Three friends are traveling throughout the southeast US. They decide to stay at one of their friend's acquaintances' place in the Smoky Mountains. That's when things start getting weird.
"I’ve lived in Appalachia for all but four years of my life and I’m almost twenty-two, and I have never experienced any of the creepy things people say about the Appalachian mountains, until the story I’m about to tell you.
So toward the end of last year (2023), two of my friends and I had sort of simultaneous crises, which eventually led us to get rid of almost all of our belongings, quitting our jobs, leaving our apartments, and living out of our cars and traveling around the southeast US.
Well, on our first night on our big trip, we went to stay with a friend of one of my travel-mates. She lived in Tennessee in the Appalachian mountains. The Smoky Mountains, specifically. She lived off a backroad in the middle of the woods.
The first night we were there, she had told us that there were strange occurrences on the property. The house was haunted, and there was something in the woods. She had told us that whatever is in the woods likes to hang out around her shed. She said that one night, she was walking up onto her porch when she got the overwhelming feeling of being watched. Becoming fed up with whatever it was, she screamed something along the lines of “Go away” into the woods, only for something to scream right back at her. She claimed to have seen it one night from her kitchen window. She said it was peeking around the shed, staring at her. It wasn’t an animal, but it wasn’t human either. Out of curiosity, I asked her to describe whatever creature she saw in more detail, but she refused. I, being the skeptic that I am, basically disregarded everything she said and forgot about it.
Now, because it was our first night on the trip, and it was so fun and new to us, we wanted to sleep in our cars, which were parked right in front of the shed I mentioned earlier. Yes, that shed. We hadn’t yet made window covers, so we were sleeping in three SUVs with uncovered windows completely surrounding us. But, I had no issue with this. I thought the worst that could happen would be that I’d wake up with a bear staring at me. So, I went to bed peacefully and woke up in the middle of the night, really needing to urinate. I got half-dressed, put on my shoes, left my car, walked to the edge of the woods, did my business, got back in my car, and went to sleep. No uneasy feeling, no feeling of being watched, nothing.
The next night, I once again woke up, really needing to relieve myself. So, just like I did the night before, I sat up in bed, put on my pants, got my shoes ready, and reached for the door handle. But I couldn’t do it. It was like every hair on my body stood on end, and I got this overwhelming feeling of dread and foreboding. Now, I had a makeshift bed in the back of my SUV, on top of all the back seats that I flipped down. So I’m sitting there in my bed, looking around through all of my uncovered windows. I can’t see anything outside, except for some faint outlines of trees, and the glints off of my travel-mates’ cars. I neither saw nor heard anything that should be putting me on edge. I reached for the door handle again, but I once again got that terrible feeling. I continued to look around, tried to reach for the door, and withdrew my hand. I finally gave up and said screw it and just went into an empty water bottle.
The next morning, I got up and was talking to my travel-mates, and one of them mentioned waking up in the middle of the night out of nowhere and experiencing an overwhelming feeling of being watched. She sat up in her makeshift bed, and looked all around, only to see nothing. I can’t lie, when she said that, I got a bit of a knot in my stomach. I asked her what time it was when that happened, and she estimated that it was around the same time I woke up, around 3 AM. I then told both of them about my experience, and we were all a little freaked out about it.
When we were headed out to our cars the following night, we noticed that all of the homeowner’s many outdoor cats were sitting on her front porch, which we hadn’t seen the last two nights. Previously, they would all be scattered around the property, if they were even in sight. We thought it was weird, but we didn’t think much of it. We all climbed into our cars and said our goodnights on our walkie-talkies. It was a pretty warm and muggy night for October, so we all had our battery-powered fans running. One of my friends frustratedly reported that her walkie was dying. Then, my other friend reported that their fan had died. Then my walkie started dying. And it continued until, in five minutes, all of our electronic camping gear (walkies, flashlights, and fans) had all died. Finding this incredibly creepy, we all decided that we should just sleep in the house to be better safe than sorry.
We were gathering up our things to move inside when I began to hear what sounded like something large walking through the leaves in the woods. I kept stopping what I was doing and looking toward my friends, who were standing right by the woods. They seemed unbothered every time, so I would just continue what I was doing. That was when I heard a louder noise coming from the woods and finally decided to walk over to my friends. Turns out, one of them was standing watch while the other one gathered the rest of her things. Me and my friend stood there watching my other friend’s back, and it kept sounding like whatever was in the woods kept getting closer to us. Soon enough, my friend had gathered all her things and we calmly, but quickly went into the house.
From what I can remember, we slept in the house the following night as well, but the night after that, one of my friends borrowed some sage from the homeowner and saged all along the wood line and around our vehicles before we got ready for bed. We slept perfectly fine for that night and every night after. No more weird feelings, noises, nothing. Of course, we were pretty much perpetually on edge from then on, but it was never quite the same feeling of dread and foreboding that I had felt before.
To be honest, I don’t know what to make of all of it. I know I didn’t see anything. But the feeling I got was unlike anything I had ever experienced. That was the first and only time in my life where I have gotten that feeling, especially just out of nowhere.
I’ve told the story a few times now, and I’ve had people tell me that it was just a bear. But I don’t think a bear would give me that sort of instinctual feeling of danger when I can’t even hear or see it. And I’m fully aware that I may be biased now, but I’ve lent a bit more credibility to the homeowner’s stories after my experience.
For those of you that are curious, no, we are not still on the trip. Unfortunately, the whole thing went downhill after a couple of months, and we are now integrating back into society. We are, however, all still friends. And, no, we did not experience anything like this again, despite staying at several campgrounds in the middle of the woods in other parts of the southeast." L
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