Creepy/Scary Outdoor Stories

michaelm466

michaelm466

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Mar 5, 2009
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I've been reading through a great thread on another forum and thought I'd start one here. Most of the stories were the type where you're out in the woods and you suddenly get that creepy, hair raising feeling, or like you're being watched, sometimes it's a creepy person, cougar, bear, Bigfoot, chupacabra, ghost, or intimidating squirrel or you never find out what it was.

I'll start out with one my late grandfather used to tell that takes place in New Mexico in the 50's. My grandfather (Eli) didn't grow up on the reservation, or even really embrace much of the culture (Apache), but he swore up and down this happened.

Eli drove about 15 miles on an old rarely used highway to work every day, often times he would see this old man (looked like a full blood native, long gray hair, short in stature, thin, cowboy boots, jeans and a denim jacket even in the middle of summer) walking to and from the store. My grandfather would try and pick him up to give him a ride whenever he saw him and was going the same direction. He lived in a little adobe a couple of mile off the highway on a dirt road with nobody else around, had a few sheep and some chickens. When headed to town it was usually just for some groceries or some smokes. He didn't talk much but expressed his appreciation with tobacco or an old silver coin every once in a while that he insisted my grandfather take for the trouble. One day my grandfather was headed into town and dropped off the old man at the store and headed to a different store when he came back from the hardware store he saw the old man's wallet sitting in the passenger seat, so he drove back to the general store hoping he could catch him (this all happened within 30 minutes)

Eli asked the clerk if the old man was still there, the clerk said “no, he left about 2-3 minutes ago.” Eli figured he'd only be a couple hundred yards down the road of the 12-mile journey back to his house if that's where he was headed. He started the drive back and didn't see him in the first mile which was puzzling, and kept going he finally pulled into the drive of the adobe hut and walked up the front door, knocked and didn't see or hear anyone (he thought maybe he happened to be picked up by somebody else on the highway even though that would be extremely rare anybody else was driving it. He went around back and as he was circling around the side he saw an owl swoop in through the open window and land on the table. He got that hair on the back of your neck raising feeling like he shouldn’t be there, but curiosity got the best of him and he wasn’t superstitious, so he then went back to the front door to look in the front window and saw the owl sitting there it then jumped down on to the ground out of view of the window, then he heard the cowboy boots clunking on the floor (about 5 steps to the front door) and the old man answered it (meaning he had somehow beat Eli 12 miles to his house with a 3 minute head start on foot, if it had been with another driver he would have passed the other car going back out the 2 mile dirt road back to the highway).

He didn’t look surprised or concerned as one would who just had an owl fly into their house. Eli looked into the one room house looking for the Owl, but saw nothing in there besides the table, bed and a dresser. My grandfather swore up and down it the old man was a shapeshifter (skinwalker). Eli gave him a few more rides over the few more months he lived there before moving to Texas, he did get up the nerve to ask if he had any pets besides the sheep and chickens once, but the old man said no. After that incident Eli paid more attention to the drive, and said he often saw an old buck walking the parallel to the highway several times, once he even saw it turn in on the dirt road up to adobe.
 
Here's a second one from my dad, he was about 10 at the time, he grew up in Texas and the story of La Llorona is well known around there. He had fun with scary stories, but didn't believe them at all. My dad was sleeping in a shared bedroom with his younger brother (8 years old). My dad was sleeping soundly when he was startled awake and sees the silhouette of his mother standing in the doorway (backlit by the dull hall light) she tells him he needs to get up and come with here right away, their father needs their help, they need to meet him at the river (about 2 miles away). He says why? what happened? she says "hurry, we don't have time" and grabs his forearm to pull him out of bed, but her grip is ice cold and very strong, his brother had woken up to when my dad was talking and screams when his mother had grabbed my dads arm, a couple seconds later (their mom- their real mom) entered the room and turned on the light- the ghost or entity or whatever disappeared as the light flooded the room. My dads forearm was cold and damp and he had a hand shaped bruise the next day on his arm. Their parents didn't believe them they thought they had been rough housing or fighting over something, but they both slept in their parents room for several weeks after that.
 
My ex said when she was a kid she lived in a house where her bedroom window looked out onto a deck. Her family had just bought an old rocking chair they found at an antiques store a day or two before, and they put it on the deck off to the side of her bedroom window.

That night she woke up and was looking out the window in the dark when she noticed something. Sitting in the chair was an old woman. She wasn't moving at all, just sitting there, completely still. My ex didn't recognize her, and freaked out and ran back to bed. The next day the woman was gone and there was no sign she'd been there.

The following night my ex woke up again, and crept over to the window to look out. The old woman was there again, still not moving at all. So my ex raced back to bed again. The same thing happened the next night too.

She kind of got used to it, and wasn't too worried, until the next night. The old woman was there again, sitting on the chair and still not moving at all, but now she was leaning forwards as though about to get up. The next night, she was in front of the chair, but now she was standing up. The night after, the woman was standing in the same spot, but she had turned and was now facing the window. The last night this happened, when my ex woke up and looked out from her covers, she could see the old woman standing right at the window, pressed up against the glass, looking straight at her in bed.

They got rid of the chair after that and never saw her again.

EDIT: not an outdoor story but it's the only creepy story I've got
 
Once my Dad, brother, uncle and cousin all went camping in Forks WA up by the ocean. We were fishing all day and were in a bit of a hurry to find a camp site at the end of the day, so we ended up just camping down an old logging road in a pullout area on the road. It was getting dark but we could clearly see when we set up our tents and everything. We went to bed early just afyer dark so we could get up early and do some more fishing the next morning.

When we woke up we are amazed to find piles and piles of dear crap everywhere around us. EVERYWHERE. There must have been a hundred deer that came by there that night and every one of them took a crap in our camp. The ground was just covered in crap everywhere. Whatever your imagining, multiply it by 10.

The weirdest part is than none of us heard a thing that night. We had no idea even a single deer had come through our camp.

ETA: we know it wasn't there before we set up camp because under our tents there was no dear crap.
 
My little story - not as spooky or crappy :))) as those above but...

Walking with my wife in some reserved park land - not much use - and saw something ahead in the brush - appeared to be an old foundation. My wife said - "what do you think that is"? My response should have been- an old foundation - but what I said instead was - "it's a symbol of an ancient God". o_O When we walked the short distance to the very obvious now - old foundation- I looked down and saw a ball cap. I picked up the cap (in pretty decent shape) and on the cap face was an emblem of Mt. Katahdin, :cool: the famous mountain from my home state, Maine (not where we were) that I have climbed often. THEN- embroidered on the back side of the hat, the words, " A Symbol of an Ancient God" :confused: :eek:. Not that spooky but a little on the freaky side of things. I gently laid the hat down and we walked away. Damn :( - I regret now that I didn't keep the cap. It was a nice one. :D

Keep 'em comin' :thumbsup:

Ray
 
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flip888 said:
Once my Dad, brother, uncle and cousin all went camping in Forks WA up by the ocean. We were fishing all day and were in a bit of a hurry to find a camp site at the end of the day, so we ended up just camping down an old logging road in a pullout area on the road. It was getting dark but we could clearly see when we set up our tents and everything. We went to bed early just afyer dark so we could get up early and do some more fishing the next morning.

When we woke up we are amazed to find piles and piles of dear crap everywhere around us. EVERYWHERE. There must have been a hundred deer that came by there that night and every one of them took a crap in our camp. The ground was just covered in crap everywhere. Whatever your imagining, multiply it by 10.

The weirdest part is than none of us heard a thing that night. We had no idea even a single deer had come through our camp.

ETA: we know it wasn't there before we set up camp because under our tents there was no dear crap.
Click to expand...

Those weren’t from deer....Bigfoot has tiny, tiny droppings:D
 
I'm loving this thread, keep them coming!

My elderly mother and I have both seen, on separate occasions, a large and/or low flying triangular craft very close to my parents house. Had 3 green lights on each end, looked just like all of the commonly told similar descriptions that you may have heard of.

She just kept driving to work until she no longer saw it.

When I saw it, a couple years earlier than she had, I had just left my buddies house along with a friend who drove separately. I saw it and pulled over to call him about it, as I watched in amazement. He answered (early cell phone flip phones) and says "Im staring at a UFO!" I reply that I'm watching it as well, and we both watch it hovering, then shoot off in a streak of light akin to how a Star Trek craft jumps into light speed.

Edited to add: it was more likely a military craft than an otherworldly ship. Was still fascinating to watch.
 
Another series of interesting happenings:

My girlfriend of 10 years and I had just moved into a second story apartment of an old house that used to be a boarding school back in the late 1800's.
I saw what appeared to be a smoky apparition of a tall man walk into 2 of the rooms and then quickly disappear, on 3 different occasions. Once I saw it sitting in a chair as I walked into the room. All in broad daylight. The signings were very quick.

My girlfriend woke up and saw it/him walk though a wall that used to be a doorway. These sightings only occurred during the first few months, and never happened again. We never felt anything strange, it just happened. Haven't seen anything similar before or since. We don't know what to make of it.

In the bedroom of that house, I once woke up to my cat going nuts and jumping all over me and the bed. I quickly realized that there were bats flying in a circle under the ceiling fan, and that our cat was trying to catch them. I had to grab a sheet and catch them (5 or 6) to put them outside. Upon trying to find how they got in, I couldn't. All of the windows were latched. Maybe they had been hiding in there for awhile, I can't readily explain it.
 
I've seen and heard things I have no explainations for but no real storys to share from personal experience with exception on being stalked by a mountain lion in Montana while I was hunting one season ... on several occasions I would cut his tracks as I circled back ... and at times I had the hair stand up on my neck and knew he was nearby but I never saw him ...

but from family ...

before I was born my parents and older siblings lived in an old farm house ... the same house that my grandparents lived in before and where my grandfather passed away ...

dad never believed my mom and sisters telling him the things they heard or saw ... not until one night they were sitting at the table and dad said that it started real softly then got loud enough you could hear clearly an organ playing ... well my grandpa played the organ among many instuments ... but grandpa had passed and there was no organ in the house then ...

and mom and my siblings had often said in winter when they came home as it was dark early they would sometimes see a light near the wood pile ... they always said it looked liked an old miners carbide headlamp (grandpa worked in a mine for many years) ...

dad never saw the light either until shortly after the organ music he came home from work and had split a bunch of wood but hadn't gotten it stacked and was going to when he got home ... but dad said as he pulled down the long drive he saw a light and it disappeared into the house ... so when he came in he thanked mom and my siblings for stacking up the wood ... and they hadn't touched the wood they had all been inside ...

it never bothered dad but my mom and siblings said they were never more happy than when they moved.
 
Back during the late 70s, my family was invited to spend a few days at a friends house in upstate New York. The house sat on 200-300 private acres, up in the mountains, and access was via a long drive up a private winding gravel road. No one lived at the place, nor at the several nearby homesteads which had long been abandoned and absorbed into the property, some of which still had private graveyards. The original house had been a modest two floor building with 3 small bedrooms, and dated back to the mid 18th century. It had long since been expanded to several times that size and was now attached to a large two story building containing a greenhouse, a library, several more bedrooms and a couple of large common rooms with huge 8' tall fireplaces. I was a teenager at the time, and along with a few other young people we decided to stake out one of the upstairs common rooms, where we were mostly left alone to listen to music and play games. We went at it until we finally fell asleep from exhaustion.

I woke early that morning; it was dawn, although the sun was not yet visible. We were all suddenly awake, and there was a distinct and very loud Whooshing sound seemingly coming from everywhere at once. We started run through the house and everywhere we went we could hear the noise. We could see nothing within the house or from the windows. By now, everyone was up and looking for the source of the noise. It probably went on for nearly 10 minutes, before we figured it out.

Somebody finally stepped outside and looked up. There was a hot air balloon hanging in the still air directly above the house and the sound we had been hearing has been the sound of its propane burner, blasting heated air into the overhead envelope.....yikes!

n2s
 
Just remembered one from my grandfather on my mother's side, this takes place some where on the Umpqua river in southern Oregon about 15 years ago. My grandfather and his cousin were into rock hounding and gold panning. They're both in they're mid 60's my grandfather (David) has always been an avid Hunter and Fisher and was quite the scrapper in his day. His cousin, more of geologist/ scientist type.

So it's a Saturday afternoon, they're both grabbing bucket fills of sand/soil to pan and throw back in as they work through it, no nuggets or thing, but specks of color every one in awhile. They had checked the maps to make sure this was public land as people with claims can get pretty agitated with trespassers. Suddenly they hear the hear somebody walking on the river rocks behind them. David turns around to see a guy about 6'3, 250lbs probably in his late 30s early 40s coming towards them. He's wearing a tie dye tank top and camo pants with shoulder length hair. He tells at them from about 20 yards asking what they're doing. My grandfather replies figuring he's just a curious hiker or fisherman, that they're gold panning. He replies that he didn't give them permission to do that, he comes up to within 10ft them, so they can hear eachother over the river rapids. The river rock here is large so it's not easy to move quickly across them with out tripping or one surfing shifting or rotating under your weight.

My grandfather had noticed by now that the guy had a 9-10" bladed Bowie knife on his belt in a leather sheath. David replied, we double checked the maps before we came out, this is public land. The guy points across the road and up the hill and says "my house it's up there and the property line extends down to the river bank" David replies that even if that were so that's still the other side of the river. The guy rests his hand on the knife handle. The guy continues to get more agitated and aggressive claiming that he owns both sides of the river several miles down (which is all BLM land that my grandfather had hunted since he was 7). My grandfather always carried a G21 in a shoulder holster in the woods for predators. At this point David sees that he won't be able to train with the guy, his cousin is unarmed and looking more and more nervous and staying quiet. David says ok, we'll leave then, the guy says you going to pay the toll for using my land?

At this point he unsnaps the strap on the knife sheath, my grandfather reaches into his jacket and puts his hand on the Glock handle and unsnaps his holster. The guy grins at him and says "are you packing, or are you bluffing?" David says why don't you back off so you don't have to find out. The guy asks, still grinning "Do you think you can draw and fire before I stick you?" At this point the guy backs down and says "Don't let me catch you down here again, and turned and walked back up the road. David and his cousin packed up quickly and left. They talked to the cops once they were back in cell service, apparently that want the first time the guy had harassed people in the area he also had several assault and drug charges
 
jux t: saw the same type of "aerial vehicle" with the same light configuration back in June, 1974. It was not a military aircraft.

Ron (military and civilian aviator for over 30 years)
 
I have no firsthand knowledge of this event, but I happened upon a story about the "Beast of LBL" that has made me rethink a few things. There are even LEO records of a family having been killed by "an unknown animal" to go with it....Pretty freaky stuff.
 
Brommeland said:
I have no firsthand knowledge of this event, but I happened upon a story about the "Beast of LBL" that has made me rethink a few things. There are even LEO records of a family having been killed by "an unknown animal" to go with it....Pretty freaky stuff.
Click to expand...
I've heard about that, too. You're right...it IS freaky.

I also found this story fascinating. Her story is very descriptive down to the smallest details:


*Edit to add:
This story occurred in Oregon.

Jim
 
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Yeah - after I first heard about LBL I did a bit of youtube surfing and came across that interview. I tend to be a "Joe Friday" ('just the facts, ma'am) kinda guy and dismiss weirdness as a rule. However, there are so many reports of these things... they're kinda hard to ignore completely - especially when hanging in a hammock out in the woods at 0300 :eek:. Makes me feel like a sack lunch hanging between two trees.
 
Big fan of Coast to Coast and different cryptid podcasts here, love this thread. Other than a coyote scaring me (I scared it too) on the road, and a deer making a sound that mimicked something out of Star Wars, also on the road, I haven't really had much happen.

Other than knowing either a coyote or mountain lion walked up out of my fathers woods with me, at night. I hope it was a coyote, as mountain lions are not supposed to be in MD. They might've gotten the Mason Dixon line wrong though, my father's property is about a mile from the state line.
 
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