A group of friends are on a backpacking trip to Zaleski State Forest in Appalachia Ohio. That night, the witness heard loud human-like breathing and heavy footsteps outside of the tent.
I received the following account:
"I need validation that I’m not insane. I’ve never really had paranormal experiences, but I cannot explain this. I’m in college and I and some other 7 people from my school went on a backpacking trip, and we had 2 experienced leaders. We drove to Zaleski State Forest, which is in the Appalachian region of Ohio. It was early April, and it was cold and everything was still dead from winter. After hiking miles into the forest, we set up camp at the backpacking campsite, and there were a couple other groups of people as well, a few of them were friendly older couples and then 2 college-aged girls. Everyone was pretty spread out from each other, so we set up camp farther away from everyone else.
I have always been able to sense the energy of places, and the energy in this area wasn’t great, it was almost spooky. Each of us had individual, 1 person tents and we formed kind of a cluster in this site, with my tent being in the back, so no one was behind me. Our cluster was also right next to the forest because this backpacking site was like a big cleared-off square in the middle of the trees. Fast forward, I’m dead asleep around 2am, and I wake up to leaves crunching right behind my tent. I hear footsteps walking in circles around my tent; they had a sort of heaviness to them that couldn’t be a deer or a dog, also it sounded like just 2 legs. I cannot make this up, this “creature” was circling my tent for long periods, slowly creeping up to the sides of my tent and then just stopping for periods, and then would move on to waking around the rest of our tent cluster. I could hear human-like breathing from the mouth when it was close to my tent, like a light sort of heaving.
I was shaking, too scared to unzip my tent and investigate. I kid you not, this occurred for hours, and it seemed I was the only one awake. Out of nowhere, I saw an illuminated light shape from my tent, although I couldn’t tell what it was from inside my tent, because it was all zipped up. It was like a warm glow. I might have assumed it was someone’s flashlight, except no one was moving. I was paralyzed in fear, I simply couldn’t believe it was an animal. At some point, I fell asleep due to sheer exhaustion, but I could hear the heavy footsteps circling until I did.
In the morning, I questioned my fellow campers about it, and my leader admitted she heard the footsteps and noises as well, admitting it was bizarre and she would have investigated had she not been so groggy. One of the boys in the group said he also noticed the light that came on but thought it was someone else. Not a single person in this group woke up to go out or turn on a light that night. I’ve heard things about the Appalachian regions being creepy and bizarre, and now I believe it?" S
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