"The Man in the Pines":
I’ll never forget that camping trip in northern Minnesota, not far from the Canadian border. It was supposed to be a fun weekend—just a simple youth group retreat into the woods. Twelve of us kids, all in middle and high school, and four adult chaperones from church. We were excited, loud, buzzing with energy the whole drive up. But what happened that night still gives me chills. No one’s ever been able to explain it—not the park rangers, not our parents, not even the chaperones who were with us. And no matter how much time passes, I can’t forget it.
This is my story, and it’s all true.
We left early Friday morning, crammed into two church vans. The drive was long and winding, the highway eventually giving way to narrow roads lined with endless pine trees. Towering spruces and firs surrounded us on both sides, the forest so thick it looked like it had been growing undisturbed for a hundred years. The air smelled different up there—sharper, cleaner. Full of sap and wet soil and something else I couldn’t name. The further we drove, the more it felt like we were leaving civilization behind.
By the time we reached the campsite, the sun was beginning to dip low in the sky. The lake we parked beside was mirror-still, reflecting streaks of orange and pink from the sunset. The surface shimmered like glass, and frogs chirped from the reeds at its edge. Dense woods surrounded the clearing on all sides—deep, dark woods that seemed to lean in, like they were listening.
Mr. Thompson, our group leader, stood at the edge of the lot and clapped his hands. “Alright, let’s get these tents up before we lose daylight!”
We scattered like ants, tugging sleeping bags and gear from the vans. My buddy Sam kept pretending to trip over everything—tent poles, backpacks, even a rock he clearly kicked on purpose—making the rest of us howl with laughter. By the time the fire was lit and dinner was cooking, night had settled in around us. The air was cold enough that you could see your breath in front of your face.
The chaperones—Mr. Thompson, Mr. Garcia, Mr. Lee, and Coach Daniels—sat around the fire sipping camp coffee from battered metal mugs, talking in low voices. We roasted marshmallows, hands sticky with chocolate and graham crackers. I remember the weight of the cocoa mug in my hands, the way the steam curled upward in the cold night air, and how the fire’s warmth didn’t quite reach my back. The lake was a sheet of black now, still and silent, and the crickets sang steadily from the underbrush.
After dinner, we sat around the fire telling stories. Coach Daniels leaned in, the firelight dancing across his weathered face. His voice dropped low.
“They say there’s an old hermit who lives out here. Somewhere in these woods. No one’s seen him, but they’ve heard him. Talking to himself at night. Crying sometimes.”
We groaned, half-laughing, half-uneasy. “Come on, Coach,” Sam whispered beside me, grinning. “That’s like, every campfire cliché ever.” We laughed, but not too loudly. The shadows beyond the fire seemed a little darker now.
By ten, we’d finished singing a few songs and joking around, the high of the day mellowing into a warm fatigue. The moon was out—big and silver—casting long, warped shadows through the trees. Mr. Thompson stood and stretched. “Alright, guys. Big hike tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.” We all groaned but obeyed, retreating into our tents in clumps of four.
Sam, Ethan, Lucas, and I shared a tent on the edge of the camp. We zipped ourselves in, still giggling about the hermit story and tossing our socks at each other like dorks. Eventually, one by one, we drifted off. The fire crackled outside, the lake lapped gently at the shore, and everything felt safe.
Until it didn’t.
I woke up sometime after midnight, my body jolting upright like it had been dropped. My heart was pounding. I didn’t know why—there was no sound, no light, no reason. Just an overwhelming sense that something was wrong. The tent was still, quiet except for the soft breaths of the others. But then I heard it.
Breathing.
Not snoring. Not rustling. Breathing.
Heavy. Wet. Uneven.
It was coming from just outside the tent.
I froze, every muscle tensed. My stomach twisted in a slow, sickening knot. The breathing grew louder, raspier, like whoever it was had something caught in their throat. I sat up slowly, trying not to make a sound. My heart felt like it was trying to hammer its way out of my chest.
Then came the voice.
“Please… help… me…”
It was a man’s voice. Weak, broken, desperate. Old.
I couldn’t move. My skin prickled with ice. My brain screamed, Don’t open the tent. Don’t move.
Sam stirred beside me. “Jake… you hear that?” he whispered, barely audible. His voice was shaking.
“Yeah,” I whispered back. “Don’t move. Don’t say anything.”
The breathing got closer. The voice came again, this time more broken, like it was crying.
“Please… oh God… help…”
Ethan and Lucas were awake now too, both sitting up. I could see their pale faces in the faint moonlight filtering through the tent’s nylon. I reached for my flashlight with trembling hands. “What’s going on?” Ethan whispered.
“Shh,” I hissed.
I crawled slowly to the front of the tent, unzipped a tiny slit, and angled my flashlight out. I hesitated—I didn’t want to look—but I had to. I clicked the light on.
There he was.
An old man. Naked. Standing maybe ten feet from our tent.
His body was rail-thin, skin stretched tight over bone, his ribs jutting out like a skeleton. His legs were mottled with bruises and dirt, covered in scabs and scratches. His face—God, his face—sunken eyes wide with something between terror and madness, a scraggly gray beard hanging from his jaw. His mouth trembled as he sobbed, shoulders shaking like he could barely stand.
“Jesus,” Sam whispered, leaning over my shoulder. “Who the hell is that?”
I couldn’t speak.
Then—he looked up.
His head jerked in our direction like he’d heard us. His eyes locked onto the slit in the tent. Wide, wild, hollow eyes. And then—he bolted.
He didn’t speak again. Just turned and ran, stumbling into the woods with an unnatural speed, his bare feet cracking branches as he disappeared into the trees. His sobbing vanished into the dark, swallowed by the forest.
I zipped the tent shut so fast I nearly broke the zipper. “We have to get Mr. Thompson,” I said, my voice hoarse.
We scrambled out, heartbeats racing, adrenaline roaring in our ears. Lights flicked on in the other tents. Whispering voices. One girl screamed. I sprinted to the chaperones’ tent. “Mr. Thompson! There’s someone out there!” I cried.
He unzipped the tent immediately, his face groggy but alert. “Jake? What’s wrong?”
I told him everything, every terrifying detail. The others gathered, flashlights in hand, pulling on coats and boots. Mr. Garcia’s face darkened. “Stay put,” he said. “All of you. Don’t move.”
But we didn’t listen. We huddled by the firepit, our backs to the woods, eyes scanning the darkness. “Was that the hermit?” Lucas whispered.
“No way,” Sam said. “That guy… that guy looked like he was dying.”
“Maybe he was sick,” Ethan offered, his voice shaking. “Or lost. Like, dementia or something.”
The chaperones disappeared into the trees with flashlights, calling out. “Sir? Hello? We want to help!” Their voices faded, answered only by wind and leaves.
They searched for almost an hour.
Nothing.
No tracks. No footprints. No broken branches. No sign that anyone had been there at all.
Mr. Thompson called the rangers from the road, where he could finally get a signal. When they arrived, they searched again—with dogs, with spotlights, with maps. They found no trail. No clothing. No signs of a missing person. Nothing.
By sunrise, the rangers told us to pack up. “It’s better if you head back,” one of them said. “We’ll keep looking. But we can’t explain this.”
We didn’t argue. We threw our gear in the vans and left. The ride home was dead quiet. No music, no jokes. Just the hum of tires and the occasional sniffle. I kept staring out the window, seeing his face in every tree trunk.
“Who was he?” I asked Sam. “Why was he out there?”
Sam just shook his head. “I don’t know. But I don’t ever wanna see something like that again.”
When I got home, my parents hugged me tight, asking what happened. I told them. They listened, but the looks on their faces told me they didn’t quite believe it. Who could blame them?
A few days later, the rangers called. They never found him. No one had reported a missing person who matched the description. No one had escaped a hospital or wandered from a nursing home. No one had even been camping in the area. It was like he’d come out of nowhere and disappeared the same way.
Sometimes I wonder if he ever really existed. But then I remember his eyes—those hollow, pleading eyes—and I know what I saw.
I haven’t been camping since. I don’t know if I ever will. Because the woods are full of secrets. And that night, we saw one of them.
Just one.
And that was enough.
"No Vacancy":
It was early October, and the Pacific Northwest was just beginning to slip into its long, gray sleep. The air was cool and dry, tinted with the faintest promise of winter. Sarah and I had been on the road for six days—just the two of us, our rented gray Subaru Outback, and the endless ribbon of highway winding up the coast. We’d flown into San Francisco, loaded up with camping gear, and set off toward Portland. No reservations. Just maps, instinct, and each other. It felt raw and exhilarating. Every night was a new place, a different patch of wilderness under a different patch of stars. We were chasing that feeling of freedom—the kind that makes you believe nothing can touch you.
That evening, we were somewhere in southern Oregon, winding through pine-thick hills as the sun bled into the treetops. We’d been driving longer than we meant to, chasing daylight after a late lunch stop in a sleepy coastal town. The campsite Sarah found online looked decent—open year-round, remote but not too far off the main road, with fire pits and restrooms. It was supposed to be quiet, peaceful.
But when we pulled in, something felt wrong immediately.
The entrance was a narrow gravel path swallowed by tall trees. The car rocked gently as we crawled forward, headlights slicing through shadows that stretched like fingers across the road. Just past the bend, the forest opened up into a clearing—a handful of dusty campsites, most overgrown with pine needles and moss. The sign at the entrance, barely legible in the fading light, was crooked and weatherworn. “CLOSED FOR SEASON” was scrawled in faint red paint beneath the official signage.
Sarah leaned forward in her seat. “Didn’t the website say it was open?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Must be off-season or something.” I tried to sound casual, but the silence unsettled me. No other cars. No sounds of life. Just wind brushing through the trees and the creak of swaying branches.
She hesitated, lips pressed in a line. “The next campsite’s over an hour away.”
I nodded slowly. It was already dusk, and the roads around here weren’t exactly well-lit. Driving mountain curves in the dark didn’t sound any safer. Against my better judgment, I pulled into a flat spot near a stand of trees and turned off the engine. The sudden stillness rang in my ears.
We stepped out and stretched stiff legs. The air was colder here, damp with the scent of wet leaves and old pine. As I unpacked the tent and started hammering in the stakes, a flicker of movement caught my eye. Across the clearing, maybe fifty yards off, a fire burned low in a circle of stones. Two men sat beside it, slouched in broken lawn chairs. They wore faded, ripped jackets and stared at us—motionless, unsmiling. Their faces flickered in and out of the firelight, expressionless.
I forced myself to look away. “Probably just locals,” I said under my breath.
Sarah didn’t respond. When I looked up, she was watching them too, her brow furrowed. She turned her back and busied herself with the cooler, but I could see the tension in her shoulders.
We had just about finished setting up when we heard footsteps—slow, uneven, crunching over leaves. A woman emerged from the tree line. Older, maybe late fifties, wearing a dirty brown parka and mud-caked boots. Her gray hair was matted and hung over her face in clumps. When she spoke, her voice was low and gravelly, like her throat was full of smoke.
“Evenin’,” she said, eyes scanning us. “Where y’all from?”
I straightened up. “California.”
She nodded, slowly. “Nice car.” She gestured with a crooked finger at the Subaru. “Y’all got any food to spare? Times are tight out here.”
Sarah closed the cooler lid with a soft thud. “Sorry, we just brought enough for us.”
The woman’s lips curled into a smile, revealing yellowed, crooked teeth. “Just askin’, no harm.” She stayed there a moment too long, her eyes never still. She studied our tent, our gear, our bodies. A silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable.
“You two camping out long?” she asked.
“Just one night,” I said quickly. “Heading north tomorrow.”
She nodded again, slowly, then shuffled off toward the campfire where the two men still sat. One of them leaned in to say something to her, and all three glanced in our direction. My stomach tightened.
“We shouldn’t stay here,” Sarah whispered once they were out of earshot. Her hands were trembling as she zipped up a duffel. “This feels wrong.”
“I know,” I said. “Let’s eat something fast and go to sleep. We’ll leave at first light.”
As darkness fell, the forest seemed to press in closer. Our camp stove hissed quietly as we heated a can of beans. The fire across the lot crackled louder now, and the sound of faint, irregular laughter drifted through the trees. We were just finishing our meager dinner when the rumble of a car engine broke the stillness.
Headlights stabbed through the darkness.
A white Mercedes, old and rusted, rolled into the clearing with a bass-heavy thrum of distorted rap music. The engine coughed, then idled. The car doors opened with metallic groans, and three figures stepped out. Their faces were painted—black and white streaks across their skin, exaggerated grins and jagged shapes. Like clowns, or maybe Juggalos. One of them tossed an empty beer can onto the ground and whooped.
They weren’t here to camp. That much was clear.
Over the next half hour, more people arrived—beaten-up trucks and faded sedans, their occupants stumbling out in groups of twos and threes. Some carried coolers, others passed around plastic bags and tiny glass pipes. The smell hit us next—chemical, acrid, metallic. It clung to the air like smoke. Sarah’s eyes were wide in the dim light of our lantern.
“Meth,” she whispered. “They’re all high.”
I didn’t answer. My brain was already in overdrive, cataloging escape routes, doing rough mental maps of the way we came in. The entrance road was narrow and twisting. If they blocked it, we’d have nowhere to go.
“We need to leave. Quietly.”
We packed fast but tried to make it look casual. Every zip, every crinkle of nylon felt deafening in the quiet. My heart thudded in my chest, adrenaline spiking with every second. I could feel eyes on us. When I looked up, the woman from earlier was back—standing beside a dented pickup truck, smoking a cigarette and staring at us.
“Leavin’ already?” she called.
I forced a tight smile. “Early start tomorrow,” I said, trying to sound light.
She didn’t smile back. “Y’all be careful out there,” she said slowly.
But the way she said it… it wasn’t concern. It was something else. A threat wrapped in politeness. A warning wrapped in amusement.
As I slammed the trunk shut and climbed into the car, Sarah was already locking her door. The woman’s headlights snapped on, and suddenly we were blinded. The engine of her truck growled to life. I twisted the key—nothing.
“Come on,” I muttered. “Come on!”
“The brake!” Sarah hissed. “Parking brake!”
I yanked it off. The car jerked forward, tires crunching on gravel. In the rearview mirror, the truck followed—slow, steady, keeping pace. My hands clenched the wheel as I pushed the car faster, whipping around corners, the forest a blur of black shapes and flashes of moonlight. For a solid mile, the headlights stayed behind us. Then, without warning, they vanished. Just… gone.
We didn’t speak for a long time.
We kept driving until we saw lights—a tiny town nestled in a valley. A quaint B&B had one room left. We took it. That night, we locked the door, shoved a chair under the knob, and lay awake listening to every creak of the floorboards above us.
In the morning, over burnt coffee and pancakes, the elderly man who owned the place asked where we’d stayed. When we told him, his face went tight.
“That place?” he said. “That’s a bad spot. Locals don’t go near it. Meth cookers and squatters. Sometimes worse.”
We thanked him and left, but the ride to Portland was quiet.
Lucky. That’s what he said. Lucky we got out.
But some nights, I still see those painted faces in the dark. I still smell the chemical smoke. I still hear her voice.
“Y’all be careful out there.”
And I still wonder what would’ve happened if the car hadn’t started.
"Whispers in the Clearing":
I’ve always felt most like myself out in the wilderness. Not in the sanitized trails behind suburban neighborhoods or the overly curated “nature experiences” at national parks, but in the deep, quiet places—the places where the trees seem older than memory, and where the silence settles over you like snow.
There’s something primal in those places, something untouched and indifferent to the frantic hum of modern life. Out there, everything slows down. Your breath. Your thoughts. It’s not just peaceful—it’s honest.
And after the year I’d had—endless overtime, a breakup I saw coming too late, mounting bills and sleepless nights—I needed honesty. I needed quiet. I needed to get out.
So when Jake sent the group text—“Long weekend? Remote cabin? No signal, all chill”—I said yes before the others could even weigh in. It was a small A-frame up in the Cascades, a few miles off a fire road, no Wi-Fi, no cell reception. Exactly what I needed.
But the more I thought about it, the more I felt like even that wasn't enough.
I didn’t just want to escape my life. I wanted to strip it away. Test myself. See what was left underneath once the distractions and dependencies were gone. That’s how I decided I’d spend the first night camping alone, a short hike from the cabin in a spot I remembered from a backpacking trip years ago—a secluded clearing down a deer trail, maybe thirty minutes from where we’d be staying.
I mentioned the idea casually while we were unloading gear at the trailhead, hoping not to make it a big thing. But Jake caught on.
“You’re going to camp where?” he asked, pausing mid-swing with his pack. “Why?”
I shrugged, trying to keep it light. “I just want to try a night solo. Clear my head. Reset.”
His brow furrowed. “It’s pretty isolated out there. You’ll be alone in the dark woods, man. What if you get hurt? Or worse—what if you get bored?”
I grinned, trying to mask my nerves. “I’ve got a map, my GPS, and a phone—though it probably won’t get signal. And I’ll be back by breakfast. I just want to see if I can do it. You know… be out there. No distractions.”
Jake gave me that skeptical big-brother look he always gives when I do something borderline reckless. “Alright,” he said finally, with a sigh. “But if you hear banjo music, run.”
We split off near the cabin. They carried their coolers and sleeping bags toward the porch, laughing and hollering like kids on a field trip. I turned down the narrower trail, the one half-choked with moss and roots, my pack snug against my back and the sun just beginning to dip behind the peaks.
The hike was short but beautiful. Dense trees filtered the golden light, casting dappled shadows on the forest floor. The air smelled like pine sap and last week’s rain—clean, earthy, alive. I moved carefully, letting myself sink into the rhythm of my footfalls, the rustle of animals unseen in the underbrush, the distant croak of a raven overhead. Each step felt like a layer of noise was being peeled off my skin.
The clearing was just as I remembered it. A natural bowl of soft, uneven grass surrounded by tall pines, with a thin stream weaving through the far side like melted glass. It was quiet, but not dead. The kind of quiet that breathes with the forest—wind sighing through branches, insects humming, the occasional splash from the stream.
I dropped my pack and stood for a moment, soaking it in.
Here, finally, I felt like I could breathe.
Setting up camp was easy. I pitched my small one-person tent on a patch of level ground, laid out my sleeping pad and bag, and collected enough deadfall to make a small fire. I didn’t bring much—just the basics: a lighter, a small cookpot, some instant food, snacks, a headlamp, a flashlight, and my folding knife.
As dusk fell, the forest began to change. The birds grew quieter, replaced by the nocturnal orchestra—crickets, frogs, the occasional distant hoot of an owl. I built a modest fire and cooked two hot dogs on a stick, their skins blistering and popping in the flames. Afterward, I made a s’more and let myself fall back against a log, watching the flames crackle as the stars blinked into view.
The fire cast flickering shadows that danced along the edges of the clearing. Beyond its light, the woods seemed to deepen—to thicken. Trees leaned closer together. Darkness pooled between trunks like liquid. But I wasn’t scared. Not yet.
When I finally crawled into my tent, zipping the flap shut and burrowing into my sleeping bag, I felt... content. Not euphoric, not excited—just content. As if the world had finally stopped spinning for a moment.
I must’ve drifted off around eleven. The stream’s trickle, the breeze rustling through needles—it was like being rocked to sleep.
Then, around midnight, I woke up.
No reason. Just... alert.
The woods were dead silent.
At first, I thought maybe a cloud had passed over the moon. But when I unzipped the tent flap slightly, I saw the stars were still out. Still shining. Still watching.
That’s when I heard it—the sound that had woken me.
Crunch.
A slow, deliberate footstep on dry leaves. Then another. A soft rhythm. Someone—or something—was walking through the clearing.
I lay perfectly still, every nerve in my body on edge. My breath was shallow. I reached silently for my flashlight and the knife, barely daring to blink.
The steps circled. Not fast. Not loud. Just... patient. Measured.
Around the tent. Once. Then again. I could hear twigs snap. I could feel the vibration of the steps through the cold ground.
I told myself it was a deer. Or maybe a curious coyote. Something wild. Something explainable.
But the steps stopped just outside the tent wall, near my feet. And then...
A voice.
Ragged. Low. Almost like it had been dragged across gravel before being forced into shape.
“Is someone in there?”
The words were clear. Not imagined. Not wind.
I stopped breathing.
It didn’t sound threatening—not exactly. But it didn’t sound right, either. Like someone trying to mimic speech, to imitate normalcy. Too slow. Too careful.
Then something touched the tent.
Pressed against it.
A hand.
I could see it in silhouette—a palm and five fingers, spread wide, pushing inward like it was trying to feel me through the fabric. It dragged down slowly, the fingertips catching slightly on the nylon, making that soft, scratching sound that sliced straight into my spine.
I didn’t think. I couldn’t think.
I exploded out of the tent, flashlight blinding as I bolted into the trees. Branches lashed my face. My foot caught a root and sent me sprawling. I rolled, scrambled up, kept running. The forest seemed to twist around me, the terrain unfamiliar even though I’d just walked it hours before.
Eventually, I collapsed behind a thick tree trunk, heart hammering so hard it hurt. I killed the flashlight and listened.
Nothing.
No footsteps. No voice. No hand.
But the silence now felt hungry.
I curled up under the tree, knife clenched so tight my fingers went numb. I stayed there all night, eyes scanning every shadow, every flicker of movement. I don’t think I blinked for hours.
When dawn finally came, it was like surfacing from a nightmare. Light bled through the canopy, golden and warm. I stood slowly, legs like rubber, and began retracing my steps.
I found the clearing. My tent stood as I’d left it. No footprints. No disturbances. No evidence that anything had been there.
But I know what I heard.
And I know what I saw.
When I got back to the cabin, Jake opened the door, eyes widening.
“Dude. You look like hell.”
I forced a laugh. “Didn’t get much sleep.”
Sarah handed me coffee. “So? How was your night under the stars?”
I paused. “It was... strange. I think someone came into my camp.”
Jake frowned. “Like... a person?”
I nodded. “They walked around my tent. Spoke. Touched it.”
They didn’t laugh. Not this time. Sarah’s smile faded. Mark put down his mug. Jake looked at me like he was trying to decide whether to believe me.
“Did you see anyone?” he asked quietly.
“No,” I said. “I ran before I could.”
I didn’t sleep much the rest of the trip. Even in the cabin, surrounded by friends, the dark felt closer somehow.
I’ve never camped alone again. Never will.
Because I learned something out there in that clearing—that the forest doesn’t care about you. That silence can listen. That something can speak your language just enough to get under your skin.
And when the wind is just right, I still hear that voice echoing in the back of my mind—
Is someone in there?
It wasn’t just a question.
It was an invitation.