"Rampart Creek":
August 2019. It was the kind of road trip that felt like something out of a nostalgic movie—endless highways stretching into forested horizons, the kids in the backseat playing “I Spy” and singing songs off-key, while Matt and I passed snacks and traded off driving. We'd been talking about this for years—heading north, deep into the Canadian Rockies—and now we were finally on our way to Banff National Park, the crown jewel of Alberta. A week of mountains, stars, and the simple joy of making s’mores over a fire. It was exactly the kind of escape we’d needed after a long, exhausting year.
We’d left New Jersey four days earlier, making our way through the U.S. heartland, crossing into Canada at the Sweetgrass border station in Montana. The further north we went, the more the land seemed to stretch and rise, swelling into ranges that swallowed the sky. When we finally reached Rampart Creek Campground just before sunset, we were all quiet for a few moments—just staring. There were towering peaks on all sides, draped in thick pine and larch forests. The campground sat like a tiny clearing on the edge of a vast wilderness, hemmed in by stone and shadow. The wind rustled through the trees, carrying with it the scent of pine needles, cold river water, and something ancient.
Holden, our curious, talkative seven-year-old, bounced in his seat. “It looks like a place where dragons live,” he said, eyes wide. Reid, younger and quieter, just pressed his face to the glass, taking it all in.
We picked a spot near the edge of the campground, just a short walk from a babbling creek that twisted its way through the woods. That stream would become the soundtrack to our stay—its melodic chattering echoing through the night. While Matt and I unpacked the gear, the boys took turns trying to skip rocks across the water. Holden got two skips; Reid mostly just plunked them in with a grin.
Setting up the tent took longer than expected—Matt couldn’t find one of the corner stakes and swore it was in the wrong bag. I laughed and called him a camping rookie, which earned me an exaggerated eye roll. Eventually we got the thing standing—big enough to hold the four of us with room for bags and boots. It felt sturdy, the nylon thick and weather-resistant, with a reinforced zipper and an extra rainfly. We told ourselves it was practically a mobile fortress.
Just as we finished settling in, the air changed. A low grunt came from the tree line, and we all turned to see a black bear—large, slow-moving—lumber across the gravel access road, maybe fifty yards away. Its fur shimmered in the dying light like spilled ink, and for a moment, it looked directly at us before disappearing into the pines. The boys froze. Reid gripped my hand. I could feel his little fingers tighten around mine.
Later, at the ranger station, we stopped to check in and grab a map. A young ranger with sun-reddened cheeks and a clipboard leaned on the wooden counter. “Any bear sightings?” I asked casually.
“Quite a few,” he said, and pointed to a corkboard pinned with photos and notes. “That black bear’s probably the same one we’ve seen crossing around here. But we’ve also had a couple of grizzlies moving through last week.”
I swallowed. “Anything we should know?”
He nodded, straightening up. “Absolutely. Lock up all your food—coolers, trash, anything with a scent. Don’t cook near your tent. And always keep bear spray on you.”
He tapped a bright orange canister on the shelf beside him. “It’s not just for bears. Wolves, cougars… even an aggressive moose. You never know out here.”
We bought two cans. I clipped one to my backpack; Matt tucked the other into a side pocket of the tent.
That evening, we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire. The stars came out one by one until the sky was so thick with them it looked like powdered sugar dusted over black velvet. I pointed out constellations while Matt told silly ghost stories that made Holden giggle and Reid bury his face in my shoulder.
By the time we zipped into the tent for the night, we were exhausted in the best way—our bodies sore from hiking, our clothes smelling of smoke and pine. I lay between the boys, listening to the creek just outside. Holden turned his head and whispered, “This is the best adventure ever.”
I smiled in the dark and kissed his forehead. “Sleep tight, buddy.”
Hours passed. The tent was still, save for the occasional toss or murmur from one of the kids. The night had grown colder, the kind of cold that creeps in beneath the sleeping bags and wraps itself around your toes. Outside, the creek whispered on.
Then—suddenly—I was awake.
A loud, dull thump struck the side of the tent, hard enough to make the fabric bow inward and the poles groan under pressure. My eyes flew open. My heart instantly started pounding in my ears.
I sat up, the cold air like needles on my skin. “Matt,” I whispered sharply, shaking his shoulder. “Something’s out there.”
He blinked, groggy. “What?”
Another thud—stronger this time, followed by a sound I’ll never forget. A low, guttural growl. Not a bear’s huff. Not the chuff of a deer or the bark of a dog. This was deeper, raw and wrong.
“Get the bear spray,” I hissed.
Matt scrambled, reaching into the side pocket. He’d barely unzipped the tent when the wall behind him exploded.
The tent fabric tore open with a sickening RIIIP, and then—just like that—it was inside.
A wolf.
Its frame filled the opening, lit by the silver-blue glow of the moon. Tall. Lean. Ribs jutting out under matted fur. Its eyes glowed with a feral sheen, and its lips peeled back in a snarl that revealed teeth like broken glass. My breath caught in my throat. For a split second, I couldn’t move.
Then it lunged.
Matt raised his arm just in time. The wolf latched on, jaws closing around his forearm with a brutal, bone-snapping crunch. Matt screamed—a raw, instinctual cry that jolted both boys awake. Blood splattered the tent wall as Matt fell back, trying to shield us.
“Get the boys!” he screamed, struggling with the beast.
I grabbed Holden and Reid, who were sobbing, clutching at me. “It’s okay, I’ve got you,” I whispered, but my voice cracked. The wolf’s bulk blocked the exit, its paws sinking into the sleeping bags as it dragged Matt toward the opening. I screamed for help, over and over, throat raw with panic.
Then—footsteps. Fast.
“Hey! What the hell’s going on?!” A flashlight beam pierced the tent. A man’s voice.
Russ. A fellow camper we’d seen earlier. He charged into the clearing, swinging a thick branch in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He started shouting—loud, furious—and banged the branch against our metal cooler.
“HEY! GET OUT OF HERE! GO ON!”
The wolf froze, eyes flicking toward him, muscles tensed.
With a snarl, it dropped Matt and bolted into the trees. One moment it was there, the next it vanished like smoke.
The silence afterward was deafening.
Matt slumped to the ground, bleeding heavily. I held the boys tight, my own body shaking so hard I couldn’t stand. Russ knelt by us, pale and breathless.
“What was that?” he asked, his voice low.
“A wolf,” I choked out. “It attacked him.”
Matt groaned. “I’m okay,” he muttered, but blood was still pouring down his arm. It soaked the sleeping bags, pooled onto the tent floor.
Russ tried his phone—no signal. He stood. “I’ll go get help. Hold tight.” And then he was gone, flashlight bobbing through the trees.
I tore open our first-aid kit, hands slippery with blood. I wrapped Matt’s arm in towels, applying pressure as best I could. “Stay awake, okay?” I said, brushing hair from his face.
Holden whimpered. “Is Daddy gonna die?”
“No,” I said, forcing calm. “Help is coming. He’s going to be okay.”
We sat in that broken tent for twenty agonizing minutes. Every rustle in the forest felt like the wolf coming back.
Finally, headlights.
Russ returned with two rangers and a medic. They moved quickly, bandaging Matt, lifting him onto a stretcher. I carried the boys to the ranger truck, wrapping them in our campfire blankets.
The hospital in Banff was small but efficient. Matt’s wounds were cleaned, stitched, wrapped. No broken bones—just torn muscle, shredded skin. “You’re lucky,” the doctor said. “Another inch and it would’ve hit the artery.”
Later, the rangers told us they found the wolf—sick, starving, its teeth worn to nubs. It had likely been scavenging for days, too weak to hunt elk or deer. Our tent had been easy prey.
They euthanized it. DNA confirmed it was the one that attacked Matt.
The news called it a freak incident. A one-in-a-million.
But we lived it.
Russ stopped by the hospital before we left. He looked uncomfortable with our gratitude. “I just heard you screaming,” he said. “I ran. That’s all.”
I hugged him hard, tears in my eyes. “You saved us.”
A few days later, we packed up what was left of our gear and drove home to New Jersey. The tent was shredded, the sleeping bags stained. Holden still asks about wolves, wondering if that one was just hungry or mean. Reid doesn’t let Matt out of his sight. And Matt—he never talks about the attack, but sometimes I catch him staring out the window, lost, his fingers tracing the faint scars on his arm.
Me? I don’t know if I’ll ever camp again. But I remember that night with aching clarity—the wind in the trees, the sound of tearing nylon, and the way a quiet man named Russ ran toward screams in the dark.
"Night Vision":
In April of 2016, my best friend Emily and I decided we needed to escape the city for a few days—disconnect from work, the constant noise, and the stress that seemed to cling to us like a second skin. We settled on a weekend camping trip along the Blue Ridge Parkway, near a quiet little spot called Potato Field Gap. We’d been camping a few times before, nothing too intense—mostly campgrounds and short trails—but we considered ourselves seasoned enough for a remote site and a couple of nights under the stars.
The drive up was peaceful. The road wound through the mountains like a lazy river, the landscape rolling past in shades of green and gray. It had rained lightly the day before, so the forest seemed to steam in the afternoon sun, mist lifting from moss-covered stones and dark tree trunks. As we pulled off onto the gravel road that led to the trailhead, Emily cracked open her window and breathed deep. “This,” she said with a wide grin, freckles dusted across her sunlit face, “is exactly what I needed.”
By late afternoon, we found the clearing we’d marked on the map—a gently sloping patch of earth surrounded by rhododendron and birch, about a fifteen-minute hike from the car. Wildflowers peeked through the grass in soft clusters—trillium, violets, a few tiny bluets. The air had that perfect early-spring bite, cool and clean, with the faintest smell of wet earth and pine needles. Birds chirped lazily in the canopy above as we pitched our tents and gathered dry wood for the fire.
That night was postcard-perfect. We roasted hot dogs on sharpened sticks, told dumb stories, and laughed like we hadn’t in months. Emily leaned back on a fallen log, firelight dancing across her face. “No phones,” she said, grinning at the crackling flames. “No traffic. No notifications. Just us and the woods.”
“Just the way it should be,” I replied, cracking open a soda and toasting the stars. The sky was clear—an endless ocean of black velvet, scattered with stars like shattered diamonds. By 9 p.m., the woods around us had gone still, save for the steady hum of crickets and the occasional who-whooo of an owl somewhere deep among the trees.
We talked until our voices felt too loud for the silence around us, then crawled into our tents around eleven. I zipped myself into my sleeping bag, the nylon rustling softly in the dark. Outside, the fire died to glowing embers. Inside, the silence pressed gently on my ears, like a soft hand. I drifted off thinking, this might be the most peaceful place on Earth.
But that peace didn’t last.
I woke up at 3:07 a.m. according to my watch, with a dull ache in my bladder and a chill crawling up my spine. The fire had long since died. My breath fogged faintly in the tent, the air damp and frigid. Reluctantly, I reached for my flashlight, trying not to disturb Emily in the tent next to mine. The zipper of my tent seemed too loud, the teeth clacking in the silence as I unsealed the flap and stepped into the night.
The clouds had rolled in, hiding the moon. The world was cast in near-total darkness, my flashlight slicing a narrow path of light through the trees. I walked a few steps away from camp, just far enough to get some privacy. That’s when I saw him.
About fifty feet away, near the edge of the clearing, a man stood completely still.
He wasn’t moving. Not a twitch. Just standing there—staring. I don’t know how long he’d been watching, or how long it took me to fully register what I was seeing. He wore a heavy, dark jacket and thick hunting boots, and even from that distance I could see the pale glint of his eyes reflecting my flashlight.
My skin turned ice cold. The forest, once quiet and serene, now felt like it was holding its breath.
“Hey!” I called, voice cracking from the cold and adrenaline. “You okay?”
No answer.
He turned—slowly—and walked back into the woods. His boots crunched through the underbrush, the sound unnaturally loud in the night. I stood frozen, gripping the flashlight like a weapon. Every instinct screamed at me: something was wrong. He hadn’t stumbled on our site by accident. He hadn’t been lost or confused. He was watching us.
I stumbled back into my tent and zipped it tight, heart hammering, eyes wide in the dark. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
At dawn, I told Emily everything.
She was crouched by the fire pit, stirring water into two packets of instant coffee. Her eyes widened as I described the man—his posture, the way he hadn’t responded, the way he just walked off.
“That’s creepy as hell,” she muttered, glancing toward the treeline. “Why would someone be out here in the middle of the night, just… standing around?”
I didn’t have an answer. We both stared into the woods for a long time.
We tried to brush it off, heading out for a hike around late morning. We took photos of the sweeping views, posed with wildflowers, tried to pretend things were normal. But every snap of a twig made us flinch. I kept looking over my shoulder, half-expecting to see those heavy boots stepping out from behind a tree.
It was around noon when they appeared.
Two men, coming down the slope toward our site. They wore full camo—jackets, pants, even gloves. One had a scruffy beard and cold eyes. The other wore a baseball cap pulled low over his face. Both carried rifles slung casually over their shoulders.
They didn’t look like hunters. They looked like soldiers—or predators.
Emily stiffened beside me. “Those guys look intense,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.
I nodded, stepping slightly in front of her as they approached. “Morning,” I said, forcing a smile. “Beautiful day, huh?”
The bearded one just grunted. The other didn’t even look at us. They walked past slowly, eyes sweeping the campsite like they were cataloguing it, and then vanished into the woods.
We didn’t relax the rest of the day. That night, we kept the fire high and took turns staying awake, listening for footsteps or branches breaking. The forest no longer felt like a retreat. It felt like a trap.
At 2:11 a.m., everything unraveled.
Emily screamed—a raw, panicked sound that shot straight through me. I grabbed the flashlight and sprinted to her tent, unzipping it in a rush.
She was pale, shaking, eyes wide. “He was in here,” she gasped. “I woke up and he was leaning over me. He had these goggles—night vision, I think. I screamed and he ran. But I saw him.”
I swept the light across the clearing, but it only caught leaves and shadows. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. Just—just get us out of here.”
We packed what we could in minutes. Our gear was half-scattered, the fire barely doused. We sprinted down the trail with adrenaline pumping, crashing through the undergrowth until we reached the car. The headlights cut through the darkness, and as we pulled onto the main road, I thought I saw movement behind us in the trees.
The ranger station was about twenty minutes away. We banged on the door until someone came—a tired-looking ranger in a T-shirt and jeans. His face tightened as we told him what happened.
“We saw a man last night,” I said. “Emily was attacked. He had night vision goggles. There were others with rifles. They were watching us.”
She nodded, still trembling. “One had a scar. On his left cheek. I saw it when he leaned over me.”
The ranger didn’t hesitate. He picked up the phone and started making calls. We waited inside with lukewarm coffee and flickering fluorescent lights, every creak of the floor making us jump.
We left the next morning, shaken and silent.
A month later, I saw the headline.
“Missing Woman Found Tied to Tree Near Blue Ridge Parkway.”
My hands went cold as I read. A 64-year-old hiker had vanished days before our trip. She’d been found barely alive, tied to a tree in the woods near Potato Field Gap. Tips from campers—our report—had helped rangers find her.
I called Emily.
“You think it was them?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“I do,” I said. “The scar. The gear. The way they were watching us.”
We never went back. Even now, the memory chills me. The forest is beautiful—but it also hides things. And sometimes, those things are human.
And far worse than any monster.
"Voices in the Pines":
I’ll never forget that camping trip in November of 2022. It was meant to be a reprieve—just a quiet, disconnected weekend with my boyfriend, Freddie, far from the pressure cooker of city life. The two of us had been stretched thin for months. Between work, responsibilities, and the dull gray pulse of urban noise, we’d started to feel like we were drifting—like two ships passing each other in a fog of exhaustion. So we packed up the essentials, left our phones mostly off, and headed northeast toward the San Bernardino National Forest, near Big Bear Lake. We weren’t looking for anything more than peace. Stillness. A chance to feel small in the face of something natural and vast. But what we got was something altogether different—something that still tightens my chest when I think about it, even now.
We arrived later than planned, as always. The drive had taken longer than expected—construction delays, a wrong turn, and a last-minute grocery stop in a tiny town with a single gas station and a boarded-up diner. By the time we turned onto the dirt access road leading into the forest, the sun was already grazing the tops of the trees, bleeding long, golden rays through the pines. The further we drove, the denser the forest became. The trees thickened like a wall closing behind us, each bend in the trail sealing us deeper into the wilderness.
The air changed as we stepped out of the car—cooler, quieter, heavier. There was a weight to the silence here, not oppressive exactly, but dense, like the forest had its own gravity. Even the birds seemed muted, like they were keeping their voices down out of respect for something older, something watching.
We found a spot tucked about twenty feet off a narrow trail, just a stone’s throw from a slow, meandering creek. The water was cold and clear, threading its way between smooth rocks and fallen branches, barely making a sound. The clearing was small and uneven, scattered with old pine needles and mossy stones. One massive fir loomed near the center like a sentry, its roots like gnarled veins threading across the forest floor.
As we set up camp, the light faded quickly. The forest floor darkened first, shadows thickening around our boots. Then the treetops turned to silhouettes, and finally, the sky dimmed into a deep indigo. We worked quickly, pitching our tent while the last of the light clung to the horizon. The temperature dropped as soon as the sun dipped below the trees. Our breaths turned visible, drifting upward and vanishing among the branches.
Once the tent was up and our sleeping bags laid out, we lit a small fire. The crackle of flames was almost too loud against the silence. Freddie knelt near the fire ring, stacking dry pinewood we’d collected, his face flickering in and out of orange light. I wrapped my arms around myself, watching the trees beyond the fireline. They seemed closer than before, leaning in, forming a circle around us. It was a beautiful kind of eerie. Serene, but also unsettling in a way I couldn’t quite explain.
“This place is… intense,” Freddie said, tossing a twig into the flames.
I smiled, forcing a chuckle. “You mean quiet?”
He didn’t look up. “Too quiet,” he murmured. “Like the forest is listening.”
I wanted to brush it off, tease him for being dramatic. But the truth was, I felt it too. There was something strange about the stillness, like we had stepped into a part of the forest where time moved differently, slower. More deliberate.
We started prepping a quick dinner—canned soup and some bread. Freddie fiddled with the propane stove while I gathered a few extra sticks for the fire. We were just starting to settle into the rhythm of the evening when it happened.
A sound pierced the stillness like a needle through fabric. A yell—distant, but unmistakably human.
It came from somewhere beyond the creek, muffled by the trees but raw, desperate. I froze, the sticks falling from my arms and landing silently on the forest floor. My eyes locked with Freddie’s.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered, my throat tight.
“Yeah,” he said, already reaching for the flashlight. “That wasn’t an animal.”
Then it came again. Weaker this time. Drawn out, as if whoever was yelling barely had the strength to finish.
We stood in stunned silence for a moment, hearts pounding.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Freddie’s face had changed—he looked focused now, alert. “We can’t ignore that. Someone might be in real trouble.”
I grabbed my jacket and gloves while Freddie checked our flashlight batteries. We brought an extra headlamp, just in case. Before we left, he poured some water into a bottle and slipped a small first-aid kit into his backpack.
We extinguished the fire partially but left the embers glowing, in case we needed to find our way back quickly. The moment we stepped outside the ring of firelight, the cold hit harder, the dark deeper.
The forest swallowed us. Every step we took into the woods felt like peeling away from reality. The beam from the flashlight was narrow and sharp, but it barely dented the shadows. Trees loomed tall and immovable, their bark black and rough like dried blood in the half-light. The further we went, the more I could feel the forest pushing back. The silence wasn’t empty—it was filled with the creaks of trees shifting in the wind, with the distant rustle of leaves disturbed by something unseen. And always, always the whisper of the creek nearby, like the forest’s own pulse.
We called out—once, twice. No answer.
Then, about ten minutes in, we heard it again: “Help…”
Closer. Still faint, but no longer fading. We broke into a hurried walk, ducking under low branches, our legs scraping against thorny brush. The undergrowth got thicker, more tangled. Something snagged my jacket and ripped the fabric. I barely noticed.
Then the flashlight caught something ahead—a figure, slumped against the base of a tree.
At first, I thought it was a bag of clothes someone had dumped. Then it moved.
We rushed forward. He was alive. Barely.
A man, mid-thirties maybe, with a long, filthy beard and wild eyes that caught the light like a frightened animal’s. His clothes were torn and filthy, his jacket hanging in shreds from one arm. He was shivering uncontrollably, and his hands were raw, cracked open from the cold. His feet were bare and swollen grotesquely, with purplish blotches and blackened toes. His skin was mottled with dirt and exposure, and his lips were so chapped they’d cracked open.
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “Are you okay?”
He blinked slowly, as if it took all his energy just to lift his eyes. “I’ve been here for weeks,” he rasped. “Lost. I tried… to follow the creek…”
Freddie knelt beside him, examining his injuries. “What’s your name?”
“Eric,” he whispered. “Oceanside. I was hiking. Took a wrong turn. Phone died on day three. Twisted my ankle day five. I thought…” He didn’t finish.
Next to him was a cracked plastic salsa jar. It was nearly empty, crusted at the edges.
“You’ve been eating that?” I asked.
“It’s all I had. Creek water kept me alive.”
I called 911 while Freddie bundled Eric in our emergency blanket. The signal was touch-and-go. I climbed a small hillock and stood on my toes, waving the phone around like it was a divining rod. Eventually, one bar stuck. I got through to a dispatcher, gave her our location, and she assured me they’d dispatch a chopper within the hour.
We stayed with Eric, giving him water in small sips. He winced as he swallowed. He told us bits of his story in pieces—how he’d followed a trail that didn’t exist, how he thought he could find his way out by sticking to the creek, how every night got colder than the last. He’d tried building fires, but most nights he was too weak. He saw eyes in the trees sometimes—deer maybe, or worse. He thought he was going mad.
I held his hand while he talked. He cried once, quietly, and didn’t try to hide it.
Then we heard it—the chop of rotor blades.
Freddie lit a flare. The red glow painted our faces in ghostly light.
The helicopter hovered overhead, light sweeping through the trees. Minutes later, a rescuer descended on a harness, moved with swift, practiced efficiency. They wrapped Eric tight, secured him to a stretcher, and winched him up slowly through the trees.
He looked down at us as he rose, face pale in the spotlight. “Thank you,” he said. “I thought I was already dead.”
When the helicopter faded into the sky, the forest was still again. But something was different now—like the forest had exhaled.
We hiked back in silence. Neither of us spoke. We just listened to our boots crunching over the earth, to the wind slipping through the trees. Back at the camp, the fire had gone out completely. We didn’t bother restarting it. We climbed into our sleeping bags, fully clothed, and lay there in silence, barely blinking.
The next morning, frost coated the ground. The creek steamed slightly in the early sun. We packed slowly, our movements automatic, our minds somewhere else entirely. That day, the forest seemed quieter than ever—but not ominous. Almost grateful.
Two weeks later, Eric called us. He was still in the hospital, recovering. His voice was steadier now. His feet would take months to heal, but he was alive.
“You saved my life,” he said. “I owe you everything.”
He offered to take us to dinner in Oceanside. We told him we’d think about it.
But really—we didn’t need anything. We’d heard a voice in the dark, and we’d answered. That was enough.
And that trip? It changed me. The forest, beautiful and brutal, reminded me just how thin the line is between life and death. Between being lost and being found. I’ll never forget that night, the way it shook something loose inside me. It’s a story I’ll carry for the rest of my life, like a scar that doesn’t hurt, but never quite fades.