45 Unsettling Trips Into Nature When People Wanted To Leave Immediately

This one is my brother's story:

He studied biology and ecology in college. for one of his courses, they did a wolf survey in the northwoods of Wisconsin. what this basically entailed was going out in the middle of night, howling like a wolf, and then recording how many distinct wolf howls responded, along with their rough location.

they were having a pretty good night, getting lots of responses. on one of their last stops, they got a pack to really start singing. lots of back and forth howling. then, the wolves just stopped responding. the students kept howling, hoping for a response, but nothing.

Finally, they heard one howl, much, much closer than the others had been, that was suddenly cut off by a yelp, like the wolf howling had been hurt.

the professor very quickly rushed all the students back into the van and they all got out of there. when the students asked the prof. why they were leaving so quickly, he explained that the wolves thought the students were a rival pack, and were most likely trying to sneak up and circle the group to investigate/ possibly attack. the lone howl was most likely a young wolf responding out of reflex, and the yelp was another wolf biting him to shut him up.

As a kid, my grandparents would take my brother and I camping in the absolute middle of nowhere in Wyoming. They would stay in the tent trailer while my brother is slept in a tent. One night, I got up top go pee and stepped outside. There was tons of light from the moon and stars (absolutely zero light pollution...) and I just saw thousands of eyes staring at me. We were camped in a field and were surrounded by rabbits as far as I could see in every direction. It was too many rabbits.

Was sitting by the river at night just enjoying the sound of the water. Suddenly a loud human-like scream erupted very close to me. I booked it home.

That's before I learned about bobcats.

I was camping with a group of army cadets in a remote area, no facilities. Middle of the night I had to get up to relieve myself and walked into the bush a ways. I could see a faint human-sized glow in front of me and thought WTH? I kept walking gingerly and discovered a rotting stump. Turns out there's a bioluminescent fungus that lives on rotting stumps.

I was driving in Colorado through the middle of nowhere in the heavy snow when we saw something in the road. As we were driving closer we noticed it was a body. A man was lying in the road, flat on his back! I was terrified, like I could not process it. We were out in the middle of nowhere. It was me and my family(two very young kids) we freaked out and I got a bad feeling and said, “do not stop!” We drove past him and HE STOOD RIGHT UP and stared at us. I’m not sure what sinister thing he was up to, but we were not going to find out. It was terrifying and we drove in silence for a good 30 minutes after.

Heard the sound of twigs snapping off in the woods at night, sometimes quietly and sometimes violently. Thought there was a wounded animal or something stomping through the brush. Went looking for it everywhere, but the closer we'd get the farther away it sounded. We were pretty terrified.

We were also baked and it turned out we were chasing the sound of the campfire crackling.

I was woken up by my wife screaming...

Laying just outside the tent walls was a growling kangaroo eveytime one us moved the MF would growl. The worst part was we had no idea what it was at first. I DIDNT EVEN KNOW KANGAROOS MADE NOISE LIKE THAT.

It was winter. I was walking my beagle, Rowdy, through a nature preserve. Kishwaukee River on my left and deep woods of a nature preserve on my right. It was cold and clear, snow on the ground, with the footsteps of others who use the trail packed and frozen. Then I came upon a spine.

It was right in the middle of the trail. I stopped and clicked the button on Rowdy's leash to keep him from running up to it. There was a spine and pelvis just laying there.

I remember the thoughts flashing through my head. "Is that a spine? That's a spine. Real? Yeah they don't put tendons on fake ones. No blood in the snow. It didn't happen here. Coyotes and vultures must have been at it. Is it human? Right length, pelvis looks wrong. Too narrow. Deer? Gotta be. That makes sense.".

I walked around it and kept going. The trail looped and it was shorter to keep going. About 20 yards up the trail I found the leg. "That's a femur and lower leg... And the leg has a hoof. Okay that was a deer." And I let out the biggest sigh of relief.

My ex girlfriend and I (both female) had just set up our site, we got the tent up, fire started and was just chilling. When out of nowhere this truck pulled into our spot and got out of the car and walked right up to our site. Any seasoned camper knows that you do NOT enter someone’s site without their permission so that was the first red flag. He had a beer in his hand and was slurring his words, asking us where we’re from and if we’ve ever been here before and if it was just us two. As he was saying this he was inching his way closer and closer to us. I gave me ex a look and she went and grabbed the pepper spray out of the tent, as I had my hand on my knife on my belt. It got quiet and the first thing I thought to say was “Alright babe let’s go down to my grandmas house” (she lives about two miles down the road) as soon as I said that he said have a good day and left. As soon as he left we packed up our things and went home. I’ll always trust my instincts.

Ooooh I have a story for this!! I'd like to caveat first by saying this is 100% true and it gives me goosebumps still.

A few years ago I went on a solo backpacking trip in June in the eastern US. I only planned to hike up a trail, camp 1 night, and hike back down the next day. I got to the turn around point around 1700 and set up camp. My tent was a small, 1-man tent that was basically a rectangular bivvy bag with 2 tent poles to raise it off your face (snugpack stratosphere if you wanna look it up). About 5 meters away I built a fire ring, started a fire, set up a chair and ate a mountain house meal. While the sun set I poured my glass of scotch and started reading a book. Just before the sun dipped below the horizon, I heard a huge crash in the woods.

Here, I'd like to point out I am a very experienced backpacker, and have spent many nights alone in the woods. Trees falling or big animals stomping through the woods is a common sound. That is not what this was. It sounded like someone crashed a truck into a tree or something.

Regardless, I didn't think too much of it though I did get up to investigate and make sure I didn't attract any bears or big cats with my meal. Finding nothing, I returned to my camp and sat down.

The next thing I know, I suddenly open my eyes and it is pitch dark. My fire is nothing but coals, my half drank cup of scotch is nearly placed on a rock near the fire, and I am sat in my chair with arms crossed and my book neatly layed over my chest, closed. I check my watch and it's 0300 on the dot. I can't find my headlamp, lighter, or my phone, so I get up and use my watch backlight to go to my tent. When I find it, the stakes at the feet side of the tent have been VIOLENTLY ripped out of the ground causing grapefruit-sized craters. My tent has also been rolled up onto itself and is resting on the head side in a pile. I unroll and unzip the tent to find my phone and headlamp stuffed into the foot of my sleeping bag (I know that I had my headlamp around my neck and was actively texting my wife on my phone before I heard the crash. I even used my headlamp to look into more shaded spots in the trees). When I get my headlamp out and on, I immediately investigate the area and find that absolutely nothing else has been disturbed.

I didn't sleep that night. I lit the biggest fire I could, turned my phone flashlight on and kept it face up shining into the sky and kept my headlamp on and on my head. I was absolutely terrified. I hiked out at first light and drove straight home.

To this day I have no idea what happened. But, even typing this, I can feel that feeling of abject terror. I have experienced combat in Afghanistan, have feared for my own life many times, and have never, ever felt the kind of fear I felt that night.

Used to live in a city that had a massive wooded park on the northern half of it that was pretty secluded in some areas. Well one day I drive up there early in the AM to take my dog for a walk down this hiking trail we always hit. We get out and I let her loose for maybe 5 min, not far at all, and we come right up on a fresh deer carcass, ripped clean open and still steaming. I noticed right at that moment that all of the birds were silent and something was not feeling right. I picked my dog up and sprinted back to my car right as I realized that it was a mountain lions breakfast and that lion was right there staring at us in the tall grass. Theyll absolutely take you on and follow you too, ive never been so scared in my life.

Having a bobcat scream about 10 yards from my tent in the middle of the night which made the donkey in the field jump over our tent. It was quite a night. I was about 10. If you've never heard a bobcat scream - you're lucky.

Picture this, you're 13 year old and you're supposed to be camping next to your neighbor's pond with your friend. But what you are actually doing is waiting for his parents to go to sleep so they don't see us sneak out so we can walk 5 miles into town on the railroad track to try and hang out with all the cool kids who live in town. Of course there was a new moon, so it's almost pitch black outside. This was the 1980's so there were no smartphones and we had one cheap flashlight between us.

We are crossing over a railroad trestle where we can just make out the railroad ties in front of us, but nothing else. We are almost to the middle of the bridge when a pack of something started howling right below us. There had to be at least 20 of them and they all started howling at about the same time. I'm talking zero to deafening in just a few seconds. In hind sight, it was probably a pack of coyotes, but at the time you could not have convinced me that it wasn't wolves.

When the howling started I was thinking that staying on the bridge the rest of the night was a really good idea, but I could just hear the whistle of a train a few miles away as it sounded the horn at the last road crossing before it reached the trestle we're on. So there's no other option, we have to get off the bridge in the next couple minutes or we are going to get hit by the train.

We started running back the way we came since it was closer than going forward. We weren't running so much as jumping from tie to tie and trying not to think about the inky blackness in between that dropped off 40 feet to the creek below us.

I'm telling this story, so obviously we made it off the bridge, but it was a close thing. We kept running until we got back to our tent. Where we built up a huge fire and stayed up the rest of the night, just in case they followed us. That was 40 years ago and I can still feel my heart rate go up just thinking about it.

I'm not really a believer in supernatural and I still get freaked out hearing rustling when sleeping along in the woods, but all of that is just critters or the wind.

BUT, there is a woods around here that just has an odd, slow, lonely vibe around here. It's probably all in my head or maybe there's like some kind of weird stone off gassing something that messes with your head a little bit or maybe it's ghosts, I don't know. But every once in a while I'll do a little hike around and I feel like I'm much more isolated and away from civilization than I actually am but still being watched and have this weird sad unease. I never get this feeling anywhere else and it's a pretty small woods that you can often see a pretty busy road and some homes from.

There is some violent history in these woods, there was a battle between native indians and an English garrison here in the 17th century where the natives basically besieged a group of soldiers for days and tried to burn and smoke them out, but ultimately suffered too many casualties and fled. There's still a couple of stone basements from those garrisons left. There's also an old colonial overgrown road where people and stagecoaches used to get mugged by thugs. This was also farming and grazing land and there are old stone walls lining ancient property lines when the area was basically deforested to make way for Merino sheep in like the 19th century.

I don't know, some days it's nice and pleasant. Some days you feel like you're a bizarre dark, woods far, far away from anything living and there's things watching and whispering and time is slowed down. It's weird.

Was solo camping for the first time near Santa Cruz but at a well-populated campground.

Woke up in the middle of the night and was instantly alert and completely awake. I had no idea why until I heard something rustling in the bushes about halfway between my site and the neighboring site. Sounded like it was pacing back and forth.

Suddenly whatever was making the sound started sprinting straight towards my tent. I'm a small woman but I instantly shouted the deepest "HEY" I could muster. Must've tricked whoever it was because they came to a stop a few feet from my tent, stood there for about 10 seconds, and really, really slowly and quietly left the way they came.

Not the creepiest thing ever but I never solo camped again.

Backpacking with a buddy; we night hiked in the dark for the first few miles into the wilderness & then set up camp. We both missed that the campsite was just 40 yards or so from an old logging road.

Middle of the night, an old F-250 truck came cranking down the road, high-beams on and absolutely struggling as it was back firing — and just as we were waking up & getting the tent opened, the truck stalled out, as it let out a big engine sigh with it’s headlights shining on our tent.

Couldn’t have been more than 2 minutes before we got out of the tent, started shouting at the truck to see if they needed help, and walked on over to it — but as we got close enough, we realized -no one- was in or driving the truck.

Straight up biggest heart drop moment of my life. We kinda just shouted into the darkness as we walked up the logging road for a bit - but after not finding a trace of anyone - we decided to just pack up and get out of there. Walked back out to our car and canceled the rest of the backpacking trip lol.

I was primitive camping deep in a national forest. I woke up about 1:30 am and heard an old pickup on the two-track dirt road about 150 yards away. Snuck out of my tent, which was obscured from the road, and crept up where I could see, maybe 100 yards. They were digging by lantern light.

Spent the rest of the night at the ready, but they finished their digging project and eventually left.

Noped out of there at daylight.

If you've lived in the mountains long, you've had that feeling where the woods tell you to get the hell out. It's like that lull in conversation when a room goes silent but heavier.

I doubt anyone will see this, but I have a good story.

My family has property in Southeast Missouri. 40 acres in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Normally we camp in large groups (40+) for holidays and such.

One weekend, my wife wanted to go camping just us. We packed our young son and new puppy and drove down. We camped on a different part of the property than normal because my Uncle had started building a tiny one room cabin. Only 3 walls were closed in, but it had a roof and was big enough for our blow up mattress and the kennel. It was up on a hill, with the river running below.

I'd camped there my whole life, but I'd never seen it that dark. The sound of the river kept playing tricks on us, making it sound like someone or something was crossing at times. So we were already a little on edge.

My wife and I were up late, sitting on a little deck next to the cabin listening to music, talking, having a couple drinks. The light from the lantern between us only went so far and then it was pitch black. Suddenly, she stopped talking mid sentence, her eyes got big, and her face went pale white. I asked what was wrong but she couldn't speak.

Finally, she stammered, asking me if I heard that noise. I hadn't. She told me she just heard a woman screaming deep in the woods. I had her run and get in the car. I grabbed our son and puppy from the kennel and we got in and turned on the headlights and drove around camp for a while, shining the lights in every direction.

Eventually, I got out and assembled a makeshift 4th wall with plywood and we all piled in the bed and tried to sleep. When we got home, someone must have mentioned it to us when we told them what happened, but we looked up what a mountain lion sounds like and are pretty sure thats what it was, but we never saw anything.

No joke, we were hiking in winter in a regional park and quite a ways out from the nearest town on Vancouver Island, but the trails we were on were adjacent to department of national defense training grounds. Bushwhacked on an old abandoned trail (this is important) that we knew from the map would cross over into the restricted grounds, but would cross a safe trail at an open area ahead and we would divert and keep going without any concerns. No snow anywhere but it was cooooold, and we were looking forward to settling down for a late lunch at the crossroads.

Were coming up the last rise before heading down to the trail crossing when we heard literal screaming ahead and my partner and I just froze. Kind of peeped around a large tree and there was a man maybe 30 feet away, wearing camo pants but shirtless, with his upper body painted in silver and green stripes. His face was painted completely black, and he was WIELDING A SPEAR, jumping around and stabbing the air, the plants, the trees, imaginary demons Idontknowwhat, while howling and screaming like he was on fire.

I've never seen anything like that before or since. We were utterly terrified that this psychotic demon soldier would notice us and think we were his prey, and being on an abandoned trail meant we'd probably never be found if he did hurt us. We just got the hell out of there as quietly as we could, backtracked and didn't stop until we got back to the starting point. My poor partner was shaking the whole time thinking this guy was stalking us, she'd been the one to suggest that trail and we didn't try it again for a full 10 years... and we were still cautious when we got to the same area. I don't know what that maniac was on, but it was definitely potent.