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What was the scariest “We need to leave… now” gut feeling that you’ve ever experienced?
(fedi.ohpossum.ooo)
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
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Oh my god. My friends and I were doing a road trip around the US when we got lost somewhere crossing the border into southern California. We took some weird back road into the woods looking for a campsite that was on Google (we were roughing it as much as possible to be cheap), but it became super apparent that we took the wrong turn somewhere and we went deeper and deeper into the woods. It started to get dark and at this point my ex and I were like, "Let's just go to a hotel, it's already too dark to camp." My friend, the driver, was convinced we were almost there and the campsites were just around the next corner and wanted to save the money.
At some point, we saw this tree across the road and the only way to keep going forward was into what looked like just a clearing where some rusted out cars were. Immediately my ex and I felt this overwhelming, hair-raising "it's time to go" vibe and we started telling him to turn around. My friend pulled into the clearing saying something like, "No, this might be it, there's cars parked here". We pull into the lot and kinda do a loop, just to put the headlights on the surroundings and see what's all there. Like I said, it's an island of gravel, short, dry grass, and some rusted out cars in the middle of dense, mountainous forest.
My friend is juuuuuuust about to park and gloat about 'finding the campsite' when some feral looking dude comes barreling out of the woods like a cryptid, sprinting at the back of the car. My ex and I start screaming like loons as this dude closes the gap and my friend punches it and starts driving back down the road we came in on. The dude just stood in the road behind us with something metal (I think a pipe) and watched us go in a cloud of dust and taillights.
Absolutely HORRIFYING experience and we still have no idea what the fuck the situation was there.
I ended up in a similar situation, except I was hiking the Appalachian trail alone. I decided to stop at a creek and get some crawfish for my dinner and to boil water. While I was turning over rocks I heard some distant rustling and got this feeling I was being watched. I unclipped the button on my knife holster because that made me a little more comfortable. I heard from another hiker that this area wasn't safe and that I should pass through and go past the shelter a few miles. He looked very tired and sounded nervous under his breath and didn't take time to explain and he speed walked on.
Back to me catching crawfish, I ended up eating like 5 or 6 of them and ate the rest of the wild berries and mushrooms I collected from the morning. I heard the rustling but it sounded much closer. Close enough that I could tell it was something that weighed a good bit. I took that as my warning and got out of there.
I was a good two or three miles from the creek when I remembered what the guy said and how nervous he was. That feeling I was being watched never went away. I decided to dart into the woods and form a fishhook maneuver to see if I was being followed. It was something my friends native American grandfather said to do when hunting in a area with lots of bears or mountain lions to avoid leading them back to your camp. And sure enough it worked because their wasn't an animal following me but a person was following me.
I slowly moved back to the trail and walked about 100 ft on the hard packed soil to not leave a footprint trail then I darted in the woods and ran for a good 20 or 30 minutes before hitting a road. At this point I decided to hike 5 miles to a motel and just sleep. No way I was sleeping in the woods with a maniac on the loose.
Man, your story gave me goosebumps.
everytime I tell people my experience I get that feeling of being watched again. It's scary thinking that could have ended very bad for me if I didn't get that warning from the distressed hiker. I have heard stories about there being being creeps on the trail, but never encountered one before my experience.
opioids and/or amphetamines, at a first guess
Nah, he just thought OP had a real pretty mouth
That was just Jesse. You probably didn't notice the Winnebago.