Have you really, truly lived if you don't have at least one scary story that still haunts you to retell?
Sometimes, these stories take the shape of palpable dangers - a stranger following us, a work customer stalking us, or a wild animal confronting us. But in other stories, there are no clear answers - the noises and experiences that terrified us remain mysterious even long after the fact.
In a popular Reddit thread, people shared their creepiest stories from road trips, night shifts, and generally being out in the dark alone.
I was driving down an old highway (not heavy usage any more) during a snow storm in 2011. Had a pretty close call on this particular trip.
I was heading to the next town over with my girlfriend at the time, and we behind an SUV on the road. We were behind them for a good while, when they came to a stop. I maneuvered the car around to get a good look at why they stopped.
There was a truck in the road, driver and passenger doors open, and two sets of tracks in the snow leading off to the woods. I got out of the car to make sure no one was injured or needed help, but there were no signs of car trouble.
There wasn't much snow built up on the inside of the car, so the doors hadn't been left open for long (it was snowing pretty heavy).
I started to follow the set of tracks into the woods to check, but stopped. Before I could do much of anything else, the driver of the SUV called me over and let me know that the truck had been reported as stolen.
They said highway patrol was on their way, so I went about my business.
A day or so later I found out the owner of the truck was a man who lived nearby that had been missing for over a week. The police went into the woods to look for him, and found his freshly deceased body in a ditch with a single gun shot to the back of the head.
Whoever took him beforehand must have marched him out there, executed him, and just wandered off into the woods.
I'm still very glad I didn't follow those tracks. I didn't hear the shot, so it must have been right before we all arrived at the truck. I don't even want to think what would have happened to me if I'd persisted.
Once I was working in a restaurant and got done at around 12ish. I always rode my bicycle to and from work, it was about 15min along a bike trail next to the train tracks. This trail was constantly straight but had quite a few exits here and there. It also only had a few small parts of it lit up by street lights so without my front bicycle light I would be totally blind for the most part.
So this one night I leave omw home after the shift and I notice a guy is biking behind me which isn't too weird at that time of night in a busy (but very safe) city. It was weird that he had no lights and was still there after the first main exits which after that led to a small town but I thought it might just be a coincidence.
I felt a bit creeped out and thought I might just be tired and the dark of the night is getting to me. So I decided to bike a bit slower and let this person pass there was definitely enough room on this trail. The person started drifting along at the same speed as me and made no attempt to pass or even come closer.
This is about when I'm a few min away from home and decide to take some random lefts and rights instead of going straight home just in case this person was following me and wouldn't find out where I live. I bike around going in random twists and turns in a suburban neighborhood and HE'S STILL BEHIND ME.
What I then did as I noticed I was heading straight for a long small dark path only for bicycles I decided to turn into one of the houses and hide in the dark shadows from their garage. I heard this person pass the house and brake quickly in that small path. At this moment my blood is boiling. Now I hop on my bike and when I passed the edge of that street I stopped and stared that person in the eyes. (Well that's what I hope he thought cause I actually couldn't see anything of his face)
I biked so fast then did another few extra loops here and there until I felt safe and alone again to go home. Never had anything like it afterwards and still don't know who or why it could have been. I'm happy not knowing.
Edit: I'm an average sized girl and in my early 20's when this happened.
TL;DR: Bicycled home after a late shift in the dark and someone was clearly following me, was able to hide and get away.
I worked at a movie theater and most often worked the closing shift.
One night me and another manager were sitting in the small office. She was working on the nightly deposit and I was finishing up inventory numbers, We had a CD player that we would listen to at night with a stack of CDs sitting next to it. I stood up and changed the CD and sat back down. About a minute after the entire stack of cds LAUNCHED itself across the room.
One of the CDs hit my co-worker in the back of the head. She looked around and saw me sitting there dumbfounded with the cds scattered all around me and the office. We quickly finished up and left.
A couple of days later one of the other day shift managers calls me and asks me what we were doing the prior night. She seemed really annoyed which was out of character for her because we were friends. I asked her what she meant and she asked me why we had dumped all of the security tapes onto the floor and left them there.
I told her we hadn't touched the security tapes at all.
The tapes were stored on top of the CCTV monitor on a small VHS tape shelf. The shelf hadn't been moved and only the tapes were on the floor. She also said that all of the sleeves from the tapes had been removed and thrown all over the place too.
4. From 732:
I came back into my camp from cooking/cleaning/taking a dump, and found an individual digging around in my tent and gear. I quietly watched the person from a bit away while they rummaged around, eventually leaving while taking nothing.
Packed up all my sh*t and hiked through the in the dark. There's zero good things that could come from someone else looking through your gear in the middle of the woods as nighttime approaches. Don't know what they wanted, don't want to find out.
I don't really know if it qualifies as scary but I remember getting hit from behind by something while I was stopped in the middle of an intersection in the middle of the night last year.
To this day, I don't really know what it was. I even saw the traffic cam footage and saw nothing. All I saw was me being stopped completely in the middle of the road waiting for a car in front of me to pass by so I can cross when my car shook like something had hit it from behind and a minute or so later, it showed me parking to the side to check what had happened.
The "accident" didn't leave any dents nor scratches but it had enough impact to disalign my bumper.
I've actively tried to avoid that road since.
I was the navigation officer for a research ship in the south pacific. We had recently come to Papua New Guinea for some work along the coast. We had arrived in a small bay at around 10pm in the dark and dropped the anchor. I went over to mark our position on the chart and noticed an annotation that said "native village reported in the area". There were no fires or lights on the coast so I didn't think anything much more of it. I turned on all the deck and underwater lights and went back in to the bridge to stand my night watch as everyone else went to bed. With all the lights on I couldn't see further than about 25 yards because of a light mist in the pitch black night.
I sat in the bridge with the door open because I like the sound of the night and the feeling of the air in the tropics. I kept hearing light splashing in the water and went out to see because often we get hundreds of fish in our underwater lights. There was nothing there. I went back inside but kept hearing faint splashing and couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Since I couldn't see in to the distance I went in to the chart room and flicked on our infrared camera system and there they all were. About 50 native outrigger canoes just sitting outside our pool of light.
About 3 people to a canoe and all just sitting and watching us. Occasionally paddling one way or the other to keep their station. I have never felt so suddenly and violently alone and small as I did on that ship in the dark. I got a deck hand up and we both just walked around the decks to show that people were awake and moving. They sat there and watched us all night. Completely invisible except for on the infrared cameras. In the morning they came in and traded with us and were very friendly and just hadn't had a ship in their bay for decades.
I’m a little late to the party but this one filled my nightmares for a long time after it happened...
A couple years ago, I was living in Colombo, Sri Lanka at a small hostel on the outskirts of the city. The hostel catered to long-term guests so I got to know everyone pretty well who lived there. There was a guy living with us, his name was Raj, and Raj was a middle-man of sorts in the casinos. In Sri Lanka, the casinos are incredibly shady places full of Russian mobsters and other low-life criminals from China and India. The casinos are technically illegal but the continue operation through bribery and government coercion. I went to one of them one time and it was a surreal experience.
Anyway, my friend Raj’s job was to take online bets from Indian clients and make them physically in the casino. He was playing with their money and was simply the vessel to allow individuals to play from another location. He played in some high stakes games and with a lot of money for some powerful people. Basically a recipe for disaster.
One night, he f*cked up, BIG TIME. One of his clients managed to gain access to his online system and stole all of the money his clients had deposited to play with, a sum well over $50,000 US, which is a fortune in Sri Lanka.
We only found out about the theft after Raj’s disappearance. A note was left in his bed, very cryptic, saying “don’t look for me” and “I’m leaving” among other things. Dude vanished overnight. We made a police report and waited to hear anything.
After a few days, the police come back to visit, asking someone who knew Raj to join them. The locals in the hostel were afraid to go with the police, so I volunteered and was taken to their headquarters. They took me to the back where I was shown photos of a body, cut into pieces. It was Raj. He’d been cut apart and dumped into the sewer canal nearby by someone. They’d brought me there to identify the body. They never found who did it either, and the image of those photos had never really left me. I’ll forever be haunted by it and I left the hostel shortly afterwards. Poor guy was caught up in some shady stuff but he didn’t deserve that.
I was camping in my car while on a drive up to see my family in Salt Lake. I was taking my time on what should've been about an 11-hour car drive with minimal stops. But this time I was on my own so I was stopping to take in views and all that. Think I was about 18 and not much money to my name so instead of getting a pricey room for the night I decided I'd just find a secluded place off the freeway in the desert. (for anyone that's ever driven the route, it was about an hour past the race track just outside of Las Vegas) It was one of those exits where there were just farm roads coming off it. So I assume I wasn't gonna be on anyone's land that would mind too much or ever check on me.
I pulled off and parked up, was sat on my tailgate enjoying my dinner of beef jerky and Arizona tea while listening to music. Just normal stuff. Out of nowhere, a f*cking motorcycle flies past me. No lights no nothing, it was going fast enough that I took me a solid 20 seconds to put it all together. Laughed and shook my head just thinking how dumb it was but it's their life do what they want. Not a minute later two low flying Jets fly overhead. Top gun style, curving mountains, and battling valleys. It was a great show. Then 10 minutes later or so a convoy comes rolling down the road. I could hear it before I saw the lights.
Now I grew up in the military so I'm use to seeing this sh*t. But this felt different, maybe it was just the series of events. Normally you see a convoy you wave at em and let them go by. But it was nearly midnight and something told me to just turn around and pretend I didn't see anything. A humvee pulls up and basically blocks me from moving my vehicle could hear doors open but no one gets out to come to me (I was leaning on my hood at this point, the car was off all that) Didn't even turn to look at them. Keep my hands away from me and on the hood. I could feel them just looking at me. Convoy passes, humvee pulls out and goes on their way.
I really think it was just the series of events. The jets were probably doing practice since the AFB is right next to LV. The motorcycle was just some dude taking advantage of empty roads and the convoy was just out for some training like the jets.
Not exactly a lonely road, but I was speeding west on I-70 through Colorado near Glenwood Canyon when I decided to slow down and enjoy the view. I notice a State Patrol car in front of me a minute later when he turns on his sirens, and I think he’s got me busted for speeding. Instead, he’s pulling to the shoulder up ahead to help a broken down motorist.
I slow down and remember looking at the motorist who is sitting in the drivers seat with their head down, thinking “man that guy is lucky to get help out here, no cell coverage, etc”. I keep driving west.
A few minutes later I start to notice police cars flying past me headed back east, sirens blaring, going extremely fast through a curvy canyon. One after another for like 15 minutes, ambulances, fire trucks, seems like all emergency response in the country is headed back the direction I came from.
The next day I’m at a hotel in Utah and discover what happened. Turns out the broken down motorist had skipped bail, and after being confronted by the state trooper who was there to offer assistance, exited his car and began shooting the officer in his back multiple times. On a normal day, the officer would’ve died as they typically drive alone, but on that day he was headed to training and had a partner in the car who empties his clip and killed the motorist. Officer almost bled out on the road but survived.
On one night shift dispatch gave us a call about “screaming in (whichever) elevator”. So we go to it, and can indeed hear screaming. We get a person posted at every floor of this elevator. You can hear the screaming when the elevator is moving, but when the doors open there’s nothing. We decide to have maintenance take a look. Maintenance finds nothing wrong.
I was sleeping in a hammock on my mountain ranch, and woke up around 4am. After lying there awake watching stars for about 5 minutes, I heard the sound of something big urinating nearby. In the night silence, the sound was so clear as to distinctly change as the dirt went from dry to muddy to a small puddle. I didn't hear any movement afterward. There are deer, coyotes, bobcats, and rarely bears in this area.
I've posted about this before in another thread but I feel it fits here.
So this happened on my shift (graveyard) I was helping another short-staffed store across town.
Had a woman come in, she seemed a little frazzled and is carrying a bible but otherwise she seems fine. She buys some chips then starts talking to me about crazy this corona virus stuff, yada yada then she tells me ate a evil spirit pretending to be a clove of garlic. I of course think shes just messing with me but no she pulls out a piece of garlic lays it on the counter and starts telling me it isn't garlic and is in fact a demon that wanted to possess her.
She then starts asking me about if i believe in spirits or if I can see it because despite looking like im one of the humans that's a third demon I'm really a human who's a third angel who was sent to earth to help her expel the evil spirits and urges she feels and that it's okay if I didn't know it because she can see it and she leaves the garlic on the counter and tells me that she'll wait for me to deal with it.
Now that's pretty much where the original incident ended. A few days later about 2 am maybe 2:15ish on a Tuesday I'm working the graveyard shift at my usual store when this woman pops up again.
She proceeds to just buy some candy and sorta hang out asking me about jade (the jewelry type) and incenses and if we've met before. Nothing as weird as before.
Now the weird thing is I didn't hear or see her come in before she approached the counter we have a loud ass siren thing that turns on when the doors are opened and only shuts off when they're closed. Which is normally not a big deal but considering I'd been stocking and cleaning in the front the whole time and had only gotten 2 or 3 customers before hand yeah it was a bit weird.
She hangs out a bit longer than rushes to restroom and and doesn't walk out of it til about 6. Says have a nice day and just walks out the store like nothing.
Which freaks me the fuck out cuz I cleaned the restrooms a little bit after she went in and she somehow had managed to slip out or hide somewhere when I went to clean them.
Outside of hiding in the stalls there is no where to hide in the restrooms and there's no windows to slip out of. And like a jacka*s I looked up at the top of the stalls and at the ceiling thinking she had a pulled a Spiderman but nope she just poof! Disappeared then reappeared and left super casual a couple hours later.
TL:DR Customer told me she ate a demon trapped in garlic and I was half angel. Then a few nights later she shows up again pulls a houdini in the bathroom and randomly exits the restroom and leaves the store a couple hours later.
When I was 18, my family and I took a vacation to Hawaii. My mother wanted to do the touristy thing and do the “road to Hana”. Normally you can take a tour bus up it, but that wasn’t good enough for her. So we rented a car. The rental companies typically forbid driving that road because of the liability issues. That didn’t stop my mother.
We had a normal drive up there, plenty to see. We spent all day exploring. So by the time everyone was exhausted, it was night. Now, we were a good ways away from the road down, think back dirt roads of Maui. So what do we do? Go down some of the closed off local roads. This one road, in particular, was a very narrow winding road over the edge of the island. You couldn’t even stop on the road to get out and pee. If you looked over the edge, it was a straight drop into the ocean.
Anyhow, so we were driving in the dead of the night, slowly, and we approach this weird bend that backs up to a heavily forested area, a small waterfall, and a cliff overhand just above us. My mother wanted to take some pictures of the moon, stars, ocean because it was breathtaking with no city lights. So we pull off to the side of this road, with just enough space to let another car pass you. I, of course, get out too. It was dead silent. Then all of a sudden I hear what sounds like a crying baby.
Which was...weird. We were in the middle of no where and hadn’t seen anyone for HOURS. So, I’m just standing there, confused, and it stops. I motion for my mother to come over and ask if she heard anything. She didn’t. So we stand there for a little longer and it starts up again. Neither of us could pinpoint where it was coming from. Both of us were panicked because that’s what baby crying does to most humans. We spent a good hour calling out and trying to figure out what to do. Eventually it stopped.
We returned back to the hotel and never heard anything about it.
The end. :)
As a rule I don't believe in ghosts or any other super natural stuff, but I do have a ghost story of sorts. It's not very dramatic but at the time I was freaked the f*ck out and more than a little confused.
A few years ago at Beverly Beach State Park in Newport Oregon. I was walking with my dog along this trail that runs along a fairly large creek to the left and a fairly steep hill filled with brush to the right. I was pretty close to the campground, I could still see the RVs and tents through the trees on the other side of the creek.
As I was walking along I saw another kid about my age (14ish) and all by myself and feeling a bit lonely I thought I'd approach him. About 50 feet away from him though my dog starts panic barking.
I mean freaking the f*ck out. Hackles raised, teeth bared, tail tucked, feet against the ground. Usually my dog is as friendly as he can be, so I was stunned I'd never seen him act this way before. I tug on his leash and with all my strength and giving the kid a wide breath, manage to pull my dog past the kid and further along the trail. I apologize for my dog's behavior and the kid says nothing, just stares at me. Head slowly tracking me, almost like it would in a horror movie.
As soon as the kid is out of sight doggo immediately relaxes, wagging his tail and happy as a clam at high tide. Baffled something in me forces me to turn around and walk back towards the kid wondering what could have made my dog act like that. (Yeah, I'd probably be the first to die in a horror movie.) The kid's gone.
I mean gone and I have no idea where he could have went where I wouldn't have seen/heard him. Even if he'd taken off at a dead sprint down the long straightaway and towards the next corner in the 30 seconds my back was turned I feel like I would have seen him, and thanks to the creek/hillside surrounding him there really was only one way to go.
I suppose it's most likely that some shy kid terrified of dogs was equally scared sh*tless of me and my dog as we where of him, but everyone I tell this story too that's the type to believe in ghosts are absolutely certain this was dog sensing and evil spirit.
I had freshly turned 18 and was working a closing shift at a small cafe in a grocery store. One of my regular customers comes in, Tom. Tom was a hugger, he'd come in and call out "where's my girls?" and we'd all have to awkwardly hug this 80 year old man while he whispered "God bless you" in your ear. I hated Tom. He always held on a little too long and whispered a little too close.
On this shift, I was closing alone and Tom came in at about 4 pm. Not unusual, I dealt with the creepy and got him his coffee and bagel. He was with his wife this time, she was sweet but tired looking. He started asking me questions as i worked.
What do I have to do at night? Is it hard closing alone? What time am I off? Do i ever get scared walking to my car in the dark? The questions got progressively more uncomfortable and his wife just sat there silently. I answered as friendly as I could, despite the hair on the back of my neck standing up. I would catch him staring at me often. It was okay though, I was off work at 7 so it wasn't a big deal.
Until he didn't leave. His wife went home without him, and he just stayed, staring, for hours. I asked if there was anything else he needed, he said no, I'm just waiting for you to get off of work. He wanted to walk me to my car, he said, because young girls shouldn't be in a dark parking lot alone. I told him it wasn't necessary and continued about my work, ignoring him now even as he stared.
He left about 15 minutes before my shift ended, into the dark Michigan winter, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn't think twice when I punched out and headed to my car. I grabbed my snow brush and began clearing my car, enjoying the quiet that's unique to a snowy night. I began to hear the crunching of footsteps behind me, I brush it off, I am in a parking lot, after all. But they get closer, past any other car and directly towards my car, parked away from the others in employee parking. I look, and it's Tom, maybe 50 ft away and smiling. He tells me that I should have looked for him, he had been sitting outside waiting for me and I should know it's dangerous for young girls to be alone in a parking lot at night.
I began shaking. I tried to open my car door but it was frozen shut due to the earlier storm. Tom came closer, calling me a stupid girl and asking God to forgive him. I debated running back into the store, he was so old he surely couldn't keep up, right? I didn't want to chance it, though. He could have been younger as I'm a terrible judge of age, and I'm not exactly fast myself considering my weight. So I stand my ground. I fumble in my purse for my pepper spray, thankfully attached to my keys. I tell him to stay back, I have pepper spray, and to go home to his wife. He glowers at me. I show him the teal canister. We're about 15 feet apart now, he's well within range. He calls me a b*tch, spits at me, and heads back into the store. I get in my half uncovered car and drive home, terrified.
I called the store when I got home (only a mile and a half away, so about 2 minutes) and told them what had happened. They kicked Tom out and told him not to come back. He began cursing up a storm and his wife had to come pick him up. He ended up getting arrested for child pornography a couple years later, but I don't know the details as I had moved away at that point. Can't say I'm sad to see him go, though.
This isn’t really that scary but around 2014 I witnessed what I can only assume could be ball lightning. The weather was clear though and it didn’t seem to emit electricity so I can’t really be sure. But anyway I was taking a walk around sunset and noticed this orange glowing orb roughly the size of a softball slowly drifting about 20 feet in the air. I stopped and watched it for a few minutes until it disappeared behind the trees. I’m still mad I didn’t have a smart phone at the time because I totally would have recorded it.
This was actually on a Danish highway with lots of traffic. I was riding my motorcycle, and pulled over at a rest stop. The stop only had a parking lot and a toilet, no gas station or anything, and was hidden from view from the highway by trees.
As I stopped, there was only one car in the parking lot. A man was standing next to it. He came over and I thought he was just a tiny bit strange. He told me he was a German chemistry professor,but did not look the type. He had been sleeping in the trunk of his station wagon, and when he left through the rear hatch he had left the keys inside and the car was locked. He wanted to borrow my phone to call for assistance. And I let him use it.
After the phone call, I was still talking to him and he told me about the trip he was on. I was more or less trying to end the conversation, when a run down van with graffiti on it stopped next to us. Out comes a man who looked...a bit off. Like a mix of 80's denim jacket gang member and a drug dealer. He opened with "How much is that motorcycle worth!". I found that slightly threatening. He kept on talking about how nice my bike was, as well as telling me his life story. He told me he was a West German truck driver in the 80's, driving a route to East Germany.
He had an East German girlfriend who he met every time he was there. But they were discovered by Stasi, and he never saw her again. He was convinced she was killed by Stasi because of her relationship with him (West German). At that point, he had moved to Norway, and worked there as a butcher for 10 years. "But then some things happened in my life and I joined the foreign legion."... Now, people don't just join the French foreign legion... The way he said it made me think he was saying that he did some serious crime, but escaped the police/prison by joining the legion. Which is apparently a thing.
Now, at this point I was 100% convinced he was bullsh*tting me, I just did not understand what he was trying to achieve. Did he want to steal my bike? Or my wallet, phone? Meanwhile the professor wanted to leave SO bad, but he was still locked out of his car. Me and the crazy dude was speaking partly Danish/Norwegian, so he did not understand what we were talking about, but I guess you could say he understood enough to be a bit frightened.
I wanted to pull on this crazy guys strings a bit, so I asked him about something I'd heard about the foreign legion. That they give you a dog, and you have to care for the dog and have it as a pet, and then they make you kill it and eat it. He told me "nope, that's not true. It's a rabbit, not a dog!". And then he kept talking about it in a way that was very, very convincing. And then he pulls the ace out of his sleeve. Literally. He pulls up his sleeve and reveals a tattoo of a legioneer of the French Foreign Legion, in uniform, covering his whole arm from elbow to wrist. I mean, non-legioneers don't have that....
I was still trying to figure out what he wanted. He had still not asked what me and the professor were waiting for. But just then, a roadside assistance truck arrived to help the professor, and the crazy guy realized the situation. And then became annoyed because if he had known, he could have picked the car door lock in seconds. "I have equipment for it in my car!" Anyway, the professor and the crazy legioneer became occupied with the locked car and the arrival of the roadside assistance truck. And I got on my bike and noped the f*ck out of there.
In the end of the day, I think he was genuinly a legioneer, butcher and truck driver. I think he was a lonely guy, just looking for conversation, but no longer used to civilian friendly conversation. I'm sure he had hundreds of interesting stories to tell, but I would prefer to hear them in a less isolated place than a Danish rest stop...
Last year I started working the graveyard shift at a newer hotel. It was built basically over the spare pasture for the farmer that still lives next door. One night I'm doing my late shift thing (which was absolutely nothing) and I was standing at the front desk browsing the internet. The front door is perfectly visible from where i was standing, and I thought I saw a flash of white out of the corner of my eye that came from that direction. There's a lot of stray cats around here so I didn't think anything of it at first, on top of the fact that I was half asleep and there was a good chance it wasn't anything anyway, until I noticed it a second time, but much slower.
I look up and out of the sliding glass doors I saw a giant white mass. If that was a cat it was an absolute monstrosity. Nervously, I walk towards the door to investigate, not knowing what kind of sumo wrestling feline I was about to encounter. I finally am able to see out towards the street, and lo and behold, there were 4 horses loitering in front of our hotel. I failed to put two and two together at first and had no idea where they came from, and if you can believe it the hotel didn't provide me with any horse handling training, so I had no idea what I could do.
The hotel is right next to a busy highway, and even at 3 in the morning I was worried about the horses wandering around unattended. I ended up calling the police and after telling them where I was I told them, verbatim: "I don't know how to explain this, but there are unattended horses outside."
I didn't see anyone show up, but the horses were back in the pasture behind the hotel the next day so everything must have sorted itself out well in the end.
I know that wasn't very scary but it was when I experienced it. Two of my coworkers are convinced the hotel is haunted though, maybe they've got some better stories.
Once my friend and I were hiking on an overnight trip to the summit of this peak, in order to get from the campgrounds to the peak you had to (unless you wanted to cross a deep river) walk across the mountain ridges and then desend into a valley in order to climb out of the valley onto another set of moutain ridges. It is impossible to reach the mountain in one day so you have to find a place to camp for the night.
In this area of Alaska, everywhere is tundra and mountains except for the valley between the two ridges. There is cover from the wind there so we decided to set up camp there. It is important to note that the campground has the only road leading to civilzation for miles. To come from any direction other the the one we came from would mean the nearest town is more then a 100 miles away. Also important side note when we arrived we were the only people at the campground.
It is late at night and we are trying to fall asleep when we hear footsteps approching, slow human footsteps and a raspy breathing. It was human for sure, not animal. We were armed with a bolt action rifle for protection from bears so we asked who was out and there was no reply. We then heard them knock over our clothes drying rack. I was scared shitless and warned the person outside that we were armed. The footsteps suddenly picked up as the person ran past our tent opposite of the direction of the campgrounds. There was no shacking of a pack as they ran which I found odd.
It was a sleepless night and when the sun shone on the valley we exited our tent to find our clothes drying rack in tatters and there were small bootprints in the ground leading towards and away from our tent. We made it to the mountain and hightailed it back to the campground as fast as we could. I dont know who that was but I didnt go camping for a while after that.
A few years back I shared a house in the suburbs with a couple of roommates. It was a planned development, with lots of benefits like a community pool, park, garden, etc. The downside was the local bus stopped running at around 8 PM. I worked graveyards and early shifts nearby, not an issue. But my roommate, Luke, worked a night shift that only clocked off at around 10 PM, then he had to ride the city bus for an hour to get ten miles out from where the house was. I told him if he covered some of my utilities share, I’d pick him up in my car and save him the late-night walk home from the city bus stop. This worked out great, and another roommate, Jen, started to join me for the ride or to go on a late night snack run.
One night I was sleeping and woke up to the sound of Jen calling my name over and over, “Waki, Waki...” I get up in a daze and think, damn, I fell asleep and missed Luke’s text, now we’re late to pick him up. Jen’s in the driveway under my window and still calling me, “Waki, Waki...” I tell her I’m coming and she stops. I‘m rushing now cause I have two roommates waiting on me, so I put on a jacket, go downstairs, grab the keys, slip on my shoes and open the garage, and see nothing in the driveway except my car.
I’m confused, since there’s no way Jen’s 170 cm self is hiding behind our dying rose bush or my Toyota. I think about going out to look around for her, cause maybe she walked down the street a bit to smoke a cigarette since she knows I hate the smell, but I realize I forgot my phone. I close the garage and go back inside, Jen got outside without it open, she can get back in without it. As I rush upstairs to where all our rooms are, I realize the lights are on under Jen and Luke’s rooms. They’re both home.
I get to my room, check my phone and see that it’s 2 AM on a Sunday. Luke doesn’t work Sundays and Jen was never outside calling my name.