(Several people from another thread wanted to hear this story, and I've been thinking about posting it for some time, so here goes, this is gonna be a long read so apologies for wall of text.)
I've been an avid camper most of my life, more than that I actually lived in the Wyoming wilderness for almost 2 years as a child in a house on a nature preserve. A place where electricity was only available by generator, and we had to boil water that me and my siblings carried up from the creek. All of this before I was even 10 years old. If there were emergencies it would be at least an hour before we could get to help or help could get to us. I've hunted dangerous game, (not particularly proud of it, but it happened.) And seen some weird shit in the desert.
So when I say that I will not venture into the woods of the Cascadia Mountain Range alone, it's important to know that the wilderness doesn't frighten me easily.
I was 23 years old when a friend of mine, we'll call him Darren (all names are altered), invited me to a camping trip. The sight was a place a few miles up a logging road, so about an hour long hike from an already "back-road as fuck" back-road. It was just me, Darren, and his good friend Wade. Place was, from the logging road, about 10 minutes down a trail.
The moment we got to the site I was excited. The small lake was beautiful: barely touched by people over the years. It also comforted me somewhat when we got there to see that within the last month at least somebody else had camped out there (extra wood by the firepit). We ate a bunch of chili and hot-dogs, but around dusk the guys went off into the woods and came back with a sealed bucket they had buried the year before, and we opened it up to get into some MREs they stowed in their "cache". It was looking to be one of the better camping trips I'd have had in my adult life.
That night was a bit different. For the first time in my life I felt an uneasiness sleeping in my tent. I couldn't quite place it, chocked it up to not being used to camping without my dad. Darren brought his .38 special for protection from predators, but he was the only one armed. The next day it rained (as it do in the PNW) and we tried to wait it out but eventually called it quits, packed up and went home.
Fast forward to the next year: me and Darren get the itch to go camping again, and I wanted to give that site another shot. I spend a great deal of effort convincing a bunch of my friends to tag along. In the end it wound up being 6 of us and a big white german shepherd: Me, Darren, Wade, James, Charles, and Rita: James' girlfriend, and Moogie (dog). Knowing about the uneasiness felt the last time, I brought my 12-guage. James wanted to get some unregulated target practice in (shooting shit they don't allow at official gun-ranges, like full cans and gallons-jugs). We also brought a quad with us this time so we could haul a bunch of extra water, booze, and other supplies to make our weekend more comfortable.
First day, as we're setting up, we hear a loudspeaker playing some music over by the south end of the lake (which was basically right next to the logging road and this your could be seen from the road unlike the year prior.) So, deciding we're big-dick americans: me and James saunter down to meet the source of the noise pollution. Now... I have to commend the coolness of the cop that was just having a fishing trip, when two large, armed men (me with the 12-guage, James with his .308), emerged from the treeline. We introduced ourselves, mentioned the others but not exactly where we were camping: just that it was nearby.
That's when shit started to get creepy.
It could have just been cops doing cop shit, but this guy REALLY wanted to know EXACTLY where we were gonna be. Then he was mentioned his favorite spots nearby, and really REALLY wanted us to try this other spot 2 more miles down the logging road. At a point it was almost like he was suggesting that was the only spot where we wouldn't be in trouble. Darren showed up finally, told us that he spoke to the land owners several years ago and they were fine with us being there. Cop was mad, but we lied and said we'd check out the site he was pushing.
None of us trusted the guy when we left, so we decided not to. It was like a horror-movie set up. The whole "Shady cop tells us to go to the spot where his hillbilly friends are gonna kidnap us" kinda vibe. So we move on, pretty early in the day so we set up our stuff, get a fire going. Float around on our giant 4-person inflatable chair-boat thing. Biggest highlight of the day: Charles cut down an entire dead tree with nothing but a small axe (like the midway point between a hatchet and a firemans axe). An impressive feat of stamina and strength.
It was a good day leading into a good night. But right after it got dark I felt uneasy again.
The first thing that worried me was a couple of us heard something BIG splash into the far-side of the lake. We thought maybe it was Moogie, but he was by the fire, his head now perked up and looking in the direction of the splash. Since we were drunk, we thought maybe the floaty-thing might be compromised, so we went down with flashlights to pull it out of the water and onto the bank.
Then we heard the "owl".
Charles, Wade, and Darren were already passed out by midnight. Rita was humming along by the fireplace with Moogie, and me and James were out getting some more wood so the fire would last. We heard an owl start up it's hooting: a cadence I was familiar with in the area. But something was off about it. I have a gift for mimicking bird noises, so what I noticed immediately is the ending hoot was off. Almost always sounds like the owl is rolling it's R's as that final hoot of the sequence goes.
James, not nearly as outdoorsy as me, says "that almost just sounds like a person".. We joke, listen to it a couple more times, then I do my own attempt at an owl noise.
Silence.. For a few minutes.. Just as I am thinking that makes sense because of the noise... It starts up again, but not just 1 owl: another started up about half a second after the first. The new owl sounding more like an actual owl than the first one that seemed to have started up again: and after the first hoot from "real" owl, the "fake" one stopped short.
"Did that owl just tell the other owl to shut up? lol" James says to me.
I decide to shout, "BETTER LISTEN TO YOUR WIFE DUDE!"
Immediately after I shout we both hear a loud crashing, almost identical to the sound of the tree falling that Charles did earlier that day.
Moogie starts to go fucking berserk, barking and growling. He had a stink-gland issue at this point still so he was releasing that nastiness as well. He was threatened, and luckily Rita was there to keep him from bolting (big as he was if he really wanted to move she wouldn't be much of an obstacle). I'm about to shit my pants out of fear.
I will re-iterate for effect. I have hunted mountain lions and bears in my life, and at no point during those hunts was I as shaken and genuinely afraid as this. I was paralyzed for like an entire minute.
"WHOEVER THAT IS YOU BETTER FUCK OFF, WE HAVE PLENTY OF GUNS!" I shout across the lake.... Then silence again, luckily for the rest of the night.
I didn't fall asleep until Darren woke up, basically at sunrise. So I missed breakfast and a morning dunk in the lake the others all did before I got up needing to poo real bad. James had already explained the noises to the others by time we all were ready for our different adventures.
Darren, Wade, and Rita just wanted to listen to the radio and chill. Moogie had run off just after lunch and we decided to go look for him while also investigating the area of the noises last night.
Almost immediately when we get to the other side of the lake, the hair stands up on the back of my neck. Charles also feels creeped out, but he had an axe, I had a shotgun, and James had his rifle and his .45 holstered on his hip. So we pressed onward, looking for probably a couple of hours. I was mainly trying to see if we could spot any trees that had fallen.
Then we made it to the eastern bank of the lake (we were camped on the western side)... "Holy shit!" Charles says, causing me and James to come rushing over. There we saw what looked like a human foot-print.. Just one, but it was very clearly a footprint in the mud, even had a little pool of water still in it.
My first thought was "bigfoot", so I took off my boot and compared sizes. I am a huge guy with pretty large feet, so it wasn't a surprise that my clodhoppers dwarfed this footprint when I put my own print down next to it. But what was weird was the other print, where the "pinky toe" would be, looked like another "big toe" was there instead. We also found several downed trees but none that looked recent. So we decided to go around the north of the lake and back to the others, doing a full-circle.
Moogie was fine, as soon as food smells filled the air he came running back. And we all had a pretty good day again. Drinking, feasting, and making fun of each other for being "paranoid". We heard some gunshots a little close, and then called out to warn the shooters that there were people and animals nearby. The shooters of us actually went to meet the people and all of us but Darren and Wade joined the old guy and his wife shooting at whatever we could. Part of me consciously thought "anything that was lurking around sure us fuck isn't now".
Boy was I wrong.
A brief mention about Charles: ever since we were kids Charles has had vivid night terrors. Most of the time funny, some of the time scary. He'd full on sleep-walk and have conversations with you, while still asleep.
We had all gone to bed, I was one of the first due to getting like 4 hours of sleep and being quite "Rum-drunk".
"HEY! WHO'S THAT!! CAPTAIN! STAY IN YOUR TENT!!" Charles, who was sleeping on a tarp by the fire instead of in a tent, started shouting. I shot up, grabbed the shotgun, and turned on my flashlight.
"WHAT'S WRONG!" I shout, adrenaline filling my entire existence, I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
"COME CLOSER TO THE FIRE!... NO, DON'T CROUCH DOWN MOTHER-FUCKER! USE YOUR WORDS!" He keeps shouting, finally stirring awake James and Rita who were in the tent closest to Charles.
"What the fuck?" James calls out. Moogie starts growling and apparently let off the stink-gland again in their tent because him and Rita are like "UGH!! MOOG GROSS"
"THERES SOMEBODY SNEAKING UP ON CAPTAINS TENT. GET OUT HERE!"
I start to unzip my tent. "NOT YOU CAPTAIN, STAY IN THERE HE'S RIGHT NEXT TO YOU."
Everybody else to this days denies hearing this, but I swear I heard something whisper "captain" before hearing a twig crunch right outside my tent. James makes it out of his tent, and seconds later I hear him laughing. "It's just the water-stump. Charles is just having a night-terror."
Charles claimed he wasn't dreaming, but when I got out and shined the light on the stump he agreed that "that had to be it" (we put one of those big jugs of water on top of a stump, it could easily be mistaken for a white shirt standing in the dark). Satisfied that there wasn't actually anything there, despite my protests, we all went back to bed. Charles stayed in the tent for the rest of the night... I decided to spend the rest of the night "on watch".
That was one of, if not the most, terrifying nights of my life. I heard more activity in those woods than I had ever heard before. Moogie would wake up and "borf" multiple times as I'd hear twigs snapping off in the trees. Then I heard a REALLY big snap that had to have only been about 10 feet away.
I jumped to my feet, whipped over to where the noise was, and shined my light. I've seen enough deer-ass in my life to know what I saw running from me. What is not normal of deer, however, is they don't stand the fuck up and run on their back legs. Moogie HOWLED and snarled, I took aim, letting my light drop and fired.
I didn't care that it turned to run, I fucking unloaded. BOOM after BOOM after BOOM until I ran out of all 6 shells I had loaded. Everyone else was freaking the fuck out and rushed out of their tents. I told them what happened, and nobody went back to bed until the morning. Nothing else happened that night. I think Moogie refusing to leave the tent was what allowed the others to take me seriously enough (he was a brave dog, sweet, but if mean dogs fucked with him at the park he knew how to throw down).
The last thing that happened, on that last day. Darren and Wade went to go bury the bucket after putting some fresh new supplies in it. They had always known where the cache was buried because there was a (different) stump that they used as a landmark.
That stump was just... gone. It was there when we retrieved the cache 2 days prior, but now it was vanished. No signs of it being uprooted, dragged, or disturbed. It simply was as though it never existed. We all thought we made a mistake, until we found the hole for the bucket, still dug and with the little poncho stuffed in it.
"Well, I'm never coming back here now so we may as well take this with us." Darren said, and we all left after lunch.
That is why I will never even go hiking in the Cascade wilderness without a firearm and at least 2 other people who know how to use them.
tl:dr: Creepy noises causes paranoid idiot to shoot at the darkness. Evidence suggests he wasn't so paranoid.
submitted by /u/captain_rumdrunk
[link] [comments](Several people from another thread wanted to hear this story, and I've been thinking about posting it for some time, so here goes, this is gonna be a long read so apologies for wall of text.) I've been an avid camper most of my life, more than that I actually lived in the Wyoming wilderness for almost 2 years as a child in a house on a nature preserve. A place where electricity was only available by generator, and we had to boil water that me and my siblings carried up from the creek. All of this before I was even 10 years old. If there were emergencies it would be at least an hour before we could get to help or help could get to us. I've hunted dangerous game, (not particularly proud of it, but it happened.) And seen some weird shit in the desert. So when I say that I will not venture into the woods of the Cascadia Mountain Range alone, it's important to know that the wilderness doesn't frighten me easily. I was 23 years old when a friend of mine, we'll call him Darren (all names are altered), invited me to a camping trip. The sight was a place a few miles up a logging road, so about an hour long hike from an already "back-road as fuck" back-road. It was just me, Darren, and his good friend Wade. Place was, from the logging road, about 10 minutes down a trail. The moment we got to the site I was excited. The small lake was beautiful: barely touched by people over the years. It also comforted me somewhat when we got there to see that within the last month at least somebody else had camped out there (extra wood by the firepit). We ate a bunch of chili and hot-dogs, but around dusk the guys went off into the woods and came back with a sealed bucket they had buried the year before, and we opened it up to get into some MREs they stowed in their "cache". It was looking to be one of the better camping trips I'd have had in my adult life. That night was a bit different. For the first time in my life I felt an uneasiness sleeping in my tent. I couldn't quite place it, chocked it up to not being used to camping without my dad. Darren brought his .38 special for protection from predators, but he was the only one armed. The next day it rained (as it do in the PNW) and we tried to wait it out but eventually called it quits, packed up and went home. Fast forward to the next year: me and Darren get the itch to go camping again, and I wanted to give that site another shot. I spend a great deal of effort convincing a bunch of my friends to tag along. In the end it wound up being 6 of us and a big white german shepherd: Me, Darren, Wade, James, Charles, and Rita: James' girlfriend, and Moogie (dog). Knowing about the uneasiness felt the last time, I brought my 12-guage. James wanted to get some unregulated target practice in (shooting shit they don't allow at official gun-ranges, like full cans and gallons-jugs). We also brought a quad with us this time so we could haul a bunch of extra water, booze, and other supplies to make our weekend more comfortable. First day, as we're setting up, we hear a loudspeaker playing some music over by the south end of the lake (which was basically right next to the logging road and this your could be seen from the road unlike the year prior.) So, deciding we're big-dick americans: me and James saunter down to meet the source of the noise pollution. Now... I have to commend the coolness of the cop that was just having a fishing trip, when two large, armed men (me with the 12-guage, James with his .308), emerged from the treeline. We introduced ourselves, mentioned the others but not exactly where we were camping: just that it was nearby. That's when shit started to get creepy. It could have just been cops doing cop shit, but this guy REALLY wanted to know EXACTLY where we were gonna be. Then he was mentioned his favorite spots nearby, and really REALLY wanted us to try this other spot 2 more miles down the logging road. At a point it was almost like he was suggesting that was the only spot where we wouldn't be in trouble. Darren showed up finally, told us that he spoke to the land owners several years ago and they were fine with us being there. Cop was mad, but we lied and said we'd check out the site he was pushing. None of us trusted the guy when we left, so we decided not to. It was like a horror-movie set up. The whole "Shady cop tells us to go to the spot where his hillbilly friends are gonna kidnap us" kinda vibe. So we move on, pretty early in the day so we set up our stuff, get a fire going. Float around on our giant 4-person inflatable chair-boat thing. Biggest highlight of the day: Charles cut down an entire dead tree with nothing but a small axe (like the midway point between a hatchet and a firemans axe). An impressive feat of stamina and strength. It was a good day leading into a good night. But right after it got dark I felt uneasy again. The first thing that worried me was a couple of us heard something BIG splash into the far-side of the lake. We thought maybe it was Moogie, but he was by the fire, his head now perked up and looking in the direction of the splash. Since we were drunk, we thought maybe the floaty-thing might be compromised, so we went down with flashlights to pull it out of the water and onto the bank. Then we heard the "owl". Charles, Wade, and Darren were already passed out by midnight. Rita was humming along by the fireplace with Moogie, and me and James were out getting some more wood so the fire would last. We heard an owl start up it's hooting: a cadence I was familiar with in the area. But something was off about it. I have a gift for mimicking bird noises, so what I noticed immediately is the ending hoot was off. Almost always sounds like the owl is rolling it's R's as that final hoot of the sequence goes. James, not nearly as outdoorsy as me, says "that almost just sounds like a person".. We joke, listen to it a couple more times, then I do my own attempt at an owl noise. Silence.. For a few minutes.. Just as I am thinking that makes sense because of the noise... It starts up again, but not just 1 owl: another started up about half a second after the first. The new owl sounding more like an actual owl than the first one that seemed to have started up again: and after the first hoot from "real" owl, the "fake" one stopped short. "Did that owl just tell the other owl to shut up? lol" James says to me. I decide to shout, "BETTER LISTEN TO YOUR WIFE DUDE!" Immediately after I shout we both hear a loud crashing, almost identical to the sound of the tree falling that Charles did earlier that day. Moogie starts to go fucking berserk, barking and growling. He had a stink-gland issue at this point still so he was releasing that nastiness as well. He was threatened, and luckily Rita was there to keep him from bolting (big as he was if he really wanted to move she wouldn't be much of an obstacle). I'm about to shit my pants out of fear. I will re-iterate for effect. I have hunted mountain lions and bears in my life, and at no point during those hunts was I as shaken and genuinely afraid as this. I was paralyzed for like an entire minute. "WHOEVER THAT IS YOU BETTER FUCK OFF, WE HAVE PLENTY OF GUNS!" I shout across the lake.... Then silence again, luckily for the rest of the night. I didn't fall asleep until Darren woke up, basically at sunrise. So I missed breakfast and a morning dunk in the lake the others all did before I got up needing to poo real bad. James had already explained the noises to the others by time we all were ready for our different adventures. Darren, Wade, and Rita just wanted to listen to the radio and chill. Moogie had run off just after lunch and we decided to go look for him while also investigating the area of the noises last night. Almost immediately when we get to the other side of the lake, the hair stands up on the back of my neck. Charles also feels creeped out, but he had an axe, I had a shotgun, and James had his rifle and his .45 holstered on his hip. So we pressed onward, looking for probably a couple of hours. I was mainly trying to see if we could spot any trees that had fallen. Then we made it to the eastern bank of the lake (we were camped on the western side)... "Holy shit!" Charles says, causing me and James to come rushing over. There we saw what looked like a human foot-print.. Just one, but it was very clearly a footprint in the mud, even had a little pool of water still in it. My first thought was "bigfoot", so I took off my boot and compared sizes. I am a huge guy with pretty large feet, so it wasn't a surprise that my clodhoppers dwarfed this footprint when I put my own print down next to it. But what was weird was the other print, where the "pinky toe" would be, looked like another "big toe" was there instead. We also found several downed trees but none that looked recent. So we decided to go around the north of the lake and back to the others, doing a full-circle. Moogie was fine, as soon as food smells filled the air he came running back. And we all had a pretty good day again. Drinking, feasting, and making fun of each other for being "paranoid". We heard some gunshots a little close, and then called out to warn the shooters that there were people and animals nearby. The shooters of us actually went to meet the people and all of us but Darren and Wade joined the old guy and his wife shooting at whatever we could. Part of me consciously thought "anything that was lurking around sure us fuck isn't now". Boy was I wrong. A brief mention about Charles: ever since we were kids Charles has had vivid night terrors. Most of the time funny, some of the time scary. He'd full on sleep-walk and have conversations with you, while still asleep. We had all gone to bed, I was one of the first due to getting like 4 hours of sleep and being quite "Rum-drunk". "HEY! WHO'S THAT!! CAPTAIN! STAY IN YOUR TENT!!" Charles, who was sleeping on a tarp by the fire instead of in a tent, started shouting. I shot up, grabbed the shotgun, and turned on my flashlight. "WHAT'S WRONG!" I shout, adrenaline filling my entire existence, I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my ears. "COME CLOSER TO THE FIRE!... NO, DON'T CROUCH DOWN MOTHER-FUCKER! USE YOUR WORDS!" He keeps shouting, finally stirring awake James and Rita who were in the tent closest to Charles. "What the fuck?" James calls out. Moogie starts growling and apparently let off the stink-gland again in their tent because him and Rita are like "UGH!! MOOG GROSS" "THERES SOMEBODY SNEAKING UP ON CAPTAINS TENT. GET OUT HERE!" I start to unzip my tent. "NOT YOU CAPTAIN, STAY IN THERE HE'S RIGHT NEXT TO YOU." Everybody else to this days denies hearing this, but I swear I heard something whisper "captain" before hearing a twig crunch right outside my tent. James makes it out of his tent, and seconds later I hear him laughing. "It's just the water-stump. Charles is just having a night-terror." Charles claimed he wasn't dreaming, but when I got out and shined the light on the stump he agreed that "that had to be it" (we put one of those big jugs of water on top of a stump, it could easily be mistaken for a white shirt standing in the dark). Satisfied that there wasn't actually anything there, despite my protests, we all went back to bed. Charles stayed in the tent for the rest of the night... I decided to spend the rest of the night "on watch". That was one of, if not the most, terrifying nights of my life. I heard more activity in those woods than I had ever heard before. Moogie would wake up and "borf" multiple times as I'd hear twigs snapping off in the trees. Then I heard a REALLY big snap that had to have only been about 10 feet away. I jumped to my feet, whipped over to where the noise was, and shined my light. I've seen enough deer-ass in my life to know what I saw running from me. What is not normal of deer, however, is they don't stand the fuck up and run on their back legs. Moogie HOWLED and snarled, I took aim, letting my light drop and fired. I didn't care that it turned to run, I fucking unloaded. BOOM after BOOM after BOOM until I ran out of all 6 shells I had loaded. Everyone else was freaking the fuck out and rushed out of their tents. I told them what happened, and nobody went back to bed until the morning. Nothing else happened that night. I think Moogie refusing to leave the tent was what allowed the others to take me seriously enough (he was a brave dog, sweet, but if mean dogs fucked with him at the park he knew how to throw down). The last thing that happened, on that last day. Darren and Wade went to go bury the bucket after putting some fresh new supplies in it. They had always known where the cache was buried because there was a (different) stump that they used as a landmark. That stump was just... gone. It was there when we retrieved the cache 2 days prior, but now it was vanished. No signs of it being uprooted, dragged, or disturbed. It simply was as though it never existed. We all thought we made a mistake, until we found the hole for the bucket, still dug and with the little poncho stuffed in it. "Well, I'm never coming back here now so we may as well take this with us." Darren said, and we all left after lunch. That is why I will never even go hiking in the Cascade wilderness without a firearm and at least 2 other people who know how to use them. tl:dr: Creepy noises causes paranoid idiot to shoot at the darkness. Evidence suggests he wasn't so paranoid. submitted by /u/captain_rumdrunk [link] [comments]
