Speaker 1: Me and my best friend, who all called James for privacy,
were down in Oklahoma for a camping trip together almost
ten years ago. Now, we lived further north, but would
go to different nearby states on weekend camping trips whenever
we had the chance. This was just another trip where
we found a somewhat uncharted place to go, and we
planned on staying for a night or two before heading home.
We had been doing this for most of our lives
at this point, and grew up hiking and camping all
the time. Both of us enjoyed making our own trails
and finding relatively unexplored areas to stay. That being said,
we should have been more careful. It was our first
night staying there. We had hiked out four hours from
where we parked the truck, which was already deep into
the forest. On a poorly made path. Along the hike,
we found it destroyed, an abandoned structure made of wood
and mud, with an overgrown trail leading to it. It
was a pretty cool find and we thought it might
have belonged to someone years ago. Something strange about it, though,
was that it looked like it had been burned down,
with char all around the wood. We passed it and
continued until we found the very small lake. Then we
set up our campsite along the tree line up the
hill from the beach. We made a fire pit and
even dragged some small logs over to sit on, then
talked for hours while enjoying the scenery. Once full darkness
settled in, we decided it best to let the camp
fire die out then go to bed for the night.
We talked a bit more while the fire slowly got
smaller and dimmer, until James stopped in the middle of
his sentence and went silent. James, I said his name
and looked up, seeing him looking behind me. He told
me to be quiet. Then I turned and looked behind me,
seeing nothing. You see, I asked, getting a little shaken
by the way he was acting. I don't know, he responded,
looking around. He was starting to make me uncomfortable, which
was not a usual feeling I got around him. If
I'm being honest, he was usually the one that didn't
scare easily. The fire continued to get softer, making the
forest around us darker. James grabbed a few sticks beside
him and tossed them in, keeping the flame up a
bit longer, not long after that, James locked his eyes
over my shoulder. Again, what's going on, man, and you're
starting to freak me out. He stayed silent for a second,
then spoke, I think there's someone watching us. I turned
to look behind me again, but this time I saw
something too, A small person partially crouched down next to
a tree, staring an hour to I turned back to
face James, and a few yards behind him, I saw
another person standing behind a tree. I felt a sense
of shock and fear, like this was some sick nightmare
I was living in. James felt it too, I could
see it in his eyes as we both looked around
and noticed more and more people standing and running between
the trees around us. What made it even more creepy
and fear inducing was you almost couldn't even hear them moving,
like their footsteps didn't exist. We both stood up and
looked around, watching these ten to fifteen unknown people surround us.
James called out asking what they wanted, but they didn't respond.
I held my hunting knife, but it didn't make me
feel any safer than a few of them started making
their way closer, with them becoming more visible in the
faint light. They were holding long sticks, likely some sort
of hunting spears, and were barely clothed. Seeing these people approach,
though they looked angry and feral, James grabbed my arm
and started pulling me back. We backed up slowly and
grabbed our bags, then moved away from them and into
the other side of the trees, where it seemed none
of them were anymore. As we slowly backed away, checking
our surroundings, often the whole group seemed to be more
interested in our camp spot than they were in us.
We walked as far as we could in the general
direction we came, then found a small place to hide
for the rest of the night, though neither of us
were able to sleep. In the morning, we could see
smoke coming up from around the area where we had
our tents set up. We assumed that that was them
burning the tents, and it also came across our minds
that they may have been the ones to burn the
abandoned structure that we had seen as well. We started
back for the truck, then drove straight home. At the time,
research wasn't the easiest thing to do, so we kind
of just left it as a horrifying experience that we
may never understand, but recently we've gotten some answers. James
found out that there are actually tribes that live not
far from civilization in many territories around the country. Most
often they do not like any outsiders or unknown people
traveling or living in their territory. There are stories of
them attacking campers or burning their campsite to force them away.
Given these possible actions, I think James and I actually
got lucky with our encounter. Nowadays we do a lot
more research in the areas we plan to explore, making
sure that the uncharted territories we camp in don't belong
to someone else. I'm a twenty nine year old male
and was out last year in northern Washington or a
solo vacation. None of my friends enjoy camping at all,
though I probably wouldn't want to be out camping with
them all the time even if they did. It was
something I'd been doing alone all my life, and I
found it to be my way of enjoying life stress
and worry free. Washington was one of my favorite camping states,
as it had tons of forest areas and mountains and
was overall just an amazing state to be in. For
this trip. I decided on a three day to night
camping trail. Basically, I would hike during the day, then
camp at night, and repeat that over the course of
the trail. The first day and night went well, nothing
significant at all. I hiked a good portion of the path,
then set up camp off the side. I woke up
early in the morning, right at sunrise and crawled out
of my small tent. I started repacking everything I had
taken out, then started pulling the rods from the tent
and folding it up. As I did this, though, I
noticed the grass behind the tent was pushed down. Walking
up to it, it was a footprint. I looked at
it for a second, then looked up and around at
the trees. It had clearly been made recently, most likely
last night while I was sleeping. Not seeing anyone, I
looked back down and started following the prince. They were
pretty well defined prints, and they led straight to the path.
It was confusing, especially since I was on a camping
trail and my camp site was a good distance away
from the main path. From the tracks, though, whoever it
was seemed to just walk away after noticing my tent.
After packing my tent, I did a quick perimeter check
around the site to make sure there were no other footprints,
then got back on the trail and continued along. Most
of the trail was beaten dirt or gravel, All footprints
showed up well. Strangely, though, there were no footprints all
the way along the trail. As I walked the second half,
I wondered where that person could have gone, knowing this
was really just a one way trail. After a while, though,
I had forgotten about it and was just letting my
mind wander to other things. This portion of the hike
had amazing views, so I took my time and just
took in the nature around me. Eventually the sun started setting, though,
and I had to set up camp again. I chose
to go deeper into the forest this time, hoping no
one would pay me a visit like they had the
previous night. Once I got the tent set up, I
made a small fire pit and sat on the ground
next to it. Watching the sunset by a campfire is
one of the most calming things. It really brings your
mind to a better place. But that didn't last for long.
Once the sun was almost fully set, I heard something
walking towards me. From the trees behind the tent. They
were slow, soft footsteps, and the closer they came, the
more recognizable they were as a human's footsteps. I quickly
grabbed my bag and pulled out my heavy flashlight along
with my handgun, shining a beam of light into the
dark forest. The footsteps stopped. I moved the light around,
scanning the whole area. For nearly thirty minutes, I was
standing by the fire, looking in every direction. I was terrified.
I never heard the steps departing, which made me really
scared and nervous that someone was watching me. Still, I
didn't know what to do. I was alone and helpless,
with nowhere to go for safety. I thought about going
back to the path, but I was too terrified to
go away from the campsite while it was so dark outside.
I decided it had been long enough, though, and backed
into the tent. Tried to come up with every possible
explanation of what it could have been, just to get
myself to calm down. I only lasted a couple minutes
in the tent, though, before I got really panicked and
paranoid due to not being able to see around me.
I unzipped the tent and stepped out, and before I
could even turn on my flashlight, heavy footsteps sprinted away
towards the forest, coming right from the back of my tent.
I turned around and frantically turned on the light, seeing
nothing but footprints in the dirt and grass. I was
breathing heavily and my heart was racing as I stood
by the campfire and stared at the trees in silence.
I sat by the campfire with my gun in hand
for the rest of the night. I flinched at every
small sound, but eventually the sun came up and I
felt a sense of safety. Looking at my tent in
the sunlight, there were footprints again right behind it where
I had heard the footsteps. I don't know how now
I didn't hear them walking up to the tent, but
I knew I needed to go. I packed everything up
and finished the hike before the sun went down. I
have no idea who was there, why they were watching me,
or what they wanted. My husband and I took a
road trip across the Pacific Northwest a few years back.
The trip itself was two weeks, going from Tahoe City, California,
to Olympia, Washington. It was spring, and we were super
excited because we loved the rain. We lived in Arizona
for most of our life, so when we moved to
California for my husband's new job, we wanted to go
on a trip and experience something besides desert. We drove
a new mar Bay Star, which is an RV and
for its time, it was really nice. We stopped at
an RV park in Upper Oregon, where we planned to
stay for a few days, because Oregon happens to be
one of my favorite states. It was really late and
my husband was showering while I was making grilled cheese
when I heard a knock at the door. We've stayed
at a handful of our V parks and this kind
of thing has never happened, not unless you talk with
your neighbors beforehand and become friendly. But we had arrived
only half an hour ago and didn't talk or introduce
ourselves to anyone. I peeked out the curtain and didn't
see anyone. Ten or fifteen minutes go by, and I
hear another knock. I peeked out the curtain again, and
again I didn't see anyone. I hear the shower turn off,
and I go to knock on the bathroom door to
ask my husband to check outside. But as I'm right
outside the door, I see a light shining through a
window that's in our bedroom. I told my husband through
the door about what was happening, and he quickly got
dressed and headed outside with a bat. He did a
perimeter check and said he didn't see anything. We moved
our r V to a different spot, a good amount
away from where we originally were. We sat down on
the couch to watch a movie and eat our grilled cheese.
My husband fell asleep after a while, and I started
to clean up. I was washing dishes when I heard
the door handle to the r V move, as if
some one were trying to get in. I kind of
froze and then it stopped. I woke my husband up
and he checked outside the door, and again there was nothing.
The park we were at wasn't the biggest, so there
weren't many more spots we could move to, but we
did anyways. We were both incredibly tired at this point
and going to another park wasn't an option. We parked
as close to the exit as possible and everything seemed
to be okay. My husband was about to pass out,
and my gummy I had taken two hours ago had
kicked in, and all I wanted to do was sleep.
We kept the kitchen light on and the TV on
low volume as a sort of deterrent, and went to bed.
I was woken up by my husband tapping me aggressively.
I opened my eyes to see him sitting on my
side of the bed. Apparently he had heard some loud
noises outside, and when he peeked out of the window,
he saw two guys with what looked like knives in
their hands trying to pry open the front door. He
had called the police and they'd be here soon. I
got dressed and we waited listening to the two men outside,
still scratching and prying at the front door. A few
minutes of this goes by, and we can hear them
getting more and more frustrated as time went on, but
then the noises suddenly stopped. It was silent for another
few minutes before the police finally pulled up, but the
guides were nowhere to be found. The police said they'd
ask around, but obviously nothing ever came of it. Another
camper had a similar thing happened to them. It was
also one of the only other nicer looking RVs in
the park, so I'm pretty sure we were scouted. We
left around seven am after the police were done taking reports.
Nothing was taken or significantly damaged, so it didn't affect
us that much, but it was still a very scary experience.
We wound up at a different RV part with better
views and added an extra lazy day to our trip.
I'm very thankful that our RV had a tight lock
on it, seeing as how there's no way they couldn't
have known we were inside. Tells me that they weren't
just looking to rob us, and if that lock had broke,
I most likely wouldn't be here today. A