Men of Reddit: What is the most scary thing you’ve ever had happen while out in the woods?

22 comments

  1. Got cornered by two white dudes who looked like accountants. Fully thought I might become a statistic in a hate crime incident but turns out they were just crazy religious dudes who’d come overseas to recruit people.

    Never before have I been so happy to hear someone start talking about God, cause prior to that moment it was bullet sweat time.

  2. Was in the French Alps in a tiny log cabin. Got physically sick. Diarrhoea and vomiting imminent. Exit cabin. Pitch black. Pick a direction. Start walking. Need to get a long way away for this nonsense. Can’t go any further. Completely undress because this is about to get real. Commence pissing out both ends in the pitch black snow as wolves howl and what sounded like some kind of hell boar circled me.

  4. I was out walking by a little stream I used to hang out at as a teenager with my ex. We heard a freaky screeching noise, hauled ass back to my house, and I never went back. She was absolutely bawling from it lmao

  5. I was miles down a back country road at night looking for a new fishing hole. This is a road where you have to go about 5MPH because it’s so bumpy it’s not even gravel, just dirt and rocks.

    I turn the winding in the road and roll up on four large SUVs, and maybe 12 guys all of which do not look like the type you want to meet in the scenario.

    They blocked the road. I stopped. They looked like they were discussing what to do, then they signal me through. I drove by with one hand on the steering wheel, and the other on my pistol just in case.

    I’ve had a few paranormal experiences, but nothing scares me out in the woods more than just other human beings.

  6. I don’t have any scary stories really. Just that walking in swamps can sometimes be unnerving with gators and snakes especially at night. Once when I was hiking I felt I was being stalked by something/someone. Probably a Black Bear or maybe a Bobcat. It was probably a Black Bear because when my grandfather went to take our trash out at the dumpster behind our camper a bear rushed past him from the dumpster lol. I even got the bear running away on video although not during his initial encounter.

  7. Sitting at a lake minding my own business as two arab dudes slowly go by in their boat-eying me.

    About 10 minutes later the boat came back but only one dude was inside it.

    The other one approached me from the exact opposite site like they were going to clamp down on me.

    I shouldered my axe and put my knife in the other hand and started to call out towards the guy on land in a way of „Come here, I want to talk to you.“ and approached him a few steps.

    He vanished into the bushes, from time to time I managed to get a glimpse of him watching me.

    I just packed my stuff and left being careful they keep a distance.

  8. Heard someone breathing in the middle of the darkest woods. Was in the middle of the night. Noone there….and a few meters around me, somewhere was breathing. In and out. Quite loudly. Sounding very much like a human.

    To this day I had no explanation until my gf convinced me that it was prolly an owl. Apparently, owls breathe a lot like humans in terms of how it sounds.

  9. I’ve been treed by a sounder of hogs for over a day.

    I’ve been treed by a moose.

    I’ve been bit by a cotton mouth on a 5 day 60 miles float trip and was delirious the whole time.

    I’ve been shot by meth heads when I stumbled upon their shack in the middle of the woods. Birds shot to the back of the head at 50 feet doesn’t kill you but still lodges some pellets back there.

    I’ve been in such a bad flood we saw people die. Not our group but a very inexperienced one that had no business there.

    All that was still a lot safer and being home with my family.

  10. Hearing a cougar scream in the middle of a cold mountain night. The cat, not the hungry woman cougar lol. Holy shit that is a freaky sound. Especially when that shriek echoes and re-echoes off the rock walls

  11. I don’t have any super spooky deliverance-esque stories really, but I can remember one time when I was younger being absolutely and completely lost in the woods behind my grandparents’ house. They owned a huge house on a mountain with several acres of undeveloped land, had 1 neighbor across the road and that was it for quite some way, just super desolate wilderness. We saw lots of deer, a few elk, one or two moose, coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, you name it we saw it out there at some point in time. I was always scared of getting lost back in the trees, I knew the land fairly well but when it gets dark out there I don’t think most people understand how dark that type of dark is. You’re lucky to see your hand in front of your face.

    One night I was out with my brother, we were shooting our bows at trees and stuff and just being little 10 year old kids or however young we were. We’d wandered quite a ways, much further than we’d ever been before, but we never realized it because we were busy having fun. When you know the woods, or an area of the woods, you learn to distinguish and recognize really odd, seemingly dumb things that others wouldn’t. Natural markings and patterns on trees, root formations in the ground, different arrangements of trees and rocks and stuff, basically just landmarks to tell you where you are. We saw nothing we recognized. Just thousands of trees, pine needles, dirt, and rocks. We didn’t know what direction we came from, where we were headed, didn’t have a compass, we were completely SOL. By the time it had gotten dark, we legitimately thought we were going to die out there. Couldn’t see anything, couldn’t walk anywhere, didn’t know where to go or what to do. We were terrified. So we just sat there. All of a sudden I hear footsteps coming up behind us and felt my stomach sink into the floor. Turned around, and my grandpa was there. Understandably pretty mad, but deep down also glad he found us. Dude had a fucking flashlight but I guess heard or saw us somehow before we saw him and decided to give us a good scare, I don’t fucking know, boomer Vietnam combat veterans are weird man. Felt pretty stupid walking back to the house when we realized that the spot where we had first realized we were lost, was literally 50 feet from the trail back up to the house. It was hard to see, and we indeed hadn’t been there before, and it seemed like it was really far out from where we normally ventured even though it wasn’t, but had we just walked 50 feet in the other direction none of it would’ve happened. I really did think at the time that I was going to die out there, one of the most terrifying situations I’ve ever been in and I’ve been in some pretty crazy shit.

  12. Thinking the cops were going to catch me with weed when I was a teenager. As It turned out they weren’t there for me.

  13. Tried taking pictures for tinder with headphones on. 10 minutes in my music cuts and I hear rattling. Turned around to a very pissed off woodland rattle staring at me from the tree I was using as shade lmao

  14. Sleep paralysis. I was lying on my back in my sleeping bag, with a couple of old friends by my side, in an open lean-to shelter. The campfire was slowly burning through the last bits of wood and I watched the flame’s flickering light reflect on the inside of the lean-to. Then something changed: I was unable to move, there was a sudden feeling of something bad about to happen, and I heard footsteps approaching in the snow. I had time to think about where I had left my hatchet, as the panicky feeling reached its peak, and I snapped out of it.

    Nothing that’s happened while awake has brought me anywhere near that intensity of emotion.

  16. A wolf tried to off me because I was being an annoying 10 yo. Up a tree I went, then I threw rocks at it, but I was absolutely terrified.

  18. This isn’t a particularly scary story, but I was more than a little worried at the time.

    I was hiking through the woods near where I lived in Germany at the time, alone except with my dog. This was in Decemeber, so thay days were really short. I got a late start, and realized too late that I had misjudged the distance on the map. With daylight rapidly fading, I realized I wasn’t going to get back to the village where I parked my car before it got dark. I had never hiked this trail before, so once the sun went down, it would be very hard to find my way (and of course, I did not have a flashlight). I started to walk faster and faster. As it got darker and darker, my pace turned into a run. Finally, just after it became completely dark, I could just make out the lights from the village. Now that I had a visual reference point, I was OK.

    And then, to top things off, a wild boar suddenly ran across the trail. Scared me, and drove my dog crazy.

  19. Was doing a solo Kayak trip three days. So not 100% forest, second day I saw a mountain lion and spotted him multiple times for miles, not sure if just wondering what’s that floating in the river or ohh tasty treat floating down the river, I had a gun on me but made camp that night on the other bank

  20. coming back to the camp site and having it torn apart by a bear because someone kept food in the tent.

  21. Nothing. The woods aren’t scary here. They’re comfortable.
    I walked home around midnight through the forest a few times. No light source. Could barely see more than a few steps in front of me… but I felt completely comfortable with it. I mean there are no predators higher than me on the food-chain here, and most humans would use a light-source at night because they have worse night-vision than me, so the odds of running into one in the dark would be negligible. And there wasn’t much chance of me tripping either since I knew the woods pretty well and the terrain was level.
    I honestly felt more safe there than in my own home.

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