3 separate creepy accounts from the outdoors. From Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Missouri. Do you have any strange and unexplained stories? Feel free to forward it to me.
I recently came across the following accounts:
"So I started hunting with my friend in far eastern, Oklahoma about 13 years ago. He has had a 1000 acre at least for the last 35 years. It is within a greater 12K acre ranch. In the "Old Days" the area that is now his lease and the rest of the ranch used to be an area where back in the early 1900s felons would hide out from the law. Basically moving around the thick hilly wooded oak stands while running from the law. Since he has had the lease since the mid '70's he has had very little problem with trespassers. When he is at the lease by himself and not in the deer stand he wears his .357 on his hip.
Keep in mind that the first year I hunted with him on his lease I was engaged to his daughter and just out of college. The thick, very dark, and somewhat spooky woods at night were very new to me as I was born, raised, and still reside in Orange County, CA.
The night before the deer rifle season opener we are sitting in his deer camp in the cook tent where we also relax and enjoy the fire. He begins to tell me of a story that goes like this:
It was about 10 years prior and he is at deer camp by himself coming out of the woods from the morning hunt. As he is walking he smells the very distinct smell of frying bacon very close by. He said he waited for several minutes and continued to smell the bacon as if were very close. Now, he knows every inch of his 1000 acre lease like you would know every inch of your own bedroom. He heard no movement in the thick layer of oak leaves on the ground. It seemed to really bother him so he decided to go back to camp and retrieve his pistol and shotgun rather than dealing with someone with his 3 shot deer rifle. When he went back to the exact spot where he smelled the bacon he smelt nothing. He searched everywhere on that section of his lease and found nothing. Not even a camping spot where someone may have been cooking bacon. Nothing, not a hint of anyone. The place where he smelled the bacon could not have come from another part of the ranch or any adjoining lease or land, just too far off to drift that far. Needless to say, it wasn't the best thing to hear before my first morning out in the woods.
He also told me of several encounters with trespassers by other hunters when he first got the lease. Told me that the confrontations grew fairly intense until he pulled his .357 out of his holster that was hidden by his parka. Many other crazy stories of places on his lease that he gets all weird when he tells me the stories. Places on his lease that he will absolutely not go into or hunt no matter how big the buck he saw near there. Seems to me that he feels that it is/may be haunted by Native American "spirits/things/whatnot". BB
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"In the early '90's I was in high school and got invited to go on a 3-day canoe/cave exploring trip with some of my friends. They were 2-3 years older and had more canoeing/cave experience than me, so I was honored that they invited me to go along. There were 6 of us and we were going to float down the Eleven Point River in Missouri and explore any caves that we found along the way. I had floated the river quite a bit (I lived only a couple of miles from it as the crow flies) but I had never been on a multi-day trip. We usually would to a day trip with relatives or friends that would come to visit in the Summer.
We made camp the second night a little ways back from the river among the trees. It was a fairly open area with scattered trees and knee-high grass. We made a fire, cooked and ate dinner and we're all about to go to sleep when we heard something walking towards our camp. As we shined our flashlights in the general direction that the sound was coming from we saw a large, dark shape just at the edge of the light. It was a round-ish form, about waist high and its eyes glowed red. It was only there for a few seconds and then it ran off.
All six of us were pretty spooked at that point. We stoked the fire until it was probably visible from space and all started fashioning spears out of saplings. We never saw or heard whatever it was again that night and we eventually fell asleep.
Later on, we learned that there were feral hogs in that area and I'm pretty sure that's what it was. The only thing that doesn't quite fit is the eye-shine. I've done quite a bit of feral hog "management" at night and I'm pretty sure that their eyes don't shine red. As I'm typing this, I'm considering that it might have been a black bear. I'm not sure what their eyes look like at night and back then no one in the area ever talked about seeing any bears. Nowadays there are about one or two reports a year of bear sightings.
Looking back on our "encounter," it strikes me as funny how we were tough and macho boys until we saw the "thing." I'm also not exactly sure what we're going to do with our spears either." HH
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"I was in the Snowy Range camping with a friend in a group of lakes called the Gap Lakes, Wyoming. We were testing our ability to go lighter and just took a sleeping pad and tarp for shelter. The first night was rainy and miserable and I didn't have the best spot picked out as I was on a slight incline and kept sliding off my sleeping pad downhill.
The second night was better and we moved camp a little further uphill into a small clearing where we both could have a flat spot for sleeping. This spot was about 100-150 yards from the lake where we had been fishing all day and pulled a few trout out of for dinner. We had a couple trout leftover that we were going to cook up for breakfast and left them on the stringer in the lake since the water was still extremely cold since we were up over 11,000 feet and there was still plenty of snow feeding it. When we decided to put out the fire and head to bed I had this uneasy feeling that something was around watching us and studying us. My friend said he felt it as well. We both were armed with .45's and had them near should anything creep us out for the night. I didn't sleep well that night either as I felt something was near for quite a while. I heard a few rustles of leaves and some twigs breaking but no growls or any other animal sounds.
When the sun finally came over the 12,000-foot peak in the morning I was happy the night had ended. After putting on our boots and jackets we headed down to start up the campfire and cook up our trout. When I went to pull the trout out of the lake I found the rope stringer had been pulled out of the water and there was no sign of the trout. This area of the lake was pretty rocky so it was hard to check for any tracks. But the rock the stringer was tied to hadn't moved so whatever it was eating the trout right off the rope. That at least verified I knew something was around us that night. Not extremely creepy but at least I was aware and ready.
The story of my mom has always creeped me out and I had only messed with a Ouija board once or twice before hearing that story. I never had any luck getting it to move so I'm thankful I didn't get any names to come up. If I had and the name matched the one she gave me I would have freaked. Needless to say, I never touch those things and never will." S
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