4. The sound of spirits crying
“Two years ago, myself and two other people were camping in Yellowbottom, which is in the Cascades of Oregon.
About 3 am I woke up hearing what sounded like a bunch of people having a campfire party. Nothing huge, not even scary, just, talking, laughing, stuff like that. I was kind of pissed since we’d specifically come up to get away from the college kids and such, and now somebody had set up camp what sounded like less than 100 yards away. But I couldn’t see fire or light through the tent walls, and since that was my big concern, fire in the woods, I just kind of ground my teeth about it and went back to sleep.
About an hour later, I wake up again, this time somebody’s let a little kid start crying, and it’s really annoying. Like, not wailing but just sniffles, that long term crying that kids do. I listen for about five minutes and since I’m NOT a monster, I’ve kind of got this prickly feeling that maybe there’s trouble. You know, little kid crying all alone, where the hell are its parents, etc…
I started to get up and my friend, who I though was sleeping, grabs my arm, just about giving me a heart attack, and says, ‘Don’t go out there. Just wait.’
He knows the woods better than me, and he sounded actually scared, so I sit and wait, and yeah, a few minutes later, the crying stops and the party starts back up. But the weird this is, I can’t really pinpoint now what direction the party is coming FROM, because I was trying to tell if maybe it was a group who had found the kid and now they were all talking together, but I couldn’t tell what direction it was from.
The party went on for about another hour, just until dawn, then all of a sudden, nothing. Like, cut off in the middle of a laugh silence. I was completely freaked out by then and I think I might have made a noise when it just stopped like that. My friend, who hadn’t even sat up the entire time, just said “Stick Indians” and then rolled over and fell back asleep.
I got up when the sun was finally completely up and made coffee and kind of looked around but I’m not brave like that and didn’t go far. But there was nothing, no campfire, not tents I could see through the trees, nothing.
We packed up that day and I asked him what a ‘stick indian’ was and he wouldn’t tell me, had to come back and google it, and even now I’m not sure if what’s online is true or made up or what, but if you look it up, apparently it’s some kind of Yaquina forest spirit that lures people out by making noises like crying babies or people having a party and then… I don’t know. Eats them, or something.
So that’s my creepy thing in the woods, I don’t have any proof but people who know the Pacific North West, it was WAY up Yellowbottom, past the official camps, on the left hand fork of the main road, down that logging road and right by the river. The campsite with the huge fallen over dead trees. That one.
Me, I’ve never been back up there. No sir.”
