to start one here to see what other ATS members had to say.

Source?

I have been in lirk mode, not osting anything for a while but I enjoyed your post so much I had to find the source.

originally posted by: DeviantMortal
Source?

I have been in lirk mode, not osting anything for a while but I enjoyed your post so much I had to find the source.

Boom! Winner! Thanks!

Decided I would add the only story I really have, I was about 19 and went hunting with my step-dad. We were a good hour or two into the woods on an old peanut plantation and we were both in seperate ground blinds. I had two incidents on this same trip. First, while I was watching a deer through the brush a good 50 yards away I noticed some movement out the corner of my other eye. When I turned my head to look I saw a bob cat, it was a big fella too less than ten feet from me, nothing between him and I. We locked eyes and I swear it just stood there looking into my eyes for what felt like forver, before it turned and walked away calmly. The second also cat related, near the end of the trip, it was almost dark. I heard some rustling in the brush to my right and as I spun my head around to look I heard what sounded like a mountain lion growl and saw a long slender tail slither into the bushes almost as close as the bob cat was. I didnt find out untill the trip home that there had been a few sightings of big cats in the area. I wished i had my camera with me that day. I would love to have gotten a picture of that bob cat at least.

a reply to: jtrenthacker

No problem :p I have been told my serach-fu is strong LoL.

This is so cool!!! Dun ...dun ...dun .....

I walked into a forest once, it was so nice and wonderful, even serene.. It was maybe a little dark, but the flowers were so nice and their fragrance so intoxicating. Like whispers of things you want to hear, but only into your lungs.

But then.. I saw the sun, shining vaguely, struggling through the withered and pierced and gaping trees, enticing every wanderer near by, and I realised that this forest, was in fact the most horrible of creatures known to any man.

I tried with all my might to see those flowers, to smell their scent. Instead I could only smell death and putrid rotting souls. It surely was hell. But I found I could not run away, I was ensnared in the grasp of her roots. Surely I was a doomed man.

Good thing she didn't ensnare me completely in her prickly bush... Oh I didn't escape without scars, scars of the heart and of the soul. But I did escape.

And now, I walk into a garden. And the flowers are much nicer and have no thorns. and instead of a horrible creature, I only see beauty in it all... The gods spared me to see darkness in beauty and the beauty in what was always before me.

True story, I tell you no lie.

oh and then I saw a sasquatch and ran away, Can't say any more but he looked like a large man in a hairy suit. Probably was a rare forest ape descended from enoch, I think. big feet you know. Right before I was taken by a flying saucer to nibiru. Well you know, truth and nonsense often become good friends.

I knew I recognized a lot of these stories. Spent a good long night reading them. Not my best idea to read at night though I must say!

There was another ranger posting there for awhile. Think he had like 6 parts of really strange things. The one in particular that stood out was when he kept coming upon stairs in the middle of nowhere, leading to nowhere. He really never got a total straight answer from his work buddies either about them except to NOT climb them. He did get a couple point of interest about them, but for the most part it seemed to be a really taboo subject with the rangers.

He said there were all kinds of stairs. Not the same kind. Also if he passed by the same spot later, they would be gone.
Really cool chronicles he wrote about it. I am nowhere near doing it any justice.

If anyone is interested, I will go see if I can find the link. It was certainly captivating.

originally posted by: onehuman
I knew I recognized a lot of these stories. Spent a good long night reading them. Not my best idea to read at night though I must say!

There was another ranger posting there for awhile. Think he had like 6 parts of really strange things. The one in particular that stood out was when he kept coming upon stairs in the middle of nowhere, leading to nowhere. He really never got a total straight answer from his work buddies either about them except to NOT climb them. He did get a couple point of interest about them, but for the most part it seemed to be a really taboo subject with the rangers.

He said there were all kinds of stairs. Not the same kind. Also if he passed by the same spot later, they would be gone.
Really cool chronicles he wrote about it. I am nowhere near doing it any justice.

If anyone is interested, I will go see if I can find the link. It was certainly captivating.

I've come across those stories as well. Most people have explained them away as what was left of an old lookout that was used for forest fire spotters. As far as disappearing, maybe the person was mistaken on the location upon returning? Fun reading either way.

a reply to: jtrenthacker

I also found that thread written by a forest ranger,really good,creepy stories.
I was interested in those strange stairs that show up in different places in our
national parks.I will read more of these stories when I have time.

originally posted by: onehuman
I knew I recognized a lot of these stories. Spent a good long night reading them. Not my best idea to read at night though I must say!

There was another ranger posting there for awhile. Think he had like 6 parts of really strange things. The one in particular that stood out was when he kept coming upon stairs in the middle of nowhere, leading to nowhere. He really never got a total straight answer from his work buddies either about them except to NOT climb them. He did get a couple point of interest about them, but for the most part it seemed to be a really taboo subject with the rangers.

He said there were all kinds of stairs. Not the same kind. Also if he passed by the same spot later, they would be gone.
Really cool chronicles he wrote about it. I am nowhere near doing it any justice.

If anyone is interested, I will go see if I can find the link. It was certainly captivating.

IIRC that whole thing was a hoax. I read it I was intrigued by it, I think the guy came forward and admitted it was fake, sadly.

a reply to: jtrenthacker

Many years ago my wife and I were driving around a place in Louisiana called Melrose. It's where all of the old plantation homes on Cane river were/are. So we're driving around on the backroads, sipping on some beer and listening to the radio. We come across this cemetary that was so old it looked like the people that took care of it died long ago. There was vegetation everywhere and even some trees growing into some of the headstones.

I tell her to stop because I like to walk around old cemetaries and check out the tombstones. There were many from the 1800's or older. This cemetary was right next to a Bayou. So many of the graves had a concrete/brick covering over them to keep them from washing away whenever a flood hits and the bayou fills up. While I was walking around, I noticed that one of these graves had a hold smashed into the side of the concrete. So I go back to the car and get a flashlight. When I came back and looked into the hole you could see the top of the coffin and tree roots growing everywhere.

In the corner of this grave right on top of the casket was a white plastic wal mart bag. I was thinking maybe somebody stashed some money or something valuable there, so I get a stick and fish it out of there. When I opened it up I had no idea what I was seeing.

There was several wal mart bags all together. After getting through the many layers of plastic, there were three peices of cypress bark, tied together with red and black yarn and covered in cayenne pepper. I unwrapped the yarn and opened it. Inside were what appeared to be the insides of a pumpkin with seeds everywhere. There were thumbtacks all in it, as well as red and black candles that were burned down to almost nothing. Pencils were stuck through this weird package at odd angles sort of holding it all together. Inside in the very middle of all of this was a peice of paper. On one side of this piece of paper was all three names of the man whose grave it was in. It was written both horizontally and vertically and covered that whole side of the paper. On the other side of this paper, was written the words "shut you mouth" over and over and over, both horizontally and vertically just like the other side.

I knew that there were still some old folks that messed with voodoo that lived out there, so we got kinda creeped out and just left the cemetary. A few months later we were telling a friend about it, and he decided to go drive out there and look at it. We went with him and looked in the grave and it was the same as before. A white wal mart bag sitting on top of the casket in the corner. We left it alone this time.

I asked a friend of mine who is into this stuff and it turns out the bark, yarn, pepper, all of that stuff was used for binding spirits to their grave. Apparently whoever was in that grave had some voodoo talismans put there so their spirit would not come back and haunt the living.

a reply to: Cancerwarrior

Whoa, wtf? That would've freaked me out. I don't think I would of had the stones to reach into the grave and grab the bag. Thanks for the story.

a reply to: jtrenthacker

This might interest you.....

www.canammissing.com...

a reply to: jtrenthacker

What's weird is with the span of a few months, I had lost my job, gotten busted by the cops twice, gotten very sick and had to be in the hospital for a bit, landlord problems, woman problems you name it.

Maybe it was all a coincidence, maybe not. Either way I learned to never mess with any weird stuff you find in the graveyards around here.

a reply to: olaru12

I've read some of the 411 stuff. Great stories. Wasn't aware of this site though. I'll check it out. Thanks!