my cousin and I were out hunting together one day in the woods we hadn't gotten so much as a glimpse of deer or anything else where shooting for that matter the woods were quiet and our hopes of bagging something that day were starting to fade so after some time we decided to take a break and walk out of the main hunting area we headed for a patch of power lines about a mile away way figuring that we'd stretch our legs after a bit we found a big rock next to a large Boulder and decided to
sit down have a drink and kill some time by throwing rocks around hitting them off of a bigger Rock there was some guy on a hill about a mile away standing and taking pictures of us he had a camera or a phone hard to tell from that far away but he was pointing it down the hill at us we sat there for a while and the guy kept filming us or at least watching us my cousin being the type to Never Back Down gave the guy the middle finger and kept it up for a Solid
5 minutes the guy who had been silent up until then started screaming at us he was yelling at us but we couldn't make out the words just a bunch of angry noises just constant loud rage filled yelling we decided it was probably best to leave and head back to Camp as we started walking we heard him getting louder the guy was running down the hill towards us now full-on sprinting we started jogging too just just to get away from him we kept running for a while trying to stay ahead of the guy after about a
mile of jogging we slowed down a bit we were still a good way from camp but we thought that we'd maybe lost him we stopped to eat some berries off a bush trying to catch our breath when we looked up we saw him again he was moving fast walking briskly towards us as soon as he saw us he started shouting again this time we did a full Sprint the entire rest of the way back to camp and so did the guy behind us by the time we finally reached the camp we were out of breath
and totally freaked out that's when the other people at the camp our parents heard us yelling and came out to check my cousin said some crazy guy was chasing us and on quue the man broke out of the woods and into our camp the guy was only 50 yards away now and we could clearly see him for the first time with his ripped clothes and wild eyes he was still shouting and cursing at us as he entered the clearing from the woods he also pulled out a knife from a holster on his side at that
point my dad grabbed a shotgun and told the guy to stop telling him to turn around and leave or they'd have to shoot him the guy didn't listen he took a few more steps towards us still yelling random incoherent stuff it wasn't until my uncle also appeared and raised a rifle towards the man that he finally stopped he shouted one last string of curses and muttered something about us being on his land before turning and walking back up the mountain into the woods we called the police and they told us that people like him were
often hanging around on the other side of those power lines there was a homeless Camp up there a place where addicts and Drifters would set up tents it's been years now but we still joke about that day we call it the day that we angered the protector of the power lines but even though we joke about it now it got really scary once we saw he had a knife it's a good thing he never caught up to us before we made it back to camp this happened when I was about 10 or 11 camping with
my mom near a river in the woods it was just the two of us out there no one else around the nearest Farmhouse was a couple of miles away but we were mostly alone we had the tent set up and a small campfire going when a little before dark this man arrived to our site the area we were in was open to anyone wanting to Camp so it wasn't strange to see somebody else but he had no Gear with him at all he made conversation with us and eventually came around to warning us that there
were wild dogs in the area that we needed to watch out for my mom and I were slightly uncomfortable because he didn't leave and said that he would stay at the campsite a while to protect us from the wild dogs my mom hinted several times that we would be fine and that he was free to leave because we didn't need his protection but he didn't leave he stayed a long time but there wasn't much we could do because it was a public campsite he had the right to be there if he wanted even though he
had no camping stuff with him eventually my mom told the man that we were going into our tent for the night thanked him for keeping us company and said that he could leave and we would be fine I asked my mom quietly if he was going to hurt us and she said of course not but I could tell by the way her voice cracked that she was scared too we didn't want to provoke him but we didn't want to make him feel like we were scared either so we just crawled into our tent while the
man kept sitting on a log at the fire pit I don't think my mom slept that night as she had a knife close to where she lay in the tent I watched the man through the flap in the tent for a while at one point while sitting by the fire he pulled out a long knife and started sharpening it on a stick he just stared down at the blade and ran it along the stick making these slow scraping sounds I asked my mom if he was going to kill us and she kept saying no but
I could tell that she was worried she tried not to show it but she was prepared for the worst I eventually fell asleep but woke up a lot to see my mom was still awake lying there and listening to the scraping sound of the knife on the stti by morning the guy was gone I wasn't sure how long he had stayed or when he left after packing up our gear we stopped by the nearest Farmhouse to tell somebody about the strange man at The Farmhouse the old man there listened to our story then kind of
chuckled and said oh that's just Ivan he means well just doesn't know how to mind his own business apparently he lived on a farm nearby and the old man promised us that he'd have another word with his neighbor reminding him not to be so rude and strange a few years later after our camping trip where we had met Ivan I saw something disturbing I was watching the news and a man had been arrested who was a suspect in several missing person cases they showed his photo on TV and even though it had been a few
years ago I instantly noticed it was the guy who had been with us at the campsite his name was Ivan Mt a serial killer who had been picking up hitchhikers along the highways and killing them and burying their bodies in the woods right across the river from where we had camped I can't even describe the way I felt when I realized it the guy who had been lurking outside our tent sharpening a knife talking about wild dogs had been a serial killer we had come so close to him and I had no idea at the
time I don't think I'll ever forget that night and how lucky we were but it still haunts me I had a summer job when I was a 15-year-old girl that was a few miles from my house I lived in a rural wooded area and my parents never let me go into the woods by myself however they both worked days and my job started at noon every day so I had to walk to work I chose to disobey them and walk through the woods instead of the road because it cut about a mile off of my
walk to work so every day at the same time I would walk through the very abandoned State Forest down a Deer Path for a mile or so until it intercept Ed a railroad track then I would walk a couple more miles down the railroad tracks into town to my job taking this path always freaked me out and I always felt like I was being watched but it was shorter and less Sunny so I wouldn't get sweaty walking to work in the heat most days I'd ignore my parents' influence and they would pick me up after
my shift unaware of my daily routine this routine continued for many weeks one day I was walking about a mile from any houses deep in the woods and there were two porn magazines that had been ripped out and placed on the trail facing me they hadn't been there the day before I was completely creeped out as they were clearly intentionally placed and probably for me since very few people utilized this area but I kept walking because if I turned around at this point I'd have to go farther to get out of the woods and would
also be late for work this was a densely wooded area with brambles and Dogwood and Rolling Hills so I couldn't see very far in any direction sudden L I could hear somebody else walking close by I stopped and I would hear them for a split second and then they would stop they sounded like they had Loose Change in their pocket so I knew it wasn't an animal because of the echo I couldn't tell where it was coming from just to check that I wasn't crazy I stopped once more and I heard the same noise which
quickly stopped when I stopped that's when I knew I was being stalked my instincts told me not to speak and not to run but to just keep walking down the dense Deer Path farther into the woods my instincts told me not to look behind me I could sense there was somebody right behind me on the Deer Path now but I did not look back back then I was a rather short slightly chubby person and looking at me you'd probably assume that I couldn't run very fast so if you wanted to catch me deep in the
woods you might assume you had plenty of time to do so however at the time I ran cross country and track at school and could run a 7-minute mile with hills being my specialty I always placed well on hilly terrain by no means was I a great Runner but I knew I was likely faster than the creep who was hanging out in the woods stalking a teenage girl it's not like I was processing this thought at the time but I just instinctively knew not to run yet I kept walking seemingly deeper into the woods because
I knew that the train track was up ahead and there would be more space to run without tripping or getting caught in the tree branches it was terrifying not to look back but something told me not to I just kept walking like nothing was happening and did not turn around I could feel somebody maybe 20 ft behind me at this point following me for a good eighth of a mile as soon as I got near the train tracks I ran I kept running and I ran on all fours up the last hill before the tracks
gripping onto weeds to pull myself up faster and then sprinted along the tracks as fast as my lungs and legs could carry me I heard and saw branches snapping below me in the woods but now I was out in the sun and the woods were dark so I couldn't see what was behind the branches I just kept sprinting I never saw the person but I knew their intentions were awful I never cut through the woods again and I didn't mention what happened to my parents because I was scared of being grounded this happened about 15
years ago when I was a sophomore in college attending a college in New York within the first month or to a freshman year I had found myself in a very tight-knit group of people who all loved horror movies an adventure at the beginning of sophomore year we decided that in October near Halloween that we would find a very creepy wooded spot and explore we did some research and found that there was a particularly isolated area about 30 minutes away Infamous for paranormal sightings the seven of us split into two different cars and headed out for
the wooded area we turned off a busy Main Road flooded with strip malls and restaurants before immediately being greeted by complete darkness again this area was very heavily wooded it was essentially a large web of winding roads surrounded by trees very few street lights and very few houses we all made sure to have fully charged phones and flashlights just in case but the goal was to keep driving until we could collectively decide to pull over and go exploring we made a left off the main road driving for 30 minutes or so into the darkness of
the woods picking directions at random just getting intentionally lost eventually our car made a turn and and to our surprise there was a huge log in front of us we had reached a dead end of some kind with nothing but trees Beyond it we all got out to see what exactly this was and stepped over the log we noticed that two narrow Trails LED in different directions this seemed like a good time to grab our flashlights and explore the woods we flipped a coin and set off on the trail to the right the trail was
so narrow that we had to walk in a single file line to avoid getting whacked by branches for whatever reason I ended up in the back I'm usually pretty rational and levelheaded but I have to say the farther we went in the more I was overcome with an uneasy feeling I kept hearing sounds deep in the woods unable to shake the feeling that we were being watched but I seemed to be the only person who heard these things so I Shrugged it off as part of my imagination in any case the whole point of us
being there was to get scared so I didn't want to tell anybody that we should stop and go back we headed down the trail for about 20 minutes and just when I thought it would never end we came to a massive clearing it was a large open field of unkempt grass it was big comparable to a golf course I suppose since we couldn't see the end of it from where we were standing I was thrilled to get out of that narrow Trail but I don't think any of us were expecting to find an area so
vast on our right there was an old beat up house several hundred yards away that we decided to explore the house was completely dark with no cars or signs of anybody living there we walked over and shined our flashlights at it and sure enough the windows and doors were all boarded up I managed to peer between the boards to one of the windows and what I could see was an old white couch covered in plastic but an otherwise empty room whoever used to live there was long gone because there was no way into the house
and because we all felt sufficiently creeped out by it we decided to walk closer to the trail we had come in from and have a seat in the field and rest before we all sat down however one of my friends began panicking and pointing out into the field back towards the house we all turned around to look and in the field across from us we could see a tall and lanky figure in the Moonlight who appeared to be dancing the moon was so bright and the woods so dark it took a second for us to
really understand what we were looking at it was a figure of someone or something dancing as it moved closer to the house we had just been at what happened next sent shock waves through all of us whoever it was they stopped dancing looked in our Direction and then started charging straight at us without even thinking we all freaked out out and ran back to the trail while the walk into the woods took about 20 minutes on the way in we made it back to our cars hopped in and drove away in only about 5 minutes
that experience is always in the back of my mind and I'm pretty sure it always will be here's the thing that still resonates with me about that night whoever that was they were dancing maniacally in the woods at 1:00 in the morning and then ran directly at a group of young adults not at all phased by the fact that they were severely outnumbered I still wonder if they knew who we were from the the second we parked and if the sound that I kept hearing while walking on the trail was that figure whatever the case
may be if it was a real person or something paranormal it was downright scary giving us more of an adventure than I think we had hoped for I was black powder hunting alone on a private property in the woods one night many years ago in Kentucky the property had a gated entrance so I would park my four-wheeler there and normally walked in the remaining 200 yd to my elevated deer stand as I shut my four-wheeler off and put on my backpack I heard a very large limb snap and I thought it was a deer or
animal moving around maybe 20 yards away I didn't think much about it gathered my gun and hunting stuff and started walking down the trail my flashlight was off due to having good enough light from the Moon to see where I was walking and also because I knew where I was going as I I walked in the dark I quickly realized something was paralleling my every step inside the woods I walked and stopped and it would do the same by the time I realized it it was too late to go back to the four-wheeler so I
picked up my pace and made a beine for my deer stand when I got within 10 yards of the stand I heard another large limb snap really close to me on my left I stopped turned my flashlight on and shined it in that direction I saw two glowing green eyes about 10 in apart so instinctively I raised my rifle and stomped my foot to try to scare it away not really sure what I was seeing it just blinked its eyes once and never moved I could not make out any details just that it may have
been crouched down due to the proximity of the eyes to the ground whatever this was it seemed like a predatory animal and I realized in that instant the best thing to do was to bolt up my ladder and to get in the stand as quickly as possible it was no more than eight steps away and if I shot at it I would have been blinded by the muzzle flash and it might attack if I missed in the dark I basically just said a prayer and managed to make it up my deer stand without being attacked
the rest of the night as I waited in the stand for Daybreak it circled my stand just out of range of my flashlight and right before Daybreak I heard it go into the woods where it had followed me from I waited up in my stand for a good chunk of the morning still and then quickly made my way back to my four-wheeler right before I fired up the engine I heard another Branch or limb snap loudly I left the area and went back home cutting the week-long hunch short and didn't return until the following spring
I've never hunted the same way again since and rarely go out after dark on foot I also sold that property the next spring I was just so scared of whatever was hunting me out there
