Darkest Mysteries Online — The Strange and Unusual Podcast 2026
Park Rangers, What's The Creepiest Thing You've Seen In The Forest? (r/AskReddit)
16 Oct 2022
Chapter 1: What creepy experiences have park rangers encountered in the woods?
Hikers Park Rangers of Reddit, what is the scariest creepiest thing that you have seen in the woods? Serious. A few years ago my brother and I were camping in Colorado. He heard a twig snap somewhere nearby, and he wakes me up. We scan with our headlamps and see a huge pair of eyes staring at us through some willows.
I figured it must be a bear, it kept staring at us for 5 minutes until we turned off the lights. We were going to move camp back towards some other groups.
Chapter 2: What happened during a camping trip in Colorado with a mysterious animal encounter?
All of a sudden a massive moose comes charging out of the willows. Luckily it veered off before it collided with our tent. Another time I was hiking a trail I hike regularly with my dog. But it was totally deserted because of some rain. She was ahead of me maybe 20 yards when she comes to a dead stop. And beelines it back down the trail. Completely ignoring my calls.
As I chase her I notice an unmistakable mountain lion print. Smart dog. I was hiking in the Adirondacks with my ex on a trail that was a loop around a lake with one trailhead exit. Early spring so a lot of trail cleanup hadn't begun yet. We are walking about halfway to check out this waterfall and I hear this rumbling that sounds like an animal stomping the ground towards us.
I then hear this bizarre rapidly increasing growl that sounds like what Hollywood uses for alien noises and freaking book it. My boyfriend, ex. Tells me to hold up but I am crapping myself. I'm out of breath and refuse to go back the way we entered the trail. We have to march through this thick bog that was pulling our boots off to get through to the other side to exit the loop.
We get to the car and I'm crying at this point. The previous day was spent vomiting from eating bad food. Next vacation we are going to a city I moped. We had been to the Adirondacks for the past 4 vacations and honestly this experience beat me down. Years later I was listening to nature sounds on the internet and I hear that growl. A chill went up my spine. I learned that's a real thing.
It was a mating call of a roughed grouse bearing its wings on its chest. Yup. I freaked out bc of a frisky bird. I was in archaeological field school, living in a tent for 6 weeks at 7500 feet and the closest paved road was 10 miles away.
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Chapter 3: How did a mountain lion sighting impact a hiker's experience?
One night I woke to a huffing snorting kinda sound right outside my tent. Next thing I know, whatever it was, was bumping my head. I froze for a second. Then on pure instinct I did an overhead punch. Definitely felt contact. Whatever it was went away. This was on US Forest Service grazing land. So it could have been a cow with insomnia. But it could have been a mountain lion or black bear.
Wasn't even tempted to go out and see what it was. I preferred the safety of my tent. The trailside killer, in Northern California, late 70s, hiking with a friend, came across him at a rock outcropping on MT-10. He gave off a very discomforting vibe and we didn't hang around, we both independently recognized him when he was finally captured a few years later and his picture was in the paper.
If I'd been with my girlfriend, we might not be alive. He was a creepy looking dude. I was hiking in a national forest with my wife and my dog. The first couple's miles of trail led to a waterfall and swimming hole so it was fairly well populated with people. We decided to hike past the waterfall which involved a bit of a climb. Enough at least to keep most people from going past the waterfall.
We hiked another mile or two without seeing a single person.
Chapter 4: What unsettling discovery was made while hiking in the Adirondacks?
This whole time my dog was having a great time. Happy to be in the woods and happy to walk 30 miles if we let her. Suddenly, in a particularly dense part of the trail, she stopped suddenly and stared straight ahead. She absolutely would not move another inch forward. We stopped and listened but couldn't hear or see anything unusual.
The dog, though, started whining and trying to pull us on the leash back up the trail towards the swimming hole. I had never before or since seen my dog act this way, but I believe she was legitimately afraid of whatever was ahead of us. Maybe there was a bear on the trail, or a coyote, or maybe a serial killer was hiding in the woods.
I'll never know, because we listened to our dog and decided to get foe as fast as we could. Who knows, maybe we avoided some gruesome death deep in the woods. I worked as a tree planter in Northern Ontario, living in tents in very remote parts of the forest, like hours away from civilization only accessible by logging roads.
Strangest was from a fellow planter who found a backpack in the middle of his area with shoes, closed the wallet with a school lid and a film camera. How it ended up there is a total mystery because this is no place for hiking or camping.
Scariest for myself was waking up to my tent vestibule collapsed and a large bear claw rip which I apparently slept through, as well as turning a corner to a large wolf about 10 feet away, and returning to a spot I'd planted about 5 minutes earlier to fresh mama bear and cub prints.
Realizing a bear family had sauntered behind me while my back was turned was very unsettling because you do not want to frick with a bear and her cubs. Canadian wildlife is scary yo.
People constantly underestimate how big wolves are, they are not just wild dogs, those em are huge, I went to a wolf sanctuary once, and I was astounded, my grandfather bred mastiffs, and it takes a lot to make me impressed with the size of a canine, but holy crap wolves are big. The most surreal experience I had was during an off-trail hike in the Rockies, CO.
I was extremely depressed and spending a day away from an awful ex. I wasn't really sure what my plan was but I fell on my butt through ice into a shallow stream I was crossing and just said frick it, I'm not going back to my car. Well just near the top of a steep hill I almost stepped on some sort of leg bone.
I was like oh crap, that's cool, until about 3 feet away I saw several more limb bones and most of a spine between a couple mounds. I didn't see fresh blood but was certain it was regular territory for something that could frick me up. I kinda froze and looked around me since I hadn't heard anything so far, so decided to get a few pics and then slowly left down the hill.
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Chapter 5: What frightening sounds and encounters occur while camping at night?
Asked us if we knew where they could get any. I had my big Becker BK knife by my side. Thankfully they left. That's not a knife. working in a rainforest in SE Asia many years ago. One of the things we did was trap moths at night. You'd sit in front of a big white sheet with a lamp in front of it, powered by a generator and then periodically go and see what insects had been attracted to the sheet.
Incidentally, the insects attracted frogs, which attracted snakes, which attracted bigger things. Due to the noise and light, the trap was about a mile away from camp, so you'd be there at 3am, all alone in the middle of a jungle. One cloudy night there wasn't much happening on the 1am to 3am shift, I heard a rustle in the woods beside me.
This wasn't unusual, but it was a bit bigger than I was used to hearing. The rustle got closer, and I started getting tense. It got closer still, and I was starting to think that I was going to get eaten by a tiger. Suddenly a disembodied face broke out of the tree line, screaming in an unintelligible language. I practically shat myself.
Screamed a little, and the disembodied face disappeared back into the woods issuing high-pitched giggles. It was only after my heart slowed that I realized one of the local lumberjacks had given me a jumpscare using a torch under their face for spooky lighting. I wasn't even mad. It was hilarious. I'd be swoopy.
was on a camping trip in the boundary waters in Minnesota and we woke up in the middle of the night to this incredibly loud slap and a splash out in the middle of the lake. Sound carries really well across water. Our first fear was that someone was shooting at us and that was absolutely terrifying.
Then we heard it again a bit closer and one of the guides realized it was a freaking beaver slapping its tail on the water before it dove below. My last trip up there I was awoken from a midday nap by my buddy's sing-songily screaming bear. Turns out we made camp in the middle of a berry patch and the bear was having a feast about 10 feet from my head.
Was camping with my boy scout troop at the time and woke up during the middle of the night to footsteps and breathing. It got louder and more footsteps started. My bunkmates were up too at this point. Then we start to hear huffing and animal noises. Turns out the field our campsite was at was in the middle of an apparent cow crossing. Had to be at least 30 of them walking by at once.
Definitely a scary moment to wake up to in the middle of the night hearing a million footsteps and animal noises. For your information cow pies everywhere the next morning. Oh I love pie. A pack of dogs ran up on my wife and I while hiking out of the Grand Canyon at about 3 AM.
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Chapter 6: What strange events happened during a hike in a remote forest?
Very very dark outside. Her and I had headlamps. We stopped. They stopped. All I saw was a bunch of glowing eyes and bushy-tailed silhouettes. After a beat I realized they were working dogs for the reservation. So I just went, hee-eye-puppers and the same voice I use for my dog and they immediately went on their way. Ended up not being dangerous really, but I almost shat myself.
I was camping at a BLM campground on the Navajo reservation near a little town. I was grilling a steak and just hanging out when a pack of reservation dogs showed up. I threw another steak on the grill and shared it with them and they hung out for hours. All real friendly.
I went running through a trail near my house one afternoon, headphones in and my mind elsewhere just because I knew the path really well. I came around a bend, and through the gap in the trees about 20 feet in front of me, I locked eyes with a dead and rotting deer. Somehow, it was postured in a way that made it look as though the corpse was staring through me.
I turned around and bolted out as fast as I possibly could. You should watch the movie, The Ritual. A sleeping feral hog with piglets. God I hope you booked it away from there. My dad was stuck on the roof of his ute because of a pee off pig once. It was scary because I was locked inside the car looking at it. I'm not a ranger, but I've hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail.
This occurred in West Virginia, I believe. Happened about 8 years ago. Was hiking with a group. We spread out naturally based on hiking speed. I was in the middle-ish group of 4 of us, and one person had to stop to pull a tick off. Other two, one leader, stayed with them but I decided to hike on ahead and see if I could catch up with the lead group.
The AT is extremely well marked with white blazes so I wasn't worried about getting lost. I knew the next landmark was an old logging road and sure enough, I hit it about half a mile later. I decided I should wait for the rest of the group to catch up, so while waiting I hiked a bit down the old overgrown road, which ran perpendicular to the trail.
there was a low stone wall along one side and i was strolling along it checking for anything interesting like artifacts and stuff when it was like i crossed an invisible line all of a sudden it was like sound cut off no birds or insects called when seconds ago there had been multiple birds singing even leaves on the trees around me stopped rustling it was just this sudden unnatural deafening silence
For whatever reason, I took a few more hesitant steps forward until I hit this invisible wall. It was like suddenly I was barraged by this feeling. I can only describe it as intense and welcome, as if I had entered the house of someone I knew hated me, but multiplied by about 100. All the hairs on my body stood straight up. I stopped dead in my tracks.
The feeling was so strong that I didn't even want to turn my back. I couldn't see anything down the road, threatening or otherwise, that would give me this feeling, but I knew I had to leave immediately. I just knew I was not meant to be there and if I stayed something bad would happen. So I walked backward slowly, never turning away from the road and trying really hard not to even blink.
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