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

a reply to: onehuman
a reply to: mamabeth
a reply to: Caver78

Search and Rescue tales

NoSleep is a place for authors to share their original horror stories. For a more detailed explanation of the subreddit, click here. Suspension of disbelief is key here. Everything is true here, even if it's not. Don't be the jerk in the movie theater hee-hawing because monkeys don't fly.

I just love this type of thread,s+f. Im also extremely interested in the Missing411 phenomena,so creepy forest stories always fascinate me.I live in the African Bush,but its not like forests at all,and no creepy things around here.There's a strange flying cryptid around here,it streaks through the night sky sometimes trailing behind it what looks like a fire trail.I estimate it to be about the size of 2 pigeons,or one very large pigeon.It's not creepy though,just a fresh surprise every time i see it.Seems to have a nest in the game reserve next to our yard.

I went to college at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. The town is surrounded by dense forests in the southeastern part of the state. About a half hour drive from Athens was a place we hiked often. There was a trail that followed what was left of a train track and led to the Moonville Tunnel. Very spooky place.

Here is a link to the thread I made that goes into detail. I believe there are links from that thread to the other area stories.
Moonville Tunnel

a reply to: jtrenthacker

My weird story is about a particular stretch of highway in the Arkansas Ozarks where I've had two strange experiences.

#1
One night I was driving along and a large male whitetail deer was just beginning to step onto the road in the other lane. He was at least an 8 to 10 point (total points on the antlers as they count them here). He saw me coming and began to walk a little faster and it was not helping his chances of surviving. I was not about to swerve so I braked hard, harder, and then the tires locked up. He stopped, looked directly at the bright, screeching "thing" coming towards him and did nothing. As my car began to approach contact with this beautiful creature, it skidded slightly crooked within the lane. I screeched to a halt at which time my driver side rearview mirror lightly tapped his cheek bone. Again, he did nothing. While he continued to stand in the same spot, we made eye contact. For some odd reason I pushed the power window button in the "down" position. It just seemed the thing to do. We certainly were not going to chat it up, so it makes no sense but that's what I did. After about 3 or 4 seconds looking at each other with the window down, he turned his head and trotted off!

#2
EXACT same spot in the road, I blinked and when my eyes opened I saw something odd out of the corner of my left eye. I did not see the shape of the creature, person, or whatever it was. All I saw was big, long, dark brownish, almost black dreadlocks. It was from something tall and they appeared to have a wide diameter.

It's rare that i travel this road anymore. Next time I'm in the area, I will have to run video. The way it goes, I'll probably get some good "bug gut" footage and nothing more...

originally posted by: jtrenthacker
I went to college at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. The town is surrounded by dense forests in the southeastern part of the state. About a half hour drive from Athens was a place we hiked often. There was a trail that followed what was left of a train track and led to the Moonville Tunnel. Very spooky place.

Here is a link to the thread I made that goes into detail. I believe there are links from that thread to the other area stories.
Moonville Tunnel

The Ridges (Athens Lunatic Asylum) is in Athens. I knew a few very credible people that broke into that place and watched a huge steel door slam shut for no apparent reason. Many strange things around that town, for sure.

originally posted by: Flesh699

originally posted by: jtrenthacker
I went to college at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. The town is surrounded by dense forests in the southeastern part of the state. About a half hour drive from Athens was a place we hiked often. There was a trail that followed what was left of a train track and led to the Moonville Tunnel. Very spooky place.

Here is a link to the thread I made that goes into detail. I believe there are links from that thread to the other area stories.
Moonville Tunnel

The Ridges (Athens Lunatic Asylum) is in Athens. I knew a few very credible people that broke into that place and watched a huge steel door slam shut for no apparent reason. Many strange things around that town, for sure.

Yeah, I have some threads on here about all of the stories and my experiences there. We found an open window while they did some renovations to the Ridges. It was when they were constructing the Kennedy Museum. After hours of searching, we managed to find Margarets stain up in the attic. Nothing paranormal happened but we were very scared the whole time.
Athens Part 1
Athens Part 2
Athens Part 3
Athens Part 4
Athens Part 5

a reply to: jtrenthacker

Uuu

This could be a good thread, I am gonna add my story later

a reply to: jtrenthacker

I have worked in the woods in some capacity or another for a good part of my career. I have three; one spooky one I heard second hand and one that was just cool.

Me and my stepson were out cutting firewood in a remote part of a piece of property my family owned at one time. we were down on a small flat with a ridge to our South & West, I was running the saw and if I had been working alone this probably would have never came to my notice. My stepson tapped me and pointed South; i saw the top of a pine tree, visible above the ridge, wipping back and forth. I stopped running the saw & we walked to the top of the ridge to see what was causing this, only a few yards up the and the tree stopped wipping back & forth, when we got to the top of the ridge and looked down toward the base of the tree nothing was there. the tree was substantial enough that I doubt that a person could have moved it like that, though we were not inclined to hike down the other side of the ridge to investigate further. Whatever did this was smart enough to know we could see the tree top from where we were but not see it as the ridge was in the way.

Someone I worked with had a story; he was in a rural area out on the coast, I cannot recall if he was working or what, It was during a big storm & it was raining very hard, he went outside, I believe to fetch some firewood but I am not sure, he picked up a tarp and underneath were these bugs/spiders about the size of a nickel or a quarter there were about 1/2 a dozen of them & they were bright orange either having some kind of bioluminesence or very reflective they all began to move very quickly around one another. He said it kinda freaked him out and he put the tarp back down & left them alone. In the morning he went out to see if they were still there & they were not. Anybody have any idea what those could have been?

Driving home from work I was traveling down a little canyon. The road paralleled a small creek that was just below me & off to my right. As I drove by I spooked a golden eagle it taking flight from a tree on the opposite side of the creek. But the eagle did not fly away it flew up to my passenger side and paced me off the passengers side window about 25 feet away, he (we will call him a he) was there for a few seconds then he flew directly in front of me about maybe 15 feet above me & maybe 25 feet ahead he did this for about 10 seconds, it was a poor dirt road & I was only doing 30 mph, it was cool if someone had seen this it would look like I had an eagle escort. He then swung over to my drivers side staying there for a few seconds and even looking at me then he flew off, it was really cool.

Man, the wife and I have gone back and forth reading the stories to each other late at night from Reddit. We live in the pnw and I have been calling my whole life in the cascade range. I couldn't think of anything really odd but then I remembered the Maltby Cemetery.

I grew up in Bothell about two miles from this famous landmark. Ghost hunters from the past will recognize the name by its infamy. Anyway, the legends were thick about going there at night when I was a teenager. I never gave it much thought until I started reading about the stairs that appear in the woods from the Reddit posts.

Now I've never seen random stairs myself but that was the legends...30 years ago. It goes that if you went to the cemetery late in the night you would come apon stairs that go to nowhere. Being kids we went several times. Although , the cemetery was otherwise empty. As time passed more houses were built around the area choking the woods out
I just found it strange that this same legend it's still around.

You know, this is like the sole reason I got an account? Just to make this post. Anyway.

When I was little in Connecticut, there was a very old garden, overgrown, in the woods behind my house--I lived next to Sleeping Giant, and I could just walk up any old time. What I'd been told was that was my great-grandmother's project back in the day, and, to me, it was very peaceful and I loved to go find it and just hang out there among the sunbeams and the vegetation. My family was always very, very nervous about me being out there, though. Said something about nails in the soil, but the reaction was sheer terror. I can't remember if there was a small family graveyard nearby or if I'm conflating memories with Ohio. Could be. My memory isn't the best, low-grade abuse and gaslighting and all.

When I lived in Ohio, we had a porch light and a side light, but neither reached all the way out to the field. There was maybe ten feet of yard between the edge of your vision and the start of the field, and after harvest it was a pretty big vista all the way out to the hill that was in the middle of the field. So one night in the fall, and this is back when I had my first dog, my dog just goes outside and looks out at the field. Not defensive, not curious, not playful, didn't have to go, just a little antsy. And so I go outside too, because hell, it's not too cold yet. I stare out and keep staring, and I swear I see something, and then it comes into focus: two red eyes in the field, at the edge of the light, low to the ground, but I don't remember them being low enough to where it would make sense for a coyote. And they're noisy, and run in packs, and stayed on the other side of the road, around the old railroad bed. Now that I'm older I'd say bear-height. But # if I'm going to go and figure out what the hell it really is. That side light stayed the # on, too.

Not particularly spooky, but when two guys in a Ford van pull into your driveway at 11:30 PM and don't stop to go to the house but just go straight to the equipment shed you get a special kind of angry-scared.

Also walking your bike past one of the old, packed-full Midwestern cemeteries well past sundown because your legs just do not want to keep pedalling. Yikes.

When I was in Afg the first time, one of our COPs did 8-hour guard shift rotations on three towers--the other was kind of pointless and got turned into the ammo dump. One was the north tower, one the south, and on the other side of the compound was the gate, serpentine and guard tower for it to the actual American side. Now, mind you, when we replaced the losing unit, there was a mechanic left behind to hand over the trucks and one or two of his joes, and one of the first things he told us was that the towers were haunted, and specifically the story about the ECP, where one of the Afghan cops had let a suicide vester onto the American side, he didn't get very far, but he wrecked the serpentine and collapsed the tower, killing the kid in it. Funny story, I actually met back up with him (the sergeant, not the kid) again when I was with a completely different unit. I think it may have been in Kandahar, not sure any more. Small Army. Anyway, so this ECP tower I pulled the late, late night shift, and the way it was structured it went to 3 or 4 in the morning, which means I not only pulled sundown but all of the witching hours on a border COP in the boonies of eastern Afghanistan. And about one-thirty, two o'clock, I hear rustling and scratching, and I figure, god damn it, probably rats somewhere, even though I haven't seen one yet I know they're there. But I can't see it, it never crosses my vision (and I had my NODs down after that first noise), I keep looking for it, but no go. And as late as it is, and as bright as it is (it was either full moon or close to one), I both a) figure I should see this damn thing and b) my mind starts to go haywire. But that's just the stuff that gets me jumpy. What really got me was late, late into this thing, the moon had gone down, maybe around three, it was pitch dark but for the stars, and I just...I feel someone standing by me. You know how you can kinda tell by magnetic fields or whatever, and some people are better than others? I'm not too great, but this was strong, and I don't turn around for the longest time. I actually don't look back before I key the radio: "Zulu, this is ECP, is SOG out, over?" Because you know, maybe he's #ing with me, but I'm too goddamn terrified to turn around. "...Negative ECP, he's with me." And so I squeak out a belated "roger", and finally work up the courage to turn to my side, this thing is over my left shoulder, and there's this. This hole. I dunno how you would describe it, like it didn't look any different to my eyes, I guess technically, but I knew where the edge of the not-thing was, I could feel this like sucking, like where gravity shouldn't be, and my stomach dropped to my knees, and that knowledge kind of blended into my sight to mark the boundaries of a dude-sized oval. And I just screamed at it. Not screamed, screamed at it. Like I was so pissed off that this #ing thing was #ing with me it never occurred to me to keep my voice down or invoke God or something, I just roared ARE YOU #ING SERIOUS GET THE # OUT OF HERE and you know, I've never had a supernatural experience since?

Im a late comer here but wow first I didnt know pumas bobcats mountain lions etc were so scary. We have em walking around as well as coyotes...and lots of roadrunners (not vicious though) at one of my houses but theyre so afraid of people I, that encroached neighborhood on their habitat really turns em into scardy cats sadly. Nah, once or twice a year someone will forget to bring dogs and cats in when sun setting which ends sadly in a scene telling thats what happened, poor pets and owners. But hmm guess id need to walk into one in his territory and see if I were frightened.

One sight I love so much I dont remember lol but it should be easy to find. It was a Mt shasta and all the crazy disappearances type site I was led to by project 411 or whatever its called. The creepiest is about the five year old who disappeared twenty four Hrs and was found saying he was with his family doubles but the robot ones. Lots of Indian legends talk about the odom sometjinh something race of tricksters it sounds just like the entity responsible for some Mt shasta stuff, bigfoot being the other.