When you're used to the creature comforts of home, camping can prove to be a little unsettling. In the wilderness, when the night falls, scary and unimaginable things come out to play. From lurking strangers to terrifying predators in the dark, these stories give The Blair Witch Project a run for its money:
1. How Daddy Screamed
I took my kids camping in the woods for the first time, and they were really nervous. I kept telling them there was nothing out there to be scared of. Then the night suddenly got a lot creepier. Right after I reassured them, we heard something moving outside the tent. They started to cry a little, and I told them it was probably just the wind or maybe a raccoon somewhere nearby.
Then something landed on top of the tent...and started pressing down in four different spots. They completely panicked...and honestly, I screamed too. But when I went outside to see what it was, I was so relieved. It was our cat. My wife had let him out, and he had wandered down into the woods to find us. He was still young and had never seen a tent before, so he jumped right on top of it above us.
This happened a few years ago, and my kids still talk about how scary it was—and how daddy screamed.
2. Froggy Footsteps
I went camping once in Michigan, and we were in a pretty remote area with clearly separated campsites. It was fall, so the ground was covered in dry leaves. Just as we were starting to fall asleep, we heard slow, steady footsteps crunching through the leaves. They moved around the campsite, circled our tent, and kept pacing around without any obvious purpose.
Of course, we assumed it was some kind of animal, but every time we rushed out with a flashlight, there was nothing there—no sound, no sign of anything. As soon as we got back into the tent, the footsteps started again. And they didn’t begin far away; they started right next to the tent. We went through this routine about three more times, because the sound was so clear, so close, and so unsettling. We never even caught a glimpse of whatever it was.
The next morning, we were sitting by the fire and heard the same footsteps again—only this time we looked down and realized it was just several tiny frogs hopping around the campsite.
3. Mama, Mama...
I was tent camping in Arkansas in 2003, and The Blair Witch Project was still very fresh in my mind. I was about 20 at the time. Around 2 or 3 in the morning, we woke up to what sounded like a small child running around our tent, crying and trying to get inside. I was completely freaked out.
Eventually, I worked up the nerve to open the tent, and there was a little kid who couldn’t have been older than three, terrified, and wearing nothing but a diaper. A lot of things ran through my mind, but mostly I was thinking, “How am I supposed to handle this?” I couldn’t exactly go from campsite to campsite in the middle of the night, and the ranger station was closed. So there I was, standing in the dark holding a child that wasn’t mine.
We finally decided to call 9-1-1 because it seemed like the safest option. Right then, a woman came walking down the trail and said, “How did you get out?” The little boy said, “Mama, mama…” and went straight to her. She casually thanked us and walked away. Now that I’m a parent, that whole situation would scare me even more if it were my own kid.
4. Quaking In My Tent
I was camping in Zion National Park in late August of 1992. By then, the campground was nearly empty. At 3:30 in the morning, I woke up in midair. You know those dreams where that happens? I assumed that’s all it was...until I suddenly hit the ground. It was an earthquake. I heard cracking noises, a few small thumps, and then one huge one. Parts of the cliff face had broken off.
Luckily, the campground was far enough away that no one got hurt. If it had happened during the day, there’s a good chance some people wouldn’t have survived. The park ended up closing for a few days afterward, and we couldn’t get in or out for a big part of that day. One entrance road was unusable, and the other was blocked by a boulder about the size of a car.
After a while, they moved the boulder and told everyone to leave the park. I called home to let people know I was OK, and everyone said, “Why, what happened?” It hadn’t even made the news. Luckily, it was fairly minor overall—just some local damage.
5. A Bone-Chilling Moan
When I was pretty young, I went camping with my dad in Alabama. It was late at night, and the fire was almost out. We were getting ready to sleep when we heard a long, chilling moan. We looked at each other and decided it was probably just trees rubbing together, but then we heard it two more times. My dad grabbed the flashlight, and I followed behind him with a big stick, fully convinced I was going to rescue him if anything happened.
Eventually, we found a woman lying on the ground not far from our campsite. She was on a hill, with her head downhill and her feet uphill, still moaning. It turned out she had been drinking so much she could barely speak, and she had been camping in the woods with her boyfriend. They’d had a big argument, and he drove off, leaving her there alone.
She had seen our fire dying down and wanted to bring us the rest of her firewood before she left too, but she had tripped and was too drunk to get back up. We helped her back to her campsite and made sure she didn’t try to drive anywhere that night. But I’ll never forget that moaning sound.
6. Your Worst Fear
I was camping in the Serengeti, with Maasai men standing guard. We were sitting around the fire when, all of a sudden, one of the Maasai stared out into the pitch-black dark, switched on a flashlight, and caught the eyes of a lion about 40 yards away. It was just standing there, watching us. I hadn’t heard a single thing.
7. Howl At The Moon
One time out in the wild, a couple of friends and I, not exactly thinking clearly, started howling at the moon. Huge mistake. We ended up drawing in actual wolves. They came to our campsite about an hour and a half later, just as we were lying in our hammocks getting ready to sleep. They sniffed around for a few minutes and then moved on.
I guess they weren’t too impressed with what they found. Luckily, they also weren’t starving. Still, I was terrified, and during the whole short encounter I tried not to move at all.
8. Where Did They Go?
I used to camp at this pretty secluded spot on state land. I’d been going there since I was a kid, and over time it became an annual tradition for my buddies and me to unplug and rough it for a few days. Back then, a little over 15 years ago, hardly anyone knew about it, and it took some effort to reach the campsite.
It was deep in the woods but close to a lake, which made it perfect for swimming. There was no cell service, no light pollution, nothing. We were completely on our own out there. Even so, my friends and I always looked forward to it. One summer afternoon, I got there first, ready for a week of camping, drinking, and swimming.
But to my surprise, someone was already there. A couple of tents had been set up. It was a pretty big campsite, so I figured I’d carry my gear over and see if the other campers would be okay with sharing the space. Maybe they’d be friendly, and maybe it would turn into one big group hangout.
I walked up to the site and...no one was there. The tents were empty. There were signs of a campfire, so I knew people had been there recently. I decided to check the lake, thinking maybe they had gone for a swim. That’s when it started to feel really unsettling. A steep path led from the campsite down to the lake, and as I walked along it, I noticed some stuff scattered along the trail.
There was a sleeping bag, some tools, and clothes that had clearly been hanging on a line but were now lying in the dirt. The clothes were wet with muddy water, and they looked like they’d been there for a while. There was nobody at the lake. When I went back to the campsite and took a closer look, it became clear the place had been abandoned for some time. But that still didn’t explain why they had left everything behind.
As far as I could tell, whoever had been camping there had left in a real hurry. The tents were pretty new, and that’s not the kind of stuff people usually abandon unless they’re grabbing only the essentials and leaving fast. What stood out to me was that the fire had gone out, but there was still ice in the coolers and beer inside, so they couldn’t have been gone for very long.
My friends showed up later, and we decided to set up camp nearby and keep an eye on the place. Maybe the campers had to leave because of some emergency. We stayed there for the whole week, and nobody ever came back for their things. Luckily, the DNR stopped by during a patrol, and we told them what we’d found.
They said they’d gather up the gear and take it to a lost-and-found at their station. It was creepy, but even more than that, it was just strange. I still wonder what happened to those people.
9. A Bloodcurdling Shriek
When I was a kid, my best friend’s grandparents lived on a “farm,” which was really about 100 acres of forest with a few clearings and a house. We used to camp there all the time. One night, a few of us were out there when a sound suddenly echoed through the woods. We kept hearing thumping and screaming coming from the trees.
We had literally just finished reading a book about Bigfoot at school, so we were convinced Bigfoot was out there in the forest, pounding on trees and roaring. We climbed out of the tent, completely terrified, and slowly made our way through the woods toward the noise. Eventually, we reached a clearing and found several of my friend’s uncles trying to repair an old barn.
And yes, they were extremely drunk. At around 2 in the morning. The thumping was them hammering wood. The screaming was what happened when they missed and hit themselves instead. We were scared out of our minds at the time, but now it’s hilarious.
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10. When The Bee Stings...
I was on a trip with YMCA Camp Widji, and on our last day on the trail, we got up early to hike the final few miles to the pickup point where the van was waiting. We came around a bend, and I could see the van ahead, along with this strange swirling dark cloud hanging over the trail. Out of nowhere, the guy in front of me screamed, and my nightmare began. All of us were suddenly swarmed by huge black wasps.
I accidentally caught one in my hand, and it was about the size of a cicada. I only got stung twice, but the two guys in front took close to ten stings each. We ran back up the trail away from the van, and our counselor immediately started handing out EpiPens, though thankfully none of us turned out to be allergic. We had to take the long way around the wasps to get to the van, but I was shaking the entire time.
11. Worst-Cast Scenario
About 10 years ago, I went camping for a weekend. It was supposed to be fun, but that trip has stayed with me ever since. On the morning of the second day, we went hiking and before long we realized we were off the trail on a steep slope above the Monashee River. We were about 100 feet up when one of my friends lost his footing and started sliding.
On the way down, he knocked into my other friend, and I watched them both hit rocks and trees before reaching the rapids. I climbed down and found one of them on the riverbank, while the other had been swept away. I couldn’t find him then, but his body was discovered two weeks later, about two kilometers from where they fell.
What remained of him was still in the river because when search-and-rescue teams tried to recover him from a logjam, he was stuck fast, and the boulders along the bank gave way and collapsed on top of him. This is a very shortened version of what happened, but overall it was one of the most frightening days of my life.
12. That Laughter In Your Ears
I was on a camping trip with the Scouts, and my friend and I ended up sharing a tent with a kid who always seemed off. He was constantly causing problems, getting into fights, and showing off how many knives he had. One night, we were in the tent playing blackjack, and I must have said something that upset him because he started shouting at me. That alerted the Scout leaders that we were still awake, so they told us to go to sleep.
I don’t know how long I had been asleep when I woke up to him choking me. I struggled and tried to push him off, but I was panicking and couldn’t think clearly. I remember the tent seeming darker and darker, and my eyelids felt heavier. I tried to breathe, but I just felt exhausted. I was starting to slip away. I was terrified that his laughter would be the last thing I ever heard—then there was a loud WHAM.
It was my friend. He had woken up from the noise and immediately started hitting the kid to get him off me. Once he let go, I was coughing and gasping for air. My friend yelled for help, and that got the adults’ attention. The kid was scolded for what he’d done and separated from everyone else, sleeping alone in a tent close to the adults. I couldn’t sleep after that.
I moved into a tent with my older brother, and I must have woken up three times that night kicking and screaming from nightmares about him trying to kill me. When we got back from camp, his parents were told what happened and he was banned from Boy Scouts. They told my mom too, and I honestly don’t know how she stayed calm.
He was also banned from several other activities, so I never really saw him again. I still wake up from nightmares about being choked or unable to breathe. Even though I’m normally a heavy sleeper, if anyone comes near me while I’m asleep, I bolt upright in a panic. I can’t even really nap with my dogs because of it.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sleep peacefully around other people again.
13. Shiver Me Timbers
When I was in Boy Scouts, we were camping during a severe storm that kept getting worse through the night. When we tried to sleep, all we could hear were loud thudding noises coming from all around us. By morning, we found out what it was.
A huge number of very large, old trees throughout the campsite had fallen overnight. These trunks were easily three feet wide and had come crashing down all around us. And here’s the truly frightening part:
If even one of those trees had landed on a tent, no one inside would have survived.
14. Nightmare Fuel
I fell asleep in the car while we had firewood strapped to the roof rack. Later, I woke up with one eye swollen shut, but both my mom and dad kept insisting it was nothing, even though neither of them actually looked at it. We were sitting around playing cards when suddenly my mom let out a piercing scream and turned away from me in horror.
A family friend reached over and flicked a huge, bloated leech out of my eye just as it was moving toward my nose. I watched it burn in the fire while my eye bled enough to soak 14 tissues.
15. Extreme Sports
We went to a tiny piece of land my friend owned behind a local park. They had built some BMX jumps there, and we wanted to try them out. When we arrived, we tossed our bikes down near some holes in the mud. We didn’t think much of it and assumed they were old badger dens or rabbit holes, which were common in the countryside where I grew up.
We stayed there for a while, but the jumps were in rough shape, so we didn’t really ride much and mostly just hung around. Later, when we went back to get our bikes, we were met with a horrible surprise—every single bike was completely covered in wasps. I could barely even see my handlebars because they were swarming so heavily.
It turned out the holes in the ground were part of a massive wasp nest, and no matter what we tried, we couldn’t get our bikes back without getting stung over and over. I called my dad—an absolute hero—who probably assumed it was just a couple of bees, but he came to help anyway. Once he arrived, he saw how bad it really was.
Because he’s a legend, he showed up with a blowtorch and a rag tied to a stick to smoke them out. Somehow, it worked perfectly. When I got home and took a shower, I counted 18 visible wasp stings, and there were still six wasps physically stuck in my clothes and on my body. One was in my hair, and two had gotten into my boxer shorts.
16. Crashing Down
I went to Guatemala with my girlfriend, and we did a three-day hike through the jungle to Tikal. We spent two nights in a tent at small ranger campsites deep in the forest. On the second night, a huge thunderstorm rolled in above us. Then around 4 a.m., I woke up to the sound of men’s voices outside. I stepped out of the tent to see what was going on, and that’s when two men with rifles walked toward me. I completely froze.
I told my girlfriend to stay in the tent because I didn’t want her to panic, but she came out anyway. As it turned out, the men were local hunters looking for shelter at the campsite. I offered them some coffee, and they were very happy about that. About 30 seconds later, the storm got so bad that a large tree fell and landed right on our tent. If I hadn’t stepped out to check on the voices, or if my girlfriend had stayed inside, we both could have been killed.
17. Don't Get "Boared"
I went backpacking with my wife and our dog in Arkansas. We were alone on top of a mountain when we heard grunting and footsteps just outside our tent. I couldn’t tell whether it was a person or an animal. I had a 9 mm with me and was trying to decide what to do, because even unzipping the tent would probably alert whatever was out there.
Oddly, our dog stayed quiet, which was not normal at all. Something told me not to draw attention to us. Eventually, we found out what it was, and I’m really glad I stayed still. It was a boar. If boars are really as aggressive as people say, using my gun probably would have made things worse.
Even if I had somehow hit a charging boar in the dark, it still might have torn me apart. Those things are built like tanks.
18. Interrupted The Chase
Just two weeks ago, I was having dinner with a friend on a mountainside in Denali National Park. We heard rocks sliding down the steep slope above us, and my first thought was, “Uh oh, landslide.” But what happened was even wilder. When I looked over, I saw five caribou, including two babies, running down the hillside about 10 feet from us.
Right behind them, a wolf was chasing them down the mountain. When it noticed us, it stopped nearby and stared for a moment, then ran back up the hill to a rocky ledge about 60 feet away. It stood there watching us for a good 30 seconds, took a few steps in our direction, and then ran off. We knew there was a wolf den somewhere in the area, but wolf sightings are rare in that park, and I never expected to see one from that close.
I wasn’t exactly afraid for my life, since there were two of us and only one wolf, but it was still an intense experience, and my legs were definitely shaking.
19. Too Many Questions
We were teenagers, 16 and 18, when we went camping by ourselves. We made dinner and were having a good time when a man passed by our campsite near the river. He had a fishing pole, so we didn’t think much of it. He asked if he could cut through our campsite to get to the road, and we said yes. Big mistake.
He stopped and looked around, asking questions like, “How old are you? Where are you from? How long are you staying?” They were the kind of questions that were clearly none of his business, but we were naive and answered anyway. Eventually, he left and headed down the canyon road. A couple of hours later, he came back, this time with another man.
Both of them looked middle-aged, probably in their 40s. They started asking even more questions. The first man wandered around our campsite, looking through things, and both of them gave us a bad feeling. Eventually they left, and we were incredibly relieved. But something still felt wrong. They went farther up the canyon instead of going back the way they came.
A couple more hours passed, and by then it was dark. My friend mentioned that the sound of the river made it hard to hear anything else, and that made her nervous. We both had a strong feeling that we needed to leave, and fast. Maybe nothing would have happened, but we both felt the danger. Those men had asked exactly the kind of questions that told them we were alone and unprotected that night.
20. "Do You Believe In God?"
In college, I did a lot of solo car camping in the back of my truck. One time I went to a remote public area in the Ozarks and planned to stay there overnight. After setting up my bedding and eating dinner, I settled in for the night. About 45 minutes after turning off my light, I started hearing leaves crunching in the woods about 30 yards away.
At first, I wasn’t too worried. I assumed it was just an opossum, a deer, a coyote, or some other animal moving through the area. But then my imagination started running wild, like it always does, and I began thinking of worst-case scenarios. The crunching kept getting closer. Something was definitely near the campsite.
I usually carry bear spray, but being a dumb college kid, I hadn’t thought about the fact that I was in an enclosed space until I was almost ready to use it. After a while, the sounds began to fade, and I started to calm down. But that wasn’t the end of it. At 2 a.m., I heard something walking between me and the campfire. Then, from just outside my truck camper, a terrifying voice said, “Do you believe in God?”
I started screaming, switched on my headlamps, and thrashed around, ready to defend myself. The footsteps moved away and disappeared into the woods while I was still panicking. I ended up telling myself I must have imagined the whole thing, maybe because of the sugary dessert I had before bed. Even now, thinking about it too much still makes my heart race.
21. Big Surprise
When my girlfriend and I first started dating, we went camping in the fall. The leaves had already fallen, and it was a little cold...very romantic. In the middle of the night, we heard what sounded like someone walking near our car. Trying to be brave, I pulled on my boots and headed outside. My girlfriend handed me this terrible little pocket knife.
The moment I unzipped the tent, I heard the footsteps run off. Still trying to act tough, I went to check anyway. When I came back to the tent, I found a .380 pistol pointed at me...which was honestly terrifying. She had sent me into the woods with what was basically a toy. She hadn’t wanted me to know she had a pistol, because to her that somehow made it less strange.
22. Chop...Chop...Chop...
I was hiking a trail in east Tennessee. I hadn’t seen another person since leaving the parking lot that morning. As the sun went down, I set up camp on top of a rock bluff about 50 yards off the trail, ate a quick dinner, and fell asleep around 7 pm. Around 11 pm, I woke up to voices that sounded German. I listened for a while and realized the footsteps and voices seemed to be coming toward the tent.
I woke up my hiking partner, and he heard it too. The footsteps stopped maybe 10 feet from the tent, and we could still hear the same two low voices. I unzipped the tent and looked out, but there was nothing there. I grabbed my flashlight and shined it around...still nothing. At that point, it was getting seriously strange. After a few minutes, I got back in the tent, and we both tried to sleep.
A little later, the voices started again...and this time we also heard what sounded like someone chopping a tree with an ax. My partner pulled on his boots, and we agreed the sound was only about 10 feet to the right of the tent. He slowly unzipped the tent while we were still hearing it, then jumped outside with his flashlight. He went straight toward the noise...and found nothing.
We sat outside the tent for over an hour because there was no chance either of us was going to sleep, but we didn’t hear anything else. Eventually, we were both exhausted, so we got back in the tent and fell asleep. Around 3:30 am, the ax started again, and we just lay there listening. A few minutes later, we heard the cracking and rushing sound of a tree falling, followed by a heavy thud when it hit the ground.
We both jumped up and rushed out of the tent. Again, there was nothing. No sound at all. No wind in the trees. No bugs. No frogs. Just silence. We packed everything up in minutes, but decided not to leave because climbing back down to the trail was hard enough in daylight and too dangerous in the dark. We sat there until sunrise without hearing the voices or the ax again.
By then we had calmed down a little and started searching the area. We probably covered 100 yards in every direction around camp, and there was no sign that anyone had been there.
23. Check Your Smellables
About twenty years ago in Pisgah National Forest, I was camping in a hammock for the first time. I didn’t have a rain tarp yet, so I was completely exposed except for my sleeping bag. This was a trip organized by a nearby summer camp, so there were about six other teens with me. One kid decided, “Hey, chocolate doesn’t count as something with a smell, right?” and left it in his pack, right next to mine under the hammock.
You can probably guess where this is headed...Sure enough, around midnight, a young black bear wandered into our campsite looking for that chocolate. While it was digging through the packs under the hammock, its back kept bumping into me. I was starting to wake up, but I was so groggy that I thought it was just the other kid looking for something in his bag.
Then the bear noticed the hammock moving and swatted at it with its paw, like a cat batting at yarn. That’s when I realized it was definitely not another camper, and I started screaming. The whole campsite woke up, and we threw rocks at the bear until it ran off. The kid got in serious trouble.
24. That's Not A Raccoon...
We were camping in Canada in a small cabin. Every night, raccoons had been trying to get into the outdoor trash cans. One night, my dad heard them and got out of bed. We all followed him because we wanted to watch him go yell at the raccoons. He went to the door, with my mom behind him, and then my brother and me behind her.
My father opened the door, and the next thing we knew, we had all crashed onto the floor. He slammed the door and fell backward on top of us. When he opened it again, there was a huge grizzly bear standing up in the doorway. I definitely did not sleep that night.
25. Clip Clop
The most scared I’ve ever been was while camping at a horse riding show. The venue wasn’t deep in the woods or anything, just a large park area, and we were basically camped in what felt like a grassy parking lot. In the middle of the night, I woke up to something nudging my head. My stomach dropped.
It didn’t take long to realize that a few horses had gotten loose and were grazing around our tent—but that didn’t make me feel any better. Horses are enormous, and one of them was walking around in the dark right next to my head. It seemed completely possible that it could accidentally step on the edge of the tent, which was exactly where our heads were.
I thought about making noise or pushing at the horse’s nose to get it to move, but startling a huge horse standing right over us also seemed like a terrible idea. In the end, I just sat upright in the tent until it wandered off. Everything turned out fine, but it honestly felt like we were one careless horse step away from a very bad night.
26. The Sands Reveal
I was in the Sahara when a sandstorm swept away a huge amount of sand, exposing old camps and buildings. One night, we were walking back toward what we thought was our camp because we could see a fire and even hear drumming. But when we reached it, everything was dark and completely silent. It turned out to be one of the camps that had been uncovered.
My friend got freaked out and refused to go any closer, but I was curious and moved in for a better look. As soon as I got near the closest building, though, I got this really bad feeling and backed out. I still have no idea what we saw or heard, but there definitely wasn’t any fire or drumming once we got close.
27. No Normal Noise
The first time I ever went solo camping was in the Harz mountains in Germany. I was new to camping alone and still figuring things out. When I got to Wernigerode, I started hiking, but the path marked on my map didn’t actually exist, so I had to turn back. By the time I got back to the village, it was already dark, so I decided to camp in the hills nearby.
After I set up my tent, I tried to sleep, but I kept hearing noises. Not ordinary noises, either—really unsettling ones. It sounded almost like a baby crying and screaming in short bursts. Over about 15 minutes, I got more and more paranoid as it seemed like the sound was getting closer. Eventually it felt so close that I decided I was done. I threw on my clothes, got out of the tent, and dragged it to the road.
I packed up all my gear, went back into the village, and ended up sleeping in the local park. There weren’t any good hidden spots away from the path, so I just slept as far from it as I could in my green sleeping bag. The next morning, I got up early and headed home. It was probably just some bird, but in the moment my imagination made it much worse.
28. It Is Time To Leave
Last summer, I was camping in the San Juans in southwest Colorado. We go almost every year, but the weather last year was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It’s usually monsoon season when we go, but this time it started raining and simply never let up. For five straight days, we camped in nonstop rain while landslides came down all around us.
Every day, we were basically trapped in camp, with the road to the nearest town blocked off. A major avalanche from the winter before had wiped out huge sections of trees, and wildfires had already cleared our usual camping areas. That left nothing but bare ground, which the rain just kept washing away. On our last day, while we were packing up, we heard the familiar sound of another landslide beginning.
Then we heard the most terrifying, chilling scream I’ve ever heard in my life. I was convinced someone had just died somewhere across the valley, so we rushed down the mountain and found someone with an ATV and a radio so we could try to get help. After that, we started heading home east on I-70 and ended up missing the Glenwood Canyon landslide by about 45 minutes.
It was so massive that it changed the course of the Colorado River and completely destroyed part of the highway. That trip taught me a lot about how powerful nature really is, and how much respect it deserves.
29. Where Am I?
I was in the Boy Scouts in the US, and we went on campouts all through the year. On one trip to a park somewhere in New England, I was about 14 years old. I was sharing a tent with another kid who was always kind of a jerk. I don’t remember all the details, but before we went to sleep, he somehow ended up with hypothermia. It was cold, but there wasn’t any snow or anything like that.
Anyway, he got taken away—I assumed to the hospital—so I had the tent to myself. That ended up being a real problem. There was a pretty bad windstorm that night, but I’m a very heavy sleeper and didn’t notice a thing. In the morning, I heard people shouting from far away, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying, so I ignored it. Then the wind must have shifted, because suddenly I could hear the conversations more clearly.
I heard someone mention my name and say, “His tent was here last night—where did he go?” Then I heard more shouting, and this time I realized they were calling for me. I opened the tent and discovered I was no longer in the field near the pavilion where I had set up camp. I was about 500 feet away and around 150 feet into the woods. I still have no idea how I got there.
The only explanation I can think of is that the wind somehow moved me. Maybe other scouts did it, but everyone seemed genuinely worried and they were already organizing search groups to come look for me. If it really was the wind, that’s terrifying—especially since I slept through it. And if it was other scouts, I guess I’ll never know, because no one ever admitted it.
30. Perilous Pancho
It had just stopped raining, and dinner was already underway. We needed to get the fire going again fast, so everyone spread out into the forest to gather wood. Twigs, branches, kindling—we got the fire burning well again, with tall flames and everything. We had to keep feeding it so we could build enough coals to boil water and cook. I was wearing a plastic poncho, and at one point I turned around to straighten up the woodpile beside the fire. Then someone suddenly shouted, “LOOK OUT!”
I spun around, startled, but didn’t see anything unusual. Then I heard someone running from the side, and before I could even turn, I got tackled. The poncho was ripped off me, dragged up my back and over my head, and as I hit the ground I caught a quick glimpse of a ball of fire flying through the air. It landed on the pine needles a short distance away.
The others rushed over and stomped it out while the camper who tackled me stood up and helped me to my feet. I had been facing away from the fire, and while I was bent over fixing the woodpile, the bottom edge of my poncho had caught fire and flames shot up my back. I hadn’t felt a thing and had no idea it was happening, but my dad’s friend Ted happened to look up at exactly the right moment and saw my back catch fire.
He didn’t hesitate—he ran, jumped, and ripped it off me just seconds before it could have melted into my skin. He probably saved my life.
31. Panic, But Silent
During high school, I went camping in the Cherokee National Forest with two friends at a spot people used often, though it wasn’t an official campsite. The trip was going well, and we all went to sleep in the one tent we had brought. Sometime well after dark, I woke up to the sound of voices at our campsite. All three of us were inside the tent, and from where the voices were coming from, I could tell whoever it was had sat down around our fire in our camping chairs.
My two friends started waking up too, and I quickly motioned for them to be quiet. We all started silently panicking. I’ve always carried a pocket knife, even back then, so I grabbed it and waited without making a sound. Eventually, the people got up and walked away, but I’ve never forgotten that night. This was also the same campsite where one of my friends and I woke up terrified by the loud howl of a wolf.
It sounded like it was just across the small creek right beside us, probably no more than 20 yards away.
32. Canoedleing
My partner and I badly misjudged how far we could get in a canoe before dark. We had done a few portages and ended up on a large lake, but every campsite seemed to be taken. So we kept going, hoping to find an open one. We reached a stretch of the lake with almost no campsites, but we knew there were more farther ahead, so we kept paddling.
Once the sun went down, it became cold and dark almost immediately. We had to move slowly along the shoreline, shining our flashlights toward the trees. The forest was so thick and the rocks so steep that if a spot wasn’t a campsite, there was no way we could climb out there. Even with the flashlights and being close to shore, we could barely make out the trees through the mist over the water.
Every so often, we’d catch the reflection of eyes in the woods—probably a raccoon or something harmless, but still unsettling. It took hours. We knew that if we hit a log and tipped over, the water was cold enough that hypothermia was a real risk. Eventually, we found a campsite and pitched our tent in the dark. We were completely exhausted, but incredibly relieved to finally be safe.
We stayed at that site for the next few days and ended up having a great trip, but for a while it was genuinely frightening.
33. Take Shelter
Two years ago, my wife and I planned to spend the night in a shelter on the AT after a long 14-mile hike. Around sundown, we were having dinner with another couple who were camping a little way down the trail when a man arrived at the shelter. He declined our invitation to join us for dinner and instead sat on the edge of the shelter, just watching us. Right away, something felt off.
Night came, and it was time to settle in. My wife and I were the only other people staying in the shelter that night, and we tried making small talk before bed. The man finally said a little as he finished setting up his gear and got into bed, turning off his light. Then things started to feel even more unsettling. Around 11:30, he opened his pack and started taking out different items. He kept opening and closing something for about half an hour.
The problem was that the sound was unmistakably like a pocket knife. Around midnight, the man went outside without a headlamp to “use the bathroom.” At that point, I tried to guide my wife’s hand to the knife beside my pillow because I knew she was awake and just as scared. When he came back into the shelter, he stood beside his sleeping bag for the next twenty minutes while we lay completely still, my back turned toward him.
Then suddenly, I heard him start walking toward us. I panicked, let go of my wife’s hand, and rolled over in his direction, pretending I had just woken up. I truly thought I might have to defend my wife. The man quickly moved back to his bag about 15 feet away and zipped himself in. To this day, I still don’t know what he intended to do, and that uncertainty is what bothers me most.
I stayed awake the rest of the night, occasionally making noise so he would know I was still awake. At 4:30, a horse—which is common in that part of Grayson Highlands—tried to come into the shelter, and my wife pretended to be interested in it as an excuse to get up. I have never had a longer hike than the seven-mile hike out the next day.
34. Ocala Omens
I used to do a lot of solo camping in the Ocala National Forest in Florida. On one long weekend trip, I found a nice primitive campsite about 20 minutes from the nearest paved road and set up camp. On the third night, around 2 a.m., I woke up to the sound of a vehicle speeding down a dirt road near the campsite. I heard it stop, and then someone got out.
They walked through the woods to my tent and stood right outside the entrance for a long time—long enough for me to hear heavy, rough breathing and low groaning sounds while they stayed there. I had a gun with me, and I pointed it directly toward the area where I heard the breathing. They stayed there for what felt like forever, probably around 10 minutes.
I thought about saying something, but I didn’t want to make the situation worse. So I stayed silent. Eventually, I heard a long sigh, and then they walked away. After I heard the vehicle leave, I lay completely still for another hour before deciding to pack up and leave. Bodies are sometimes found deep in the woods in Ocala, and I’ve often seen groups of prisoners out in the brush searching for evidence of crimes...
But I never imagined I’d end up in a situation like that. I haven’t been back since, and now I only solo camp in places near or inside state parks.
35. Airhead
When I was a kid at Boy Scout summer camp, I had one of the most frightening nights I can remember. One kid had left a couple of Airheads on the picnic table. In the middle of the night, everyone woke up to more than 30 raccoons fighting over them. They were also going into tents looking for more food. If you’ve never heard that many raccoons hissing and growling all at once, consider yourself lucky.
Wikimedia Commons, Sergey Yarmolyuk
36. Lock The Door
When I was a clueless little kid, maybe 10 or 11, I went to a family reunion at a campground. My cousin, who was about my age, and I got left by the fire while everyone else was down in a meadow playing the usual family football game. The fire was dying, and we couldn’t find any firewood, but we noticed we were surrounded by trees, which, in our minds, meant plenty of wood.
We found a saw and started cutting off the branches that looked the most dead. Partway through, a car pulled up in front of the campsite. A man got out and started shouting at us to stop. We did, but he just got more and more upset, saying we were cutting down the trees and that he was going to get a ranger. I was already terrified, but then it got much worse.
That’s when he pulled out a pistol and said he was going to make us stop cutting trees. Luckily, right then my dad showed up—he was a very tall, intimidating guy—and the man jumped back into his car and sped away. My parents called a ranger, and we did get a stern talk about not cutting branches in a state park, but that seemed like the end of it—or so I thought.
That year we were sleeping in an RV we’d borrowed from a neighbor. The next morning, I slept in while my parents went to get the fire started. I was still asleep inside, with the door thankfully locked. Someone tried to open the camper door, but I was too groggy to move. When they couldn’t get it open, they started pounding on it and shaking the RV.
Then they started pulling hard on the windows. I woke up completely panicked and started screaming. Through the frosted glass, all I could see was a big shadow. The fire pit was on the other side of the camper, so my parents couldn’t hear right away, but just as the stranger got really aggressive, a ranger car pulled up with its lights flashing and the person ran off.
Later I found out my dad had asked the ranger to drive past our campsite every so often, and he caught the same man from the night before trying to break into our RV while I was inside. I definitely didn’t sleep well after that.
37. Sweet Tooth
Late one night while we were camping in the desert, we heard footsteps circling our tents. We figured it was probably some drunk guy from a nearby camp who’d been riding dirt bikes all day, but we couldn’t see anyone. We couldn’t even make out a shadow. Still, the footsteps kept coming, right next to the tent, just inches away. I quietly woke up my friend and made him listen too, and we were both thoroughly freaked out.
Eventually the sounds stopped, so I slowly unzipped the tent to look around and see who—or what—it was. I tossed out a glowstick and saw a pair of eyes flash in the dark. It turned out to be two white desert foxes, whose footsteps somehow sounded way heavier than they should have. When I spotted them, they were standing on our camp table, eating all our chocolate.
Oops.
38. The Shadow On The Wall
When I was a teenager, I went camping with some friends in an alpine hut. I was probably 14. We’d hiked in through the bush, and we hadn’t seen anyone since we were dropped off that morning. It was late at night, deep winter, and I was the only one still awake. The moon was full, the sky was clear, and moonlight was pouring through the window, making a bright rectangle on the wall across from me.
I remember it perfectly, right down to the shadow from the crossbars in the window. Now imagine you’re facing a wall and someone walks up behind you while there’s a car shining headlights from behind them. You’d see their shadow rise clearly on the wall, human-shaped, growing larger as they got closer.
That’s exactly what I saw. Lying there on the floor of that old hut, alone and awake, I watched a shadow like a person walking toward the hut rise slowly up the wall over maybe 20 seconds. It even swayed slightly side to side, the way a person’s shadow would as they walked. Then, when it filled about three-quarters of the moonlit patch, it suddenly shot off to the side, like someone had quickly ducked away to avoid being seen.
I got up and looked outside, but there was no one there. I woke up my best friend and told him I thought someone had been outside. We checked all around the hut and found nothing. We called out into the night and got no answer. We were about 20 km from the nearest highway on a remote track, so it’s not like random people were wandering by.
There were definitely no vehicles nearby that we could hear, and like I said, we hadn’t seen anyone since that morning. It was one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never seen anything like it since, and even now I can’t come up with a rational explanation.
39. Lyle...Why?
A couple of years after high school—maybe eight years ago—I went camping with a big group of friends. Everyone had been drinking quite a bit, and one of my friends, let’s call him Lyle, decided he wanted his own private fire out in the woods away from camp. Obviously, terrible idea. He’d start a little fire, and someone from our group would run over, put it out, and tell him, “Lyle, you’re going to start a forest fire. Knock it off.”
This happened a few times, and Lyle got annoyed that people kept shutting him down. He argued that starting a forest fire was much harder than everyone thought. To prove it, he poured lighter fluid all over his shirt and shorts and started stepping over the main campfire we’d built. And yes, nearly everyone there was very drunk. I wish I were making this up.
He did it a few times and somehow didn’t catch fire. Then he pushed his luck even more and let another friend touch a burning stick to his shirt. Suddenly Lyle was completely on fire and, instinctively, he took off running into the woods and down a hill. A couple of people chased after him, but he was moving fast and they lost sight of him almost immediately.
About a minute later, he walked back up the hill with his shirt off, and at first he seemed mostly okay. His shirt was badly burned, and his skin looked a little pink, but he didn’t seem too bad. He went to lie down in his van, and a few minutes later he started screaming in pain. We went to check on him, and he was writhing around in agony. His chest was especially badly burned.
My girlfriend and I were the only sober people there, so we had to drive him down the mountain in his van. There was no cell service, so we were trying to get low enough to call for help. On the way down, I came within maybe 10 inches of hitting an elk while going 60 mph, but we made it, and an ambulance met us on the road.
Then later that same night, back at the campsite, another friend broke his leg trying to do a backflip off his car.
40. Wrong Place, Wrong Time
Two years ago, I was camping at a state park in New Jersey. It was late in the season, so there were only three groups in the campground. One night I heard ATVs and trucks driving around, and I assumed it was just some locals out off-roading. I’d already taken out my contacts, so I couldn’t see much past 10 feet, and I still slept pretty well. I only woke up once to pee on a nearby tree, then went right back to sleep in my tent.
The next morning, I unzipped my tent and saw around 15 officers from three different agencies, plus two search dogs, moving through the campsite next to mine, across my site, and around my car. I was like, “Uh, is everything okay?” One of the officers started asking me about the people in the site next to me. When had they arrived? Had they been arguing? Had I seen or heard anything unusual?
I told them a man and a teenager had shown up around dinnertime, set up camp, sat by the fire, and then I went to bed. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary. That’s when they told me what was going on. The teenager had gone missing during the night. The father had left for a while, and when he came back, the kid was gone. They asked about my travel plans too. I had out-of-state plates and was camping alone, so they took my information and entered it into some database.
I spent the day cooking hamburgers over the fire and reading a book while the officers slowly packed up and left in stages. By dinner time, only two of them were still there, getting ready to head out. Then, completely out of nowhere, the missing teenager walked right out of the woods. We all just stared in disbelief. It turned out he’d gone for a walk, gotten lost, spent two nights in the forest, and finally found his way back—literally emerging from the trees just before the officers were going to leave for the evening and come back with a boat to drag the lake and start searching for a body.
41. That's A Funny Wolf
I went camping last week. While talking with some people who were staying after a private event had just ended there, I mentioned that I usually camp alone in a secluded part of the 170-acre property. They warned me to pick a different spot since I’d be the only camper there that night. Apparently, wolves sometimes come through looking for food left behind by careless campers, and that area was one of their favorite places.
Naturally, I camped in my usual spot instead of the secluded one. As the sun went down, I could hear the wolves howling and yelping like usual, but they sounded much closer than I remembered from all my past trips there. I told myself I was probably imagining it, that they only seemed louder and nearer than normal. Eventually, I went to sleep.
Then something woke me from a deep sleep. Just a faint sound. A rustle. Then a twig snapped. Instantly, I was wide awake and on edge. I switched on my headlamp and looked through the mesh of my tent, but with the smoke and fog, I couldn’t make out anything. Then I heard more rustling. I made some loud noises, hoping to scare off whatever was out there. It didn’t help.
After trying several times to scare it away, I decided to just get it over with and do the dumb brave thing. I climbed out of the tent with a long, pointed fence post in hand, just in case. Turns out it was a raccoon, not a wolf. And it had gotten into everything. The end.
42. Immaculate Campsite
I went on a road trip with some friends to Lake Chelan. We left late and got lost. This was before cell phones, and we didn’t have a map, so we relied on my friend’s memory. We pulled off the road and decided to camp for the night in a grassy area. With only a little light, we quickly set up the tent. The next morning, we woke up to someone hitting the tent and yelling at us to get off his property.
We had accidentally camped on some poor guy’s lawn. We were just clueless 18-year-olds, but I don’t think we’ve ever packed up camp faster.
43. Hot Rocks Are No Joke
We used to cook all kinds of things on “hot rocks.” We’d find a nice flat smooth rock, place it near the edge of the fire, let it heat up, then pull it out and throw on a burger patty, some bannock, or one of those frozen hash brown squares. Seriously, about 10 seconds per side and you had crispy, golden-brown potatoes.
For a long time, we only used small rocks, about hand-sized, and it worked perfectly. Then we started trying river rocks because they were so smooth, but they cracked and broke apart from the water trapped inside. Then one time, our buddy came back to camp with a 30-pound, 5-inch-thick slab of limestone he’d found in the woods while looking for firewood, and dropped it right into the middle of a roaring fire. That turned out to be a terrible idea.
We spent some time messing around and gathering wood, and a couple of hours later, while clearing spots for our tents, the slab exploded. It split in two like slices of bread, with one piece standing upright and facing straight toward us. We were all lucky nothing happened, because the fire pit was in the dirt hollow left by an uprooted tree, so when the rock burst, it couldn’t launch straight at us.
The three of us were spread about ten feet apart when the upright piece exploded again, maybe a minute after the first blast. This time it was like a grenade full of glowing, jagged rock shrapnel. Somehow, not one piece hit any of us. We all watched chunks fly through the air, and one piece the size of two fists shot past my friend’s head. He said he could still hear it sizzling. Ever since then, we’ve stopped using rocks in or around campfires entirely.
This was years ago, and even now, whistling rocks in a campfire still make us nervous.
44. Don't Follow The Deer
A few years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I decided to take a road trip to Bryce Canyon. We live in Southern California, so we took a week off work to have enough time to drive there, camp for a few days, and head back. The drive to the national park went fine, but when we arrived, we found it completely full with no campsites available. So we drove out of the park and into the next county. About 30 or 40 minutes away, we spotted a dirt road leading off to the side and decided to see where it went.
As we followed it, the road got rougher and rougher, to the point that we had to slow way down for the rocks and uneven ground. After about an hour of that, we were relieved to see signs for a campground ahead. I don’t remember the name, but it was a real campground and actually pretty decent. Hardly anyone was there, and it was fairly large.
We picked a campsite and set up without much trouble. No one charged us, and no one said anything. We spent a couple of good nights there. Now for the creepy part. On the third evening, around 4 p.m., my girlfriend and I had just finished washing our bowls and utensils at our site.
We heard a faint rustling nearby, and then a doe stepped out from behind a tree about 15 feet away. It was close and kept coming nearer. My girlfriend slowly reached for her bag, which had her camera in the tent behind her. The deer didn’t seem scared at all. It didn’t come too close, maybe within 10 feet, and my girlfriend managed to get a picture.
Then the deer slowly walked back into the woods. My girlfriend and I looked at each other and, for some reason, had the same thought: let’s follow it. So we did, walking slowly behind it and keeping pace until we were maybe 10 minutes outside the campground. My girlfriend got some amazing pictures of the deer moving through the woods with sunlight filtering through the trees.
Then, while we were looking at one of the photos, we looked up and the deer was gone. In front of us was nothing but forest. Behind us, the same. Everywhere we looked, just trees, with no clear sign of where we had come from or where to go. We tried walking back the way we thought we came, but nothing looked familiar.
It was quiet too. No birds, no people, nothing. We were only about a 10-minute walk from the campsite, so we thought we should be able to hear someone, right? But we couldn’t. We kept trying to retrace our steps and recognize something, anything. Meanwhile, the sun was going down and it was getting colder. We started moving faster, almost jogging, and eventually had to pull out our phones just to see where we were going.
At some point, we spotted a campfire through the trees and headed toward it. The people there helped us figure out where we were, which somehow turned out to be on the opposite side of the campground. I still have no idea how we got so turned around. It took another 45 minutes to get back to our site. It’s wild how easy it is to get lost.
We were only lost for about three hours, but we were so confused and disoriented. It sounds silly, but it was genuinely scary.
45. Kangaroo Court
In Australia, there’s a group called Outward Bound where you head out into the bush for a few days or weeks and hike while learning some outdoor skills. One thing they do is a solo night, where the instructors assign you a place to camp and you spend a day and night alone to reflect.
During the day, the area where I set up camp had at least two groups of kangaroos. A few times, they hopped right up toward me, noticed me, and then turned around and hopped back to the others. Nothing else very exciting happened that day, and eventually I went to sleep. In the morning, I felt what I thought was someone trying to grab me, so naturally, I completely panicked. I struggled for a moment, and then it stopped.
It turned out a kangaroo had hopped into my tent, landed on me, and then couldn’t get its footing or something.
Wibbles20
46. That Better Be Ringo
In high school, my friends and I used to camp a lot at Ragged Point, back before it had bathrooms, signs, or anything like that. It was basically just a clearing under some trees, a few yards from the cliff edge. Mostly locals knew about it, and whenever we went, we never saw anyone else. We’d bring drinks we were definitely too young to have and just hang out. We’d build our little village of tents and do all the things we couldn’t do with parents around. Looking back, it was absolutely asking for trouble.
One night, I think we’d already been there three nights without seeing another person. Then it started raining, so most of us retreated to our tents and went to sleep. Sometime in the early morning, we started hearing drums in the distance. No voices, just these deep, steady drums slowly getting closer. We were a mixed group of teenagers, alone in the pitch black on a stormy night.
It sounded like some kind of ritual drumming headed straight for us. At least that’s what my boyfriend at the time decided, and once he said it, I couldn’t stop thinking the same thing. People started whispering from tent to tent, but we weren’t camped that close together because, well, we had our reasons. We were also still a little buzzed from the drinks.
A few people panicked and ran out of their tents to crowd into the biggest one. At first, I convinced my boyfriend to stay in ours. It seemed smarter not to bunch up and become one easy target, like the person in a horror movie who panics and gives away everyone’s location. Hardly anyone slept that night. The drumming stopped just out of sight, but it kept going until sunrise.
As soon as it got light, we wanted out of there immediately. We packed up our stuff as quietly as we could and tried to figure out the safest way to get from the cliffs back to our cars, which meant passing whatever had been out there. But as we were leaving, we finally saw what had really happened. A group of hippies with giant drums had decided to go camping in the middle of the night, during a storm, without tents.
They’d stayed right at the tree line, drumming away the whole time. They didn’t even wake up when our tightly packed group hurried past and started laughing hysterically with relief. It was terrifying then, but over the years it became one of our favorite stories to tell.
47. Don't Stick Around To Find Out
A few friends and I went on a hunting trip in the Canadian Rockies. We were way out in the middle of nowhere and set up camp on a cut line. I shot a deer about 50 yards from camp, and my friends helped me gut it. After we were done, we dragged the deer back to camp, but for some reason, I felt like I should look back at the spot where we’d cleaned it.
In less than 10 minutes, the pile of organs was gone. We never found out what took it, but we packed up and left right away.
48. End Of Days
My brother and I were staying at our remote lake cabin during a very dry summer. One night, while we were asleep inside, we woke up to a strong smell of wood smoke. When we stepped outside, it looked like the end of the world. The forest all around us was on fire, and the flames were spreading toward us fast. We grabbed what gear we could, got into the canoe—our only way out—and paddled into the lake.
We sat there watching our cabin burn, along with everything around it, as we paddled farther away just to breathe cleaner air. Both of us had nightmares about it for a long time afterward. Even now, it’s hard to think about, knowing how much work our parents put into building that place and how quickly it was all lost.
49. Savannah Scares
We were camping beside a small river with very steep banks that dropped several meters down to the water. It was dusk, the light was fading, and I was walking toward the chow tent, which meant following the edge closest to the river. I saw a long dark shape in the water and pointed my flashlight at it. That was almost the last thing I ever did.
A huge hippo burst out of the water and charged up the opposite bank. That’s about all my brain processed before I turned and sprinted the other way, screaming. We also had a leopard wander through camp that same night before the guards drove it off. The savannah is seriously terrifying.
50. Don't Go In The Water
Many years ago, my wife and I booked—and fully paid for, as required—two weeks at a local government campground by a nice lake. We’d only seen photos, but we were excited to spend our whole vacation there. Then we heard some chilling news: a day or two before we arrived, a teenager had been fishing with his uncle and cousin, and when he jumped out of the boat to cool off, he never came back up.
We tried to book somewhere else, but campsites were almost impossible to get. When we arrived, search-and-rescue dive teams were still looking for his body. The lake bottom was made of very loose silt, which made the search difficult. For the first couple of days we were there, they still hadn’t found him. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t go in the water at all, especially while his body was still in the lake.
Unfortunately, that week was brutally hot, around 40°C in the shade. Eventually, we gave in and waded into the water just to cool off. By the next day, we were swimming, trying not to think about the fact that the boy still hadn’t been found. If I remember right, they finally recovered his body about a week into our trip.
He had become tangled in fishing line underwater and drowned before he could free himself.
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