The Creepiest Camping Experiences

I know someone who while hiking in Colorado with some friends, they found an abandoned cabin. In a roughly circular region around the cabin, everything inside was dead: plants, small animals, etc. They didn’t step inside and have no idea what was up.

Was driving in the Sierras and found a campground a few miles off the 395. The place was empty except for this one old car in a spot. I set up camp and a dog appears and just stares at me. After a bit I made a sudden movement to scare it off. Dog proceeds to bark wildly. Then I hear some male voices. I hear one guy say, “oh, we’re gonna have some fun tonight.” I packed up and split in record time.

Went camping in Ginnie Springs in Florida about 10 years ago and sometime at night I heard that sound you hear in movies/TV of a huge tree falling. Didn’t think anything of it. About 10 minutes later I started hearing lots of people talking outside my tent so I got out and discovered the tree fell on someone’s tent kind of close by and killed them. A helicopter had to come and airlift them out.

When I was younger, around 14 or 15 years old. My family used to camp at a state park. Every night my friend and I would walk through the woods. We called this “the ritual” this particular night we decided to walk further into the woods than usual. We had flashlights be we liked to try and navigate through the woods with them turned off. We were about half a mile from the nearest camp site when we heard soft whispering behind us. Obviously we hit the flashlights and spun around. Didn’t see anything.

So we kept walking and we hear it again. This time we stop and look around a bit before we decided to head back to our campsite. Then we see what’s whispering. It’s a lady crawling on the ground whispering just random words. She was wearing dark clothes and was covered in dirt.

When she sees that we notice her she stands up and declares that she is looking for her campsite. We ended up walking her back to the campground and tried helping her find her group. Turns out she was just super drunk/high and got lost trying to find a bathroom. Her friends didn’t even notice she was missing and if we didn’t go that far into the woods she would have been lost all night. It was pretty creepy.

Camping alone in a bit of secluded bushland (lots of sticks and leaf litter so can hear critters and people moving easily). Hearing a plopping noise during the night (but no other noises) to wake up to see a decapitated kangaroos head next to the tent that obviously wasn’t there when I put the tent up. No explanation. Got the f out of there.

Safari guide here. Woke up one morning, with “something” very warm, rather soft and comfy on my back. Realized my back was against the canvas of the tent. Realized it was an animal. It was a really cold winter night, temperatures drop close to zero here in the lowveld. WTF?

As I moved a bit, I heard the voice from my buddy, from his tent. He spoke a bit hushed, and with a definite tremble in his voice; “TheAfricaBug are you awake?”. Stupid me replied with a strong voice: “yes”. The animal next to me got up, and (luckily) ran away. It was a big male lion.

I was camping in a valley by myself with no cell service. I stayed late on a trail and ran into a nice local dude as it was getting dark. He showed me a local camping spot close to the road and the river, but camouflaged. I had a fire, drank beer, and listened to my friend’s comedy podcast. I was loud and visible.

Because it was dark already I decided to sleep in the back of my truck under my topper next to all of my gear as opposed to setting up my tent. The next morning I made a fire, cracked a beer, and started making breakfast. Then I notice that there is a man at the edge of my camp. He comes closer, but never looks directly at me. This dude looks homeless has a long ratty beard and has at least a hundred plastic grocery bags tied all over his clothes. I comment about how nice the day is. No response from him.

I offer him breakfast, nothing. He sort of paces around the perimeter of my camp. I offer him a beer. But he just turns around. The dude is just standing there back to me wandering around. I’m realizing that there isn’t going to be any good happenings. I had my bear spray and buck knife super close. I give him an ultimatum, “motherf#@ker, you are either going to acknowledge me or leave immediately!

He ignores me. I grab the bear mace and walk a few steps towards him. He sulked away and I threw my s@#t in my truck and left that place right quick. I wonder if he had watched me during the night and I thank my laziness for staying in my truck instead of a tent.

Went camping with my friends back in high school. We hiked way out into the woods/mountains and collapsed exhausted into our tents. Middle of the night, I hear something outside my tent. Then another something, and another, all around the tent. It sounded so much to me like something stalking up to our tent, surrounding it.

I gathered my courage and looked out, shining my flashlight into the pitch black darkness. All I could see in the dark was shining eyes looking back at me. Not little eyes or eyes close to the ground, but almost man height and large. Turned out it was a herd of deer.

Saw a mountain lion looking at me from about 100 feet away while pooping. Good thing I had a gun with me just in case but it was at my most vulnerable moment. Also it really helped me take a s@#t faster.

My parents were out camping and my mom got miffed at my dad so she decided to take a hike by herself.

She’s walking and down the trail is this pissed off looking, bare a$$ naked guy just… hiking? Had no interest in her or what she was doing.

Turns out she was really close to a nudist colony in the area.

It was 2 am pitch dark, low fire. We heard rustling in the woods, flashlights pan out, all of he sudden a mole comes running towards us and INTO the fire. We could hear it sizzling while we all were screaming! The next day the charred body was buried with an proper funeral.

Another scary one. Dog and I were backpacking. Spur of the moment overnight trip. Wasn’t far off the road or anything. So I just have a tarp up as a small shelter. Small little fire. Wasn’t really hiding per say but wasn’t being obvious. Just dozing off when I hear a truck rip up and a bunch of drunken voices. Then the shooting started.

Now they probably didn’t know I was there. I was parked on a different road and hadn’t realized I had walked as close as I had to the second one. But I still don’t like being in the area when a bunch of drunken yahoos are shooting off guns. Especially when I was fairly certain they were shooting in my direction (based on the lay of the land). So I put pupper on a tight leash and headed out asap.

I had a nasty thunderstorm that spawned a tornado roar over me one night. The tornado cut a path a couple of kilometers away. At one point the lightning was almost continuous. No choice but ride it out.

My parent’s story, not mine. They were on a canoe trip way up in nowhere, Saskatchewan, far from any semblance of civilization. One morning, they hear a rustling outside their tent. Still half asleep, my dad sits up and tries to figure out what is going on. The noise is loud, and very close. Before he can collect himself enough to go investigate, his whole side of the tent collapses in on top of him.

The weight lifted quickly. Now entirely awake, my parents scrambled to open the tent flap and figure out what was going on. About ten feet away was a spooked black bear, staring confused and concerned at the tent. After being yelled at a bit, it ran off. We figure it had been foraging in the bushes right behind the tent and lost its balance. So my dad can truthfully say he has been sat on by a bear.

I tend to get a late start when I head out into the woods and so I’m usually setting up camp well after dark and don’t really get to see my surroundings until the next morning. One morning I woke up before dawn to the sound of something large and heavy being dragged past my tent.

I remember laying there in horror, telling myself “Ok, it’s going to be fine, you’re going to go back to sleep and when it’s light out you’re going to laugh at this because OH MY GOD ITS DEFINITELY A BODY THERES A MURDERER DRAGGING A BODY AND IM NEXT.” Eventually I managed to exhaust myself out of sheer terror and fell back asleep.

Woke up in the daylight, relieved to be alive, looked out and discovered I’d set up my tent on a small overlook directly below a beaver dam. I was right beside their log chute.

We like to hike 3-5 miles down a trailhead in deep Georgia. One night the temperature dropped into the low 20’s, which is really rare for mid fall. We got a solid fire going, and the heat mixed with a full belly put us all to sleep.

I woke up to my buddy tapping my foot with a stick. I looked up at him and he nodded toward the fire. There were 2 wild boar kicking up dirt around the dying fire.

We didn’t have any sort of weaponry except a hand axe that was out of our reach. My friend and I laid there completely silent watching these two for about an hour till the fire died completely down and they moved on.

If you don’t know, Wild Boars in Georgia are easily 150lbs, pissed all the time, and prone to gore literally anything . We were reaaaally lucky we didn’t spook them.

My time in the Army meant I spent a ton of time in the woods of upstate NY. I remember many of nights waking up to things reaching into my pockets, pulling things from my kit (body armor). I’d wake up to a raccoon pillaging my things, literally unzipping pouches and such. I still swear to this day they were organized, rallied behind this giant raccoon f@3k stick who would sit outside and keep guard and coordinate them.

My family went camping every summer when I was growing up. We usually bounced between Virginia Beach, Assateague, and this godawful place called Westmoreland. One trip we were in Assateague, near the beach, and we had two tents set up in different parts of the site.

Some time in the middle of the night my mom woke up, which woke me. She was sitting up straight but completely still, and I looked over at what she was staring at. In the moonlight there was the silhouette of what looked like an old woman looking into our tent. Long wiry hair and everything.

I was young, so it terrified me, and I started asking my mom what that was, who was outside. Once I made noise it spooked the “old woman” and she took off, and that’s when we realized she was actually one of the feral ponies that live on the island. We had set up that particular tent on one of their trails, and they were going down to the beach.

25 years ago or so. Saw eyes in the darkness of the trees when shining a flashlight out. Seemed kinda high up. They were red reflecting. Also was having sticks and rocks occasionally thrown into our camp. Nothing big and it was directed at the fire. Eventually it stopped and we went to bed. There was 4 of us. I’m a light sleeper and so is my dad. We both woke up to footsteps and a really bad stink about 5am. My dad shook the side of the tent and yelled “get the f#$k OUTA here” whatever it was it ran off. Cowlitz country WA.

Went on a group camping trip in the middle of nowhere Arizona only to awake and hear something sniffing the outside of our tent. My immediate reaction was that it was likely a bear or some animal that came across our site, and just maybe my du@#$ss friends didn’t tie up the garbage? Seconds later, I can hear the sniffing go to the tent next to ours and everyone in mine grabs one another quietly to acknowledge we all were awake and were aware of what’s happening outside.

Moments later, a friend in another tent popped out and started to scream and make noise (he had a gun too), hoping it would scare off whatever animal was in our site. Turns out, it wasn’t an animal. It was some guy who had gone through our coolers/food and also decided it’d be okay to sniff our tents.

Our friend chased him off and we immediately packed our s@#t and left.