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Kids Stalked In The Woods
I've posted this elsewhere, but it fits pretty well here. Sorry for length. Scared the shit out of 1998 me.
I lived in Pennsylvania until I was one month shy of being 12. I know that exact date because you had to be 12 to hunt in PA and I was looking forward to it. Anyways, we moved to Florida and I get to hunt down here too so that's OK.
I had a few good friends that lived right down the street from me. We lived out in the country. My address was literally 1691/2 __ Road. Middle of nowhere. So we'd hang out at my buddies place, or we'd go up this hill for about half a mile until we reached the burn pile and cabin at the top.
It really was a basic cabin. Outhouse. No lights. Nothing. We'd hang out there, use it as a fort for Nerf battles, manhunt, CTF, etc. Well one night my friend invited a few of his friends/cousins up to the cabin so we could roast marshmallows and play manhunt.
There were something like 13 of us to start, but the number slowly went down to 10 by nightfall. So we played manhunt 5 vs. 5 in the dark. Around 11 pm we were in the middle of a game and two of my friends had hung back with me because we were the fast ones. We realized that there were only three of us left on our team and that we hadn't captured anyone from their team. We tried to make a jailbreak and lost my friend (We'll call him F). It was just myself and another friend that we'll call "L."
L and I were ~100 yards from the other team and they had 3 of our 5 players now in their "jail." They began to press our side more and mess with us until one of them told us we were cheating. L and I looked at each other unable to figure out why. Our side had about 1/4 of it covered heavily in trees. The other side was about the same, with both wooded areas near the back of the sides.
At one point when we were chasing someone off our side I saw L and I running in the same direction and someone on the other side of L. I quickly cut behind L and intended to surprise the other person and nab them on our side (I was probably the fastest person there and I didn't want to be on the team to capture nobody). Once I emerged from behind L's trajectory (we were both running) I saw absolutely no one. Nothing, no trees, no scarecrow, absolutely nothing that I could have mistaken for a person.
I surmised that there had to be someone from the other team hiding behind our lines waiting for us to cross over and then tag us there. Well, the game ended up dwindling down to us with two left and the other side with 4. We capped one person and then all parties were exhausted. I asked the other team (mostly L's cousins) who was behind the line waiting to cap us? No one claimed responsibility. I figured it was someone trying to mess with us.
Back at the cabin we start cooking hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire. We were all 10-13ish with one person being maybe 15 (older cousin), so we we're drinking soda and not beer. Note: If this had been beer and I'd been older, I'd just chalk this up to booze. All 10 of us are around the fire when we saw someone coming up the hill. It's hard to see outside in teh dark when you've been staring at a fire for a while, but at least 4 of us had seen the person so we figured it was one of the people who left coming back, or someone new.
After about half an hour no one came up. We went and looked and found no one. Being the intelligent young kids we were we decided to investigate further. It's summer, after 12 am, and we're out playing with fire and flashlights looking for a mystery person. Yeah, we were not honor students. We went to the path that led down the hill and could clearly see my friends house in the distance (they left the outside lights on for the dogs), and no one in between.
Someone was trying to mess with the group so they ran into the woods and came out directly on top of us scaring the crap out of everyone. After we all changed our pants and regrouped we headed back to the cabin only to see someone on the very far side of the clearing. There were three of us with flashlights, and all of us attempted to illuminate this person, but we were too far away to get a good look; as soon as we lit him/her up he/she disappeared into the woods.
OK then, now a few of us are freaking out. Six people decide to go down to my friends house to spend the rest of the night where "the ax murderer from hell" won't be able to get them. Since they have 6 and the 4 of us who decided to "rough it" are only 4 the group of 6 got two flashlights. I was the only one left with one.
We decided to figure out who this was. L had an uncle who was only 10 years older than him who we figured was just fucking with us. We knew his place was less than a mile from where we were (big extended family, large family plot of land). L, F,one of L's cousins (gonna call him "C"), and myself began to walk across the clearing. Once we were about 40 feet from the edge of the woods we could hear someone moving around in the brush. Not stomping or anything, but very carefully moving through the fallen sticks and underbrush trying to make as little noise as possible. We figured it was L's uncle, we'll refer to him as "Uncle J."
So we split up again and two people waited in the clearing (F and L's cousin) and myself and L went into the woods to try to flush out Uncle J. We figured F and C could see OK from the clearing, and to be honest they actually could. L and I eventually were about 50 feet INTO the woods (further than we thought we'd need to go) when we heard this low rumble noise. This is one of those times when I regretted trying to act macho. L and I kinda looked at each other to make sure it was neither of us "rumbling," and basically just stopped dead in our tracks.
I shined the flashlight up in the direction of the noise (directly away from the clearing and the fire) and couldn't see anything. There was just nothing there. It was, to this day, one of the most eerie noises I've ever heard. Like a noise a Halloween decoration would have made, but real. We stayed about 50 feet into the woods, never venturing much further in, and searched the general area. Never found anything.
After about half an hour of this (it's now past 2 am) we heard a noise just at the edge of the clearing and both of us turned around. I had expected it to be F and C coming to figure out what the fuck was taking us so long. But instead, I see one person basically hiding halfway behind a tree looking at us. I've never not wanted to shine my flashlight on something before that moment. If it was dark, I wanted to see what it was. But in the distance, well past the shadowy character, I could see F and C milling about by the fire. I had this awful feeling that there was no way Uncle J was being this creepy. I didn't want to see who it was, and I really just wanted to get away from this person. I mean the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.
L must have seen it too because he started slowly backing FURTHER into the woods. We moved in as wide a circle as we could around this shadowy person and managed to make it back to the clearing. We got back to the cabin and grabbed F and C and began to make our way back to L's place. When we were about 100 yards from the cabin we heard it's door slam and we fucking bolted.
When we made it back to L's house near the bottom of the hill, we debated what to do; should we call 911? Was that a trespasser? Or was that simply a family member messing with us. L went to notify his parents who we figured would be overjoyed at the premise of being woken up around 3 am by a bunch of sweaty terrified 11 year olds.
They weren't home. Apparently L's grandfather had a heart attack around 10 pm. None of us had cell phones as it was 1998, and so no one had been notified except for L's 19 year old step cousin (I never really figured out this relationship TBH) who had drank himself near blackout drunk as soon as the adults left him in charge of all the younger kids up at the cabin. Seriously, he got reamed the next day by basically every adult in attendance. That meant that uncle J, and basically every other of L's family members who could have been messing with us were at the local hospital with the patriarch of the family who'd had a mild coronary.
At 4:00 am we knew sleep wasn't an option and began to watch and wait for the shadow guy to show up at the bottom of the hill. Less than 10 minutes later I hear a sound coming from upstairs...only problem is...there's no upstairs to L's house. There's something (someone?) on the roof. L grabs his pellet gun (cause that's going to be super effective) and we go outside (cause, you know, we're smart and stuff).
We shine ever flashlight straight up at the roof and see a completely black silhouette jump off the far side of the house in a mad sprint. The way L's roof was shaped the part he (it?) jumped off of was over 25' high; there was a huge vaulted ceiling in the back room of the house and the roof was even taller to accommodate for the attic. We watched it run away from the hill and towards the creek (10' wide maybe 2' deep) and we followed it until we realized how much faster it was than us.
Once it reached the edge of the creek, it stopped and looked back at us. This rumble thing came back and it jumped the creek, and we lost it.
The next day we told L's parents and they informed us that the cabin was being torn down. A cow had been killed and dismembered IN THE FUCKING CABIN early that morning, presumably after we left. It could have been a panther (cows weren't uncommon on that part of the property, but they tended to avoid the people), it could have been a bear, but fuck, we never went back up that hill at night. No way, no how. Never saw that thing again. Might not seem like much, but to 11 year old me...I had a new face for fear.