Strange Encounters in the Woods, Mountains, or Desert

"Anyone see this when we hiked in????"

Not my story, but told to me by a co-worker about a past road trip he had to the Black Hills when I was talking to him about heading there myself to climb (musta been circa mid 90’s when it happened).  He was just arriving in the area from the Twin Cities late on a Thursday night. It was after midnight and He was planning on camping near Custer State Park.  As he and his girlfriend were driving, he saw a van up ahead just sitting in the middle of the road.  No lights or anything.   He slowed down to a crawl and was going to pass it as both his curiosity and anxiety level were going up when a dude steps out from in front of the van and waved his arms to flag him down.  Being the good Minnesotan, he was going to roll down his window to see what the guy needed, when his girlfriend screams because a couple more dudes had come out of the ditch on either side of the car and were trying to get in the doors.   He simultaneously shat himself (seriously) and floored it and the dude in front threw something at them (never knew what it was, it just bounced off) as they sped by.    They skipped camping and went back up to Rapid City and reported it. 

He said it was his girlfriend’s scream that literally scared the shit out of him.   He said “you ever hear a woman scream like that, and everything, including all hope, just leaves your body.  Nothing I could do..” 

other co-workers vouched for the story, in so far as he didn’t just make it up to scare me on my trip there.  He had told it before.   And the way he described the scream was clear he was sincere and wasn’t bullshitting, or he was one hell of an actor.   

Literally every story I can think of (a lot, btw), involve me being the strange guy.

Claudine Longet wrote:

Literally every story I can think of (a lot, btw), involve me being the strange guy.

On a scale of 1-10, how bummed are you that the user name Rusty Shackleford was taken?

Edit for my guess:

I was camping alone at an empty trailhead in Washington and was awoken by a car pulling in and parking next to me at 430 am. It's not a very well known or used trailhead, but I was like "whatever someone's getting after it." I watched the car for a little bit and whoever had pulled up wasn't getting out and was sitting inside their car in the dark. I thought I saw some lighter flicks and I was like "whatever they're getting blazed and waiting for the sun to come up" and passed out again. 

I woke up a couple hrs later and the car was gone. I was chilling out drinking my coffee when the exact same car pulls in next to me again. A dude gets out, comes up to me and says:

"hey man... if you see anyone touch my car while we're on the trail, you have MY permission to fuck them up". 

I was like "ok sounds good"

Then he thanks me and offers me a hit of weed which I decline. After that, he's like: "yeah no worries man... you wanna smoke something harder?"

And I was like no thanks lol. 

Then he tells me he was just testing me because he actually doesn't smoke meth anymore and it's bad and that he just drinks a lot instead, raising his twisted tea to me to say cheers. I raised my coffee in solidarity.

He then starts to walk away, leaving his final remark:

"People say I have a drinking problem, but I call it a drinking solution!"

And that was my morning I guess.

Is 11 Mile south plate?
My wife and I were camping down a FS road outside of 11 Mile a few years ago.
When we were looking for camping we came across a group of what must have been 100 Asians in the woods. I don’t know if it was a church retreat, a family reunion or what, but I saw more Asian people 5 miles down a FS road Than I had living in Durango for 3 years.

So we turned around and found a spot a mile or so before the group and set up camp. About 2 hours later we see a white minivan coming down the road and just figured it was people from the party looking for more camping but as the van approaches you can see the driver is an old white guy in army fatigues and the van is beat to shit. Doesn’t wave or look our way as he passes, then he passes back by us in the opposite direction about 30 minutes later. No eye contact, no waves.

Went to bed.  
We woke up at 6 am to someone pounding on some sort of metal and shouting “come and get me you fucking cowards”

We broke camp and got out of there, and as we were heading out the guy in the van was standing outside of his van with what looked like a car tire cut into lengths, and he had camped on a hillside where he could see the Asian party. Like he was watching them.

Really random and really creepy.

bouldering. Hear a coyote or something, turns out to be a massive dude with a rambo knife strapped across his chest. He questions us, we question him, then we smoked a joint.

Not creepy, but weird:

Was out in the Sangre de Christos in northern New Mexico. Setting up camp as the snow is starting to pick up and the sun is setting, about 10 miles from the trailhead. Two guys from India come down the trail heading back toward the trailhead, wearing loafers and dress shirts. No headlamps, no packs, no water. I say something along the lines of, "it's a long way back to the car, are you guys going to be OK?" In a thick Indian accent the guy says back, "of course we'll be fine, there are no tigers here!"

Creepy, but not weird?:

My wife sometimes talks in her sleep. We're out on a ski tour in Montana, and it's been snowing more than we expected as we set up camp for the night. We're good where we are avalanche-wise, but we're ironically hoping for less snow over the night so there's less avy danger tomorrow. We both fall asleep, but a little on edge. Middle of the night, my wife starts talking. It's that weird thing where she's not fully in control of her voice, so it comes out all weird and guttural. She says "Aaaaprilll tweeeeenty fouuuuuurth..." My half-awake brain is sure that she made some deal with a demon and now it's telling us when we are going to die. Maybe when the world will end? "Twoooo thouuuuusand and siiiiix," she says. Phew, it's in the past! I wake her up, she has no idea what the dream was. We google it up when we get back home, just another day. Stupid demon.

B P wrote:

… the guy in the van was standing outside of his van with what looked like a car tire cut into lengths, and he had camped on a hillside where he could see the Asian party. Like he was watching them.

Really random and really creepy.

Seems pretty common.  Local creepers like to keep tabs on things in case outsiders come in and try to out-weird them on their own territory.    In the batshit community, it’s always “locals only bruh”.   He had that area red tagged

Mark Pilate wrote:

Seems pretty common.  Local creepers like to keep tabs on things in case outsiders come in and try to out-weird them on their own territory.    In the batshit community, it’s always “locals only bruh”.   He had that area red tagged

Yeah but I’ve never seen anyone beating the shit out of their car with a cut up tire antagonizing a large group of people 5 miles down a dirt road.

But I was only in Rado for 3 years…

A couple of years ago I got off work during the dark times (early December) and ran up Bear Peak above Boulder. It was glorious winter conditions, lightly snowing and the perfect decompression after work. On the way down my headlamp revealed several glowing eyes in front of me probably 20-30' away. I stopped quickly, then made my way onto a nearby ~6' boulder. From that vantage point, looking down on them, I could tell there were 3 mountain lions. Seemed like a mom and two cubs, as the larger lion was in front and the two smaller ones hung out behind. Of course I started yelling at them (no effect) then making trips off the rock to dig rocks out of the snow and throw them. The lions gave me the impression that they considered my behavior to be strange but largely unconcerning, slowly backing away but not taking their eyes off of me. They end up just past my rock throwing range, at which point I stop to ponder my next move. I decided to break off a large tree branch to brandish, then backed away back up the trail until I could turn onto another trail and take the long way around back to the car. I must have glanced behind me every two seconds on the run down; the fresh snow felt like the perfect conditions for a quiet ambush. In retrospect the group was probably just psyched when I left so they could continue their family time without a headlamp blinding them, but at the time I was sure they would hunt me down.

And on the weird side of things, I've seen strange moving lights multiple times from wall bivys in the 90s. I remember once from Washington Column and once from Zion (Right Brother I believe), but I think there were other times too. Multiple lights on the ground, seemed like they could have been bright flashlights, but moving in strange patterns impossibly fast through difficult terrain. There's probably a reasonable explanation, but really seemed hard to figure it out at the time. Too concentrated/point-like and didn't look right to be other wall denizens shining super bright lights down, likewise with helicopter search lights plus we would have heard a chopper. Could be low-flying quadcopters with lights but those hadn't been invented yet. Both my partner and I saw them, and we weren't using any experience enhancers. Perhaps others have seen similar?

Ryan Franz wrote:

 

And on the weird side of things, I've seen strange moving lights multiple times from wall bivys in the 90s. I remember once from Washington Column and once from Zion (Right Brother I believe), but I think there were other times too. Multiple lights on the ground, seemed like they could have been bright flashlights, but moving in strange patterns impossibly fast through difficult terrain. There's probably a reasonable explanation, but really seemed hard to figure it out at the time. Too concentrated/point-like and didn't look right to be other wall denizens shining super bright lights down, likewise with helicopter search lights plus we would have heard a chopper. Could be low-flying quadcopters with lights but those hadn't been invented yet. Both my partner and I saw them, and we weren't using any experience enhancers. Perhaps others have seen similar?

Your light comment reminded me of an incident I had that was similar.  I was in a remote area of the Mojave on a climbing trip and while camped we noticed light shining on the rocks above camp moving around.   It lasted maybe 10-20 seconds.   This was in a very remote area accessed only by 4x4 and to our knowledge there was nobody around for miles.   If they had driven in we would have seen them or heard them.  
On Powell’s second trip down the Colorado River in the late 1800’s Fredrick Dellenbaugh recounts seeing strange lights in the night near one of their camps on the Green River, when I saw our lights it reminded me of Dellenbaughs sighting.

Another strange thing happened while on a backcountry ski tour in the Sierra a few years ago.   While skiing up a drainage on a lightly snowing afternoon I suddenly felt a sense of extreme heat on the right side of my body, not warm like I was overheating but like someone pointed a intense laser at me.   When I touched my jacket the outer layer was very warm to touch on the right side but cold on the left side.   It was snowing and in the mid 20’s so it kinda freaked me out when it happened.  

Kevin Mokracek wrote:

Years ago I was riding up the Arroyo Secco trail behind JPL in Pasadena.  Came upon what looked like a recent deer kill on the trail.   I road on another few minutes before my spidey senses told me something was watching me.  As I road back past where the deer had been it was gone.  I’m assuming the Mountain Lion was waiting in the bushes and certainly watching me when I stopped the first time.   After that incident I stuck those plastic googly eyes on the back of my helmet.  I read somewhere that Mountain Lions won’t attack if you are looking at them, total BS I’m sure but I’ll take it. 

I did the same thing to my MTB helmet when I lived in Chico. Got the idea from a Nat.Geo. story on the fishermen of the Sundarbans, who deal with Tigers.

Ryan Franz wrote:

 Multiple lights on the ground, seemed like they could have been bright flashlights, but moving in strange patterns impossibly fast through difficult terrain. There's probably a reasonable explanation, but really seemed hard to figure it out at the time. Too concentrated/point-like and didn't look right to be other wall denizens shining super bright lights down, 

Very well could have been me...used to entertain my dosing buddies with a glow stick nunchuk routine. Two different colored glow sticks attached with accessory cord and a basic understanding of nunchucks. I guess it was quite impressive to those in the right state of mind. 

Buck Rio wrote:

Very well could have been me...used to entertain my dosing buddies with a glow stick nunchuk routine. Two different colored glow sticks attached with accessory cord and a basic understanding of nunchucks. I guess it was quite impressive to those in the right state of mind. 

do you do kid's parties??

one early saturday morning at the devils gate parking / camping spot a few of us are sitting around drinking coffee, waiting for reno911 to show up.  it was father's day weekend, so he arrives with his dad.  this beat to shit old jeep cherokee pulls up right behind him, and this old dude falls out of it reeking of whiskey.  he announces he is the mayor of these parts and starts trying to bust reno911's chops about how fast he was driving, etc.  reno911 is smoothly difusing the situation and somehow turning this cranky old guy into having a good time.  old guy sees me, stumbles over to my chair and yells "you must be the big dog!!!".  then he just starts barking in my face for about a minute.  after he got tired of that, he fell back into his jeep, raced up the road and returned to his day of entertaining the good folks of the devils head region.

and that's just one typical morning in the greater south platte area...

Slim, your story kind of reminded me of an interesting police encounter I had in high school.  
Was a decent sized Saturday night party down by the river. Everyone is chillin or loitering about while draining a few kegs, when someone sees a car with no lights on come crawling out of the woods (where cars normally aren’t able or supposed to be) and yells “COPS!”
Everyone immediately starts throwing beer everywhere and running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Since I was driving that night and being responsible by only drinking Mtn Dew, I stayed where I was as the car approached.

Soon I could see in the darkness that it was in fact a cop car coming towards me.   Then it got weird.  

Guy pulls up and rolls down his window as large billows of pot smoke hit me in the face.  Simply says “suuuuuuuppppp” more as a statement rather than a question.   I’m thinking, “what the…”   Then he asks, “ you guys ain’t drinking are ya?” And starts cackling like a madman at his own joke.   I had officer Spicolli here.  I’m sure if I could’ve seen his eyes in the dark they woulda been weepy and bloodshot.   We shoot the shit for a bit, and then he says something to the effect of “well, gotta get back at it” and he flips on all lights and siren and smokes the tires as he fish tails away in a cloud of burnt rubber smoke for about a hundred yards then suddenly goes completely silent and dark again -no headlights even, as he continues to drive away at a crawl.  Takes him like a full 5 minutes to finally get out of sight.  

As people started to materialize again from the woodwork and bushes, the general consensus was pretty much, “whoa”.