Campers Are Sharing The Creepiest Things That Ever Happened To Them In The Wilderness
Redditor u/cherrylbombshell asked fellow redditors the question: "Campers of reddit, what's the creepiest thing that happened to you in the wilderness/ at the campsite?" and the answers ranged from freaky to funny to full-blown terrifying. Vote on your favorite creepy camper tales below.
- 1425 VOTES
They Never Figured Out The Source Of The Mysterious Footprints
From Redditor u/DieselDown:
I used to camp pretty often at a wilderness spot that was a flat ridge on top of a big steep hill. One section had a trail that was steep but manageable, but the rest of this hill is almost vertical and would be impossible to climb without ropes and a bunch of climbing gear.
Even though the top was flat, it was a heavily wooded area, thick pine trees. Lots of underbrush. Great views of the area, and far enough off the road we never saw other people.
That particular trip, my girlfriend and best friend came along, so 3 of us spread out in 2 tents. Sometime in the middle of the night a storm blew through and dropped about an inch of snow on our tents. It was a calm night without any wind, and really peaceful all zipped up in our sleeping bags.
When we woke up at first light there was a distinct trail of human footprints in the snow that went all the way across the ridge, through our camp, and came about 2 feet from our tents.
The crazy thing was the footprints started from an area that would be impossible to climb up, and ended at another area that would be impossible to climb down. Let alone in the dark with snow making the rocks slippery.
We measured the foot prints and they were smaller than my friend and I’s boots, too big to be my girlfriend’s.
Could never figure out how someone climbed up that section in the middle of the night, moved through the thick forest without making a sound, and came so close to our tents without anyone knowing. Creepy enough we packed up pretty fast and got out of there!
- 2366 VOTES
An Abandoned Tower With Evidence Of Animal Sacrifices
From Redditor u/EhlersDanlosSucks:
I was on a Search and Rescue training weekend. We specialized in locating downed private planes so we were seriously in the middle of nowhere. Hours into the woods, we found an old abandoned lookout tower. The inside was covered in huge graphic paintings of animal sacrifices. The middle of the room had a pile of animal bones. The whole thing was unbelievably creepy.
- 3367 VOTES
Someone Possibly Came Into The Tent And Stole Batteries
From Redditor u/TheChosenSnail:
When I was younger, my family used to go camping every spring. Now there wasn't much wilderness to speak of (the wildest thing I saw was a whole bunch of hares that leaped away when I tried to take a picture), so my parents would just let me and my brothers wander around wherever.
One morning at sunrise, I woke up. Everyone else was still sleeping, which means I had to stay quiet, but I got bored and decided to go on an early morning stroll. When I got back, the rest of my family was having breakfast in front of the tent and they looked at me very confused. I was like: "What?" Turns out everyone thought I was still in the tent until I casually came strolling up to them from the other side of the campsite. My parents said that they had called me for breakfast, but that I mumbled something and didn't come. My younger brother claimed that he had heard me turning in my bed just a few minutes ago. I went into the tent to investigate. There was no one in my part of the tent. All my stuff appeared to be untouched. We shrugged it off; obviously there had been some sort of mistake or collective brainfart.
However, when I needed to be somewhere that evening, I went and grabbed my flashlight, and it didn't work. I opened it up to see what the problem was, and the batteries were missing. I checked my parents' flashlights, no batteries. I checked my brothers' flashlights, no batteries. We were quite spooked, and for the rest of that stay I never strayed far from the tent.
- 4354 VOTES
It Was So Silent That It Became The Scariest Place To Sleep
From Redditor u/MasteringTheFlames:
A few years ago, I loaded a bunch of camping gear onto my bicycle and spent the better part of the next seven months riding 5,300 miles (8,500 km) around the US. Most often I preferred to wild camp. An hour or so before dark, I'd start looking for somewhere to disappear into the woods for the night, somewhere people were unlikely to find me and even less likely to care that I was there.
A remote forest makes for far from a silent night's sleep. Think of all the crickets in a suburban neighborhood on a summer night, and amplify that by about a thousand. There were always so many crickets and toads, and even the slightest breeze would stir music out of the tree leaves. Maybe I'd camp near a babbling creek. And it was always a highlight of the night —though not particularly uncommon— to hear the yips and howls of distant coyotes. I can recall one night where I fell asleep to the sound of two nearby owls, one on either end of my tent, calling back and forth.
One night in late September or early October, I was camping somewhere in the mountains of western Montana. And it was dead silent. There was not the slightest sound to be heard, not a single cricket, no nearby river or faraway coyotes. The dry leaves of autumn surely wouldn't've required a strong wind to stir their song. And yet, there was only silence.
It was terrifying. I can only describe it as the loudest silence I've ever heard. It felt as though the entire forest was hiding from an equally silent predator. Suddenly the occasional snapping of a twig —a common sound normally lost in the cacophony of the forest— was like a gunshot. I slept terribly that night, and morning could not come soon enough.
- 5215 VOTES
The Newspaper The Next Week Confirmed The Camper Was Most Likely About To Be Attacked By A Mountian Lion
From Redditor u/anacondatmz:
This was upstate NY along the Canadian border. I wasn't camping, but I was out fly fishing one evening... It was right about that time when you look into the woods, it's pitch black, outside of the bush you could see relatively well. I was at my favorite spot, about half way in the river when on the opposite side, in the woods I could hear something walking. It was slow, somewhat methodical, and it just kept getting closer to me. I started hearing it about 100 feet away, and within 10 minutes it had slowly advanced up to a set of rocks and shrubs right next to the river. All the while, if I heard a particularly loud stick break or leaf crunch, the steps / sounds would stop for a bit.
At this point, I'd call out a few times, hoping it might be someone but no response... Just this creepy feeling of being stared at. Being alone, unarmed, having recently seen a mountain lion a couple kilometers away (no joke) I was a little on edge so I backed out of the water (never turning my back), fishing was good so I high tailed it about half a kilometer down the river and went back to fishing.
Wasn't long before I had the same eerie sounds of foot steps in the woods working their way up to me. At this point I got the f**k out of there as quickly as possible. Hell I didn't even change out of my waders at the parking lot, I jumped in the truck drove a few miles down the road to a parking lot in town and changed there. About a week later, local papers reported a horse which had been attacked and suffered serious damage from what the vet described as an attack by a very "large cat" at a farm next to where I had been fishing.
- 6335 VOTES
The Camper And Dog Had A Stand Off With A Grizzly Bear
From Redditor u/misses_massacre:
I live in Montana, so camping is just what we do. I'm an experienced camper, and have ran into a lot of situations doing so, but the creepiest/scariest one was when we were camped by Cooke City here in MT. The area is well-known for grizzly bears. I'd camped in grizzly territory lots of times, so it didn't bother me. When grizzlies pass through your camp sites they usually don't mess with your stuff, because experienced campers have nothing exposed which would interest a predator. However, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by my dog Duke, who was low growling. I looked at him, and he had his eyes totally fixed towards the outside of the tent and he was ready to attack.
It took me a minute, but then I heard the unmistakable sound of massive bear paws on the ground RIGHT outside the tent (once you know the sound, you never forget it). My dog kept growling, and the bear began sniffing at my tent forEVER. I was completely terrified, as my gun was on the other end of the tent. I didn't want to make a sound crawling over to it, as I didn't want to alert the bear that food (me) was inside. So I laid perfectly still.
Duke continued to growl and growl at the bear, until finally the bear pawed at the tent in an attempt to get in. He didn't claw at it the first time, but his claws scraped across the canvas and it terrified me. That's when I instinctively (scared) shouted out, "Hey, f**k off!!!" and it scared the sh*t out of the bear. You could hear it startle and run off a bit. I grabbed my gun and unzipped my tent a little to peek outside. I couldn't see the bear in the darkness, but my dog took off running in the direction the bear had fled. That's when I heard it lumbering off into the forest. Eventually, Duke (the good boy) came back, and would not get back in the tent. He sat outside the tent the rest of the night, keeping watch. He was a good boy. RIP, Duke.
- 7170 VOTES
A Family And Their Dogs Were Surrounded By Wolves
From Redditor u/melhekhinhel:
My family and our dogs all went camping for a weekend and on the first night there, probably around midnight or one AM, a pack of wolves surrounded our camp and were howling and prowling around for a good thirty minutes. They were so close that their howls were deafeningly loud. We were all wide awake of course and I remember my dad telling us to just be quiet and that the wolves were looking for our dogs most likely as they'd spent the day running around the area and peeing on everything so the wolves could definitely tell their territory had been disturbed by a strange animal. Our poor dogs were terrified lmao they didn't make a single peep the whole time despite being awake, too. The fact we were all crammed into a tent and not safe inside a camp trailer made it much worse.
- 8160 VOTES
A Close Call With Someone Robbing Their Supplies
Redditor u/dartfrog11:
Some random guy was shuffling through my sh*t at night. I was many hours into wilderness in British Columbia. I stayed absolutely quiet and terrified in my sleeping bag in my tent and he left after like 5 minutes. I had my pocket knife out in case he tried coming into my tent. I didn’t sleep all night.
In the morning I got out and checked what was stolen. Mostly food and batteries so I thought that he might just be doing this because he ran out of supplies but he also took my $600 camera so I guess not.
- 9183 VOTES
They Saw Glowing Eyes In The Bushes
From Redditor u/SpacemanSpiff6962:
My friends and I were at a gold claim on a river deep in the national forest. We had the campfire about 10 feet from the river and the river was shallow at that point but maybe 20 feet wide. On the other side it was all heavy brush that steeply went up the mountain side.
As we are sitting there with only the fire for light, bullsh*tting and drinking I looked at the river and saw two glowing eyes across the river in the bushes. They were fairly wide apart. Before we sat down an hour or so previously we had been shooting our guns in the open area so we had them all still on us or leaned against the chairs.
I told the guys and we all stood up and shot all the guns we had up in the air to scare it off. We heard a deep growl grumble then something crashing through the brush as it ran away. The next morning we went over there to see if there were any paw prints and found a set of big bear tracks. The bear was summing us up to see if it could take us all at once or not. If not for the guns being shot, it may have charged.
- 10150 VOTES
An Intense Run-In With Armed Robbers
From Redditor u/shwiftyname:
Just after sundown I drove up to my campsite on National Forest land in NE Oregon and found two armed men attempting to steal my camp and camping gear, including my wall tent. I was solo and also armed (deer season). After a lot of tense negotiating I got them to return most of my stuff, but they kept being shady and trying to flank me, so I told them to f**k off. I memorized the license plate and managed to get a conviction on one of the guys I was able to ID. He maybe did a weekend in jail. I got a small check from my homeowners insurance and PTSD.
- 11133 VOTES
They Witnessed The Bear Indulge In The Family's Hot Dogs And Beer
From Redditor u/I_Just_Did_A_Bad:
You know mine’s a little but tame. But this is both the funniest experience and scariest experience I’ve had camping.
Basic scene, was camping with my family, I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. It was a nice, but BIG camp site in Northern California. It might have been some kind of church or something, I can’t recall. Regardless, it was a big and full camp.
I had woken up at the crack of dawn. And no, I’m not an early riser, but my bladder was not having any of that that morning. I got up and went to the bathrooms, conveniently about 100 feet from my tent. My family was with me in the tent, it was a big 8 person (you know, the ones that actually only fit like 4).
I do my business and come on out, but hear movement. I stop for a second but then reason my dad has gotten up, since he is certainly an early riser. I start to head out and catch a glimpse of the source of the noise. It is brown and furry, my dad? Well… not quite, that aside, it was your friendly neighborhood California Brown Bear.
I watched in a mix of curiosity and fear, as the bear sat at the edge of our neighbor’s campsite, tore off the top of their cooler, which they had kindly- and stupidly -left out. I watch as a bright yellow pack of hotdogs comes out and is removed from its packaging (this was a resident mama bear we later found out, she knew her stuff). Upon eating the hotdogs I then witnessed the weirdest thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life.
This bear manages to pull out a beer (or some glass bottle, although it was more than likely beer or some hard drink) from the cooler, and EXPERTLY pops off the cap by simply grabbing it in her teeth and bending it off. It proceeded to tilt its head back and drink what it could. And it promptly left.
Honestly, I don’t trust my memory fully, but that is to date my weirdest, funniest (in hindsight), and scariest experience whilst camping.
- 12100 VOTES
A Herd Of Wild Boar Entered The Campsite
From Redditor u/RonSwansonsOldMan:
A herd of Javelinas came into our campsite in the middle of the night. As quick as we could we made a run for it to the van and slept there. They didn't do much of anything, but they're big ugly pigs.
- 13138 VOTES
Not Demons, Just Possums
From Redditor u/boostedprune:
Possum fight in the tree above my tent. Thought all the demons were coming for me.
- 1495 VOTES
Witnessed The Shadow Of A Snake Vs Hedgehog Fight
From Redditor u/skello_always:
I woke up in a tent to hear a hissing. I live in the UK so assumed it was a leaking travel gas stove or something. It's dawn with a low sun, and suddenly a huge terrifying shadow is projected on to the tent. Like a spiky ball with a snake's head. It turned out to be a friendly hedgehog having an altercation with an adder but my still waking up brain saw something from a nightmare. I watched the snake until it f**ked off though since dying of a snake bite in the UK would be too embarrassing.
- 15111 VOTES
An Unexpected Cow Crashed The Party
From Redditor u/MrSmellyEvans:
When I was camping I heard lots of rustling and noise during the night. I was alone in my tent but there was 100% something moving outside. I was terrified and I saw silhouettes of an animal in the distance moving. All of a sudden I heard the biggest and deepest MOO you've ever heard. A herd of free-range cows had found their way to me. One cow almost took down my tent but it was all good. They were really chill.
- 16105 VOTES
A Cow Strikes Again And Snorts
From Redditor u/GiraffeInASheet:
I was car camping in my jeep and a cow stuck its head in my window and just sigh/snorted.
Scared the bejesus out of me.
- 1795 VOTES
Baby Animal Started Off Creepy Then Got Adorable
From Redditor u/LostDogBoulderUtah:
A dikdik.
I thought I was having a stroke or there was something wrong with the food at first. They are not native at all to my area, and it looked like a toy at first. Then I saw its baby, which just didn't look real. So tiny. So cute.
They're nothing like a mule deer. Once I determined other people could see them too, and the teensy tiny angry mama dikdik wasn't actually big enough to do more than paw at my leg, it was more adorable than creepy. But there was a moment.
- 1897 VOTES
Fish That Go Bump In The Night
From Redditor u/pidgechef90:
I was camping in British Columbia just across the boarder to Washington. We set up camp next to a river had dinner and went to bed, while trying to sleep I could hear splashing in the river on and off, sounded like something trying to drown another thing and we’d hear this every couple of minutes but didn’t go and check as it was terrifying and pitch black. Well morning comes and we go check outside the tent and we realise we’d just heard the salmon working their way up steam for spawning season
