Even if you’re a fan of horror stories, movies, and video games, it doesn’t make you immune to real-life fear. There’s an abyss between seeing something scary play out on the pages of a book or on the screen and actually being in the middle of a disturbing situation.
In an entrancing AskReddit thread, internet users opened up about the creepiest, most frightening things they witnessed in the woods and remote rural areas. Keep scrolling to read their tales.
But be warned, some of these might spook you way more than you thought they would… Got your holy water and garlic? Good. Let’s get to it.
#1
I’d been at football training with a few of my cousins when I was about 10 years old.
We decided to take a walk before our parents picked us up, so we went along the canal towpath. My cousin looked down in the canal and say a really nice jacket floating along and being a weird scavenger person decided to reach in to fish it out.
Well, the jacket turned over. And so did the man wearing it. He also had no face left.
Not gonna lie, that was rough.
Image credits: Ruvio00
#2
Not sure how creepy this is, but I was on a week long camping trip with some friends and I woke up with a weasel sitting on my chest looking at me. I never knew I could scream that loud.
Image credits: Storiea
#3
I was driving home after an extremely late night at work, I lived in the middle of nowhere, about a mile before I got there a woman covered in blood jumped out of the woods into the middle of the road screaming. I panicked and went around her then slammed on the breaks to help. Her boyfriend had beaten her and was currently chasing after her in the woods. I got her in my car and called the police, they met us at the hospital because I told them there was no way I was waiting on the side of the road when he was coming.
#4
In advance, I apologize for poor English since it is not my first or even second language. I formed an Id just to narrate this.
I come from a village fairly up in the mountains, the mighty Karakoram Ranges. As most of you might have known about the last hiding place of Osama Bin Ladin, Abbotabad. My village is further 40 miles northwards as crow flies. By road it is almost 2 hours drive through mountain road and then, a mountain trail. Last leg of journey is upon foot, the place being a steep mountain side.
I grew up there, and my childhood and adolescence was spent in the Jungle that surrounded the village, in the mountain streams.
There were local lore and legends about the forest, which were universally believed in to.
When I was 19, or so, and was studying in an Abbottabad college, few of my friends decided to spend a few days trekking through the mountains. We were most interested to explore a cave, where, the legend says, a mountain spring just disappears. Supposedly, if you were lucky enough to go deep very deep in the cave, there was a Gold mine, with sand of Gold strewn by the stream. How ever, Djinns guard the place.
So, we gathered at my place, some 3 class fellows, from city. We were accompanied by 4 more from within my village. Thus, myself included, we formed a party of 8 young men.
I am speaking of 1973. We did not have any maps with us. We knew the general area, knew land marks, and except for three city guys, all knew how to move about in Jungle, and walk the mountains.
We walked, slept in the open, fished, ate wild fruits,and dried food from home and gossiped, as we trekked along. The ascent wassteep, unending with jungle all around.
A week later, we entered an area that we had never visited earlier. There were rocks, boulders, small springs and streams, and trees were less dense. We thought that the stream that disappears in to the cave must be around some where.
That night we were dog tired, after a very stiff climb, we took our meal, laid out our canvasses and were asleep very soon.
I have no idea how long did we sleep. How ever, I was woken up as I noticed some one brushing my hair. Just as I turned in my sleep and was to emit the standard cry-what is it? I found a hand over my mouth and a whisper, I am XXXX name of a friend, quite, shhh, wake up others just as I woke you up, no sound. Before I could even ask why? I heard sound of a woman giggling. Then a low humming sound. I woke up the next friend, who woke up the next. soon we all were fully awake, and hearing giggling, woman laughing around and then we heard heavy foot steps in the distance, Some one or thing very heavy was walking with heavy steps, slowly, but, towards us.
I had a torch on me. I turned it on. All we saw was trees, boulders, rocks, but, nothing else. It was all quiet .
Fearing that batteries would run out, I turned the switch off. We all huddled closer,packed the canvass sheets, and the bed sheets , some said in the darkness, put on your shoes, and make no noise. We just sat together on a moonless night and could not see much since clouds were blocking the star light.
We could hear the sound of a woman laughing and heavy steps walking around us. Finally, my patience ran out. I was young, very foolish, and, patience was not my virtue. I said it loud to my friends, I am not sitting like a chicken fearing the knife , let us see who is this thing. Surprisingly every one said, yes, we must.
We decided to talk louder then on, and if we had to move, we planned to stick very close, and in pairs. Column of 2 people in pairs, 4 pairs. Then some said, who are you, show us!. With in a few seconds we could feel that ground around had lot of folks . We turned on the lights, and we saw at least 10 -12 things surrounding us.
Not monkeys , there are many up there in mountains,but they were not monkeys at all. Not humans, but, human like. Hairy, broad,61/2- 7 feet tallish, but, not like gorillas either. Round, to elongated faces, dark hair covered them.
Then some said, the air smells weird. Some else said, must be their stink. But, no, it did feel different, and it was not a bad smell at all. Then we knew another thing, The forest was completely silent. The sound of nights in the jungle, insects, birds, wild animals, had stopped, The wind had stopped, It was abnormally silent. The wind gives a sound as it flows through jungle trees.
Then I turned the light ON again of my torch. Those things were gone. How ever, we all knew, they were watching us.
Some how we knew. I could feel eyes piercing my being even though it was dark. We all agreed that we were being watched very closely and intently.
Another friend took torch from me and pointed all around us. On a huge boulder, some 20 feet away, stood a giant looking at us. Same appearance as the rest, but, far taller. 7-8 feet tall. Looking at us. We began to panic. The very still air, total lack of any sound at all, darkness, and these freakish things , belief in Djinns/Demons, all began to act.
Then some said, do NOT run, IF we run, they will harm all of us. Stick together. Recite verses from Quran. And he spoke to that thing, Telling him that we came in peace, will not harm them, and bear no ill intent. Then we heard a giggle, and a woman approached us. She was dressed as a wealthy woman of that area, in mid 40s. Long hair, milky white, people in our region are fair btw.
She said in softest tone, do not get any further, We must return. Then she disappeared in the night. Just then, the jungle came back to life. Usual sounds of critters and insects, birds, air flowing through trees, the sound of air as it passes through trees. The strange things were -gone.
We stayed there waiting for the day break and returned.
Now am old, 65 years old. I am a grand father. I have seen many places. I do not know what did we encounter. I never returned to that area.
#5
Walking on the beach with my boyfriend and we had walked to a giant rocky cliff to makeout. Somebody was just gazing at the ocean, crying and shaking. Mind you, this is late at night, like around 9:30 pm. We asked him if he was ok, he apologized and practically ran back down the cliff (away from the dangerous areas). My boyfriend and I watched him until he reached the public area and decided to call it a night. Im pretty sure he was going to jump.
Image credits: TheInfamousShart
#6
I was hiking in northern Quebec, doing some exploration work for geologists. The thing about northern Quebec is that it has forests, mountains, hills. Pretty much all green, black and grey.
Except that in the middle of a forest we hiked through, we found this strange all yellow patch of grass in a perfect circle. About the diameter of a medium sized house. It was almost perfectly flat too. Caught us off guard.
Image credits: Eski57
#7
There’s a section of Joshua Tree National Park called “Samuelson’s Rocks” where an old swedish prospector who lost his mind used to live. He carved all sorts of crazy sayings into the rocks. During the day they look pretty neat. At night in a lightning storm they look like something of of Lovecraft.
#8
Sounded like babies crying….it was coyotes. Creepiest thing though was when we saw a lone person just walking through the woods in the middle of nowhere. Idk why thats creepy but it is when your out there.
#9
Posted about this before, but back when I was a kid some friends and I came across people in robes chanting around a campfire out in the woods on the edge of the town we lived in. We were staying at a friend’s house for a birthday party/sleepover and went for a late night walk. This was back in the late 80’s during the satanic panic. Looking back now, I’m sure it was just some teenagers goofing around, but at the time it scared the living bejeezus out of us. One of the girls with us had a panic attack and started hyperventilating. Got pretty serious, but we finally managed to get her calmed down.
Image credits: skeletorsleftlung
#10
My girlfriend and I were hiking along some abandoned railroad tracks and we get to a small bridge going over a little creek. I’m about to go explore under the bridge when she points something out. I look over and in the woods across from us I see a guy. Im like whatever and keep headed down to the creek area and then the guy stands up and he’s naked. We immediate back track pretty quickly to get away from there and once were like 1 minute down the trail I look back and this naked dude is just standing in the middle of the trail watching us walk away.
Image credits: fortyhandz1738
#11
My friend and I were chilling in the woods one day back in highschool and see a dog walking by, later followed by this kid. He looked troubled so we asked if he needed help. He obliged, telling us he was dog sitting for his friend and the dog got loose. So we spent a good hour following this dog and kid around, going deeper and deeper into the woods.
Eventually I finally got the dog to come to me, but it wasn’t wearing a collar so I wasn’t able to get a hold. My friend and I look away for just few seconds do discuss strategy, and when we turn back around the boy and the dog are both gone. It was like they completely vanished. Keep in mind it was Autumn so any footsteps could be heard from quite afar. But it was just silent. Not a single trace of them anywhere. Still don’t really know what happened. Maybe they ran away real quick? Who knows. Was definitely enough to creep us out tho.
Image credits: dadude25
#12
This is probably less scary than a lot of the other posts but I was pretty sure I was going to be the nameless victim at the start of a horror movie to show how dangerous the monster is.
Basically, my dad and I were walking through the woods when we came across a young moose leg lying on the ground. It looked like it had been violently torn off with no sign of the rest of the moose anywhere. It was fresh with blood still on the wound probably no more than a couple hours old.
My dad is a pretty skilled hunter so he handed me his axe that he was carrying and told me to watch for wolves while he started looking for tracks. After a little bit he came back saying
“that’s weird, normally if it was wolves you’d be able to find paw prints but I can’t see any. Also no bear prints so I have no idea what killed this”
And so I’m like you didn’t find any tracks at all?
And his very reassuring response was “well I did find what appears to be the mama moose tracks headed this way” showing me the tracks “you can see how her stride is a lot longer here, whatever killed her baby she didn’t want to fight it she just took off running”
He then pulls out his bear spray and holds it at the ready as we kept walking deeper into the woods with the un-named non-track leaving predator armed with bear spray and an axe.
#13
Went on a mountain hike in Transylvania with a group of friends from school, and way up, after maybe 12-14 km of trekking, we saw a house….was in the middle of nowhere. It had a barn, with a few animals, couple of cows, chicken, etc. As we get closer, we see a few people, a guy and 5-6 women. Not sure if there were more inside. The dude comes to greet us, barely speaking the language. We had a hard time understanding what he’s saying. They lived without electricity, gas, anything. This is in the early 90s, so there’s no internet, mobile phones to worry about. At least for most people.
Anyway, they all looked weird, kinda dumb expressions on their face, we can barely understand eachother. They asked us who’s the president now, and if we want some milk. They look at our clothes and shoes weirdly, curious…like who knows when is the last time they had human contact. Or maybe there were more crazies around those parts…dunno. Not sure to this day what was going on. It’s not typical in the region, so we kinda freaked out, especially cause the dude looked a bit disturbed, and we were too young. We were looking around to see if there’s more of them, paranoia was getting to us, thinking there must be a village nearby. What was also weird is that all the women kept their distance, and never got close to us. Like he was guarding them, or checking us out, if it’s safe for them.
One of my friends kept saying we don’t want their milk, and we need to go, cause it’s getting dark. We walked calmly for a while, then when we thought we’re out of their sight, bolted like crazy out of there. Needless to say, we camped after a few hours, and we always had one person awake to keep watch.
We told people that were living in the villages near that area, about the “mountain people”, and they didn’t believe us. They said nobody lives there, up in the mountains.
#14
I was walking with family when I was little and we came across a sheeps head. No body or blood just a severed sheeps head on the path. It was the first time I noticed sheeps eyes have slit pupils and I think my first contact with something so gruesome.
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Image credits: OriginalZumbie
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