Despite hearing tales about will-o’-the-wisps all my life, I still followed a mysterious light deeper and deeper into the woods, and it was only the sound of a foghorn blowing almost directly beneath my feet that roused me and prevented me from tumbling off a cliff into the Ohio River. I was less than two feet from the edge, and I didn’t even see it.
One time, Raccoons got into my tent, popped open my tent-mates snack box, and proceeded to fight each other viciously NOT ONLY outside AND inside the tent, but ON TOP OF ME as well.
It is hands down the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me. Raccoons aren’t inherently scary, but when there’s ~8 of them, they’re angry, and you can feel them viciously fighting directly on top of you, it’s enough to scar you for life.
I stayed stiff as a board in my sleeping bag for over an hour, just waiting for it to end. I remember having intense back and neck pain the morning after because I kept my body so rigid for so long.
I fucking hated that tent mate. He was and always will be a psycho. Pretty sure the fuck did it on purpose, because he slept in a different tent that night.
Holy Christ on a cross that sounds horrible
It sounds awful but also hilarious
Summer of ‘07, as had become our standing tradition, my brother, cousin and I would make a two-day canoe trip on the Upper Mississippi. Slightly above Winona (and indeed scattered about the river) are large piles of dredging sand scoured from the channel bottom to make room for barges. It was on one of these piles where we would always make camp.
Now, night on the river has a particular peculiarity, as the small waves tinkle like black diamonds and the stars make themselves known like in the days of pre-history. But on a dredging mount, which can often tower high above the dense treeline, the whole of the miles-wide river system span in a deep cut between the bluffs. The only light is from the moon and stars, and Winona in the far distance.
But every now and then, thundering and rumbling like an aqueous workhorse, slowly the barges approach, day and night. So big, in fact, that they themselves can be hundreds of feet of shunted rafts. Any craft foolish enough to nightcruise without lights would surely perish beneath their unyielding hulls.
Us three kids knew this must be the case, since each barge has lit with it an enormous spotlight, as big as a man, and brighter than a thousand campfires. Sweep, sweep, sweeping the dark water of the mysterious river, it would rush over, stop, then rush again to the next place. A lingering eye so uncanny, evoking the image of demons and creatures of the dark, akin to our treasured bushwhacked D&D games.
Hiding ‘hind a dune, pebbles digging our palms, we watched the barges lumber, all the while their searching eyes alert for prey. The only thing louder than the tug’s uncompromising engines were the unified chirps of a million thriving insects and nocturnal creatures. A new barge emerged around a bend, preceded by that glaring lamp, and we silently watched it make it’s inquisitive approach…
The light made a different turn. We all felt it; boats, water and flotsam were not all this barge hungered for. No, the spot of luminosity sped up the side of the dune, and faster than we could react, engulfed us three in a hail of blinding flare.
We hit the deck, but it was too late. Our eyes seared and we panted, backs cold on the sand, darkness returning with only us brave enough to watch the stars.
We waited; listened as the muffled barge meandered past, wandering it’s way to the next lock in search of more victims.
We had been spared of fate that day, but none of us ever forgot the wisps of wind, the churn of water, and the seeking, craving light of that barge. And it won’t soon forget our faces either…
Few spooky, not terrifying ,things have happened over the years.
In younger days, a large group of us went camping in a wooded area on the outskirts of rich people land.
Long story short as things fizzled out, 2 of us as we tended the fire, came to the realisation that there had been an extra person there the whole night, always standing just far enough away you couldn’t see their face, at various edges of the clearing we were in where the vegetation got thick.
Next morning we started asking folk about it and everyone realised when they were talking that the person they thought was standing near them at a certain time had actually been elsewhere.
For a while afterwards we came up with all sorts of stupid teenager explanations of spooky origin but as we grew up we just kinda decided it was a local weirdo
Another time, much later & more experienced, I went camping with a friend who wasn’t very outdoorsy.
The hike in had been more overgrown than we expected and a whole section of the path in was swampy, which it hadn’t been on previous trips. We set up by a fork in two rivers, exact middle of a forest, and got a decent fire going and a decent camp established.
We spent the evening nature watching, eating good grub and drinking, him a little overdoing it on the drinking and passing out early enough.
About 3am he bolts up outta nowhere, looking around with a blank face and whisper shouting “they’re out there!” and “they’re coming for us!”
I told him to chill, there was nothing out there bigger than a fox or badger. But he just kept going, a long rant of something vague and increasingly doomy watching us all night.
I know its nonsense, but it starts getting to the stage where I’m getting uneasy, straining to identify every noise. Splash, that’s an otter or river rat. Rustle, squirrel or owl. Distant call, likely a fox.
He’s out of his tent, still wrapped in a sleeping bag, half babbling as he falls asleep against a tree near the fire. At points he’s crying occasionally.
I start to worry maybe he’s had a mental break more than just being hammered drunk. Its also about 3am and getting quite chilly. I decide we bail, there’s a road about 30 minute walk (on a good day) we can make it to if I help him slowly, can call a friend to pick us up. I break down camp by myself, take down both our tents and let the fire go low. It’s now about 4am. He’s stopped cry babbling. Once we’re ready I shake him awake, tell him we’re bailing.
He wakes up, refuses and rolls over. I eventually wake him again. He has no idea what I’m talking about. Goes back to sleep.
Now I’m bloody freezing so I get the fire roaring and hunker down til sun rise about 3 hours later, very grumpy.
We still give him stick about it to this day, he just shrugs and chuckles 😅
Reminds me of The Ritual. Great movie for getting freaked out camping!
I feel like I should check this out but also should not
It’s just as much a psychological horror as it is supernatural. Definitely give it a watch but NOT if you’re planning on going camping anytime soon
As a kid we went camping near a reservoir and it rained real hard through a couple of nights. One of those nights there was some serious lightning. The loudest lightning crack I ever heard scared the shit out of me and woke everyone in the tent up, but we all stayed quiet. I was terrified. It had to of hit the ground relatively close. I thought it was going to hit again and get us. Thankfully it calmed down after that strike and sometime later I fell back to sleep.
Probably the foxes or coyotes screaming in the middle of the night, sounding like someone being murdered in the woods. That or the time we woke up to snuffling outside the tent flap and found bear scat in the campsite the next morning.
I’ll never forget the conviction with which my wife once woke me up proclaiming a woman needed help. Waited a minute for another howl and taught her something new that night!
Foxes are terrifying if you don’t know what they are, and even if you do you can be caught off guard.
I grew up near fox cover, they’d come down from the wooded hills to scavenge/go after poultry.
We had a big dumb outside dog - one fox would go one end of the house making noise, which would send him barreling down to the fence barking like crazy. Then another fox would hop in and steal his food at the other end
I once camped on a semi secluded beach with a couple of friends. That night we were on the epicenter of an earthquake and also we saw a big red scar looking thing on the sky.
One of my friends acted as sentinel and did not closed his eyes the whole night, he was expecting the sea to recede and come back as a tsunami, gladly nothing happened.
Later, in 2010’s earthquake the sea got out in that very same beach, it wasn’t a full tsunami but videos showed how scary the sea can be.
Not to me specifically, but a friend got his leg bitten by a spider while camping and almost died. Before finally deciding to go to the hospital, he had a terrible fever, a blinding migrane and his pee changed in color. His leg was also this close 🤏🏻 to necrosis, so yeah. Doctors said he only survived because of his weight.
This is more scary than creepy, but I got stuck in a tropical depression on an island. Thunder everywhere, pouring rain. No shelter other than a tarp. Only way to get off the island is a canoe.
Someone walking around my campsite at night that or it was animals. Either ways spooky as hell
