What is the strangest thing you have ever

[Crabby Kitten]

I've witnessed unusual things in the woods.

At 15 I was with my family camping by the edge of a forest. I didn't feel comfortable there that day, even though I love woods and exploring, camping, playing among trees, but on that particular day I felt uneasy. I was with my cousin and we decided to wander off a bit from the campsite. We were sure something wasn't right, and us and our parents were the only people there. We noticed a boy in period costume walking around on his own. My cousin was scared but I wanted to find out what he was doing by himself so I ran after the little boy, and he vanished into thin air.

Another time in a completely different forest, I was taking part in a training weekend. Everyone in the "camp" slept out in the open under brief shelters, but I was woken up during twilight hours. I noticed a small glowing orb of white-silver light hovering around me. At first I thought it was a glow bug. It didn't have a form though. It was just a light.

[scowl]

Although this wasn't in the woods, back in the 80's a friend and I were driving late at night on a highway through a wooded area in Southern Oregon. We saw a tiny light in the distance on the other side of the road. We slowed down and saw that it was a bearded man dressed in a white tunic holding a candle. He was walking along the side of the road as if he were in a trance. He completely ignored us, so we kept on going. We always heard there were Mason family style cults hiding in the hills so we figured maybe it was true.

But a small breeze would have blown the candle out. Did he have a box of matches or a Bic lighter? It seemed more ridiculous than spooky.

[.Betta]

Let's hear of the strangest thing that you have seen, or found, while in the woods. All types of experiences are welcome.

Strange things in the woods

Loud grunting and slurping sounds and wiffs of stench like rotten garbage, Two large creatures moving above you breaking sticks crashing around in the darkness ????

Any one think there might be something to legends ?

What?? lol

[Big Jim]

I've had a couple strange experiences in the woods.

In the '70s I worked as a houseparent at a children's home in Indiana. I took a group of boys camping somewhere in central Michigan. It was a state or national forest but I don't remember where. It was the night of the Perseid meteor shower. The Michigan sky was so dark. It was the only time I've seen the Milky Way. Awesome is overused but it ought to be reserved for describing such a sight. We didn't know it was time for a meteor shower. We just happened to spot one. Then another. Hey look, there's another! On and on it went for hours. We were all out in a big field spotting shooting stars. Somewhere in all the excitement one of the boys spotted an unusual light near the horizon. It wasn't a star, it had colors. It wasn't a plane because it didn't move. So while watching for shooting stars we all kept an eye on this. Suddenly it moved very quickly to a position almost directly above us. It appeared to be far off and again it was not moving, just parked somewhere up in the sky. Now we were able to look at it through the binoculars. It looked like one of those Polynesian outrigger canoes. A long rectangular center section with a tubular outrigger on either side. It had various arrays of colored lights that seemed to move along its outline. We watched it for a while, everyone getting their turn with the binoculars. There was no doubting what we saw, there were fourteen witnesses. Then suddenly it took off. It went from a standing stop above us to out of sight over the horizon in the blink of an eye. Whoosh! It was gone.

The other experience was not supernatural but was way more terrifying. I was in my mid teens and was camping in a city park in Cincinnati with 4 other boys and no adults on the night Martin Luther King was shot. Riots broke out all around us. We could hear angry voices, slamming car doors and gunshots. There was only one campsite in the park and it only had one narrow access road. There was no one around but us. We abandoned our camp and ran, half tumbling, down a hill in the dark. We spent the night huddled in the dark and cold standing near a creek until the shouting and shooting subsided. We broke camp early the next morning. When I got home I was told that I had a new baby sister. No one had time to hear of our adventure.

[TwilightSilver]

I have had many weird things happen or have seen in my course of hiking and camping; I'll share one experience that has stuck out to me over the years though. My grandparents owned a house on Satatoga Lake N.Y. and as a kid I spent almost every Saturday there when my mother would go visit. As I got a bit older, I would leave the house (out of boredom) and go hiking around the surrounding woods. When you hike about a half hour away you can get to an old train track path (the track no longer exists). That's usually when I would turn around but I had my headphones and walkman on so I decided that day to go past the stretch. It was nice warm and sunny with little breeze so the hike went pretty good. About an hour into the woods I stumbled across a structure that I couldn't figure out why it would be there. It was a moss covered stone with all sorts of odd scrawls on it almost like language but unknown to me. This stone was old. It only caught my eye because of the writings"

[TwilightSilver]

(sorry i hit send on my phone prematurely)

- on it. The stone stood about a foot out of the ground and I couldn't move it. After I aged and gained knowledge, the only way I could describe the writings, is that they seemed similar to viking runes only slightly different. My grandparents have sense passed so I can no longer go back there without permission. I'd love to find that stone again...

[keninsc]

Wow, that's cool. Closest thing to that I've ever seen is when I was hiking near Prescott, AZ. There are a number of hiking trails where you can find all sorts of petroglyphs from thousands of years ago. All sorts of funky symbols that no one really knows what they means. I recall looking at many of them and just wishing I could know what the person who made the symbols was trying to communicate across the vastness of time.

....but finding one like you did, well that just way cool.

[TwilightSilver]

Thanks Kenin! It was very strange. I still remember where I went to find it. I'd love to be able to go back and find it. It was not in an area where some random kids would pull a prank either. There could be some sort of historical value to it. Saratoga does have a lot of native american background...

[keninsc]

Oh that reminds me, I was watching this archaeological documentary back in the nineties and they'd found this old shrine that everyone had log forgotten about. Anyway, they found this elaborate secondary shrine that had all sorts of old writing on it. No one could figure out what it said or what it was so they put a huge amount of efforts in trying to figure out what language and what dialect and when they figured it all out they sent for a top guy in that language to come. He arrives they show it to him, he let's out this big laugh. The Translation? "Chin was here".

I had to laugh.

[TwilightSilver]

Haha wouldn't it be funny if the stone said somethig similar? "Train is gone. Eat at Joes".

[Stardrive]

What?? lol

It's part of a post in the Smith & Wesson forum. Source

If you don't want to look at crypto site databases, you can find unofficial recountings in forums like these.

[scowl]

Oh, this reminded me of something. About twenty years ago I and few friends were at the end of a hike (the sun was setting) in Eastern Oregon. As we got around a hill, we all thought we saw a domed building at the top of a hill silhouetted against the sky. It was perfectly round at the top. It didn't make sense but we all saw it. Maybe it was some kind of rock formation? We all agreed at camp that we were going to go back in the morning and find a way to get up there and figure out what it was.

But, the next day it wasn't there, nor was there anything on that hill that could explain what we thought we had seen. All we saw were trees. It may have been a strange cloud behind the hill.

[JesseCuster]

A couple of years ago while hiking through a wooded area that I've visited many times since I was a kid, I found this stone circle formation. No clue of its age or meaning. Surprised I never saw it before, or at least don't remember seeing it when I was there as a kid.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Archimedes

[scowl]

A couple of years ago while hiking through a wooded area that I've visited many times since I was a kid, I found this stone circle formation. No clue of its age or meaning. Surprised I never saw it before, or at least don't remember seeing it when I was there as a kid.

It looks like Spinal Tap ordered a Stonehenge prop but got the measurements wrong.

[JesseCuster]

It looks like Spinal Tap ordered a Stonehenge prop but got the measurements wrong.

Yeah, it's pretty much like a budget version of Stonehenge. Like a bunch of druids decided to have their own stone circle for worship but couldn't be bothered with putting in much effort.

[TwilightSilver]

Gonna head up to Saratoga and see if I can get permission this week. Kenin bolstered my resolve on this. Don't worry guys. I'm determined to deliver unlike some folk on here. ;-)

[keninsc]

Good luck to you man. Take some pictures and share then with us.

[TwilightSilver]

A couple of years ago while hiking through a wooded area that I've visited many times since I was a kid, I found this stone circle formation. No clue of its age or meaning. Surprised I never saw it before, or at least don't remember seeing it when I was there as a kid.

That's really neat. I wonder what the site was used for?

[+ouija ouija]

I have no stories of my own but this song is spooky and very beautiful

http://youtu.be/9GNpv7QDvMY

Edited June 2, 2013 by ouija ouija

[+DieChecker]

One thing I remember from when I was like 10 or 11 was walking uphill along a trail along a deep ravine with creek in the bottom, and on the other side, on a cliff top was a white stag, with a full rack. Maybe a 8+ point buck. When I hoofed it around to where I could cross and returned to the spot, it was gone. This was in the middle of the day too.

Another thing we (My brothers and friends) found was multiple cars buried in the hillsides in a couple spots. From the doorhandles and other items, we guessed that the cars were from the 1920s. We suspect that loggers back in the day just pushed the cars into ravines when they stopped working and silt covered them up and the springs moved into a new coarse. We spend hundreds of hours digging up those cars. Found thousands of small artifacts. Even found some old logger ax heads, picks and hammers.

Another thing we found was a deposit of red lava cinder. It was about the size of a car and there was no way it was brought into the woods. It maybe was from some gigantic eruption, like Mt Mazama that created Crater Lake.

[xYlvax]

In the woods near a middle school here, I found a group of old trailers, all containing what the prior residents kept while they lived there. I found some old textbooks with dates in which they were studied, and it had to have been around the 1930s.

It was weird happening upon it, since it was so close to the school an I had never heard of anything back there, especially since the small section of woods containing it seemed utterly unremarkable. I was just exploring beyond the fenced-in football fields of the school, and happened upon barbed wire. Climbing over this and moving a bit further through the thorns and brambles, I came upon the little colony of trailers. The whole place held a deafening silence..

I got an eerie feeling about being there, like this presence or impression that was left behind.. I remember back in school, I used to look towards that direction while I was outside for gym, because something seemed to call to my curiosity.

Anyway, I found a caved-in house garage that must have been a mechanic's home and place of work, so I made sure I was properly armed with a hammer before entering the trailers.. Most were quite ordinary, filled with rotting clothing and mattresses.. Old fridges, stoves, and tiny tiny bathrooms. It was like going into the past.

There was this one trailer where the front door had been locked shut from the inside, with a bunch of nonsense heaped in front of the door. I had to go in from the back.. This one had all sorts of things lying around, ordinary objects that are like wasted relics now. I found an old camera and a couple of old textbooks.. I wanted to get out of there shortly after.. I don't remember why, but I just got this feeling that I shouldn't be there.

Nothing much happened after that adventure..

Once, I went back with an old friend at nighttime. We didn't really want to stay long, obviously.

But, just as we were leaving and about to climb over the barbed wire, a vine hanging from the air behind us suddenly moved by itself, like someone brushed it aside.

Seeing as there was no wind or animals that I could hear, we freaked out and basically leapt over the barbed wire and then the chain-link fence of the football field.

I went back a few times after that. One of the trailers was towed away, because the one where I found the books was gone.

There are a ton of places around here to explore. I love it.

[+DieChecker]

We found an abandoned hippy truck once, out on a dirt road, with a little house built onto the back. The door to the house had a tiny window with the glass knocked out. The only thing I remember finding in it was a postcard of a nekid japanese chick and a copy of East of Eden. it eventually got towed away after like 3 years.

[scowl]

That reminds me. Has anyone else found old cars in the middle of nowhere? I've lost count of how many old cars and trucks from the 50's and 60's I've come across out in the woods that are partially buried and rusting away. Usually they're completely surrounded by trees which gives you the impression that they fell from the sky, but more likely the trees have grown around the cars over twenty or thirty years. I figure someone went on a drunken joy ride, got stuck, and wasn't able or willing to tow their car back to a road, or perhaps they were stolen and never found.

I never looked through any of these vehicles. They're always full of dirt and leaves up to the dashboard. Most still had license plates.

[Cazee]

Gonna head up to Saratoga and see if I can get permission this week. Kenin bolstered my resolve on this. Don't worry guys. I'm determined to deliver unlike some folk on here. ;-)

Did you ever get permission? I want to hear some more of that stone

[TwilightSilver]

New owners still haven't replied to my inqueries over going on the property. I'm thinking I might be brazen enough to drive up in person. (I was contacting them through snail mail)