10. Creepy dude who murders campers.
“I’ve been camping my whole life, it’s what I did for fun a lot of the time growing up. Thankfully I found a wife who is into it also, and we’ve done a ton of backpacking/camping together.
A few years ago we’re in the middle of nowhere in Maine backpacking in the day and then just walking off the trail into the woods to sleep at night. We’re carrying about 10 days worth of food and are deep in the woods – we haven’t seen another person in a few days. This is our primary goal, to get away from it all.
Normally I like to just sleep under the stars, but it was drizzling a bit so we set up our tiny two-person tent and went to sleep. Around sunrise I wake up and am sitting right outside the tent putting my boots on while my wife is still asleep. About 30 feet from our tent I see this dude just standing there looking at me. He was right out of central casting for ‘creepy dude who murders campers’. I say something stupid to him like “good morning, please don’t eat us” and he just looked at me for a few seconds and turned around and walked into woods.
We were out there for another four days after this and I kept waiting for him to jump out from behind every fallen log. I still have no clue how this dude found us or what his deal was. I think about him a lot, trying to figure out what life path led him to our tent that morning.”
11. Rocks being thrown at our tents.
“I once went camping up in Allegheny National Forest. Me and some buddies were all sitting around a fire bullshitting. As it got a bit later, we kept hearing things landing on the ground all around us. There were rocks being thrown at our tents and towards the fire. Nothing too absurd, could’ve been some hooligans at a nearby campsite. But looking around the area we saw nothing. Anyway, it eventually stopped and we went to our tents. A few hours later we heard this ear piercing noise that sounded like a woman screaming while running through our campsite, but much raspier. It was a pretty unsettling experience, needless to say, but nothing more came of it.”
12. Accidentally had a camping trip at a Klan rally.
“A few friends and I do a yearly camping trip in the Manistee National Forest in northern Michigan. One year we decided to try a new spot by the river for easier access for fishing, kayaking, etc. needless to say this spot was very remote, had to backpack in and drag our kayaks through the woods.
This is all state land so it’s basically find a spot and set up wherever. It was early June at the time so we weren’t worried about people out there hunting or anything like that.
We arrived during the day our first day there. Set up our tents and hit the river for the rest of the afternoon. Got back right before dark and started a fire. Everything is peaceful nice and quiet until all the sudden a big glowing fire about 300 yards away.
We start to hear chanting and look a little closer and notice the glowing seems to be a burning cross!! About 5 minutes later gunfire erupts and I mean ERUPTS. There must have been at least 10 different guns going off just non-stop. The gunfire stops and we hear white power being yelled by I’m guessing at least 20 people. We left all our stuff and noped the fuck out of there real quick. Went back the next day and got our tents and boats and nobody was in the area where they were that night.
TLDR : Accidentally had a camping trip at a Klan rally.”
